A new study examining a large sample of privately insured patients with obesity found that use of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy as anti-obesity medications more than doubled from 2022 to 2023. During that same period, there was a 25.6% decrease in patients undergoing metabolic bariatric surgery to treat obesity. From a report: The study, by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Brown School of Public Health, is published in JAMA Network Open. "Our study provides one of the first national estimates of the decline in utilization of bariatric metabolic surgery among privately insured patients corresponding to the rising use of blockbuster GLP-1 RA drugs," said senior author Thomas C. Tsai, a metabolic bariatric surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Using a national sample of medical insurance claims data from more than 17 million privately insured adults, the researchers identified patients with a diagnosis of obesity without diabetes in 2022-2023. The study found a sharp increase in the share of patients who received glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, or GLP-1 RAs, during the study period, with GLP-1 RA use increasing 132.6% from the last six months of 2022 to the last six months of 2023 (from 1.89 to 4.41 patients per 1,000 patients). Meanwhile, there was a 25.6% decrease in use of bariatric metabolic surgery during the same period (from 0.22 to 0.16 patients per 1,000 patients). Among the sample of patients with obesity, 94.7% received neither form of treatment during the study period (while 5% received GLP-1 RAs and 0.3% received surgery). Compared to patients who were prescribed GLP-1 RAs, patients who underwent surgery tended to be more medically complex.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Last month at Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta AI was "on track" to become the most-used generative AI assistant in the world. The company has now passed a significant milestone toward that goal, with Meta AI passing the 500 million user mark, Zuckerberg revealed during the company's latest earnings call. The half billion user mark comes just barely a year after the social network first launched its AI assistant last fall. Zuckerberg said the company still expects to become the "most-used" assistant by the end of 2024, though he's never specified how the company is measuring that metric. Zuck said that AI-driven improvements in feed and video recommendations have led to an 8% increase in time spent on Facebook and 5% increase on Instagram this year. Advertisers have also leveraged the company's AI tools to generate over 15 million ads in just the past month. Separately, Meta's Threads app is gaining over a million new sign-ups daily, with nearly 275 million total monthly users.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Behind the Black: According to a new very detailed engineering analysis into the causes of the collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2020, the failure was caused first by a surprising interaction between the radio electronics of Arecibo and the traditional methods used to anchor the cables, and second by a failure of inspections to spot the problem as it became obvious. The surprising engineering discovery is illustrated [here (PNG)]. The main antenna of Arecibo was suspended above the bowl below by three main cables. The figure shows the basic design of the system used to anchor the cable ends to their sockets. The end of the cable bunches would be inserted into the socket, spread apart, and then zinc would be poured in to fill the gap and then act as a plug and glue to hold the cables in place. According to the report, this system has been used for decades in many applications very successfully. What the report found however was at Arecibo over time the cable bunch and zinc plug slowly began to pull out of the socket, what the report labels as "zinc creep." This was noted by inspectors, but dismissed as a concern because they still believed the engineering margins were still high enough to prevent failure at this point. In fact, this is exactly where the structure failed in 2020, with the first cable separating as shown in August 2020. The second cable did so in a similar manner in November 2020. The report concluded that the "only hypothesis the committee could develop that provides a plausible but unprovable answer to all these questions and the observed socket failure pattern is that the socket zinc creep was unexpectedly accelerated in the Arecibo Telescope's uniquely powerful electromagnetic radiation environment. The Arecibo Telescope cables were suspended across the beam of 'the most powerful radio transmitter on Earth.'"

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Heat-related deaths, food insecurity and the spread of infectious diseases caused by the climate crisis have reached record levels, according to a landmark report. The Guardian: The Lancet Countdown's ninth report on health and the climate breakdown reveals that people across the world face unprecedented threats to their health from the rapidly changing climate. "This year's stocktake of the imminent health threats of climate inaction reveals the most concerning findings yet," warned Dr Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London. "Once again, last year broke climate change records with extreme heatwaves, deadly weather events, and devastating wildfires affecting people around the world. No individual or economy on the planet is immune [to] the health threats of climate change. The relentless expansion of fossil fuels and record-breaking greenhouse gas emissions compounds these dangerous health impacts, and is threatening to reverse the limited progress made so far and put a healthy future further out of reach." The report finds that in 2023, extreme drought lasting at least one month affected 48% of the global land area, while people had to cope with an unprecedented 50 more days of health-threatening temperatures than would have been expected without the climate crisis. As a result, 151 million more people faced moderate or severe food insecurity, risking malnutrition and other harm to their health.

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Nintendo has announced a mobile app called Nintendo Music, which lets users listen to classic video game soundtracks from Nintendo games spanning the last few decades, including Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and The Legend of Zelda. According to The Verge, the app is available on iOS and Android but only Switch Online subscribers will be able to stream the tunes. From the report: The app features curated playlists themed around games, moments, moods, or characters, though you can also build your own. It also supports streaming as well as downloading tracks for offline listening. Curiously, it includes a spoiler feature that lets you filter out tracks that, somehow, might spoil a game you haven't played or finished yet. And if you just want some Hyrule white noise, the app also lets you "loop songs or extend select tracks to 15, 30, or 60 minutes for uninterrupted listening." Here's a list of all the regions the app will be available in.

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In a new video published today, Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas is shown moving engine parts between bins without any human assistance. TechCrunch reports: Boston Dynamics is quick to note that the actions are being performed autonomously, without "prescribed or teleoperated movements." [...] Boston Dynamics notes, "The robot is able to detect and react to changes in the environment (e.g., moving fixtures) and action failures (e.g., failure to insert the cover, tripping, environment collision) using a combination of vision, force, and proprioceptive sensors." In addition to the autonomously executed tasks, the video showcases impressive adaptive -- and strong -- actuators, as the robot pivots at its waist. The action minimizes movements, saving precious seconds in the process.

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First we had friends. Then we had influencers. And if Mark Zuckerberg is correct, the next big thing in our social media feeds will be AI generated content. Lots of it. Fortune: Zuckerberg described our future feeds during Facebook-parent company Meta's third quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday, describing it as a natural evolution. "I think were going to add a whole new category of content which is AI generated or AI summarized content, or existing content pulled together by AI in some way," the Meta CEO said. "And I think that that's gonna be very exciting for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads, or other kinds of feed experiences over time." Zuckerberg touted the company's Llama large language model and the success of products it powers, such as the Meta AI chatbot that is now used by more than 500 million users every month. But Llama will increasingly play a role across Meta's business, Zuckerberg said, including tools for business customers and advertisers. As AI tools become more widespread, AI content will proliferate within social media feeds. Such feeds are actively being worked on inside Meta, Zuckerberg noted. "It's something we're starting to test different things around." "I don't know if we know what's exactly going to work really well yet, but some things are really promising," he added. "I have high confidence that over the next several years, this will be one of the important trends and one of the important applications."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Siemens will buy Altair Engineering for $10.6 billion, the American engineering software firm said on Wednesday, as the German company seeks to strengthen its presence in the fast-growing industrial software market. The offer price of $113 per share represents a premium of about 18.7% to Altair's closing price on Oct. 21, a day before Reuters first reported that the company was exploring a sale. The deal for Michigan-based Altair is Siemens's biggest acquisition since Siemens Healthineers bought medical device maker Varian Medical Systems for $16.4 million in 2020. [...] The transaction is anticipated to add to Siemens' earnings per share in about two years from the deal's closing, which is expected in the second half of 2025. It will also increase Siemens' digital business revenue by about 8%, adding approximately 600 million euros ($651.36 million) to the company's digital business revenue in fiscal 2023. The transaction would have a revenue impact of about $500 million per year in the mid-term and more than $1 billion per year in the long term, Siemens said.

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For months, the Colorado Department of State inadvertently exposed partial passwords for voting machines in a public spreadsheet. "While the incident is embarrassing and already fueling accusations from the state's Republican party, the department said in a statement that it 'does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado's elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted,'" reports Gizmodo. From the report: Colorado NBC affiliate station 9NEWS reported that Hope Scheppelman, vice chair of the state's Republican party, revealed the error in a mass email sent Tuesday morning, which included an affidavit from a person who claimed to have downloaded the spreadsheet and discovered the passwords by clicking a button to reveal hidden tabs. In its statement, the Department of State said that there are two unique passwords for each of its voting machines, which are stored in separate places. Additionally, the passwords can only be used by a person who is physically operating the system and voting machines are stored in secure areas that require ID badges to access and are under 24/7 video surveillance. "The Department took immediate action as soon as it was aware of this, and informed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which closely monitors and protects the [country's] essential security infrastructure," The department said, adding that it is "working to remedy this situation where necessary." Colorado voters use paper ballots, ensuring that a physical paper trail that can be used to verify results tabulated electronically.

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Ars Technica's Samuel Axon reports on Microsoft's quarterly earnings: Some investors have been uneasy about the company's aggressive spending on AI, while others have demanded it. During this quarter, Microsoft reported that it spent $20 billion on capital expenditures, nearly double what it had spent during the same quarter last year. However, the company satisfied both groups of investors, as it revealed it has still been doing well in the short term amid those long-term investments. The fiscal quarter, which covered July through September, saw overall sales rise 16 percent year over year to $65.6 billion. Despite all that AI spending, profits were up 11 percent, too. The growth was largely driven by Azure and cloud services, which saw a 33 percent increase in revenue. The company attributed 12 percent of that to AI-related products and services. Meanwhile, Microsoft's gaming division continued to challenge long-standing assumptions that hardware is king, with Xbox content and services posting 61 percent increased year-over-year revenue despite a 29 percent drop in hardware sales. [...] The company attributed 53 points of that to the recent $69 billion Activision acquisition.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gaming On Linux: Valve announced a change for Steam today that will make things a lot clearer for everyone, as developers will now need to clearly list the kernel-level anti-cheat used on Steam store pages. In the Steamworks Developer post Valve said: "We've heard from more and more developers recently that they're looking for the right way to share anti-cheat information about their game with players. At the same time, players have been requesting more transparency around the anti-cheat services used in games, as well as the existence of any additional software that will be installed within the game." Developers with games already on Steam will also need to do this, as it's not just for new games coming up for release, and it is also part of the release process now too. So Valve will be doing checks on games to ensure the notices are there and correct. However, it's only being forced for kernel-level anti-cheat. If it's only client-side or server-side, it's optional, but Valve say "we generally think that any game that makes use of anti-cheat technology would benefit from letting players know".

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Comcast says the latest installment of Call of Duty, released on October 25th, resulted in a whopping 19 percent of its overall traffic last week. The ISP says it's the company's "biggest weak in internet history." The Verge reports: It's not really possible to quantify that further, given Comcast didn't provide any specific numbers -- either about how many customers were downloading the game or how big their downloads were. Ranging between 84.4GB for the PlayStation version and 102GB for the PC edition Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is, in the grand tradition of Call of Duty games, a hefty download. It can be as much as 300GB if players choose to go ahead and download Modern Warfare II and III and all the associated content packs and languages, as Activision explained in June. The announcement underscores "just how restrictive its 1.2TB data cap can be in 2024," notes The Verge. "For any players who did download the whole massive 300GB package, they'll have wiped out a huge chunk of their 1.2TB Xfinity data cap in one fell swoop." "If they used their internet as normal otherwise, that could put them right up against or even blow past that cap. Given that my family used nearly 800GB last month without any notably large game downloads, it wouldn't be that hard at all."

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The Register's Tobias Mann reports: Supermicro shares took a nose dive on Wednesday, sliding more than 30 percent after the accounting firm hired to review its reporting practices resigned after determining they were just a bit too sketchy to warrant the risk. "We are resigning due to information that has recently come to our attention which has led us to no longer be able to rely on management's and audit committee's representations," Ernst & Young wrote in a resignation letter, which also raised alarm bells regarding Supermicro CEO Charles Liang's influence over the board. The concerns, disclosed in a recent SEC filing, only serve to stoke the fires of controversy surrounding Supermicro, which, after more than two months, still hasn't filed its 10-K annual report and faces the possibility of being de-listed from the Nasdaq as a result. [...] EY's resignation apparently came months after it raised concerns with management regarding the "governance, transparency, and completeness of" Supermicro's financial reporting, and warned that the release of the server maker's annual report was at significant risk. In response, Supermicro's board appointed an independent special committee and hired Cooley and forensic accounting firm Secretariat Advisors to review its internal controls and governance procedures. It seems EY was not too pleased with the special committee's findings which apparently raised yet more red flags. "After receiving additional information through the Review process, EY informed the special committee that the additional information EY received raised questions, including about whether the Company demonstrates a commitment to integrity and ethical values," the SEC filing reads.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Less than a year after OpenAI quietly signaled it wanted to do business with the Pentagon, a procurement document obtained by The Intercept shows U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, believes access to OpenAI's technology is "essential" for its mission. The September 30 document lays out AFRICOM's rationale for buying cloud computing services directly from Microsoft as part of its $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract, rather than seeking another provider on the open market. "The USAFRICOM operates in a dynamic and evolving environment where IT plays a critical role in achieving mission objectives," the document reads, including "its vital mission in support of our African Mission Partners [and] USAFRICOM joint exercises." The document, labeled Controlled Unclassified Information, is marked as FEDCON, indicating it is not meant to be distributed beyond government or contractors. It shows AFRICOM's request was approved by the Defense Information Systems Agency. While the price of the purchase is redacted, the approval document notes its value is less than $15 million. Like the rest of the Department of Defense, AFRICOM -- which oversees the Pentagon's operations across Africa, including local military cooperation with U.S. allies there -- has an increasing appetite for cloud computing. The Defense Department already purchases cloud computing access from Microsoft via the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability project. This new document reflects AFRICOM's desire to bypass contracting red tape and buy immediatelyMicrosoft Azure cloud services, including OpenAI software, without considering other vendors. AFRICOM states that the "ability to support advanced AI/ML workloads is crucial. This includes services for search, natural language processing, [machine learning], and unified analytics for data processing." And according to AFRICOM, Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, which includes a suite of tools provided by OpenAI, is the only cloud provider capable of meeting its needs. Microsoft began selling OpenAI's GPT-4 large language model to defense customers in June 2023. Earlier this year, following the revelation that OpenAI had changed its mind on military work, the company announced a cybersecurity collaboration with DARPA in January and said its tools would be used for an unspecified veteran suicide prevention initiative. In April, Microsoft pitched the Pentagon on using DALL-E, OpenAI's image generation tool, for command and control software. But the AFRICOM document marks the first confirmed purchase of OpenAI's products by a U.S. combatant command whose mission is one of killing. OpenAI's stated corporate mission remains "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." The AFRICOM document marks the first confirmed purchase of OpenAI's products by a U.S. combatant command whose mission is one of killing. "Without access to Microsoft's integrated suite of AI tools and services, USAFRICOM would face significant challenges in analyzing and extracting actionable insights from vast amounts of data," reads the AFRICOM document. "This could lead to delays in decision-making, compromised situational awareness, and decreased agility in responding to dynamic and evolving threats across the African continent." The document contains little information about how exactly the OpenAI tools will be used.

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An anonymous reader writes: Firewalk Studios, whom Sony Interactive Entertainment bought from Probably Monsters, has been shut down after disastrous Concord game launch. Kotaku adds: The team was responsible for Concord, the company's sci-fi hero shooter that bombed so badly it was taken offline just weeks after its launch earlier this year. The news comes less than two years after the PlayStation 5 maker first acquired Firewalk Studios as part of its ambitious plans for live service gaming. Firewalk Studios was formed in 2018 as a few ex-Bungie developers working on a new multiplayer shooter under the umbrella of the gaming studio startup Probably Monsters, formed by ex-Bungie CEO Harold Ryan. Concord was in development for years and picked up by Sony early on as a promising prospect for its portfolio of planned live service games.

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Simon Sharwood, reporting for The Register: Organisers of WordCamps, community-organized events for WordPress users, have been ordered to take down some social media posts and share their login credentials for social networks. The order to share creds came from an employee of Automattic, the WordPress host whose CEO happens to be Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress. A letter sent to WordCamp organizers explains that the creds are needed due to "recurrent issues with new organizing teams losing access to the event's social media accounts." So far, so sensible. But the requirement to share creds comes in the middle of a nasty spat in the WordPress community, sparked by Mullenweg's efforts to have rival hosting biz WP Engine license the WordPress trademark or devote more staff to working on the open source content management system's code.

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Apple has boosted the default RAM to 16GB across its MacBook Air lineup while maintaining existing prices. The memory upgrade affects both M2 and M3 models, with base prices staying at $999 for M2, $1,099 for 13-inch M3, and $1,299 for 15-inch M3 versions. The move comes as AI features demand increased memory capacity.

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Canada is bracing for Indian government-backed hacking as the two nations' diplomatic relationship nosedives to its lowest ebb in a generation. From a report: "We judge that official bilateral relations between Canada and India will very likely drive Indian state-sponsored cyber threat activity against Canada," the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security said in its annual threat report published Wednesday, adding that such hackers are probably already conducting cyber-espionage. This month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet and Canadian police have ramped up a remarkable campaign of public condemnations against India, accusing Narendra Modi's officials of backing a wave of violence and extortion against Canadians on Canadian soil -- particularly those who agitate for carving out a separate Sikh state in India called Khalistan. India has rejected the accusations and believes some Khalistan activists to be terrorists harbored by Canada.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A disgruntled former Disney employee allegedly repeatedly hacked into a third-party menu creation software used by Walt Disney World's restaurants and changed allergy information on menus to say that foods that had peanuts in them were safe for people with allergies, added profanity to menus, and at one point changed all fonts used on menus to Wingdings, according to a federal criminal complaint. The suspect in the case, Michael Scheuer, broke into a proprietary menu creation and inventory system that was developed by a third-party company exclusively for Disney and is used to print menus for its restaurants, the complaint alleges. The complaint alleges he did this soon after being fired by Disney using passwords that he still had access to on several different systems. Once inside the systems, he allegedly altered menus and, in once case, broke the software for several weeks. "The threat actor manipulated the allergen information on menus by adding information to some allergen notifications that indicated certain menu items were safe for individuals with peanut allergies, when in fact they could be deadly to those with peanut allergies," the criminal complaint states. According to the complaint, the menus were caught by Disney after they were printed but before they were distributed to Disney restaurants. Disney's menus have extensive "allergy friendly" sections.

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Dropbox is letting go 20% of its workforce as the cloud company undergoes what CEO Drew Houston calls a "transitional period." From a report: In a letter to staff, Houston said that the reduction in headcount would impact 528 people. The goal, he added, was to make cuts in areas where Dropbox has "over-invested" while designing a "flatter, more efficient" team structure. "As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I'm truly sorry to those impacted by this change," he wrote. "This market is moving fast and investors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into this space. This both validates the opportunity we've been pursuing and underscores the need for even more urgency, even more aggressive investment, and decisive action." According to a filing with the SEC, Dropbox estimates it'll lay out total cash expenditures of $63 million to $68 million on the layoffs, primarily in the form of severance and benefits, and recognize $47 million to $52 million of incremental expense.

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