Month: August 2020

Enlarge / In 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in a matter of weeks. (credit: NASA EO)

In 2016, a study found that adding a couple new processes to a model of the Antarctic ice sheets made them much more vulnerable to melt, greatly increasing global sea level rise—both this century and in the centuries to come. It was an alarming result, to be sure, but also a bit conjectural. The researchers didn’t have a way to assess how realistically the new processes were modeled, so they viewed their paper as raising a question deserving attention, rather than providing an answer.

The new processes were the collapse of ice cliffs above a certain height (a theoretical constraint, but not something we’ve watched happen) and hydrofracturing. The latter is a propagation of a surface fracture in the ice clean through to the bottom of the ice sheet as the crack fills with water. Hydrofracturing is a known commodity—it was probably the dominant process in the sudden collapse of Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf in 2002. The question here, instead, is how vulnerable is the rest of Antarctica to this process?

A new study led by Ching-Yao Lai at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has tried to answer that question by mapping fractures and calculating where hydrofracturing should be possible.

Enlarge / Sometimes it seems like Widevine is the DNS of Digital Rights Management. "It can't be Widevine!" It was Widevine. It's always Widevine... (credit: Jim Salter)

A reader tipped us off today that HBO Max stopped working a couple of weeks ago for Linux users, under any Web browser. Any attempt to play back a video on the streaming service on a Linux system—regardless of distribution or browser—returns an error saying, "We're having trouble playing this video. Please try again later." (To be clear, this is a problem for generic Linux PCs, not dedicated Linux-based streaming hardware—the HBO app still works just fine on a Roku we also tested today.)

Unfortunately, trying again later won't help—the root cause of the problem is that the Widevine DRM attempting to protect HBO Max's content from pirates is refusing to recognize any Linux system as a known platform. We saw the same thing happen in January, when CBS All Access suddenly stopped working on Linux in the same way. When we asked CBS executives if they had enabled the Verified Media Path (VMP) requirement on their Widevine server, they suddenly clammed up—but later that day, the service miraculously worked for Linux users again.

We did verify that HBO Max will not work on Linux browsers and that the problem is—once again—Widevine DRM refusing to issue a license. Although HBO Max has not returned requests for comment at press time, it seems very likely that the cause here is the same as it was for CBS All Access back in January. It seems like somebody enabled Verified Media Path on the Widevine server, and since the Linux kernel is not a verified media path, Linux users can't get a license and can't watch the content.

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  Vic McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings) has a good thing going with Lou Carmody (Jonathan Langdon). [credit: AMC ]

A young mother must overcome her personal demons to save her son from a psychic vampire in the second season of AMC horror drama NOS4A2 (pronounced "Nosferatu"), an adaptation of the 2013 novel of the same name by Joe Hill. (Hill is having a banner year between this and the successful Netflix adaptation of Locke and Key). While the otherwise compelling first season dragged in places—mostly when it was weighed down a bit by the need to build out the fictional world—S2 wastes no time kicking off the action. NOS4A2 rarely lets up over its newest ten episodes.

(Spoilers for S1 below. Mostly mild spoilers for S2 until after the final gallery. We'll give you a heads up when we get there.)

As we've reported previously, the novel is about a woman named Vic McQueen with a gift for finding lost things. She's one of a rare group of people known as "strong creatives," capable of tearing through the fabric that separates the physical world from the world of thought and imagination (their personal "inscapes") with the help of a talisman-like object dubbed a "knife." For Vic, her knife is her motorcycle; for a troubled young woman named Maggie, it's a bag of Scrabble tiles. And for psychic "vampire"/child abductor Charlie Manx, it's a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, which seems to have a mind of its own.

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  Final Cut Pro on an iMac and a MacBook Pro. [credit: Apple ]

Apple has released a major new update to its Final Cut Pro X video editing application. Labeled Final Cut Pro 10.4.9, the update is focused primarily on improving workflows for proxy files to make teams working together remotely—obviously a common situation amid the COVID-19 pandemic—more efficient.

Additionally, the new update includes a machine-learning-driven feature that automatically crops vertical aspect ratios (like you see in TikTok or Instagram videos on mobile phones) from widescreen footage, plus Apple has included some other improvements and features.

The company also updated iMovie, its mass-market consumer video editing software, to version 2.2.10 on iPadOS and iOS, and version 10.1.15 on macOS. These updates include stability improvements and bug fixes, as well as additional filters. The iOS and iPadOS versions get three new filters: Comic, Comic Mono, and Ink.

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  Delta IV Heavy nestled in its Mobile Service Tower before launch of the NROL-44 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ]

Is anyone ready to see a heavy-lift rocket take flight? Especially one that creates a giant fireball mere seconds before liftoff?

United Launch Alliance's largest booster, the Delta IV Heavy, has not launched since January, 2019. Now the big rocket—the second-most-powerful launch vehicle in the world after SpaceX's Falcon Heavy—is back on the pad to loft a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Liftoff of this "NROL-44" mission is scheduled for 2:12am EDT (06:12 UTC) on Thursday from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The weather forecast for liftoff is favorable, with only a slight concern for a chance of violating the cumulus cloud rules. Forecasters predict an 80-percent chance of good weather at the launch opportunity.

Enlarge / That soon-to-be-useless Fortnite icon has been worth a lot of money to some eBay buyers in recent days. (credit: eBay)

Since Apple pulled Fortnite down from the iOS App Store earlier this month, some eBay users have apparently paid thousands of dollars for iPhones that had a playable, pre-installed copy of the game. Starting tomorrow, though, those devices will be no different from any other iPhones.

"Apple is blocking Fortnite updates and new installs on the App Store and has said they will terminate our ability to develop Fortnite for Apple devices," Epic wrote in an FAQ update this morning. "As a result, Fortnite’s newly released Chapter 2 - Season 4 update (v14.00), will not release on iOS and macOS on August 27."

In other words, Fortnite will finally be fully unplayable on iOS devices starting Thursday. Android users will still be able to install and play the latest update by downloading it directly from Epic or from The Samsung Galaxy Store on compatible devices.