Mashable Tech – Spoken Edition

Did we really need this? LG Electronics must have had something to prove this year at CES because it went over the top with its long, winding, 92-foot-long "OLED Canyon" made up of more than 240 displays. Okay, fine. It's really, really pretty. But it just seems like a gigantic waste of energy — even in a place with enough gadgets and gizmos to outshine the Las Vegas Strip. This pathway is bright as hell.

CES, the year's biggest tech show, may feel completely different these days with all the self-driving car tech, but one thing you can always count on wowing are huge TVs. Like really big ones. Samsung kickstarted CES 2018 with a massive 146-inch 4K TV it's calling "The Wall." Yeah, it's a wall, alright. The Wall is the one of Samsung's many 2018 TVs to use a new display technology called "Micro LED.

It was the "first of a new species." It was going to change the game. It both was, and maybe was not, a car. It was the talk of CES. But that was then. Now, almost a year after Faraday Future unveiled the FF 91 at CES in January 2017, the would-be electric car manufacturer that sought to challenge Tesla has come close to crashing and burning.

The new year kicked off with a bang on Jan. 3 when security researchers revealed two major software vulnerabilities that affect, to some extent, most types of computer processors on the planet. Laptops, desktops, Chromebooks, smartphones, and enterprise machines are all potentially at risk, theoretically allowing attackers exploiting what have been dubbed Meltdown and Spectre to steal your passwords and other sensitive data.

Exactly nine years ago, on Jan. 3, 2009, the first block in Bitcoin's blockchain was mined. Called the genesis block, this block contains 50 bitcoins and was likely mined by Bitcoin's elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Looking at details of the event won't tell you much if you're not a cryptocurrency buff, but this was a time when Bitcoin was worth absolutely nothing, and you could mine it (that is, make new bitcoins) on your home PC.

Apple rarely apologizes when it messes up. But when it does, it's usually followed by even more fervor and upset users. Case in point: Apple finally admitted it did a poor job communicating to its customers about how and why it slowed down iPhones with older batteries.

If you were planning to buy an OLED TV but nothing out there was big enough for you, LG has a treat: The world's first 8K, 88-inch OLED display. The TV has a 7,680x4,320 pixel resolution (that's 33 million pixels), and that's all LG shared in terms of specs at this point. Given that it's an OLED, though, we can expect deep blacks, vivid colors, and wide viewing angles. Also, the TV has very slim borders, as you can see in the photo above.

While some of you unicorns out there may have been wishing and praying to find a baby mopor a selfie droneunder the tree this year, the vast majority were probably thinkingAirPods or bust. And if someone really loves you, you may have even scored a new iPhone X or MacBook Pro — and are preparing to be the envy of the office (naysayers be damned).

The 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, has tried, and failed, at many things over the course of his questionable career. From Trump University to Trump Steaks, the man who would be king seems to repeatedly stumble into avoidable morass after morass despite his promises to only surround himself with "the best people." But if there was one thing he was supposed to be good at, it was insults.

An open memo, to all marginally-smart people/consumers of internet "content": Some questions. Do you... If the answer to any of those questions is a "yes," then those of us working in the business of writing things, reporting things, and/or editing things have got a small request for you! It's a small resolution we're gonna ask you to make that will help us make better things, for you. It will help us avoid making garbage for you. It'll give you better things to read.