Security

Phishing, malvertising attacks could target devs to gain access to private corporate networks

CISA says attackers are exploiting a critical 2025 vulnerability in Ray, the widely used open source framework for scaling Python and machine-learning workloads. 

Tracked as CVE-2025-62593 and rated 9.4 under CVSS v4, the bug was first disclosed in November 2025. It allows an attacker to use Firefox or Safari to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on a vulnerable Ray system.

The open source distributed computing framework is used and supported by major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, and OpenAI.

Vulnerable Ray versions try to identify and block browser requests by checking whether the User-Agent header begins with “Mozilla.” Firefox and Safari, however, allow scripts using the Fetch API to modify that header.

A developer running Ray could trigger the exploit simply by visiting a dodgy website or receiving a malicious ad in an affected browser. The attacker can then use DNS rebinding to reach the local Ray service.

“This vulnerability impacts developers running development/testing environments with Ray,” the project’s developers explained. “If they fall victim to a phishing attack, or are served a malicious ad, they can be exploited, and arbitrary shell code can be executed on their developer machine.

“This attack can also be leveraged to attack network-adjacent instances of Ray by leveraging the browser as a confused deputy intermediary to attack Ray instances running inside a private corporate network.”

Ray 2.52.0 fixes the flaw. CISA gave US federal civilian executive branch agencies three days to remediate it, rather than the standard 14.

CISA did not explain the urgency, and marked the catalog’s “known to be used in ransomware campaigns” field as “unknown.” However, Binding Operational Directive 26-04 allows the agency to impose a three-day remediation window on vulnerabilities it considers especially risky.

Ray is an open source framework that helps developers scale Python and machine-learning workloads from a local environment to a cluster with minimal code changes.

Now managed by the Linux Foundation’s PyTorch Foundation, the project started at UC Berkeley and was commercialized via Anyscale, the startup founded by Ray’s developers in 2019.

According to Anyscale’s figures as of October 2025, Ray had more than 237 million total downloads, and 7 million per week – representing a near-tenfold growth year-on-year.

Product analysis site NextSprints estimates that Ray has 1 million monthly active users and is used by 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

The security advisory blamed Ray’s longstanding lack of authentication on critical endpoints for making the attack possible.

Ray’s security model historically assumed that clusters would run inside a trusted, isolated network, leaving authentication and access control to the surrounding infrastructure.

Ray 2.52.0 introduced optional token-based authentication as an additional defense against unauthorized access, although it remains disabled by default. The project continues to recommend deploying clusters inside a controlled network rather than treating authentication as a substitute for isolation. ®

If you don’t actually need one, you’d be forgiven for thinking a hearing aid just makes everything louder for the wearer. Especially since there are plenty of shady products out there which will do exactly that for just four easy payments of $29.99. But the reality is considerably more complex, as a proper hearing aid needs to be capable of selectively enhancing certain frequencies while squashing down others.

The technical challenges involved in pulling that off in a device small enough to fit inside the human ear and run off of a tiny battery are considerable — and while there’s undoubtedly been some degree of artificial price inflation going on over the years, there’s a reason proper hearing aids have been so much more expensive than their “As Seen on TV” counterparts. These same challenges are also why DIY and open source hardware hearing aids have struggled to gain much traction.

But over the last few years the situation has changed. In 2022 the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established the framework by which hearing aids could be sold over the counter (OTC). Although they’re generally less capable than their prescription counterparts and not suitable for individuals with profound hearing loss, the wide commercial availability of OTC hearing aids has kicked off a competition between manufacturers to deliver more affordable devices.

That competition entered a new phase earlier this month when the FDA granted approval for Samsung’s Galaxy Earbuds to fall under the same category. This follows a similar decision made about Apple’s AirPods back in 2024. The two biggest players in the smartphone market being able to offer their earbuds as OTC hearing aids represents a unique value proposition. Not only are they priced for mass market consumption, but many individuals who would be interested in purchasing an OTC hearing aid will already own them and need only to enable the feature with a software update.

Given how different the situation is today than even just five years ago it’s worth asking just what qualifies as a over-the-counter hearing aid, and how the shifting definition of these devices can inform the community’s efforts to develop open hardware solutions.

What is a Hearing Aid, Anyway?

We’ve already covered what a hearing aid isn’t, but before we go too much further it’s a good idea to clarify what exactly a hearing aid does in comparison to a simple audio amplifier, which in the industry are officially known as Personal Sound Amplification Products (PSAPs). This is a topic we’ve touched on previously here at Hackaday, but the short version is that since the 1980s or so, the frequencies that a hearing aid amplifies have been tailored to match the specific auditory deficiencies of the wearer.

Traditionally, getting a hearing aid prescribed would require going to an audiologist and getting an audiogram. This chart plots the results of a hearing test, and shows how well the patient can hear various frequencies. With this data, it’s possible to quantify the severity of a patient’s hearing loss and determine where a hearing aid could improve the situation. This information could then be programmed into a hearing aid to provide a bespoke amplification profile that takes into account the needs of the wearer.

It’s worth noting that this is only in the context of relatively modern digital hearing aids, essentially those created after the introduction of solid state electronics. Prior to that point, hearing aids were closer to what we would now consider PSAPs and amplified incoming audio indiscriminately.

Defining a Middle Ground

With this in mind, the primary difference between a prescription hearing aid and an OTC model is that the audiologist is cut out of the loop. That means there’s no audiogram, and in turn no data to program the hearing aid’s filters with. The specifics of this does vary from model to model, and both Samsung and Apple offer some basic audio testing tools that can help the user fine-tune their experience. But at this point, no OTC hearing aid product is capable of diagnosing the wearer’s hearing to the same level as a comprehensive hearing test performed by an audiologist

That being the case, it might seem like an OTC hearing aid is just a PSAP. But in their ruling, the FDA established the formal requirements for a device that falls somewhere in the middle. The full document, Medical Devices; Ear, Nose, and Throat Devices; Establishing Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids, comes in at around 200 pages if you’re looking for some light reading.

Fortunately, the agency provides a boiled-down list of what features a device must have to meet the definition of an OTC hearing aid. Some of the requirements have to do with the packaging and marketing of the product, which of course are important for a medical device, but it’s the technical parameters that we’re interested in.

The FDA specifies that all OTC hearing aids must use air-conduction, that is, operate with a speaker inserted into the ear canal. The alternative would be bone conduction, which is generally used in cases with more profound hearing loss. The devices must also allow users to adjust, at least to some degree, the output to match their specific needs.

The intention with this second requirement goes deeper than a simple volume control as you’d have in an PSAP. In lieu of the sort of tailored output a prescription hearing aid would offer, the OTC device can offer a selection of pre-defined audio filter profiles which the user could flip through. At the risk of oversimplifying things, it’s a bit like the audio presets for different genres of music that modern headphones and earbuds usually offer in that the user can cycle through different profiles to find what best matches the current environment.

When combined with the acknowledgement that OTC hearing aids can utilize wireless technology to communicate with another device, it’s not hard to see how the smartphone fits into the equation. While a stand-alone device is capable of meeting the requirements necessary for OTC hearing aid classification, being able to connect to the user’s phone to easily switch between audio profiles on the fly makes for a greatly improved user experience. Additionally, by playing tones through the earbuds, software on the phone can perform a hearing test on the user — the results of which can be used to fine-tune the output beyond what’s possible with simple presets.

Hackers, Take Note

Of course, anyone looking to build an open source hearing aid probably isn’t looking for FDA approval. The goal is likely to make the technology cheaper and more accessible, especially in areas where getting a commercially produced hearing aid may be difficult. As such, the new over-the-counter classification may not seem terribly important for folks like us.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t pick up some tips from what companies like Samsung, Apple, and Jabra are doing. By bringing the user’s smartphone into the mix, they have made hearing aids more accessible and easier to operate. Instead of trying to pack all of the functionality directly into the wearable, using a smartphone to do some of that heavy lifting opens up a lot of new possibilities. There are naturally trade-offs when switching a hardware problem for a software one, especially when dealing with mobile operating systems, but it may be a compromise worth making if it means getting this sort of assistive tech to more people that need it.

from the we’re-screwed dept

A couple of months back, we discussed how screwworm infections had reappeared in Texas for the first time in decades. The foreign surveillance program designed to keep this from occurring in partnership with countries south of the border dissipated after losing funding as a result of the DOGE bros deciding it just wasn’t worth it. So, just as with measles, the country had to deal with a problem that we had once essentially eradicated with a good government program.

Screwworms are a very real and serious problem if left unchecked. Flies lay their eggs in livestock, mainly cattle, and it can kill the host in a matter of weeks. There are currently reports that hundreds of Mexican citizens have also been infected. And on the American side of the border, the problem is getting worse, not better. As a result, the government is diverting drones from patrolling the border to instead look for screwworm infections in livestock.

Since the first screwworm cases were detected in South Texas in June, the US Department of Agriculture and US Customs and Border Protection have been conducting “one of the most extensive animal-health surveillance operations in the country,” the USDA said on August 10 in social media posts on platforms like X and Facebook.

The effort involves at least 200 drones owned by the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. But the actual number in use “varies depending on availability and need,” a USDA spokesperson told Ars.

The USDA also described performing 1,226 drone flights that surveyed more than 23,000 animals as of August 11.

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This all costs money. As does the reinvestment in facilities to release sterile flies to reduce their overall numbers in both Mexico and domestically. $21 million was spent in Mexico for this. Untold millions are being spent for a facility at Moore Air Base in Texas. $25 million is being spent right now to build another facility in Arizona. The grant that DOGE canceled funded animal disease surveillance programs generally, including that of screwworms, cost $170 million. We’ve likely already eclipsed the cost of keeping screwworms out of the country in the government’s response this outbreak.

And what it’s reappearance risks is nearly $2 billion in damage to the Texas economy.

$1.8 billion. That’s how much economic damage could be caused by another outbreak on the scale of the Texas incident in 1976, according to USDA estimates.

This is the very definition of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. It’s governmental malpractice and a failure of stewardship of taxpayer dollars and the economic health of America, which was the very fucking thing DOGE was pitched to have as its north star.

Our government is currently very broken, and brutally stupid. And we have yet another health issue, not to mention a food supply issue, as a result.

getting screwed

Filed Under: cbp, screwworm, texas, usda

from the taking-my-ball-and-going-home dept

Paramount bosses Larry and David Ellison aren’t having much fun in the wake of a 12 state antitrust lawsuit that risks derailing their $111 billion attempt to dominate what’s left of U.S. corporate media.

There’s been a certain creeping desperation apparent the last month or two; whether it’s the company’s top lawyer claiming that critics of the deal are somehow antisemitic, or the continued threats that the company will leave California if states don’t back off their lawsuit. The company has also been funding no limit of shitty editorials trying to pretend further consolidation is just what Hollywood needs.

This report (paywalled) from Puck indicates that David Ellison is laying the groundwork to move Paramount to Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, or another state if California AG Rob Bonta doesn’t settle the antitrust case. It’s kind of an irrelevant threat in some contexts given that most U.S. film and TV production was already leaving California, and may occur whether or not the deal is approved.

Unfortunately for Ellison and his nepobaby kid, the old “I’m taking my ball and going home” threat doesn’t appear to be working on Bonta, and the antitrust lawsuit case is slated to begin next March — much later than the Ellisons were hoping. From Vulture:

“It’s possible Ellison and his team were hoping all of this would scare Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, into backing down. But so far, Bonta doesn’t seem cowed and has accused Paramount of “blackmail” in trying to get its way. And outside observers seem to agree: “Paramount’s PR campaign appears to be strengthening Bonta’s hand rather than weakening it,” the analysts at Lightshed wrote in a note to clients this week.”

Amusingly, a bunch of Paramount employees told Business Insider they were mostly just happy the merger was paused so they could focus on their work:

“It’s nice to be able to focus on what we do without the impending disruption that a merger in 2026 would have brought,” a high-level advertising employee said of the merger delay.”

Ellison is also trying to apply pressure on more corporate-cozy Democrats to push Bonta to support a deal (see: California Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, and off-the record comments by Gavin Newsom), but that doesn’t seem to be working either. In part because the U.S. cultural animosity toward billionaires and shitty giant companies is bubbling over, but also because time is simply on Bonta’s side.

Starting in October the company has to start paying a $7 million per day ticking fee to investors, which clearly has the Ellisons panicking. Larry’s over-extension in AI, should a bubble pop, could also complicate the financing for what’s already a very debt-heavy deal.

And again, it’s more than possible that Ellison follows through and moves Paramount out of California regardless of whether the deal is or isn’t approved simply to grab some tax breaks, putting a stake in the heart of an already reeling Hollywood that’s steadily watched most film and TV production migrate overseas.

But at the same time this exact sort of consolidation is just foundationally deadly. These deals always (and 50 years of data is not subtle on this point) result in mass layoffs, higher prices, less competition, and broad enshittification as the remaining company struggles to manage debt.

So for the few remaining regulators we have concerned about the public interest and labor, the best tack continues to be to simply block this and any other “growth for growth’s sake” consolidation. Though Ellison’s megamerger is extra shitty for numerous additional reasons, ranging from the dodgy financial support from overseas autocrats, to the Bari Weiss extraction class agitprop degradation of whatever’s left of journalistic institutions like CBS and CNN.

It’s very possible that Larry Ellison likely loses either way this goes. Either the state wins its antitrust lawsuit derailing his dreams of media domination, or he succeeds with his acquisition and is overloaded with debt while a bizarre assortment of nepobabies and brunchlords (who appear to have no idea what they’re doing) struggle to remain relevant as traditional broadcast TV heads toward extinction.

Filed Under: agitprop, bari weiss, california, consolidation, david ellison, journalism, lerry ellison, media, mergers, rob bonta

Companies: paramount, warner bros.

It started with avocados and ended with sensitive information being leaked.

Onstage at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, researchers Netanel Rubin and Dan Avraham pulled up an AI shopping assistant — the kind that’s available inside most major retail apps to answer questions, compare products and help shoppers navigate a store’s enormous catalog.

But the conversation didn’t stay on groceries for long.

By the end of the demonstration, the researchers had bypassed the assistant’s safeguards and forced code to run inside the computer environment behind it. The bot returned directory listings, environment variables and other information that an ordinary shopper should never be able to see.

In the wrong hands, that kind of information could give an attacker clues about the retailer’s systems and potentially expose secrets or access that could be used in further attacks, putting both the company and, depending on what the AI can reach, its customers at risk.

The retailer wasn’t a small online shop experimenting with a hastily assembled chatbot, either.

According to Rubin and Avraham’s company Rein Security, it was one of the three largest retailers in the US, and the assistant was available through the same public mobile app used by everyday customers. 

A few important notes: Rein Security sells technology designed to monitor AI agents and provide visibility into what those agents are doing. Rein also didn’t identify the retailer, citing legal concerns. That means the findings cannot be independently verified with the retailer, and shoppers can’t know whether they’ve used the affected assistant.

How the shopping assistant was tricked

The attack started with one of the assistant’s most useful abilities: comparing products.

To answer certain questions, the AI can retrieve information from websites outside the retailer’s control. That helps it gather more information for shoppers, but it also means the assistant can encounter material created by virtually anyone, including an attacker.

The researchers placed instructions in content they controlled and got the shopping assistant to retrieve them. Instead of treating that material only as information to summarize, the AI was manipulated into treating some of it as new directions to follow.

This is known as an indirect prompt injection. The malicious code can be hidden within a website, document, product listing or other material the AI encounters while trying to complete a legitimate task.

That alone wasn’t enough to reach the system behind the assistant, but it gave the researchers a starting point.

The retailer had installed a security layer that examines conversations and attempts to keep the assistant focused on shopping. If you ask it something outside its approved role, the request could be rejected.

The researchers found that those protections weren’t applied evenly. The main chat interface had safeguards in place, but the app’s regular search field didn’t have the same level of protection.

Through that less-protected input, Rubin and Avraham said they persuaded the assistant to reveal information about its internal setup, including the names of tools it could use and the syntax for calling them.

They then created another set of instructions that caused the assistant to run code inside its own computing environment — essentially the computer system where the AI was running. The assistant returned lists of files and other information about that system, showing that the prompt injection had worked and the researchers’ commands had actually been executed.

Rein’s public account doesn’t establish what else the assistant’s isolated environment could potentially access or whether an attacker could move from there into systems containing customer, payment or inventory data.

But getting code to run at all means the researchers were able to cross an important security boundary.

The researchers said they reported the vulnerabilities on March 13. As of July 16, more than 90 days later, Rein said they had not been fixed. The company has not publicly provided a newer update on whether the problems remain.

The researchers also stressed that they didn’t access real customer information, alter anyone’s orders or attempt to disrupt the retailer’s systems. Their work was performed in a controlled environment using their own session.

The AI wasn’t just talking

Chatbots have been manipulated into saying strange, offensive or unrelated things for years. But AI assistants can do more than generate answers; they can retrieve information, call outside services and use software tools to complete tasks.

Retailers want these assistants to eventually build shopping lists, check inventory, manage orders and even complete purchases. But each new ability creates another potential risk if the AI can be tricked into following the wrong instructions.

In this case, the retailer’s security system monitored what shoppers said to the AI and what it said back. According to Rein, it couldn’t see everything happening in between, including information the assistant retrieved and tools it used.

That created a blind spot in which the security system could see the conversation, but not everything the AI was doing behind it.

During their examination of the app, the researchers also found Google Maps API keys visible in traffic they decrypted from the mobile app. If those keys weren’t properly restricted, an attacker could potentially use them to make unauthorized requests to Google Maps services on the retailer’s account, running up charges or exhausting its usage limits. 

The researchers did not report accessing customer information with the keys, but an attacker could potentially use them to make unauthorized Google Maps requests at the retailer’s expense.

What it all means

There isn’t much an ordinary shopper can do to prevent this kind of vulnerability. The attack targeted the retailer’s design, not a weak password or a customer mistake.

The responsibility belongs to companies giving AI assistants access to internal tools and information. Those systems have to assume that anything pulled from the open internet could contain instructions intended to mislead the AI — and put appropriate safeguards in place.

It’s still wise to avoid sharing unnecessary personal information with shopping assistants, particularly if the bot can access previous orders or other account details. Keeping retail apps updated can also ensure you receive security fixes when they become available.

And that also leaves one enormous unanswered question: Which shopping assistant was it?

For now, the researchers aren’t saying. But the demonstration shows what can happen as AI shopping assistants are given more control. If they can be tricked into following the wrong instructions, their most useful features can also become security risks.

With more than a decade of experience, Nelson covers Apple and Google and writes about iPhone and Android features, privacy and security settings, and more.

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Companies are still grappling with exactly how software development should work in the AI area, but one early answer is the so-called software factory. Essentially an agent loop that’s built around the traditional stages of software development, the software factory approach has become a popular way for companies to remake their engineering organizations for the AI era.

Now, a system from Warp could make that transition a lot easier. On Tuesday, the AI coding company introduced Warp Factories, a new system designed to make building and operating AI software factories as easy as possible.

Operating as an infrastructure layer, Warp Factories gives companies a simple environment for deploying agents and a roadmap for how to use them.

To be clear, many companies are already having success with the factory model without any help from Warp. Stripe has been particularly public about its technical progress, developing a “minions” system to automate development within its own codebase. Ramp has made similar progress, developing a background agent that can monitor its own code after it is deployed.

As Warp CEO Zack Lloyd sees it, the target market for Warp Factories will be smaller companies without the resources to develop a system from the ground up.

“[If you look at] things like running your agents in the cloud and steering those agents as they run, or bringing the work that they’re doing into your local environment, or setting up memory that goes across those agents, or setting up evals that go across those agents — it’s actually a huge infrastructure undertaking to do this right,” Lloyd told TechCrunch.

In Warp Factories, the architecture is already built out of the box, with many of the most difficult decisions already made. Warp’s system is based on the standard phases of software development (triage, specification, implementation, review, and verification) but the agentic approach means any of those steps can be automated.

Users can choose their own coding model and harnesses as necessary; the system works as well with Codex as Claude Code. It also integrates with ticketing systems like Linear and Jira, and messaging systems like Slack and Teams, in an effort to plug in seamlessly to existing workflows.

Beyond just shipping code, Warp Factories will also give managers the tools to track how well the factory is performing. With all the agents running in the same environment, it’s easy to compare performance metrics for different configurations, and to keep an eye on the overall token spend. Warp Factory also allows for self-improvement loops to optimize the overall system, automating management of the process itself.

Even so, Warp Factories is not built to completely replace software engineers — just give them an easier way to collaborate with the new agentic workforce. In Lloyd’s own experience, there are still a lot of tasks that require a human at the wheel.

“We automate like 30% of our tasks, 30 to 35% on a weekly basis,” Lloyd told TechCrunch, “and as models improve, as the context improves, as the harness improves, I think that that number is going to go up over time.”

The Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q is a color-accurate OLED monitor with a full port hub. It makes a strong case as a Studio Display XDR alternative for Mac users, assuming you’re fine with not having a Retina-class display.

A great monitor can anchor a whole desk setup. For Mac users who can afford it, the obvious choice has long been Apple’s displays.

Those displays are beautiful, but price and port quantity have always been limiting factors for most. Third-party OLED panels are an alternative, but generally with design compromises.

The Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED (U322Q) is one such option, with both OLED and the aforementioned design compromises. It targets designers, photographers, videographers, and other creatives who need color accuracy.

It’s not Retina, but more on that in a bit.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED review: Specifications

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: Design

Design is the monitor’s clear weak point. It wears the same matte dark finish as most professional displays. Nobody will confuse this for a Studio Display.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: The Dell monitor still has a boring, utilitarian design

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For a desk built around Apple hardware, the contrast is visible. The Dell looks like typical plastic-clad office fare.

That said, you’re going to be buying this monitor more for its capabilities, rather than its appearance.

How much that appearance matters, is an exercise for the reader. This doesn’t matter so much to me.

The stand is versatile, with height, tilt, swivel, and pivot. This level of articulation is helpful for anyone who has to stare at their monitor for lengthy periods.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: The monitor can pivot left and right, tilt, adjust its height, and rotate vertically

If your office environment is too light-heavy, a snap-on light hood is included for glare control. It’s a nice addition, but in this world of multiple displays on one desk for one workstation, I’m not sure how much use it’s going to get.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: The panel

The panel is the reason to buy this monitor. It is a 31.5-inch QD-OLED running at 4K and 120Hz. This is notably not “Retina.”

The panel itself, QD-OLED, gives per-pixel light control for true blacks and color representation. Contrast, viewing angles, and response are all excellent.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: The display does a decent job at avoiding glare, especially when in use

The anti-glare low-reflectance coating handles bright rooms well. It diffuses my Texas office’s lighting regardless of the time of day, without washing the picture out.

Color coverage reaches 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut. This is essential for people working with color, like YouTubers editing video or avid photographers.

When it comes to brightness, HDR peaks at 1,000 nits, The 300 nits available in standard use is more than enough to work with, too.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: Content has great contrast and rich colors

In extended use, the color and contrast impress the most. HDR content looks vivid, and photos and video stand out.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: Resolution

The panel’s one real actual weakness is pixel density. At 32 inches in size and at 4K, it works out to 140 pixels per inch.

That is not sharp by Apple monitor standards, and is nowhere near Retina. Users of high-density Apple displays will notice softer text up close without additional software

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: The Dell UltraSharp (left) is larger than Apple’s Studio Display (right)

An Apple display packs more pixels into less space. For reference, the Studio Display reaches 218 pixels per inch, while using a 27-inch screen.

For some workflows, the larger canvas is worth it. For others, density matters more than screen size. The tradeoff is size against sharpness at this price. A 5K OLED of this size would cost far more than this.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: There’s no missing the lower pixel density when comparing the Dell UltraSharp (left) to the Apple Studio Display (right) with their respective 4K and 5K resolutions

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In this case, the resolution isn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering the size and what OLED delivers.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: Ports and Mac connectivity

Connectivity is a major strength for Mac users. The monitor is built around Thunderbolt 4.

One upstream Thunderbolt port delivers up to 140W to a Mac, as well as handling video duties. If you’re into a single-cable lifestyle, this means you can connect a MacBook Pro and recharge it without needing separate data or video cables.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: The dell monitor has a full hub, including a downstream Thunderbolt port

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A second Thunderbolt port handles data or daisy chaining. If you have enough screens available, it can drive up to three of these 4K 120Hz displays in a chain.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: There are two HDMI ports on the Dell UltraSharp

The rest of the hub element of the display is generous. It adds two HDMI ports, DisplayPort, multiple USB ports, and 2.5GbE Ethernet. A front pop-down offers three more USB ports, all 10 gigabits per second.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: There are two USB-C ports and a USB-A port hidden on the front for easy access

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A built-in KVM switch lets one keyboard and mouse serve two machines, such as a Mac and a PC. This functionality is… okay. It does what it says it will do in the documentation. It’s all handled on the monitor, and it very much depends on your workflow if this matters at all.

In my case, it doesn’t matter. A display such as this one is my main working monitor, with a periodic delve into testing and so forth. In those cases, the attached peripheral either has its own I/O like a remote for a media player, a controller for a console, or for a network attached storage status display.

Even if it was my second landscape display on my desk that I use on busy days for a third display and for my PC after-hours, there’s still I/O that doesn’t need a KVM.

As with all things, your mileage may vary. It’s a nice feature to have on deck even if you don’t need it this second.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: Versus the Studio Display XDR

The natural Apple rival is the Studio Display XDR. The two take different technical paths to a similar goal.

The Dell uses QD-OLED with per-pixel control and wide viewing angles. The Apple model uses Mini LED backlighting instead, which reaches a higher 2,000 nits.

Apple wins on pixel density, at 218 against 140. Apple also adds speakers and a Center Stage camera.

The Dell answers back with its port hub and larger screen. It also undercuts the Apple model on price.

The Studio Display XDR runs around $3,300. The Dell sits below it, at $2,439.99 when on sale.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q review: A pro OLED that courts Mac users

The UltraSharp 32 QD-OLED is a strong pick for a specific buyer. It suits Mac users who prize color accuracy and connectivity, and need that extra screen estate.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED review: A solid option for Apple users

The panel is its best feature, with reference color modes and a deep OLED contrast. The 140 PPI density is the main compromise to weigh in here, but the cost savings make a difference here.

Against the Studio Display XDR, it’s all about personal priorities. Apple leads on density and brightness, Dell on ports, size, and absolute blacks.

For me, those ports are critical. My workstation is cross-platform, relatively dark, and multiple machine. A one-input monitor, no matter how nice, no matter how stylish, isn’t my best choice.

For color-critical work with a big port count, the Dell delivers. If color-accuracy is less important, the consumer-focused Dell 32 Plus 4K QD-OLED (S3225QC) is a solid candidate, and has speakers, for $800.

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q Pros

• Reference-grade QD-OLED color and contrast
• 140W Thunderbolt with a deep port hub
• Built-in colorimeter for automated calibration

Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED model U3226Q Cons

• 140 PPI looks soft against Apple displays
• Generic design next to a Mac setup
• Lower peak brightness than the Studio Display XDR

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED display is a solid performer. Apple devout, like our videographer, won’t care for the design.

For me, though, I look at the monitor panel, and don’t need to savor bespoke aluminum. The color accuracy is a major selling point, and the Thunderbolt dock integrated into the unit is very nice.

A lack of speakers isn’t a big deal for the main buyers of this machine. Only Apple seems to have a handle on good and small speakers.

Where to buy the Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-OLED

The Dell UltraSharp 32 4K QD-QLED is available from Dell directly, with a regular price of $2,599.99. It has been spotted at closer to $2,400 when on sale.