One of the fun things about CES is a completely different approach to established tech norms. Displace’s 55-inch OLED TV not only runs on batteries and has a pop-out camera but also attaches itself with a vacuum seal to most walls and windows. There are even handles on the frame. Is this the end of wall mounts? Probably not.
It apparently keeps itself in place through multiple vacuum loops on the back. When the display detects a surface, the vacuums kick in, sucking the device to the surface of your choice. Displace TV can also do without a power cord because it doesn’t do much image processing onboard. It’s basically streaming media from a base station that performs the rendering. So no wires and no ports on the OLED TV itself.
There are more quirks. You could watch roughly six hours of content before swapping out batteries, and there’s no remote, so you’ll have to suffer the erratic method of hand gestures – which I don’t think anyone truly likes. At $3,000, though, the Displace TV is predictably pricey. Only 100 units are available for pre-order at the moment, and the company said shipping starts in December. And if you get four of them, apparently you can put them together to create a 110-inch 8K TV.
– Mat Smith
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Sony Honda Mobility’s first concept car is the Afeela EV
The Vision-S 02 is now the Afeela.
In March 2022, Honda and Sony announced they were teaming up to build a battery-electric SUV. By June, the project was its own company. Less than a year after being announced, Sony Honda Mobility took to the CES 2023 stage to officially unveil its first prototype, the Afeela. Sony executives shared a few details about the upcoming vehicle: It has 14 exterior cameras – 45 in total – and a grille-mounted Media Bar to display vehicle information. Expect more details when the show floor opens later today and we get to take a closer look.
Roku is finally building its own TVs
The Roku TV Select and Premium Series lines range from 24 to 75 inches.
At CES 2023, the streaming device company announced it’ll build its own smart TVs for the first time. When the Roku TV program debuted in 2014, the company was cramming its streaming software into TVs built by partners like TCL and Hisense. The TVs will range from $119 to $999, so don’t expect OLED panels or insane brightness levels. Roku also announced an OLED Roku TV reference design for its TV partners. So, there’s not going to be any shortage of options if you want a TV with Roku’s streaming capabilities.
Tesla’s Model Y might miss out on new EV tax credit rules
Too light to be classified as SUVs and too expensive to qualify as cars.
Certain variants of Tesla’s Model Y may not qualify for the $7,500 federal EV tax credit based on the IRS’s latest guidelines, in a situation Elon Musk called “messed up.” It looks as though the five-seat Long Range version of the hatchback is too expensive as a car and not considered an SUV, so it falls outside the current guidelines. Only the seven-seat variants of the Model Y qualify as SUVs in the category up to $80,000, while the five-seat vehicles (Long Range, AWD and Performance) should be in the $55,000 section. However, all the five-seaters exceed that price, so they don’t qualify.
Louisiana residents now need a government ID to access porn online
PornHub is already on it.
A new Louisiana state law went into effect on January 1st, requiring websites containing “a substantial portion” of “material harmful to minors” to ask users to prove they’re 18 or older. “Substantial portion,” according to the new law, is more than 33.3 percent of a website’s content. Websites that host adult content have to implement “reasonable age verification methods,” including asking users to present a government-issued ID or a digitized form of it. Major sites including PornHub, YouPorn and RedTube ask visitors to prove their age by using their LA Wallet app, which is the state’s digital wallet app for drivers’ licenses.
Track Ember’s heated Travel Mug 2+ in Apple’s Find My app
The new model won’t cost more than the current version.
A new version of Ember’s heated travel mug, dubbed the Travel Mug 2+, is on the way, with an upgrade that makes it appear in Apple’s Find My app. The Travel Mug 2+ also has a speaker, so if you lose it, you can make it play a sound – as you would for lost AirPods. Ember’s current model, the Travel Mug 2, with a 12-ounce capacity, is available for $199.95 and keeps beverages hot for up to three hours. The company says this upgraded version will stay at this price and eventually replace the Travel Mug 2.
AMD’s Ryzen 7000 mobile CPUs feature up to 16 cores and 5.4GHz speeds
Powerful laptops are incoming.
AMD is confronting Intel’s powerful HX laptop CPUs head-on and, once again, they’re called “HX.” That won’t be confusing. The company’s new Ryzen 9 7945HX processor is its premium mobile offering, with 16 cores and 32 threads, as well as speeds between 2.5GHz and 5.4GHz. The Ryzen HX CPUs will run at 55 watts and above (also like Intel’s), meaning they’ll focus more on raw power than battery life. AMD claims the 7945HX is 78 percent faster than the previous top-end Ryzen chip in Cinebench’s multithreaded benchmark, and 18 percent faster in the single-threaded test. Compared to Intel’s 12900HX, its high-end chip from last year, the 7945HX is 169 percent faster in Handbrake encoding and 75 percent faster with Blender rendering.