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CES 2026 is right around the corner, and the pre-show hype cycle/ early reveals suggest, yes, theres going to be an awful lot of AI-powered insert-product-category-here alongside, thankfully, some major announcements from the likes of Intel, Sony and NVIDIA. Intel is finally unveiling its Panther Lake (Core Ultra Series 3) chips. The first chips built on Intels 2nm process could offer a 50 percent performance boost, which is sorely needed amid intense competition. NVIDIAs Jensen Huang is taking the stage for a keynote expected to feature a lot of AI hype, while AMDs Lisa Su will likely counter with new Ryzen 9000-series chips and the latest on AI upscaling tech. LG Over the years, CES has consistently been the show for TV innovation and heady next-gen displays. This year, well be talking a lot about Micro RGB. LG is introducing a new Micro RGB Evo panel with over 1,000 dimming zones, while Samsung plans to launch a full range of Micro RGB TVs from 55 inches to 115 inches. In 2025, Sony introduced a new RGB LED panel that uses individual Mini LED backlights in red, green and blue to produce even brighter, more accurate colors. The company has trademarked True RGB, which could become what Sony calls its spin on RGB displays. Well be covering all the keynotes, press conferences and big reveals in person. And figuring which of the 100s of AI-branded devices and gadgets are worth reporting on. Im also taking bets on the most niche celebrity appearance/endorsement at CES 2026. Weve seen 50 Cent, Big Bird, Martha Stewart, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Guillermo del Toro, Justin Bieber and will.i.am (multiple times), so who will join this pantheon of stars? Mat Smith The other big stories this morning CD Projekt co-founder has acquired GOG, the companys game storefront 2025 was the year Xbox died NASA finally has a leader, but its future is no more certain Samsungs two new speakers will deliver crisp audio while blending into your decor The Music Studio 5 and 7 will be on display at CES 2026. Samsung It isnt just TVs with Samsung. The company has already teased a pair of new understated speakers. Likely inspired by the Samsung Frame, the new Wi-Fi speakers, called the Music Studio 5 and 7, blend into your living room. The Music Studio 5 has a four-inch woofer and dual tweeters, with a built-in waveguide to deliver better sound. The Music Studio 7 comes with a 3.1.1-channel spatial audio with top-, front-, left- and right-firing speakers. No prices yet. Expect to hear more at CES itself or once the speakers arrive in stores. And as the press image above suggests, we can't wait to sit stoically in front of one, with a glass of water (?). Continue reading. Xiaomis 17 Ultra Leica Edition smartphone has a manual zoom ring And a 1-inch sensor, 200MP telephoto camera and 3,500 nit display. Xiaomi Xiaomis latest smartphone is once again a spec beast. It features a 1-inch sensor 50MP f/1.67 main camera and 1/1.4-inch 200MP periscope telephoto camera. And it also has an interesting new mechanical feature: a manual zoom ring. This surrounds the rear camera unit. Both the regular Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Leica edition come with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage, along with a 6.9-inch 120Hz AMOLED display that can hit up to 3,500 nits of peak brightness. But the camera features are the standout elements. The 17 Ultra by Leica adds some very, well, Leica touches: a two-tone finish, red dot status symbol on the front, textured edges and film simulations, like Leicas Monopan 50 black and white. Xiaomi says the zoom ring [eliminates] the need for tedious screen taps... and can detect displacements as small as 0.03mm. It can also be reprogrammed for manual focus. Xiaomis 17 Ultra by Leica and the regular 17 Ultra start at CNY 7,999 ($1,140) and CNY 6,999 ($995), on par with the latest high-end Pixel 10s and Galaxy S25s. Continue reading. You may soon be able to change your Gmail address A Google support page in Hindi says the feature is gradually rolling out to all users. A Google support page in Hindi indicates the ability to change your Gmail address might be coming. The feature wuld allow you to replace your current @gmail.com address with another. Your old address would remain active as an alias on the account, and all your data would stick around, unaffected. The support page (translated) says the ability to change your Google Account email address is gradually rolling out to all users. Continue reading.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-121511445.html?src=rss
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LG will unveil a canvas-style art TV, dubbed the LG Gallery TV, at CES 2026. The new model will be offered in 55-inch and 65-inch variants, and sports a flush-mount design along with customizable magnetic frames. The Gallery TV uses a Mini LED display and the company's Alpha 7 AI processor and offers 4K resolution. The new model will also leverage the LG Gallery+ service, a paid subscription with a library of over 4,500 works that users can display on the TV. Users will also be able to create custom images using generative AI or display images from personal photo libraries. LG says the TV was developed with museum curators, and will feature a Gallery Mode that optimizes brightness and color to show off the texture of displayed artwork. The display will have some degree of reflection handling and glare reduction, though precise details were not shared. The TV will automatically adjust picture settings to maintain an optimal image in response to changing ambient light throughout the day. This isn't the first time LG has released an art-inspired TV. It released an ultra-thin OLED model called the LG GX Gallery TV in 2020. It has also released other "Gallery Design" TVs that offer wall-flush mounting in the past, but the new LG Gallery TV with dedicated art-focused features seems like a more direct competitor to Samsung's "The Frame" or the Hisense CanvasTV.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/lg-to-unveil-a-canvas-style-tv-at-ces-2026-010024691.html?src=rss
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After a rudderless year and an exodus of around 4,000 employees due to Trump administration cuts, NASA got what may be its first piece of good news recently. On December 17, the Senate confirmed billionaire Jared Isaacman as the agency's new administrator. He now holds the power to rehabilitate a battered engine of scientific research, or steer it towards even more disruption. Considering the caliber of President Trump's other appointees, Isaacman is probably the best candidate for the job. Outside of being a successful entrepreneur, he has flown fighter jets and been to space twice as part of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn private missions. One of those flights saw him complete the first commercial space walk, and travel farther from Earth than any human since the end of the Apollo program. "Perfect is the enemy of the good. Isaacman checks a lot of boxes," says Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee and the founder of NASA Watch, a blog dedicated to the agency. "He's passed every requirement to fly in a spacecraft that American astronauts at NASA are required to pass. He also went out of his way to have a diverse crew, and shove as much science as he could in those missions." And yet if you're a NASA employee or just someone who cares about the agency's work, there are still plenty of reasons to be concerned for its future. When Trump first nominated Isaacman in the spring, the billionaire wrote a 62-page document detailing his vision for NASA. In November, Politico obtained a copy of that plan, titled Project Athena.To some insiders, Project Athena painted a picture of someone who, at least at the time when it was written, fundamentally misunderstood how NASA works and how scientific discovery is funded in the US and elsewhere. It also suggests Isaacman may be more open to Trump's NASA agenda than would appear at first glance. When asked about the plan by Politico, one former NASA official characterized it as "bizarre and careless." Another called it presumptuous," given many of the proposed changes to the agency's structure would require Congressional approval. In one section, Isaacman recommended taking NASA out of the taxpayer funded climate science business and [leaving] it for academia to determine. In another section, he promised to evaluate the relevance and ongoing necessity of every agency center, particularly NASA's iconic Jet Propulsion Laboratory, saying the facility and others must increase the output and time to science KPI. A lot has changed since Isaacman first wrote that document. It came before the workforce cuts, before the future of Goddard Space Flight Center became uncertain and before Trump surprised everyone by renominating Isaacman. But during his Senate testimony earlier this month, the billionaire said I do stand behind everything in the document, even though it was written seven months ago. I think it was all directionally correct. He did appear to distance himself from some viewpoints expressed in or inferred by Project Athena, however. Isaacman stated that anything suggesting that I am anti-science or want to outsource that responsibility is simply untrue. He also came out against the administration's plan to cut NASA's science budget nearly in half, claiming the proposals would not lead to "an optimal outcome."One thing is clear, Isaacman is not your typical bureaucrat. "One of the pitfalls of some prior NASA administrators has been that they've shown too much reverence for the internal processes and bureaucratic structure of the agency to the detriment of decision-making and performance," said Casey Drier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit that advocates for the exploration and study of space. "Isaacman has positioned himself as the opposite of that. Clearly, that's something that could lead to a lot of political and congressional challenges if taken too far." Even if Isaacman doesn't follow through on any of the proposals made in Project Athena, there's only so much a NASA administrator even one sympathetic to civil servants working under them can do. "Once a budget request goes out publicly, everyone in the administration has to defend it. Anything he does will have to be internal and private," Drier explains. "He never explicitly criticized the administration during his hearing. He's also coming relatively late in the budget process." A lot of NASA's future will depend on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is responsible for implementing the president's agenda across the executive branch. As a direct result of guidance the OMB issued over the summer, NASA awarded 25 percent fewer new grants in 2025 than it did on average between 2020 and 2024. "The OMB has added layers of requirements that scientists now have to go through to spend the money they've already been allocated. The administration has worked against its own stated goals of efficiency," Drier said. "Isaacman can't solve that himself. He can't tell the OMB what to do. That's going to be a serious challenge." Looming over everything is the fact NASA still does not have a full-year budget for 2026. Congress has until January 30 to fund NASA and the rest of the federal government before the short-term funding bill it passed on November 12 runs out. "On paper, the official policy of the administration is still to terminate a third of NASA's scientific capability," Drier points out.There are reasons to be cautiously optimistic. Publicly, both the House and Senate have come out against Trump's funding cuts. An some science missions that were slated to be cancelled, such as OSIRIS-APEX, have been approved for another full year of operations. What NASA needs now is someone who will, as Drier puts it, "vigorously advocate" for the agency in whatever way they can. It remains to be seen if that's Jared Isaacman.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-finally-has-a-leader-but-its-future-is-no-more-certain-201109072.html?src=rss
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