Attackers hijacked 400+ Arch Linux AUR packages to run a Rust credential stealer, with optional eBPF rootkit support on root systems.
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Agentjacking Attack Tricks AI Coding Agents Into Running Malicious Code
Researchers warn Agentjacking can abuse Sentry errors to make AI coding agents run malicious code on developer machines.
Patterns are alive, and we are living patterns
The search for “alien” intelligences isn’t only looking to outer space: some biologists are convinced that weird and wonderful forms of intelligence already exist right here on earth, and that they hold the key to understanding intelligence itself. In the first of a two part series, Michael Levin tries to shake us out of any assumption that intelligent beings must be embodied in a conventional way. Instead, he suggests, patterns in a medium might be intelligent, and any distinction between thinkers and thoughts is in the eye of the beholder. Read part two of our series here.
SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is a scientific endeavor with two key things going for it. First, it would have obvious and enormous impacts on our world if it were to succeed. And second, regardless of whether any extraterrestrial intelligence is found, it’s fascinating in and of itself because it forces us to ask fundamental questions in science and philosophy:
What exactly are we looking for, and how do we know if we’ve found it?
Parkinson’s medication shows promise in treating treatment-resistant depression
For many people who suffer from depression, the condition is not just about feeling down but also about a loss of motivation and difficulty finding pleasure in activities they used to enjoy. A new study conducted in Sweden shows that a medicine used to treat Parkinson’s disease can be used as an add-on therapy to alleviate these symptoms in some patients with treatment-resistant depression. The study has been published in Nature Medicine.
The researchers at Lund University and the psychiatric services in Region Skåne have identified the potential new therapy for the condition associated with depression that involves a reduced ability to feel joy, pleasure or motivation—known as anhedonia. Those affected may lose interest in things that they previously found meaningful or rewarding.
The study is an example of what is known as drug repurposing, whereby an already approved medicine is used to treat a different condition. In this study, the researchers investigated pramipexole, which has long been used to treat Parkinson’s disease, as an add-on therapy for depression with marked anhedonia.
Popular joint pain supplement might increase Alzheimer’s risk, study says
A popular over-the-counter supplement taken for joint pain might increase people’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease, a new study says.
Glucosamine use is associated with a 25% higher odds that a person will progress from mild cognitive impairment to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, researchers report in the journal Nature Metabolism.
“While it’s an association and not proof of causality, it does raise an important clinical question that now deserves much more attention,” researcher Matt Gentry said in a news release. He’s chair of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Florida.
Godfather Of AI: We Don’t Even Know We’re Near The END — Geoffrey Hinton
🔒 Make yourself and your family AI-scam proof, step by step → https://neuralnutshell.com.
The Nobel Prize-winner Geoffrey Hinton, computer scientist popularly called the \.
Respiratory Viruses Wake Up Dormant Cancer Cells
Cancer remission, in which tumor cells enter a dormant state and a patient’s symptoms subside, can persist for years or decades.1 Both the cancer cells themselves and the tumor microenvironment maintain this period of inactivity.2 While inflammation has been shown to disrupt this microenvironment, leading to metastasis, the mechanisms of this process remain unclear.
Seeing a trend in increased cancer deaths in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, cancer biologists Julio Aguirre-Ghiso at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and James DeGregori at the University of Colorado suspected that viral infections could be activating dormant cancer cells. In partnership with researchers at Utrecht University, the teams showed that inflammation from viral infections activated dormant cancer cells and increased metastasis.3 The findings, published in Nature, provide important insights into cancer remission for clinicians.
“Dormant cancer cells are like the embers left in an abandoned campfire, and respiratory viruses are like a strong wind that reignites the flames,” DeGregori said in a press release about the study findings.