Month: November 2018

Enlarge / One of several styled Apple logos associated with the October 30 event. (credit: Apple)

Apple announced on its earnings call today that it had surpassed its revenue estimates for Q4 2018. The iPhone maker boasted $62.9 billion in revenue, slightly more than the $60-62 billion it previously estimated, as well as $14.1 billion in profit, up from $11.5 billion in the previous quarter.

"We're thrilled to report another record-breaking quarter that caps a tremendous fiscal 2018, the year in which we shipped our two billionth iOS device, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the App Store, and achieved the strongest revenue and earnings in Apple's history,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.

Apple sold 46.8 million iPhones, 9.6 million iPads, and 5.2 million Macs in the final quarter of 2018. While that represents a 14 percent increase in iPhone sales when compared to last quarter, it's about the same number of iPhones sold this time last year. However, year-over-year revenue from iPhone sales was up by 29 percent, thanks to the increase in iPhone prices.

Enlarge / The total cost includes lost productivity, as well as healthcare costs. (credit: e-Magine Art / Flickr)

A report released this week puts a surprisingly high figure on the societal cost of obesity in the US: $1.72 trillion annually, or 9.3 percent of GDP. By contrast, the current CDC estimates are in the region of $150 billion, less than one tenth as high.

By far the biggest chunk of that $1.72 trillion is the $1.24 trillion chunk attributed to the “indirect” costs of obesity: the “work absences, lost wages, and reduced economic productivity for the individuals suffering from the conditions and their family caregivers,” the report explains. That is, the bulk comes from costs other than healthcare spending. The estimate for healthcare spending—$480.7 billion annually—is somewhat higher than a range of estimates in reviews of the literature, which hover around $150 to $300 billion, but are still on the same scale.

Estimates like these can vary substantially because of the different methods used in calculating them. For example, a review from 2017 catalogues the different obesity-related diseases that were included in various studies across different countries; respiratory disorders and musculo-skeletal disorders make an appearance in some but not others. A 2016 meta-analysis describes a similarly wide range in how medical costs are calculated.

Enlarge / Well, that whole thing clearly worked out well, didn't it? (credit: JASON LEE/AFP/Getty Images)

Remember the good old days, when the US and China were supposedly working out new norms for the cybers, and China was going to stop all that hacking of US companies to steal intellectual property? It turns out the Chinese were just upping their hacking game, improving their operational security and penetration skills—learning from the methods of their Russian counterparts.

A recent example of that "island hopping" tactic is the "Cloud Hopper" hacking campaign, active since at least May of 2016. In October, DHS issued a new alert on the campaign, warning of a surge in activity by the campaign over the past few months. Cloud Hopper has been attributed to the threat group known as APT 10, aka Stone Panda—a hacking group that has been tied to the Chinese Ministry of State Security's Tianjin Bureau.

Based on data from incident response companies gathered by the security software vendor Carbon Black, China is now the leading source of cyber-attacks. Of 113 investigations conducted by Carbon Black's incident response partners in the third quarter of 2018, nearly half—47 in total—came from China or Russia.

Enlarge (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Thousands of Google employees at the company’s headquarters walked out of work on Thursday to protest sexual misconduct. Many brought signs that included slogans like "End Rape Culture," "Don't be evil," "Equality for all," "Hey Google, WTF?" and "I deserve to feel safe @ work."

Similar protests took place at numerous Google offices worldwide. The Thursday protests, which featured testimonials by people who say that they suffered harassment and misconduct at the company and were not taken seriously by their superiors, marked one of the most visible instances of Silicon Valley workers protesting in recent years.

Protestors were galvanized by a recent New York Times report that chronicled three top company executives who have received massive payouts over the past decade despite being credibly accused of sexual misconduct.