🖥 Monstrous monitors

Samsung's latest displays are freakishly huge

January 2, 2023

IN THIS ISSUE 📉 Meet Samsung's new 57-inch monster monitor 🎮 Microsoft's big FTC pretrial hearing kicks off tomorrow 🎨 Dark Sky is officially dead. But don't despair 🤖 Brace yourself for the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show

DISPLAY TECH Meet Samsung's monstrous new ultra-widescreen monitors The new Odyssey range is bigger and badder than ever Enormous, impossibly high-definition displays are an unofficial tradition at the Consumer Electronics Show, and this year Samsung kept that tradition alive by announcing not one, but four ultra-wide monitors -- one of which is a ridiculously huge 57-inch 8K behemoth.   The Odyssey Neo G9, as it's called, "is a 57-inch 32:9 monitor with a 1000R curve that puts two 4K displays side by side, for a total resolution of 7680 x 2160." explains DT computing writer Jacob Roach. "Even with the boosted resolution, Samsung is maintaining a super-high 240Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time. It's not OLED, but the updated new Odyssey Neo G9 does use mini-LED backlighting, which Samsung says gives it a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1.   Obviously, the 8K resolution is the stand-out feature, enabled by the DisplayPort 2.1, which doubles data transfer speeds to allow for the bandwidth to do 8K. Whether or not your PC can handle that many pixels is another question, though, especially since only AMD's latest GPUs support the feature." Read more

BIG BUSINESS The big Microsoft v. FTC legal battle begins this week The Federal Trade Commission is suing to block Microsoft's 69 billion dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard Quick refresher: Just shy of a year ago, Microsoft announced plans to purchase video game developer Activision Blizzard (best known for games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft) for a record-setting $69 billion.   But before that deal could go through, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block it, arguing that the acquisition would allow Microsoft to suppress its competitors in the gaming market by denying or degrading their access to popular game franchises.   There's been a lot of speculation about how things could play out in the courts, but soon we won't have to speculate any more. Pretrial hearings are now set for January 3rd, with full proceedings kicking off shortly thereafter.   Even if you don't really care about video games, this is a case that you should keep an eye on. To a certain extent, the outcome will show how serious the government is about antitrust enforcement in the tech industry, and wether or not is has the teeth to rein in anticompetitive behavior from large corporations. Read more

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT Dark Sky is officially dead, but its best features live on in iOS Apple pulled the plug on the beloved weather app over the weekend If you logged on to social media yesterday, there's a good chance you scrolled past at least one post decrying the death of Dark Sky -- a weather app that gathered a large and loyal fanbase for its simple design and handy rain alerts.   Apple purchased the app from its original developers a couple years ago, and even signaled its intent to sunset the app in 2023. Still, despite the ample warnings, people were not happy when Apple finally pulled the plug on New Year's Day.   But really, there's no reason for alarm. Since purchasing the app, Apple. has slowly integrated many of Dark Sky's best features into the native iOS weather app -- including hourly, hyper-localized precipitation forecasts. So if you're an iPhone user, don't worry; you didn't lose anything in terms of features and functionality.   That being said, If you still feel compelled to find a good-looking, cleanly designed weather app to fill the void in your soul, check out Carrot Weather. Read more

ON THE HORIZON Brace yourself for the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show It starts in earnest later this week, but it's unofficially begun already Break out the champagne and roll out the red carpets, CES is back! After two rough, COVID-addled years that saw the world's greatest tech show reduced to a shell of its former self, the show is primed to spring back to its former glory for 2023. And our team of writers and editors will be on the ground in Las Vegas, bringing it all to you.   Technically speaking the show doesn't actually start until tomorrow, January 3rd -- but news and announcements have been trickling in since late December, so unofficially speaking, CES is already in full swing.   Here's a preview of what we expect to see this year. Read more

STAFF PICKS We highly recommend ...

Henry Segerman's YouTube channel Henry Segerman is rad. He's a mathematician, artist, author, educator, and puzzle designer, and the New York Times recently ran an article about one of his most recent puzzles. But he's far cooler and more prolific than the NYT piece lets on. I highly recommend checking out his YouTube channel, which is absolutely stuffed with mind-boggling explanations/demonstrations of weird mathematical concepts. His recent explorations of the concept of holonomy are particularly fun. - Drew Prindle Senior Editor

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