Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 9

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Physicists Predict When The Universe Will End in a Reverse Big Bang

If recent discoveries that dark energy is evolving hold any water, our Universe will collapse under its own gravity on a finite timeline, new calculations suggest.

Based on several recent dark energy results, a new model finds that the Universe has a lifespan of just 33.3 billion years. Since we are now 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, this suggests that we have a smidge less than 20 billion years left.

For another 11 billion years, the Universe will continue to expand, before coming to a halt and reversing direction, collapsing down to the hypothetical Big Crunch, say physicists Hoang Nhan Luu of Donostia International Physics Center in Spain, Yu-Cheng Qiu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, and corresponding author Henry Tye of Cornell University in the US.

New FileFix attack uses cache smuggling to evade security software

A new variant of the FileFix social engineering attack uses cache smuggling to secretly download a malicious ZIP archive onto a victim’s system and bypassing security software.

The new phishing and social engineering attack impersonates a “Fortinet VPN Compliance Checker” and was first spotted by cybersecurity researcher P4nd3m1cb0y, who shared information about it on X.

In a new report by cybersecurity firm Expel, cybersecurity researcher Marcus Hutchins shares more details on how this attack works.

Hackers claim Discord breach exposed data of 5.5 million users

Discord says they will not be paying threat actors who claim to have stolen the data of 5.5 million unique users from the company’s Zendesk support system instance, including government IDs and partial payment information for some people.

The company is also pushing back on claims that 2.1 million photos of government IDs were disclosed in the breach, stating that approximately 70,000 users had their government ID photos exposed.

While the attackers claim the breach occurred through Discord’s Zendesk support instance, the company has not confirmed this and only described it as involving a third-party service used for customer support.

“The Embodied Mind of a New Robot Scientist” by Michael Levin

This is a ~58 minute talk titled “The Embodied Mind of a New Robot Scientist: symmetries between AI and bioengineering the agential material of life and their impact on technology and on our future” which I gave as a closing Keynote to the ALIFE conference in Japan (https://2025.alife.org/). This is a different talk than any I’ve done before, in that besides going over the remarkable capacities of living material, I discuss 1) the symmetries between how all agents navigate their world and how science discoveries are made, and 2) a new robot scientist platform that we have created. With respect to the latter, I discuss how the body and mind of this new embodied AI can serve as a translation and integration layer between human scientists and living matter such as the cells which make up Xenobots.

The world’s most sensitive computer code is vulnerable to attack. A new encryption method can help

Nowadays data breaches aren’t rare shocks—they’re a weekly drumbeat. From leaked customer records to stolen source code, our digital lives keep spilling into the open.

Git services are especially vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. These are online hosting platforms that are widely used in the IT industry to collaboratively develop software, and are home to most of the world’s computer code.

Just last week, hackers reportedly stole about 570 gigabytes of data from a git service called GitLab. The stolen data was associated with major companies such as IBM and Siemens, as well as United States government organizations.

It’s all in your head: Select neurons in the brainstem may hold the key to treating chronic pain

Acute or short-lived pain, despite its bad reputation, is usually a lifesaver. It acts as a transient negative sensory experience that helps us avoid danger. Touch a hot stove, stub a toe, or bonk your head on a low branch, and the nervous system cues up an “Ow!” Over time, the sting fades, the wound heals, but the lesson sticks.

Chronic pain is different; the alarm keeps blaring long after the fire is out, and then the pain itself becomes the problem. Nearly 50 million people in the United States live with , an invisible and often untreatable condition that can linger for decades. “It’s not just an injury that won’t heal,” says neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania J. Nicholas Betley, “it’s a brain input that’s become sensitized and hyperactive, and determining how to quiet that input could lead to better treatments.”

Now, research led by Betley and collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh and Scripps Research Institute has identified a key to regulating long-term pain states: a group of cells called Y1 receptor (Y1R)-expressing in the brainstem’s lateral (lPBN). These neurons are activated during enduring pain states, but they also integrate information about hunger, fear and thirst, allowing for to be modulated by other signaling more urgent needs.

“I Heard It Before I Saw It”: This Giant European Antenna in Australia Will Talk to Distant Planets (and change how we explore space)

In a significant advancement for international space collaboration, the European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled its latest deep space antenna in New Norcia.

/* */