Nothing screams future technology like transparent OLED screens, and LG Display has just revealed its latest concepts and prototypes for CES 2022, The Verge reported. All the concepts were created by LG Display (an independent sister company to LG Electronics) from 55-inch 1080p OLED panels with 40 percent transparency using its 8th-generation manufacturing process. 

The most visually arresting model is the OLED Shelf that's built from two 55-inch transparent OLED displays mounted one above the other and topped by a shelf. The idea is that you could display artwork on one screen and a description of the art below, for example. It also has a sheet of opaque material that can roll down like a shade to make the display more like a standard, non-transparent OLED. At the same time, if the screens are turned off and the opaque material rolled up, you'd be able to see objects behind the screen like actual paintings.

LG Display

The other displays are designed more for signage and commercial clients. The Shopping Managing Showcase can be placed in front of physical products, adding graphics or effects like VFX smoke to enhance them. The Show Window, meanwhile, can display decal-like graphics in front of clothing or other products to make a showcase more attractive. LG Display said that versions of the latter are already being used at a fashion store in Seoul and even at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. 

LG Display already showed off a variety of curved displays, including a continuous screen that wraps around a stationary bike and a curved Media Chair concept. The new transparent displays are only concepts and prototypes, but it told The Verge that it could help customers develop them into products and that the OLED Shelf is ready for production. 

As rumors continue to swirl about its augmented reality headset, Apple has reportedly hire away Meta's AR public relations head Andrea Schubert, according to Mark Gurman's Power On newsletter. "Meta, with Oculus, has been the market leader in headsets, so such a hire makes sense as Apple nears its launch," Gurman wrote. 

Schubert has been Communications Director with Meta's Reality labs and comms lead for Oculus with Meta since March 2016, according to her LinkedIn page. Prior to that, she was director of the PR agency OutCast that counted Facebook and Oculus as clients. 

Numerous rumors have surfaced about Apple's potential AR headset, some conflicting. One recent one speculated that the headset might depend on another device like an iPhone or a Mac computer. Another from The Information stated that it would be a standalone device with dual 8K displays that could cost up to $3,000. And a third rumor, this one from Gurman, indicated that it would play "high-quality VR games." Gurman also stated that Apple may follow up the VR headset with AR-only glasses, but that would happen "years down the road." 

Most of the sources agree that the headset will launch in 2022 or 2023, however. If that's the case, Apple will need to muster an impressive information campaign to educate the public on what it is and how it will work. The fact that the company has reportedly hired away the PR lead from Meta, the current leader in virtual and augmented reality, could confirm that the product is on track so far. 

Have you ever looked at your mouse and thought "it's fine, but kind of a big fat waste of space?" Gaming accessory company XPG apparently did, because it's just unveiled a concept mouse for CES 2022 with a built-in high-speed SSD drive stuffed inside, Digital Trends has reported. 

The XPG Vault Gaming Mouse is a wired USB-C mouse that the company calls a "gaming library in the palm of your hand." The prototype model supports up to 1TB of memory that can run at a surprisingly fast 985 MB/s. The storage can be controlled by XPG's gaming software app. "Gaming Launcher software... promises to make your gaming libraries conveniently portable and [add] a higher level of game integration with XPG Prime Software Ecosystem," the company said.

It looks like a pretty normal mouse, though it'd require a pretty stout USB-C cable to support those kind of speeds. It's not the worst idea we've heard, because it gives you some high-speed storage while freeing up a USB slot that'd normally be taken by a wired mouse. XPG didn't mention the mouse's DPI or any other gaming specs. 

Mice with built-in USB storage aren't unheard of, though we haven't seen anything notable recently. Wild gadgets often pop up at CES, however, helping companies grab some attention and publicity. Aside from the prototype mouse, XPG also unveiled some products that could come to market next year including PCIe Gen5X SSDs, DDR5 DRAM and the XPG Wired/Wireless Alpha gaming mouse. 

Star Trek: Discovery is taking an unscheduled break in the season after its next episode on December 30th, Gizmodo has reported. It'll be off for a month and a half until February 10th, essentially making way for the next season of the kids-oriented Star Trek Prodigy, set to return on January 6th. 

Discovery took a similar mid-season break in season one, but this time there's more content to fill the gap. After it returns in February and finishes its run, the second season of Picard should be about ready to launch. The idea of having enough Star Trek series to run them nearly continuously was Paramount's goal when Discoveryfirst launched in 2018. 

Discovery's fourth season has got off to a strong launch creatively, thanks in part to a more episodic format that will make it easier for casual fans to follow. From a content standpoint, however, the season started controversially when Paramount announced that the series would be pulled from Netflix in non-US territories. Season 4 is now streaming on Pluto TV in some countries in Europe, at least until Paramount+ can expand to those regions. 

A TikTok moderator has sued the social media platform and its parent ByteDance over trauma caused by graphic videos, Bloomberg has reported. In a proposed class-action lawsuit, moderator Candie Frazier said that she has screened videos showing violence, school shootings, fatal falls and even cannibalism. "Plaintiff has trouble sleeping and when she does sleep, she has horrific nightmares," the lawsuit states.

Compounding the problem, TikTok allegedly requires moderators to work 12-hour shifts with only a one-hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks. "Due to the sheer volume of content, content moderators are permitted no more than 25 seconds per video, and simultaneously view three to ten videos at the same time," according to the complaint. 

Plaintiff has trouble sleeping and when she does sleep, she has horrific nightmares.

Along with other social media companies including Facebook and YouTube, TikTok developed guidelines to help moderators cope with child abuse and other traumatic images. Among the suggestions is that companies limit moderator shifts to four hours and provide psychological support. However, TikTok allegedly failed to implement those guidelines, according to the lawsuit.

Content moderators take the brunt of graphic and traumatic images that appear on social media, making sure that users don't have to experience them. One company that provides content moderators for large tech firms even acknowledged in a consent form that the job can cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, social media companies have been criticized by their mods and others for not paying enough given the psychological hazards, and not providing enough mental health support. A similar lawsuit was filed against Facebook in 2018. 

Frazier is hoping to represent other Tiktok screeners in a class-action suit, and is asking for compensation for psychological injuries and a court order for a medical fund for moderators. 

Last year, Google introduced an exclusive feature for Pixel devices called "Hold for Me" that can alert you when a business finally picks up your call. However, that function has been temporarily disabled on the Pixel 6 due to a bug in the December update, XDA Developers has reported. Pixel 6 owners may also lose the Call Screening tool that stops robocallers from ringing your phone, Google said in a community post. 

"In light of a bug in the December Android update, we are disabling Hold For Me and Call Screening on Pixel 6 devices running on the Android S December QPR release," the company wrote. The issue only affects Pixel 6 phones with the latest December 2021 security update, and not any older devices. If you haven't yet received the update, you should continue to have access to those features. 

Hold for Me started as a US exclusive feature but was recently expanded to Canada, as XDA Developers noted. It uses Google's Duplex technology AI to detect when a real person comes on the line to take your call, sparing you the pain of listening to looped elevator music or pre-recorded messages. Google's Call Screening tech also uses Duplex AI tech, which launched with the promise of automatically making restaurant reservations for you. 

With features like a bigger screen and faster charging, Apple's Watch Series 7 is a great gift idea — but the $399 price tag could be hard to swallow. However, you can now pick up the 41mm model (in green only) at a new all-time low of $339 at Amazon, for a savings of $60 or 15 percent off. 

The Watch Series 7 brings a subtle new design with a larger screen that makes a big difference for readability and control. It's more sporty thanks to new IP6X dust-resistance and improved crack-resistance, and offers faster charging if you tend to use it a lot — even for sleep tracking. As with past models, you get a strong watchOS 8 app ecosystem and solid health features like sleep-tracking and ECG measurements. 

It can also monitor your respiration rate while you sleep, and it comes with exclusive watch faces, larger font sizes/buttons and a Qwerty keyboard. The main drawback is with the sleep tracking. Unlike devices from Fitbit and Samsung, the Watch Series 7 can't detect what sleep zone you're in, for one thing. And it won't detect when you've fallen asleep, so you'll need to make sure you have the Sleep Focus mode to log your slumber. 

Still, Apple's Watch is the best selling smartwatch by far for good reason, and as the latest model, the Series 7 is the benchmark. With $60 off the price, there's never been a better time to get one.

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Samsung's 2022 televisions and monitors will support its recently unveiled HDR10+ Gaming standard, the company announced. That means they'll deliver a variety of features for gamers like variable refresh rates (VRR) at up to 120Hz and automatic HDR color correction on a game-by-game basis. 

The standard will be used by Samsung's 2022 Neo QLED lineup with the Q70 TV series and above, along with gaming monitors, the company said. It didn't mention any models, but it showed a wide-screen gaming display (below) and what could be a 2022 Neo QLED TV with very slim bezels. 

Samsung

HDR10+ Gaming slipped under the radar when it was first announced, but it appears to be a move to counter Dolby Vision HDR for gaming found on Xbox Series X/S consoles. It provides a "consistent HDR gaming experience without the need for manual calibration across a variety of display technologies for various input sources, including consoles, PCs and more," Samsung said.

The idea with HDR10+ Gaming is that you won't need to use any manual settings, as the game engine itself automatically optimizes color calibration in real-time. It's designed to deliver details in dark shadows and highlights, while configuring the display to a "true reference mode" so colors are displayed as intended by the developer. It also supports VRR at up to 120Hz along with tone mapping that won't add any extra latency to the gaming signal.

As with HDR10+, however, the challenge for Samsung is getting developers to adopt the standard for games. Dolby Vision gaming is already available or is coming to over 100 games on Xbox Series X/S, so Samsung has some catching up to do. It did say that "several companies, including Saber Interactive, are expected to showcase their HDR10+ Gaming titles" at CES 2022 (if it takes place). 

Samsung could make some headway with PC gaming, however, as Dolby Vision is only available on a handful of PC titles. To help pave the way for HDR10+ PC games, Samsung said that NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series, RTX 20 Series and GTX 16 Series GPUs will support HDR10+ with drivers "scheduled for release in 2022." 

Samsung has teased a PCIe 5.0 SSD showing that storage products should keep doubling in speed every few years, even while Moore's Law is decelerating. Designed for enterprise servers, the PM1743 SSD can hit read speeds of up to 13,000 MB/s and handle 2,500K input/output operations per second (IOPS) — nearly double what the best PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives can do. 

PCIe 5.0 supports up to 32 gigatransfers per second (GT/s), double that of PCIe 4.0. To harness that bandwidth, Samsung developed a proprietary controller and worked with Intel to test it. "Together, we have jointly resolved complicated technical issues encountered with PCIe 5.0 during this initial evaluation period," said Intel's Technology Initiatives Director Jim Pappas.

The SSD delivers sequential write speeds of 6,600 MB/s and a random write speed of 250K IOPS, again nearly doubling current specs. It also offers improved power efficiency of up to 30 percent. "This is expected to lower server and data center operating costs significantly, while also helping to reduce their carbon footprint," Samsung wrote. 

While PCIe 5.0 is now inevitable, the next version isn't far behind, either. The PCI Special Interest Group has already unveiled a PCI Express 6.0 specification that could hit up to a blistering 256GB per second across 16 lanes — twice as fast as PCIe 5.0 and four times quicker than the 4.0 spec. However, that format will need to use a new trick called Pulse Amplitude Modulation technology that can carry twice as much data as existing methods without the need to use ridiculously high frequencies.

Samsung is now sampling the PM1743 PCIe 5.0 SSD for select customers and has plans to mass produce it in the first quarter of 2022, with capacities ranging from 1.92 terabytes (TB) to 15.36TB. It's also expected to be the first PCIe 5.0 SSD with dual-port support, guaranteeing server operation when a connection to one port fails. The first customers are likely to be data centers, but such technology usually trickles down to consumers a year or so later — so plan accordingly if you have any 16K video editing projects or whatever coming up. 

With features like smart house mapping and voice assistant control, iRobot's Roomba i7 is among the best robotic vacuums you can get. As a relatively high-end device, however, it normally commands a pretty high price ($540) — but you can now pick one up at Amazon for just $399, for a savings of $141 (26 percent).

You can program the Roomba i7 to clean at certain times, or just yell at Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant to start it up if there's some unscheduled filth. Once in operation, it's one of iRobot's quietest vacuums yet thanks to a change in the placement of the motor. On top of that, it supposedly has twice the suction power as the Roomba 960. 

It does a great job of avoiding obstacles and cleaning efficiently, thanks to the smart mapping feature that can create an entire plan of your house. You can then label each area and ask it to only clean specific rooms. It's ideal if you have pets, as the multi-surface robber brushes supposedly won't tangle up with pet hair. It also traps 99 percent of cat and dog dander allergens. 

The i7 won't automatically empty its bag like the Roomba i7+ or j7+, but guess what: the latter model is still on sale at Amazon's all-time low price of $649 ($200 off). The Roomba j7+ has many of the same features as the i7, but can dump its waste into a bin that you only need to empty every couple of months. It also has longer battery life and AI-powered vision that can detect pet waste and other nasty stuff. The only drawback is that it's not quite as good for low-pile carpet as the i7, and takes a bit longer to charge. 

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