Month: January 2022

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  The Dell U3223QZ 32-inch USB-C 4K monitor. [credit:
  Scharon Harding ]

Dell’s UltraSharp monitors have a long-standing reputation for being strong picks for office professionals and creatives, and the USB-C variants have proven to be some of the most popular Mac monitors. Dell’s latest 32-inch UltraSharp was announced during the Consumer Electronics Show this week, and it doubles down on that legacy.

The monitor hits the standard bullet points: it has a USB-C port and a 3840 x 2160 screen resolution. It can act as a USB hub with its five 10Gbps USB-A ports. But what really sets the monitor apart is its 4K webcam.

As noted, these monitors are made to appeal to professionals like designers, marketing folks, and so on, so a color-accurate 4K screen is important. But these days, those workers will be spending a fair amount of time on video calls, so it seems Dell is trying to make the product a more comprehensive package for remote-working pros.

Enlarge / A shot of the “3D radar” feature Activision is trying to stop with its lawsuit.

Activision has filed a federal lawsuit against German cheat makers EngineOwning and associated individuals for “trafficking in technologies that circumvent or evade anti-cheat technologies used by Activision to protect the integrity of [Call of Duty] games.”

EngineOwning charges 13 euros per month or more for subscription access to individualized suites of cheating tools designed for Call of Duty games—and also Battlefield, Titanfall 2, and Star Wars Battlefront. The software promises abilities like automated aimbots, auto-firing triggerbots, “2D radar” that shows enemy locations on the HUD, and “3D radar” that can track and display opposing players even behind cover.

EO promises its software is undetectable by automated tools, including Activision’s recently launched Ricochet kernel-level anti-cheat tools. The software also includes built-in tools to make cheating less obvious to human moderators and recording software, making users “look like a legit player.” The company separately sells “hardware ID spoofer” software that promises to get around hardware-based bans in Call of Duty and other games.

Enlarge / Verizon store front near Grand Central Terminal in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images /)

The Federal Aviation Administration tentatively agreed not to seek any more 5G delays from AT&T and Verizon, potentially ending a battle over the aviation industry’s unproven claim that 5G transmissions on C-Band frequencies will interfere with airplane altimeters.

The commitment came Monday night, when AT&T and Verizon agreed to one more delay of two weeks, pushing their deployment off until January 19. They had previously agreed to a delay from December 5 until January 5. Terms of Monday’s deal were described in an attachment to a letter that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg sent to the carriers.

“In light of the foregoing, and subject to any unforeseen aviation safety issues, DOT and FAA will not seek or demand any further delays of C-Band deployment,” the deal terms say.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It’s a new year, so it’s time for a new Dealmaster. Today’s roundup of the best tech deals we can find is headlined by a nifty bundle for Nintendo Switch owners at Best Buy. Right now, if you buy a 12-month Family Membership to Nintendo’s Switch Online service at its usual cost of $35, you can get a 128GB SanDisk microSD card thrown in for no extra cost. The latter should appear automatically in your cart.

We highlighted a similar deal last June, but if you need to top off your Switch Online membership and your Switch could use the extra storage space, this is still a nice opportunity. In general, Switch Online isn’t quite as essential to enjoying the Switch as competing services from Sony and Microsoft are for their consoles, but it’s still required to play online multiplayer in a variety of popular games (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate among them), and it allows you to back up your game save data to cloud servers. A subscription also provides access to a number of emulated classic NES and SNES games. You don’t get access to the more recently supported N64 or Sega Genesis titles with this subscription tier, but that might be for the best anyway.

Just note that this deal applies to the Family Membership, which is designed to cover benefits for up to eight different Switch users in a designated “family group.” If you’re just looking for a Switch Online membership for yourself, you can still get a 12-month Individual Membership for $20, but this deal is a bit less appealing.