The CFTC has ordered Kalshi to keep operating in New York, claiming the state's lawsuit against the prediction market created a "market emergency." They said it acted "to ensure market stability" and "ordered the exchange to continue to operate in accordance with the Commodity Exchange Act's Core Principles." Ars Technica reports: The market emergency alleged by the CFTC is that New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Kalshi on July 31. James' lawsuit seeks a court order to permanently enjoin Kalshi "from operating an unlawful gambling business" in the state. The lawsuit also demands that Kalshi "make full restitution to customers who have engaged in betting" and pay financial penalties.

"New York intends to make event contract derivatives waste away under its iron curtain of state gaming laws before the courts get the chance to issue final rulings," CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said yesterday. "Congress did not intend for derivatives exchanges to be regulated under a patchwork of state gaming laws... New York has no business regulating these interstate financial markets. The commission is required by law to ensure order in these markets, and that is what we have done today." [...]

The CFTC says it alone has the power to regulate platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket under the Commodity Exchange Act, a US law that gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over designated contract markets (DCMs). "These are financial exchanges that offer financial instruments and operate across state lines," Selig said yesterday. "They match the bid from a resident of one state with the offer of a resident from another state and submit the trade to a clearinghouse that backstops the transactions of customers throughout the country."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at Israeli cybersecurity firm Dream say suspected China-linked hackers used an open-source AI-agent system to conduct what may be the first observed end-to-end autonomous cyberattack against a government. According to the Financial Times (paywalled), the attack compromised at least 85 accounts and resulted in the theft of more than 2,500 personnel records from Taiwanese systems. Tom's Hardware reports: The campaign reportedly ran for four days at the beginning of July and at times deployed as many as eight autonomous agents in parallel. Dream said the system mapped 21 government systems before compromising user accounts and extracting personnel information. The attackers subsequently expanded their activity to Taiwan's nuclear safety agency, at least seven energy companies, government suppliers, and other government systems.

Dream says it found the evidence inside a 160-megabyte (160MB) online archive that surfaced during its broader tracking of cyberthreat actors. The archive reportedly held 1,395 files showing that the tool was built on two open-source AI agent systems -- Hermes and OpenClaw -- both of which can be downloaded freely and are designed to let large language models carry out multi-step tasks on their own.

Researchers could not determine which underlying model powered the agents, but the data reportedly showed the model's safeguards had been sidestepped by presenting the intrusion as an authorized penetration test rather than a real attack. Of particular concern is that the toolkit for the hack comprised such easily available systems, neither of which was purpose-built for offense. The operators appear to have assembled a capable autonomous tool out of components any developer can pull down and run.

What the researchers describe as the tool's most striking feature was its ability to continuously devise attacks on its own, rather than follow a preprogrammed route. The platform continuously assessed available evidence, ranked possible attack paths, and reprioritized them as circumstances changed. When one technique failed, the tool tasked another agent with searching the internet for information and developing an alternative approach.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, passengers aboard Delta flight 591 going from Las Vegas to Atlanta allegedly spoofed the onboard Wi-Fi, raising the attention of federal law enforcement. The incident came one day after the DEF CON security conference concluded in Las Vegas, and was first described on social media accounts that follow publicly available air-to-ground messages, known as ACARS.

According to the "ACARS Drama" account, a message was sent by pilots from the plane stated: "NO INFO AS OF NOW WE HAVE A BUNCH OF PAX THAT WERE AT A CYBER CONFERENCE IN LAS THEY WERE ABLE TO JAM OUR WIFI AND BROADCAST THEIR SIGNAL." A description of the incident posted to Reddit further stated that these passengers created a fake hotspot ("Delta WiFi Fast"), with a phishing landing page "designed to harvest passengers' personal credentials."

This technique, sometimes known as an "evil twin" attack, has been long-known to the IT security community. It involves setting up a fake Wi-Fi network and then capturing login credentials and other data. "One initial finding is an unauthorized WiFi network, which was not provided, operated, or supplied by Delta, was present onboard the aircraft for a short time during the flight," said a Delta spokesperson. Delta further noted that the flight's safety was "never in question and no aircraft operating systems were affected," and that no emergency was declared.

Ars notes that the "actual onboard Wi-Fi was disabled for 30 minutes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have analyzed paint from the 2000 year old Huashan Rock art and think they've discovered the secret behind it, blood, specifically post partum blood.

Goth chemists and artists, this is your time to shine!

• Becomes first man to win three European 400m titles

• Hudson-Smith: ‘Nobody is going to beat me on this track’

Stand … and deliver. On a balmy night in Birmingham, Matt Hudson-Smith powered past the stand bearing his name at the Alexander Stadium and into history by becoming the first man to win three European Championship 400m titles.

And afterwards, as the adrenaline flooded his body and he posed wearing a crown in front of his own stand, the 31-year-old made it clear just how much it meant. “Nobody is going to beat me on this track,” he said. “This is my home. I have been here since I was nine. I know this track like the back of my hand.

Continue reading...

• Uefa Super Cup: Paris Saint-Germain 2-1 Aston Villa

• Kvaratskhelia 20, Doué 62; Madjo 45

Luis Enrique says it doesn’t matter what sport he is playing – football, tennis, padel or parchis, a board game – he wants to win every game, all the time. In Paris Saint-Germain, he has built a winning machine, the back-to-back Champions League victors maintaining their habit by conquering Aston Villa in an absorbing Super Cup contest in Salzburg. For PSG, after the joy of Munich and Budapest, three months ago, does a three-peat in Madrid in May beckon? They will surely go close.

Aston Villa more than played their part in an enthralling showpiece, Brian Madjo becoming the competition’s youngest scorer after the 17-year-old cancelled out Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s opener. Villa had chances to gain the lead but Désiré Doué was the match-winner, the forward picking his spot after beating Villa’s offside trap. The goal was initially disallowed but, after a VAR review, Omar Artan, the Somali referee handed the game by Uefa after being denied entry to the US to officiate at the World Cup, awarded it after replays showed Matty Cash played Doué onside.

Continue reading...

Lovely short video about artist Jas Knight, who is a participant in the Met Museum’s Copyist Program:

The Copyist Program offers time and space for artists to develop their own interpretation of an artwork through intimate study in the Museum’s galleries. Copyists have created reinterpretations of original artworks in The Met collection since 1872.

Here’s Knight from the video, in which he is copying Diego Velázquez’s Juan de Pareja:

Almost every artist was a copyist up until the 20th century because as a painter you would go through certain exercises to learn how to paint. You haven’t begun to see a painting until you’ve copied it.

And I especially liked this bit:

Velázquez’s brain is on that canvas. So we’re encountering a person’s brain that doesn’t exist anymore when we’re looking at a painting by them. I’m literally interacting with Velázquez.

In a piece about Harold Fisk’s Mississippi meander maps, I wrote about art as a time machine:

It takes some imagination, but standing before a painting by Hilma af Klint, a sculpture by Bernini, or a cave painting in Chauvet, France draws you back in time in a powerful way: you know you’re standing precisely where those artists stood hundreds or even thousands of years ago, laying paint to surface or chisel to stone. Even experiencing art through prints or photographs leads the mind to consider all the cultural, political, technological, and economic things that were happening when the work was produced. Art is a doorway to past worlds.

You can see Knight’s copy of Velázquez’s Juan de Pareja and compare it with the original. (via the kid should see this)

Tags: art · Jas Knight · Met Museum · museums · video

Het was nog spannend in Santander: terwijl de maan langzaam voor de helft van de zon was geschoven, zakten zon en maan achter plotseling optrekkende wolken.

Een zonsverduistering is geen Netflix-film die je aanklikt en direct begint te spelen. Dus als het na zevenen maar heel langzaam ietsje begint te schemeren, zijn er mensen op…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on buying specialized gloves that pulse with electrical energy, which make it easier for agents to subdue people, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

A user manual for G.L.O.V.E, or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, sold by a company called Compliant Technologies, provides more specifics on how the gloves are supposed to work and allegedly be used.

“No more than two (one pair or equivalent) of G.L.O.V.E. devices should be applied at one time to a single Subject,” the manual reads. 404 Media found multiple copies of the manual online and archived a version here. 

The manual says the gloves may even contribute to “sudden death.” It says “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation Devices” or CD3s may “increase the affects [sic] that can cause sudden death including physiological changes.” It then lists increases in blood pressure, respiration, and heart rates; changes in heart rhythm; and increases in adrenaline.

The manual says the gloves must “come in contact with the subject’s skin” and are not effective through clothing or hair. It also says the gloves “can be degraded on individuals and animals that are extremely hairy.”

Another page includes a diagram of the human body and says officers can “grab anywhere on the body” with the gloves “while avoiding the head, face, throat, chest and groin areas.” If the subject resists, though, another page says to deploy the gloves “as necessary.”

It recommends using the gloves for around 15 seconds, but a demonstration video published by Peacekeeper Products, which also sells the device, shows staff using it for only a second or two with people already yelling in pain.

The manual says users should avoid using the G.L.O.V.E device against elderly people, small children, pregnant women, and “the severely handicapped.”

The Associated Press report was based on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) procurement record that said the gloves would be issued specifically to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the part of ICE focused on deportations. Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the planned purchase of the technology by an agency that is already widely seen as out of control and using physical force disproportionately.

The CEO of Compliant Technologies Jeff Nikaus published a long Instagram Reel after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. “I believe as a nation we are on a precipice,” he said. He said, “we need supernatural activity” and “we need to repent as a nation,” among other explicit Christian Nationalist ideas.

Compliant Technologies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.