Month: July 2022

Enlarge / Alienware x17 R2 laptop.

PC display speeds are about to go up. Alienware's updated m17 R5 and x17 R2, a pair of 17.3-inch gaming laptops, will each include the option for 480 Hz displays—about 33 percent faster than the previous top speed of 360 Hz.

As of publication time, the laptops' 480 Hz options aren't available for purchase, but a spokesperson for Alienware told Ars that they should be available online soon.

The 480 Hz displays have a resolution of 1920×1080 and a gray-to-gray response time of 3 ms. In its announcement, Alienware promised "animation smoothness for easier target tracking, ghosting reduction which minimizes distracting effects, and lower system latency, making it easier for you to spot other players earlier."

Enlarge

Four months ago, Netflix began its crackdown on password sharing by creating an "extra member" fee for users who share accounts with people they don't live with. The extra member fee of about $2 to $3 per month was implemented in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, with Netflix saying it would evaluate the rollout before making changes in other countries.

On Monday this week, Netflix announced a different kind of fee it will charge customers who share accounts. The new one requires customers to pay for "extra homes" and will be charged starting August 22 in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

"Beginning August 22, 2022, if your Netflix account is being used on a TV outside of your home, you will need to pay an extra $2.99 per month for each extra home. You will only be charged when you or someone who uses your account chooses to add an extra home—this fee will NOT be automatically charged," Netflix says on its Honduras pricing page.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Leone dodging yet another account ban.

When it comes to players cheating in online games, a permanent ban is usually the worst punishment a publisher will dish out (either for that specific game or the company's whole catalog). Now, though, Bungie is going to court to stop one serial Destiny 2 cheater who the company says has repeatedly and publicly evaded the developer's bans and escalated to threats and harassment against Bungie and its employees.

The full lawsuit (first reported by TorrentFreak) says that describing defendant Luca Leone as "a serial ban evader and cheater... would be a vast understatement." Leone, who streams on Twitch under the handle miffysworld, has seen 13 separate accounts banned for cheating since late May, Bungie said. That includes many accounts for which Leone directly streamed evidence of cheating. Leone even tweeted about "a clip of me flying with infinite ammo walls and aimbot" on a now-protected Twitter account.

About a year after Destiny 2 went free-to-play in late 2019, Bungie implemented a new verification system intended to deter cheaters. That system requires new accounts to confirm a fresh phone number via SMS to access certain high-level content like raids. But Leone noted in a tweet that "you can just pay $1 instead," a likely reference to services that provide cheap, fake temporary phone numbers to get around these kinds of verification systems.