Month: January 2018

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We noted when LG teased its 88-inch 8K OLED TV last week that CES is a haven for absurd, if not impressive, TV concepts. But Samsung is really taking that experimental spirit to heart. The Korean firm is showcasing a 146-inch 4K TV dubbed The Wall at the annual tech industry trade show, which formally kicked off on Monday.

Samsung touts The Wall—which is twice as big as me, a 27-year-old man—as using a “module-based” design, though exactly how that will manifest itself isn’t totally clear. A company representative said The Wall’s “modules can be combined to increase the size of the overall TV” and said The Wall “could be sized smaller than 146 inches." Though the 146-inch model at CES comes in 4K, a company blog post suggests that the device isn't restricted to a particular resolution. It can also use DCI-P3 for a wider color gamut.

The Wall is a take on Samsung’s projector-replacing Cinema Screen technology. As such, it’s a MicroLED panel, which is notable for display enthusiasts. This is a still-nascent display type that, like OLED, is self-emitting, meaning each pixel doesn’t require a backlight. That means it can ostensibly produce deep black tones and infinite contrast ratios in form factors that are slimmer than the average LCD set.

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Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) has offered a strongly worded response to a lawsuit brought last month by CryEngine maker Crytek, saying that suit "never should have been filed" and that its "contrived claims... sacrifice legal sufficiency for loud publicity."

Crytek's lawsuit alleged that CIG broke a CryEngine licensing agreement and infringed on Crytek's copyrights by switching from CryEngine to Amazon's Lumberyard platform in late 2016. But CIG contends that Crytek's complaint selectively and misleadingly quotes from the full Game License Agreement signed by both parties.

While Crytek argued that the license agreement couldn't be extended for use in CIG's spin-off game Squadron 42, for instance, the actual license agreement CIG shared with the court says directly up front that it applies to "the game currently entitled 'Space Citizen' [sic] and its related space fighter game 'Squadron 42.'"

Enlarge (credit: YouTube, GoPro Tutorials)

The GoPro woes continue with the release of the company's preliminary Q4 2017 earnings. To little surprise, the company announced it will leave the drone market once it sells off its remaining inventory of $799 Karma drones.

"Although Karma reached the #2 market position in its price band in 2017, the product faces margin challenges in an extremely competitive aerial market," the report states. "Furthermore, a hostile regulatory environment in Europe and the United States will likely reduce the total addressable market in the years ahead. These factors make the aerial market untenable and GoPro will exit the market after selling its remaining Karma inventory. GoPro will continue to provide service and support to Karma customers."

While the Karma drone was ultimately popular, it had a rocky launch. After debuting in October 2016, GoPro recalled the drone in November 2016 after a number of them "lost power during operation." The Karma was the company's first (and only) drone, made to leverage the company's action cam expertise in an aerial device to challenge DJI. However, technical difficulties for both users and GoPro, in addition to the company's financial woes, seem to have led to the Karma's demise and GoPro's abandonment of other drone aspirations.

Enlarge (credit: dogr.io)

Nobody was supposed to take Dogecoin seriously. Back in 2013, a couple of guys created a new cryptocurrency inspired by the "doge" meme, which features a Shiba Inu dog making excited but ungrammatical declarations.

"The price doesn't even matter," Dogecoin cofounder Billy Markus told Motherboard in 2013. Everyone assumed that people would have some fun playing around with a pretend currency for a year or two and then move on. The currency's value peaked around $90 million in February 2014 and then began a years-long slump.

At the start of 2017, the value of all Dogecoins in circulation was around $20 million.