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Microsoft links Windows 11 boot failures to failed December 2025 update

Microsoft has linked recent reports of Windows 11 boot failures after installing the January 2026 updates to previously failed attempts to install the December 2025 security update, which left systems in an “improper state.”

The boot failures were first reported earlier this month after users installed the January 2026 Patch Tuesday cumulative update, KB5074109, on Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2.

After installing the update, impacted systems failed to start and displayed a BSOD crash screen with a stop error of “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME” code.

Hugging Face abused to spread thousands of Android malware variants

A new Android malware campaign is using the Hugging Face platform as a repository for thousands of variations of an APK payload that collects credentials for popular financial and payment services.

Hugging Face is a popular platform that hosts and distributes artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML) models, datasets, and applications.

It is considered a trusted platform unlikely to trigger security warnings, but bad actors have abused it in the past to host malicious AI models.

Aisuru botnet sets new record with 31.4 Tbps DDoS attack

The Aisuru/Kimwolf botnet launched a new massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that peaked at 31.4 Tbps and 200 million requests per second, setting a new record.

The attack was part of a campaign targeting multiple companies, most of them in the telecommunications sector, and was detected and mitigated by Cloudflare last year on December 19.

Aisuru is responsible for the previous DDoS record that reached 29.7 Tbps. Another attack that Microsoft attributed to the botnet peaked at 15.72 Tbps and originated from 500,000 IP addresses.

Synaptic-resolution connectomics: towards large brains and connectomic screening

Connectomics has delivered on its promise to map neuronal circuits at scale and at synaptic resolution. In this Review, Helmstaedter describes recent methodological achievements and remaining challenges in synaptic-resolution connectomics while synthesizing expanding connectomic mapping ambitions that include resolving local circuits of larger brains and screening of connectomes.

Study: The infant universe’s “primordial soup” was actually soupy

In its first moments, the infant universe was a trillion-degree-hot soup of quarks and gluons. These elementary particles zinged around at light speed, creating a “quark-gluon plasma” that lasted for only a few millionths of a second. The primordial goo then quickly cooled, and its individual quarks and gluons fused to form the protons, neutrons, and other fundamental particles that exist today.

Physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland are recreating quark-gluon plasma (QGP) to better understand the universe’s starting ingredients. By smashing together heavy ions at close to light speeds, scientists can briefly dislodge quarks and gluons to create and study the same material that existed during the first microseconds of the early universe.

Now, a team at CERN led by MIT physicists has observed clear signs that quarks create wakes as they speed through the plasma, similar to a duck trailing ripples through water. The findings are the first direct evidence that quark-gluon plasma reacts to speeding particles as a single fluid, sloshing and splashing in response, rather than scattering randomly like individual particles.

Interleukin-9 Regulates NF-kB-Mediated Activation of Astrocytes in Multiple Sclerosis Brain

Background and ObjectivesInterleukin-9 (IL-9) is an immune molecule with multiple roles in a variety of cell types. IL-9–induced cell responses are mediated by the IL-9 receptor (IL-9R). Recent evidence demonstrates that expression of IL-9R in post mortem…

DNA-Protein Crosslinks Explain Accelerated Aging in Progeria

In Ruijs-Aalfs progeria syndrome, patients experience accelerated aging and liver cancer.

Now, scientists showed that mutations in a certain gene prevent cells from repairing DNA damage during mitosis, triggering inflammatory immune responses that may fuel premature aging.

Read more.

Researchers have shown that harmful bonds between protein and DNA fuel immune attack in progeria. Pumping up a protein that cuts these bonds could prevent symptoms.

A Brain Parasite Infecting Millions Is Far Less Sleepy Than We Thought

A parasite that lives permanently in the brains of millions may not be as uniformly dormant as scientists once thought.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) have recently found evidence of low-level T. gondii reactivation in the brains of mice, even during long-term infection.

Today, more than a third of the world’s human population is infected by Toxoplasma gondii, a brain-invading parasite that reproduces in cats with mice and other animals acting as intermediate hosts.

The Linux community now has a succession plan for when Linus Torvalds checks out, after an apparently uplifting discussion about ‘our eventual march toward death’

The room discussed various options but, per LWN.net, “it is sufficient to say that there was not a lot of disagreement” before two things were agreed upon. The first was acknowledging that there are already some provisions in place, with multiple people being able to commit to Torvalds’ repository, and redundancy measures in place for the stable repository.

The hoped-for scenario is that Torvalds will decide to step back, arrange a smooth transition to any replacement himself, and go off to enjoy a long retirement. Torvalds made it known he has no plans in this direction anytime soon, but why would he.

Then the big question: what if something goes wrong that does prevent this smooth transition, whether it’s a freak skydiving incident or Bill Gates in the library with a candlestick. “As I put it in the discussion,” writes LWN.net co-founder Jonathan Corbet, “in the absence of an agreed-upon process, the community would find itself playing Calvinball at an awkward time.”

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