The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a rule banning senators from trading on prediction markets effective immediately. CNBC reports: The move came amid rising concern about insider trading on prediction market platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, and about event contracts that can involve death or violence. On April 22, Kalshi said it had suspended and fined one U.S. Senate candidate and two candidates for the House of Representatives for political insider trading on their own campaigns.

Earlier on Thursday, a group of Democratic members of Congress called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to issue a rule "that prevents insider trading and corruption in the market and prohibits event contracts on the outcome of elections, war and military actions in the U.S. or abroad, sports, and government actions without a valid economic hedging interest." Kalshi and Polymarket both praised the Senate's action. "I applaud the Senate for passing this resolution to ban Senators and their offices from trading on prediction markets," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour wrote in a post on X. "Kalshi already proactively blocks members of congress and enforces against insider trading. This is a great step to increase trust in our markets by making it an industry standard," Mansour said. "Now, let's pass this in the House!"

Polymarket, in its own post on X, said, "We're in full support of this. Our Rulebook & Terms of Service already prohibit such conduct, but codifying this into law is a step forward for the industry. Happy to help move this forward however we can."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A newly disclosed Linux kernel flaw dubbed "Copy Fail" can let a local, unprivileged attacker gain root access on major Linux distributions, with researchers claiming the bug affects kernels shipped since 2017. "The POC exploit works out of the box today, but a future version that can escape from containers like Docker is promised soon," writes Slashdot reader tylerni7. "Technical details are available here." Slashdot reader BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: A newly disclosed Linux kernel vulnerability called Copy Fail (CVE-2026-31431) allows an unprivileged user to gain root access using a tiny 732-byte script, and it works with unsettling consistency across major distributions. Unlike older exploits that relied on race conditions or fragile timing, this one is a straight-line logic flaw in the kernel's crypto subsystem. It abuses AF_ALG sockets and splice to overwrite a few bytes in the page cache of a target file, such as /usr/bin/su. Because the kernel executes from the page cache, not directly from disk, the attacker can inject code into a setuid binary in memory and immediately escalate privileges.

What makes this especially concerning is how quiet it is. The file on disk remains unchanged, so standard integrity checks see nothing wrong, while the in-memory version has already been tampered with. The same primitive can also cross container boundaries since the page cache is shared, raising the stakes for multi-tenant environments and Kubernetes nodes. The underlying issue traces back to an in-place optimization added years ago, now being rolled back as part of the fix. Until patched kernels are widely deployed, this is one of those bugs that feels less like a theoretical risk and more like a practical, reliable path to full system compromise.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

F1 makes its return with Miami hosting the fourth round of the season. Kimi Antonelli is looking for his third straight win, but his team mate and one or two others might have something to say about that.

After five weeks without racing, it remains to be seen whether Mercedes' rivals in Ferrari and McLaren have found the performance they need to close the gap to the Silver Arrows in Miami.

A little bit of non-grim, or at least grimly funny news to lighten your day. 1. DOJ Files Ballroom Brief That Reads Like Truth Social Post — Because Trump Probably Wrote It. Not good news per se, but I see the unhinged-ness of the brief as a positive sign that, like the unhinged Kilmar Abrego Garcia filing before it, this will go nowhere in court.

2. Trump pulled his surgeon general nomination from Casey Means after a cringey Senate hearing and after three Republican senators refused to advance her out of committee. 3. And speaking of cringey hearings, Democrats got Pete Hegseth to agree that US troops shouldn't follow illegal orders. 4. King Charles gave a good speech at the Senate. Here's a post contrasting Charles' speech with Trump's from Heather Cox Richardson. 5. Stand up for Science is hosting a virtual, accessible May Day (May 1st) event. This May Day is Science Fight Day! For those able to attend an in-person May Day event, there are more that 3,000 to choose from. May Day is tomorrow, Friday, May 1st. Keep the faith, everyone.

Denise Ann Williams, 62, was last heard from on 15 April, when she told her family she was travelling to the west coast of Cape Breton Island in Canada’s east

A search is continuing for a 62-year-old Australian woman who was reported missing on Tuesday while hiking in a Canadian national park.

Denise Ann Williams was last heard from on 15 April, when she told family she was travelling to Chéticamp, a fishing village on the west coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.

Continue reading...