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Facebook is warning developers that privacy changes in an upcoming iOS update will severely curtail its ability to track users' activity across the entire Internet and app ecosystem and prevent the social media platform from serving targeted ads to users inside other, non-Facebook apps on iPhones.

The next version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 14, is expected to hit an iPhone near you this fall. Along with its many new consumer-facing features, iOS 14 requires app developers to notify users if their app collects a unique device code, known as an IDFA (ID for Advertisers).

The IDFA is a randomly generated code that Apple assigns to a device. (Google assigns similar numbers to Android devices.) Apps can then use those codes to tie together user activity. For example, Facebook, a local shopping app, and a local weather app might all access that identifier. Facebook and other advertising businesses can then use that cross-app use data to place targeted ads for advertisers on other apps, which is what Facebook does with its Audience Network program.

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  Artist's rendering of an average gamer after hearing they'll have to spend $10 extra for a next-gen copy of Black Ops: Cold War.

Players who want to play the newly announced Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War on the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will have to pay an additional $10 for the privilege. And whether fans agree with that call or not, a slew of versions and clarifications about physical copies isn't helping the messaging for today's news.

Following today's official reveal of the game, Activision is detailing three different versions of the title for pre-order ahead of a Nov. 13 launch:

• • Standard Edition ($59.99): The standard game available for Xbox One, PS4, or PC, complete with "cross generation, cross play and cross progression support" if you upgrade later.
  • Cross-Gen Bundle ($69.99): The Standard Edition with "a dual entitlement... which allows you to play on current (PS4, Xbox One) and next-generation consoles within the same console family (PS5, Xbox Series X)."

• Ultimate Edition ($89.99): Current and next-generation versions of the game, plus exclusive skins and a Season Pass. (also available on PC)

In addition to those digital packages, Activision also lists physical Standard Editions of the game, which will cost $59.99 for current-generation consoles and $69.99 for next-generation consoles. And while the Xbox Series X physical Standard Edition will include a copy for Xbox One, the PS5 physical edition will not include a copy for PS4.

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Average 5G download speeds in the US are 50.9Mbps, a nice step up from average 4G speeds but far behind several countries where 5G speeds are in the 200Mbps to 400Mbps range. These statistics were reported today by OpenSignal, which presented average 5G speeds in 12 countries based on user-initiated speed tests conducted between May 16 and August 14. The US came in last of the 12 countries in 5G speeds, with 10 of the 11 other countries posting 5G speeds that at least doubled those of the US.

The US's average 5G speed is 1.8 times higher than the country's average 4G download speed of 28.9Mbps. User tests in neighboring Canada produced a 4G average of 59.4Mbps and a 5G average of 178.1Mbps. Taiwan and Australia both produced 5G averages above 200Mbps, while South Korea and Saudi Arabia produced the highest 5G speeds at 312.7Mbps and 414.2Mbps, respectively.

In the US, average download speeds for users who accessed 5G at least some of the time was 33.4Mbps—that figure includes both their 4G and 5G experiences. This was the second lowest of the 12 countries surveyed by OpenSignal, with the highest speeds coming in Saudi Arabia (144.5Mbps) and Canada (90.4Mbps). The US fared better in 5G availability, the percentage of time in which users are connected to 5G; the US figure in that statistic is 19.3 percent, fifth best, with Saudi Arabia placing first at 34.4 percent and the UK placing last at 4.5 percent.

Enlarge (credit: Michael Coghlan)

A Russian national has been criminally charged for allegedly offering $1 million to a person in return for them infecting their employer’s network with malware.

Federal prosecutors said that Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, met with the unnamed employee on multiple occasions to entice them to install malware that would exfiltrate data from the unidentified Nevada-based company. The group behind the attack allegedly would then demand $4 million in return for the information.

A criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday said that the malware would be custom developed to propagate through the company's network. For it to work, prosecutors alleged, the group said it needed the employee to provide information about the employer’s network authorizations and network procedures. Kriuchkov said the malware could be transmitted either by inserting a USB drive into a company computer or clicking on an email attachment containing malware, Tuesday's criminal complaint said.

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.