Many people who stop using weight loss drugs will return to their previous weight within two years, a new review of existing research has found. CNN adds: This rate of weight regain is significantly faster than that seen in those who have lost weight by changing other lifestyle factors, such as diet and exercise, rather than relying on GLP-1 medications, researchers from the University of Oxford report in a paper published Wednesday in The BMJ journal.
GLP-1, which stands for glucagon-like peptide-1, is a hormone naturally made by the body that helps signal to the brain and the gut that it’s full and doesn’t need to eat any more. Weight loss drugs mimic the action of this hormone by increasing the secretion of insulin to lower blood sugar. They also slow the movement of food through the digestive tract, which helps people feel full more quickly and for longer, and they work in the brain to reduce appetite.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
There’s evidence that Fallout 3 is getting remastered like Oblivion, but let’s all calm down for a moment
The post Here’s Why Fans Are Convinced <i>Fallout 3</i> And <i>New Vegas</i> Remasters Are About To Be Revealed appeared first on Kotaku.
Arch-based Garuda Linux ISO 260115 ships with NVIDIA 590 drivers, which no longer support NVIDIA 1000 series GPUs.
Pairing Bluetooth devices can be a pain, but Google Fast Pair makes it almost seamless. Unfortunately, it may also leave your headphones vulnerable to remote hacking. A team of security researchers from Belgium’s KU Leuven University has revealed a vulnerability dubbed WhisperPair that allows an attacker to hijack Fast Pair-enabled devices to spy on the owner.
Fast Pair is widely used, and your device may be vulnerable even if you’ve never used a Google product. The bug affects more than a dozen devices from 10 manufacturers, including Sony, Nothing, JBL, OnePlus, and Google itself. Google has acknowledged the flaw and notified its partners of the danger, but it’s up to these individual companies to create patches for their accessories. A full list of vulnerable devices is available on the project’s website.
The researchers say that it takes only a moment to gain control of a vulnerable Fast Pair device (a median of just 10 seconds) at ranges up to 14 meters. That’s near the limit of the Bluetooth protocol and far enough that the target wouldn’t notice anyone skulking around while they hack headphones.
Also: Battlefield 6 was one of 2025’s most-downloaded games on PS5
The post Fruit Barely Heals You In <i>Smash Bros.</i> Because Of Science appeared first on Kotaku.
The upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle will provide expanded GPU temperature reporting capabilities for Intel graphics cards. Additional temperature sensors will now be exposed under Linux with the Intel Xe driver using the hardware monitoring (HWMON) interface for easy consumption by different Linux user-space software…
The intriguing Africanfuturist heist game, Relooted, is out on February 10. Developed by independent South African studio Nyamakop, the game focuses on a ragtag crew from Johannesburg that liberates real-life African artifacts from a series of fictionalized Western museums.
Relooted is best described as a 2.5d side-scrolling action platformer with stealth and puzzle elements. You have to carefully plan each heist with your fellow teammates, knowing where to place each crew member and how you’re going to get in and out in one piece. Once you’ve grabbed the artifact you’re looking for in each mission, an alarm will sound and you have a limited amount of time to escape, so good preparation is vital.
The studio’s previous game, the platformer Semblance, was significant for being the first South Africa-developed IP to come to a Nintendo console when it launched on Switch in 2018. At E3 that same year, Nyamakop programmer Cukia Kimani and designer Ben Myres talked to Engadget about the difficulties of getting your game in front of the major platform-holders as an indie developer based in sub-Saharan Africa. Without notable local industry events or reps in the country, the developers had to do a lot of globe-trotting in order to get their game noticed.
At the time of writing there’s no Switch or Switch 2 release lined up for Relooted, but the game is coming to PC and Xbox consoles next month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/heist-game-relooted-gets-a-release-date-173456541.html?src=rss
Amazon’s Tomb Raider series is still a ways off, but the Game of Thrones star is serving ‘90s realness in the first look
The post The Internet Reacts To Sophie Turner As Lara Croft appeared first on Kotaku.
Amazon wants a federal judge to reject Saks Global’s bankruptcy financing plan, writing in court papers the beleaguered department store “burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a year” and failed to hold up their agreement. From a report: When Saks acquired Neiman Marcus for $2.7 billion in December 2024, Amazon invested $475 million into the venture on the grounds the retailer would start selling its products on Amazon’s website and the tech company would offer technology and logistics expertise.
“That equity investment is now presumptively worthless,” Amazon’s attorneys wrote in a Wednesday filing, hours after Saks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. “Saks continuously failed to meet its budgets, burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a year, and ran up additional hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid invoices owed to its retail partners.”
As part of the deal, Saks launched a branded “Saks at Amazon” storefront on the e-commerce company’s website featuring a range of luxury fashion and beauty items. It also agreed to pay a referral fee for Saks-branded goods sold on the platform, guaranteeing at least $900 million in payments to Amazon over eight years.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Verizon is offering a very small mea culpa after Wednesday’s massive outage, which drew more than 1.5 million reports on Downdetector and lasted hours. The carrier posted on X that it will offer a $20 credit, but customers must redeem it in the myVerizon app.
“This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can,” the company wrote. “But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us.” Incensed customers have largely replied with incredulity, both at the miniscule amount, and that it isn’t being applied automatically.
Engadget has reached out to Verizon seeking clarity on whether this credit can be claimed by contacting the carrier or only through the app. We will update this piece if we hear back.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/how-to-claim-verizons-20-credit-for-wednesdays-service-outage-171909695.html?src=rss
A significant update to Burn was released today, the MIT and Apache 2.0 licensed tensor library and deep learning framework written in the Rust programming language. Burn 0.20 brings some low-level changes as it continues to strive to deliver high performance AI across the diverse hardware ecosystem…
Been a while? We’re here to help
The post Everything To Know Before Jumping Into <i>Animal Crossing: New Horizons’</i> 3.0 Update appeared first on Kotaku.
Some games won’t end while others end forever, which makes crossing stuff off a backlog these days tricky
The post What Even Is A Video Game Backlog In 2026? appeared first on Kotaku.
Henning Koczy was offered an unusual gig in October of 2012.
He was invited to spend a little over two months on an island in tropical Belize with Lucas Martell and other artists to make an animated short film together. You should really go spend 10 minutes with the film, embedded below, but if you don’t have the time right now let me give you a quick overview.
A lighthouse pokes out of a vast desert stretching to the horizon. The world wasn’t always like this and, above this desolate landscape, a lone pilot flies toward a small cloud. The pilot doesn’t seem to have a plan, exactly, but they’ve strapped a dream to this plane anyway. Hope is little more than a sketch the pilot put on paper labeled “Rain Maker” and the pilot isn’t alone in these dangerous skies. Other planes with vast funnels flying behind them aim to pull the last bit of water from the air first.
Can the pilot complete their mission and make it rain before so many others, desperate for water too, knock them out of the sky?
Martell’s gathering of artists did everything on that island from storyboarding to animation over that two-month span, drawing inspiration from one another and their island surroundings. That’s where a company was born called Mighty Coconut.
“I had about a quarter of what it would’ve taken to pay everyone their typical day rates, but that turned out to be enough to fly everyone down, rent houses, pay for food, small per diems, etc.,” Martell wrote on a diary video recalling that ‘Destination Production’. “This trip was all self-funded through my own freelance gigs.”
Martell hasn’t taken any outside investment for Mighty Coconut and didn’t release a VR game until 2020, when he crested the wave of Oculus Quest 2 headsets selling during the pandemic with the release of Walkabout Mini Golf. These days enough people pay for a safe and fun escape inside each new course he releases that Mighty Coconut employs 34 people contributing oceans of art, animation, music and gameplay.
Martell feels some pressure.
Other independent studios, like Pistol Whip developer Cloudhead, reduced headcount in the face of changing priorities at platform companies. More than a decade after that creative getaway in Belize founding Mighty Coconut, is it possible Martell feels a bit like that pilot flying toward the cloud? My exclusive tour of Tiki à Coco with Koczy recalls his time on that island and the origins of Mighty Coconut as we move along the Walkabout path.
We start at a crashed plane on the beach of a tropical island with drums pounding in the distance. Huts cover the island but, somehow, the one that’s furthest away is the biggest. That curiosity drawn straight into the landscape invites us to investigate further and, along the way, we discover the mythical origins of mini golf.
0:00
Long ago a coconut fell from a tree and rolled into a hole in the ground.
His name was Jerry, and the game of golf was born to a bunch of coconuts who saw the very first hole-in-one. Jerry’s fall led to a whole culture of happy coconuts living on a volcanic island in virtual reality.
“Jerry fell out of a coconut tree and fell into a hole and in doing so created golf,” art director Don Carson explained on the tour. “And so it’s an island inhabited with coconuts that worship the game of golf. And so that’s the story basically.”
Mighty Coconut’s artists offer us a tapestry across the back wall of a tiki hut depicting the fall of Jerry. Exit the side of the hut and you make your way into a bustling village. You might want to stop for a photo with the CocoVision camera in front of the coconut baby taking its first rolls between mom and dad.
Walkabout introduced some of its first animated characters to the game with the release of Labyrinth in 2022. Now with Tiki à Coco, Walkabout’s animators find their footing in a place without any. That’s Mighty Coconut canon. The Coconuts, as the artists call themselves, decided their virtual coconuts lack feet. At one hole, a bunch of bandaged coconuts cheer on their fearful friend at the very edge of rolling off a plank above and into a “Jerry’s Fall” recreation.
Koczy said after my interview he doesn’t stop and think about how unusual his job is until I bring it up on our tours. But it’s a bit striking, isn’t it?
In 2012, he worked for Lucas Martell on a tropical island making a 10-minute animated film about a visionary producing a spark of something magical from almost nothing at all.
In 2025, he worked for Lucas Martell from home designing 36 holes of mini golf for a tropical island inhabited by happy little coconuts in virtual reality.
American buses in cities like New York and San Francisco crawl along at about eight miles per hour — barely faster than a brisk walk — and one surprisingly simple fix could make them faster without requiring new infrastructure or controversial policy changes. The issue, according to a Works in Progress analysis, is that US bus stops sit far too close together.
Mean spacing in American cities is roughly 313 meters, about five stops per mile, while older cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco pack stops even tighter at 214, 223 and 248 meters respectively. European cities typically space stops at 300 to 450 meters.
Each stop costs time: passengers boarding and exiting, acceleration and deceleration, buses kneeling for wheelchairs, missed traffic light cycles. Buses spend about 20% of their operating time just stopping and starting, and since labor accounts for the majority of transit operating costs, slower buses translate directly to higher expenses.
Cities that have tried spacing stops further apart have seen results. San Francisco recorded a 4.4 to 14% increase in travel speeds by reducing from six stops per mile to two and a half. Vancouver’s pilot removed a quarter of stops and cut average trip times by five minutes while saving about $500,000 annually on a single route. A McGill study found that even substantial stop consolidation reduced overall system coverage by just 1%.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
If you’re subscribed to Spotify, start checking your inbox. The music streaming service is sending emails to customers letting them know about yet another price hike coming next month.
To Spotify’s credit, the price hike is pretty minor. But starting on whatever your February billing date is, individual premium plans will jump from $11.99/month to $12.99/month, while student plans will go from $5.99/month to $6.99/month.
More extensive plans will see a slightly more costly jump. The Duo plan, which gives premium access to two people at the same address, is going from $16.99/month to $18.99/month. The Family plan, which gives premium access to up to six people at the same address, will also see a $2 increase, now costing $21.99/month rather than $19.99/month.
The price hikes are set to affect the U.S., Estonia, and Latvia, according to Spotify’s announcement. The company’s rationale for all this? According to the post, “occasional updates to pricing across our markets reflect the value that Spotify delivers.”
Truthfully, $1 to $2 does seem like a pretty minor change, but the update follows another U.S. price hike in 2024, where Individual plans went up by $1, Duo plans went up by $2, and Family plans went up by $3. And that came after a price hike in 2023, where the Individual, Student, and Family plans went up by $1, while the Duo plan went up by $2. Certain subscribers outside of the U.S. also saw their own price increases in 2025. I can’t help but feel like a frog in a slowly boiling pot.
The continual barrage of price hikes is a bit of a disappointment for subscribers who had gotten used to a steady price for Spotify since its U.S. launch in 2011, as the service went for 12 years before its first price change.
If all these price hikes are starting to get to you, you might be able to get around them. If you can find one at a store near you, you can pay upfront for a discounted annual subscription using a Spotify gift card, although it won’t apply to Spotify’s Family or Student plans. Unfortunately, Spotify does not have an annual subscription plan available on its website.
Bungie’s extraction shooter is just a couple months away
The post <i>Marathon</i> Looks Gorgeous In New Deep-Dive On Each Character’s Unique Playstyle appeared first on Kotaku.
As part of Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, parent company Wikimedia announced a slew of partnerships with AI-focused companies like Amazon, Meta, Perplexity, Microsoft and others. The deals are meant to alleviate some of the cost associated with AI chatbots accessing Wikipedia content in enormous volumes by giving the tech companies streamlined access.
As noted by The Verge, the timeline on these deals is a little squirrely. The Wikipedia foundation says that several companies became enterprise partners “over the past year,” while listing Amazon, Google and Meta as “existing” partners. It appears today is the first time they have been officially announced.
The organization sounded the alarm on this issue last year, saying the reduction in traffic due to LLMs and AI summaries could prove existential for the nonprofit and the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s 65 million free articles have served as rich training data for AI chatbots, but all that scraping has driven up server costs at the organization.
Wikimedia had been hoping to move these large firms over to its enterprise platform to help with costs. “It took us a little while to understand the right set of features and functionality to offer if we’re going to move these companies from our free platform to a commercial platform … but all our Big Tech partners really see the need for them to commit to sustaining Wikipedia’s work,” Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise told Reuters.
Under the deal, these companies will have access to high-throughput APIs that can supply chatbot systems with content from Wikipedia as well as Wikimedia’s other projects, including Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiquote and more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/wikimedia-announces-ai-partners-including-meta-and-microsoft-162834383.html?src=rss
The indie RPG Sea of Stars is being released for mobile platforms on April 7. The iOS and Android versions are priced at just $10, which is a steal considering it cost $35 when it was first released for PC and consoles. Heck, it still costs that much on many platforms.
This is a mobile release, so it’s not an exact port. The interface has been revamped to allow for complete touch control. It’s also compatible with controllers, which is always a good thing with smartphone ports. The Android version has a couple of unique features. It offers Google Play Games achievements and cloud saves across various Android devices.
Otherwise, this is the same great game we know and love. There’s a reason, after all, why Sea of Stars snagged best indie game in a particularly crowded field at The Game Awards two years back.
This is a fantastic retro-inspired RPG with more than a few things in common with the 1990s classic Chrono Trigger. The story is utterly charming, the turn-based battle system is just deep enough and the art and character designs are gorgeous. It’s more than just an homage to 1990s RPGs.
The older versions offer three-player couch co-op, which isn’t available here for obvious reasons. The mobile port will also not allow access to the recently-released Throes of the Watchmaker DLC. That’ll probably come as a paid update down the road.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/indie-rpg-sea-of-stars-hits-ios-and-android-on-april-7-162339690.html?src=rss