CoinDesk's Daniel Kuhn writes in an opinion piece: Despite the focus on FTX following its catastrophic collapse, it's remarkable how little we know about how the crypto exchange and its in-house trading firm Alameda Research actually operated. New CEO John Jay Ray III has called Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto trading empire the "greatest failure of corporate controls" he's seen. Wednesday, Coffeezilla, a YouTuber with a rising star who has made a career of shining a light on sketchy projects in and out of crypto, pressed Bankman-Fried for information related to how different customer accounts were treated at the exchange. It turns out, there wasn't much differentiation -- at the very least during the final days the exchange was in business, Bankman-Fried admitted. "At the time, we wanted to treat customers equally," SBF said during a Twitter Spaces event. "That effectively meant that there was, you know, if you want to put it this way, like fungibility created" between the exchange's spot and derivatives business lines. For Coffeezilla, this looks like a smoking gun that fraud was committed.

At the very least, this is a contradiction of what Bankman-Fried had said just minutes before when first asked about the exchange's terms of service (ToS). "I do think we're treating them differently," Bankman-Fried said, referring to customer assets used for "margin versus staking versus spot versus futures collateral." All of those services come with different levels of risk, different promises made to customers and different responsibilities for the exchange. According to FTX's ToS, everyday users just looking to buy or store their cryptocurrencies on the centralized exchange could trust they were doing just that, buying and storing cryptographically unique digital assets. But now, thanks to skillful questioning by Coffeezilla, we know there were instead "omnibus" wallets and that spot and derivatives traders were essentially assuming the same level of risk.

We can also assume this was a longstanding practice at FTX. Bankman-Fried noted that during the "run on the exchange" (pardon the language), when people were attempting to get their assets off before withdrawals were shut down, FTX allowed "generalized withdrawals" from these omnibus wallets. But he also deflected, saying what, you wanted us to code up an entirely new process during a liquidity crisis? Before now, Bankman-Fried had been asked multiple times about the exchange's ToS and often managed to derail the conversation. He would often point to other sections of the document that stated clients using margin (taking out debt from FTX) could have their funds used by the exchange. Or he would bring up a vestigial wire process in place before FTX had banking relationships. Apparently, according to SBF, customers had sent money to Alameda to fund accounts on FTX and somewhere along the lines this capital ended up in a rarely seen subaccount. This also had the benefit of inflating Alameda's books, another dark corner of the empire. Further reading: FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Is Said To Face Market Manipulation Inquiry

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Since 1999 fiction writers have tried starting and finishing the composition of 50,000-word novels in November for "National Novel Writing Month". But for the last nine years, programmers have instead tried generating 50,000 word novels — and this year's edition received more than 50 entries.

"The only rule is that you share at least one novel and also your source code at the end," explains the event's official page on GitHub.
From the repository's README file: The "novel" is defined however you want. It could be 50,000 repetitions of the word "meow" (and yes it's been done!). It could literally grab a random novel from Project Gutenberg. It doesn't matter, as long as it's 50k+ words.

Please try to respect copyright. We're not going to police it, as ultimately it's on your head if you want to just copy/paste a Stephen King novel or whatever, but the most useful/interesting implementations are going to be ones that don't engender lawsuits.
This year's computer-generated novels include " sunday in the sunday in the," mapping the colors from each dot in the Pointillist painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte onto words from the lyrics of a musical about that painting. ("Rush blind. Link adds shallot again....")

A torrent site user accused of downloading and uploading at least 120TB of movies, TV shows, eBooks, music and software, has avoided an immediate prison term. The 28-year-old was arrested as part of a police operation against DanishBytes. A member of the same site was sentenced earlier this month after he uploaded Netflix content obtained using hacked credentials. TorrentFreak reports: Early November 2021, Denmark's Public Prosecutor for Special Economic and International Crime (SOIK) announced that six people had been arrested following criminal referrals by Rights Alliance. All were members and/or operators of ShareUniversity and DanishBytes. Prosecution of site operators is not uncommon but when it's deemed in the public interest, pirate site users can also face charges. Every case is unique so criteria differ, especially across national borders, but when evidence shows large volumes of infringement, successful prosecutions become more likely. That was the case when a former DanishBytes user was sentenced last week. According to Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the 28-year-old man was a regular site member and wasn't involved in running the site. That being said, evidence showed that for the period January 2021 to November 2021, he downloaded and/or uploaded no less than 3,000 copyrighted works, including movies, TV shows, music, books, audiobooks and comics.

Information released by the National Unit for Special Crimes (NSK), a Danish police unit focused on cybercrime, organized crime, and related financial crime, reveals that the user's traffic statistics interested prosecutors. "During the period, the man downloaded no less than 100 TB and uploaded no less than 20 TB of copyrighted material," NSK says. BitTorrent trackers operating a ratio model usually insist on a better ratio of downloads to uploads but DanishBytes' situation was out of the ordinary.

The site launched in January 2021 in the wake of other sites being shut down, so had to get going from a standing start with no users. Even when arrests were being made, the site still had a relatively small userbase, which can limit opportunities to upload more. That may have been a blessing in disguise. Faced with the evidence, the man decided to plead guilty and was sentenced last week at the Court in Vibourg. In common with similar prosecutions recently, he received a suspended conditional sentence of 60 days' probation, 80 hours of community service, and confiscation of his computer equipment. The case against the DanishBytes user began with a Rights Alliance investigation and a referral to the police. As part of his sentence, the man must pay the anti-piracy group DKK 5,000 (US$600) in compensation but Rights Alliance director Maria Fredenslund is focused on the deterrent effect of another successful prosecution.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: A new book identifies "26 Lines of Code That Changed the World." But its cheeky title also incorporates a comment from Unix's source code — "You are Not Expected to Understand This". From a new interview with the book's editor:

With chapter titles like "Wear this code, go to jail" and "the code that launched a million cat videos," each chapter offers appreciations for programmers, gathering up stories about not just their famous lives but their sometimes infamous works. (In Chapter 10 — "The Accidental Felon" — journalist Katie Hafner reveals whatever happened to that Harvard undergraduate who went on to inadvertently create one of the first malware programs in 1988...) The book quickly jumps from milestones like the Jacquard Loom and the invention of COBOL to bitcoin and our thought-provoking present, acknowledging both the code that guided the Apollo 11 moon landing and the code behind the 1962 videogame Spacewar. The Smithsonian Institution's director for their Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation writes in Chapter 4 that the game "symbolized a shift from computing being in the hands of priest-like technicians operating massive computers to enthusiasts programming and hacking, sometimes for the sheer joy of it."

I contributed chapter 9, about a 1975 comment in some Unix code that became "an accidental icon" commemorating a "momentary glow of humanity in a world of unforgiving logic." This chapter provided the book with its title. (And I'm also responsible for the book's index entry for "Linux, expletives in source code of".) In a preface, the book's editor describes the book's 29 different authors as "technologists, historians, journalists, academics, and sometimes the coders themselves," explaining "how code works — or how, sometimes, it doesn't work — owing in no small way to the people behind it."

"I've been really interested over the past several years to watch the power of the tech activists and tech labor movements," the editor says in this interview. "I think they've shown really immense power to effect change, and power to say, 'I'm not going to work on something that doesn't align with what I want for the future.' That's really something to admire.

"But of course, people are up against really big forces...."

For the last thirteen years the Free Software Foundation has published its Ethical Tech Giving Guide, notes a recent FSF blog post. "The right to determine what a device you've purchased does or doesn't do is something too valuable to lose."

Or, as they put it in the guide: It's time to reclaim our freedom from the abuse of multinational corporations, who use proprietary software and malicious "antifeatures" to keep us powerless, dependent, and surveilled by the devices that we use. There's no time at which it's more important to turn these unfortunate facts into positive action than the holiday season.

The gifts that we recommend here might not be making headlines, but they're the rare exception to the apparent rule that devices should mistreat their users.
For technical users, the guide recommends pairing the FSF-sponsored Replicant, a fully-free distribution of Android, with the F-Droid app repository, which has hundreds of applications including Syncthing, Tor, Minetest, and Termux.

They also praise the X200 laptop, "one of the few home user devices that's able to run fully free software from top to bottom." With easy-to-repair hardware, it's the laptop most frequently used in the FSF's own office — just one of several freedom-respecting devices from Vikings. And there's shout-outs to MNT's Reform laptop, products from PINE64 and Purism, plus a freedom-respecting VPN, and a mini wifi adapter .

The guide even recommends places to buy DRM-free ebooks, including No Starch Press, Smashwords, Leanpub, Standard Ebooks, Nantucket E-Books, Libreture (which also offers a storage solution). Meanwhile for print books, there's the Gnu Press Shop

And it also recommends sources for DRM-free music (including Bandcamp, Emusic, the Smithsonian Institute's Folkways, the classic punk label Dischord, HDTracks, and Mutopia).

And it also tells you where to find free (as in freedom) films...

Earlier this month, the feds arrested two Russians accused of running Z-Library -- an e-book pirate site that claims to be "the world's largest library." Z-Library's remaining team members have since responded by saying they are determined to keep going, promising to take the complaints of authors seriously and asking for their forgiveness. TorrentFreak reports: After the indictment was unsealed, Z-Library's position became untenable. That led to the publishing of an official response. It confirms that part of the Z-Library team is operational but refrains from commenting on the alleged involvement of the two arrestees. "We refrain commenting on the alleged Anton and Valeria involvement in the Z-Library project and the charges against them. We are very sorry they are arrested [sic]," the announcement reads (Tor link). Z-Library does, however, realize that its site is causing trouble for authors so asks for their forgiveness. "We also regret that some authors have suffered because of Z-Library and ask for their forgiveness. We do our best to respond to all complaints about files hosted in our library if it violates authors' rights." The [response] suggests that Z-Library will do its best to respond to all takedown requests from authors but that doesn't mean the site will cease operating. On the contrary, it is still up and running on the dark web, serving millions of books to registered users.

Z-Library doesn't just respond to rightsholders. In its message, the site also addresses its users, especially those who continue to donate to the site. "We see the resonance recent events caused, we see how many people support and believe in Z-Library. Thank you for your support, it is extremely valuable to us. Thank you for each donation you make. You are the ones who making the existence of the Z-Library possible." Donations may help to keep Z-Library afloat and that is what the site appears to aspire to. Instead of waving the white flag, it is doubling down on its goal to make knowledge freely accessible to people around the world. "We believe the knowledge and cultural heritage of mankind should be accessible to all people around the world, regardless of their wealth, social status, nationality, citizenship, etc. This is the only purpose Z-Library is made for." This message resonates with many Z-Library users, with hundreds sending well wishes and words of support in response to the announcement [...]. The problem for Z-Library is that the U.S. Department of Justice clearly disagrees with these users, and will likely do its best to ensure that the remaining members of the Z-Library team will be also held accountable.

He's been a contributing editor at the Linux foundation's Linux.com, a contributor to Linux Journal, and a blogger for Linux Pro magazine. Now Bruce Byfield has teamed with the lead editor for the Open Office authors volunteer group (who was also co-lead on Open Office's documentation project) to co-author a second edition of Byfield's book Designing with LibreOffice.

From the official announcement: The book is available as an .ODT or .PDF file under the Creative Commons Attribution/Sharealike License version 4.0 or later from https://designingwithlibreoffice.com. ["Under this license, you can share or copy the book, or even add to it," explains the book's site, "so long as you mention the writer's name and release your changes under the same license."]

The first edition was published in 2016, and was downloaded over thirty-five thousand times. Michael Meeks, one of the co-founders of LibreOffice, described the first edition as "an outstanding contribution to help people bring the full power of LibreOffice into their document...."

The second edition updates the original, removing outdated information and adding updated screenshots and new information about topics such as Harfbuzz font shaping codes, export to EPUB formats for ereaders, the Zotero extension for bibliographies, and Angry Reviewer, a Grammarly-like extension for editing diction.

In the future, the writers plan to release other editions as necessary to keep Designing with LibreOffice current.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader nanday for sharing the news.

In 1999, Slashdot editor Hemos said Greg Bear was "rightly recognized as a master of hard science fiction" (introducing a review of Bear's then-new book, Nebula-winning book Darwin's Radio). In 2011 Bear began writing the Forerunner Saga , a trilogy of books set 100,000 years before the events in the game Halo.

Today theGamer.com writes that Bear has passed away at age 71: Bear's family and fans are paying tribute to the legendary author, who had more than 50 sci-fi novels to his name. Many share fond memories of reading Bear's work and meeting him at conventions, describing him as generous, welcoming, and brilliant. Fans are also sharing their favourite books from Bear in tribute, encouraging others to explore his works to celebrate his legacy.

Bear's wife, Astrid Bear, confirmed the news of his passing in the early hours of Sunday. This was after she revealed that her husband has been placed on life support, with no chance of making a full recovery after the stroke.
More from File770.com: Bear's novels won Nebulas for Moving Mars (1995) and Darwin's Radio. Three other works of short fiction won Nebulas, and two of those — "Blood Music" (1984) and "Tangents" (1987) — also won the Hugo....

Bear sold his first short story, "Destroyers", to Famous Science Fiction at age 15, and along with high-school friends helped found San Diego Comic-Con.

He also published work as an artist at the beginning of his career, including illustrations for an early version of theÂStar Trek Concordance,Âand covers forÂGalaxyÂandÂF&SF. He was a founding member of the Association of Science Fiction Artists. He even created the cover for his novel, Psychlone...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, the alleged masterminds behind Z-Library -- an e-book pirate site that claims to be "the world's largest library" -- were arrested. According to a press release yesterday from the US Department of Justice, Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova have been charged with "criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library." "As alleged, the defendants profited illegally off work they stole, often uploading works within mere hours of publication, and in the process victimized authors, publishers, and booksellers," Breon Peace, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

At the request of the US government, Napolsky and Ermakova were arrested in Argentina on November 3. On the same day, the US government seized "a complex network of approximately 249 interrelated web domains," the press release said. For many less web-savvy users, the domain seizure essentially shut down access to Z-Library's 11 million e-books, but anyone on the dark web knows it's still up and running -- suggesting that while arresting Napolsky and Ermakova has stifled Z-Library, it has not shuttered it, and it could come back. TorrentFreak reported that it's still unknown if the pair has been involved with Z-Library since the start. Michael J. Driscoll, the assistant director in charge at the New York Federal Bureau of Investigation field office, seems to suspect they have. Although the indictment is only focused on the duo's alleged criminal activity between 2018 and 2022, Driscoll said that they are believed to have "operated a website for over a decade whose central purpose was providing stolen intellectual property, in violation of copyright laws."

"Intellectual property theft crimes deprive their victims of both ingenuity and hard-earned revenue," Driscoll said. "The FBI is determined to ensure those willing to steal and profit from the creativity of others are stopped and made to face the consequences in the criminal justice system." If Napolsky and Ermakova are charged, the indictment said that they will be required to "forfeit any property, real or personal, constituting, or derived from, proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of such offenses." TorrentFreak reported that Argentina has not yet received a request from the US to extradite the accused Z-Library operators, but that will be the next step toward shutting down Z-Library. "Z-Library has linked eager readers to millions of free e-books since 2009, but it wasn't until Z-Library began recently trending on TikTok that authors protesting the piracy decided enough was enough," adds Ars. The TikTok hashtag #zlibrary was viewed 19 million times, which spurred The Authors Guild to complain to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

"Z-Library is killing us," romance writer Sarina Bowen told officials. "A book we release in the morning is up on Z-Library by lunchtime. This isn't the only site that hurts us, but it's the site that keeps showing up in TikTok videos."

Britain has lost its position as Europe's largest stock market, as Paris overtook London for the first time since records began in 2003. The Independent reports: According to Bloomberg, the combined market value of primary listings on Monday on the Paris bourse ($2.823 trillion ) surpassed that of the London Stock Exchange ($2.821 trillion) -- finally closing a gap of around $1.5 trillion which has been narrowing since the Brexit referendum. The milestone shift on Monday came as French stocks were buoyed by optimism over the demand for French luxury goods in response to China's slight easing of Covid-19 restrictions, while the sharper fall in the pound's value against the dollar compared with that of the euro this year has also played a role, Bloomberg noted.

While the UK's FTSE 100 index has remain relatively stable this year, thanks in part to export revenues boosted by a lower pound, the FTSE 250 index -- comprising smaller, medium-sized businesses -- has plummeted in value by 17 per cent. This fall has been fueled by concerns over rocketing energy bills and interest rates, the latter of which surged in the wake of Liz Truss's disastrous mini-Budget which spooked investors with her rapidly-announced raft of unfunded tax cuts. By the fourth week of Ms Truss's premiership, British stock and bond markets had lost roughly $500 billion in combined value, Bloomberg reported.

Speaking as Office for National Statistics figures showed that Britain's was the only G7 economy to shrink in the three months to September, the chancellor said on Friday he was "under no illusion that there is a tough road ahead" requiring "extremely difficult decisions to restore confidence and economic stability." "But to achieve long-term, sustainable growth, we need to grip inflation, balance the books and get debt falling," Mr Hunt insisted, adding: "There is no other way." However, Michael Saunders -- an economist who, until August, spent six years as one of the nine members on the Bank of England committee responsible for setting interest rates -- suggested on Monday that, were it not for Brexit, "we probably wouldn't be talking about an austerity budget this week."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Over a dozen public libraries in the U.S. and Canada have begun offering their own music streaming services to patrons, with the goal of boosting artists and local music scenes. The services are region-specific, and offer local artists non-exclusive licenses to make their albums available to the community. The concept originated in 2014 when Preston Austin and Kelly Hiser helped the Madison Public Library build the Yahara Music Library, an online library hosting music from local artists. By the time they completed their work on Yahara, they were confident they had a software prototype that other interested libraries could customize and deploy. "That became kind of the inspiration for building MUSICat," Austin told Motherboard, referring to the software platform he and Hiser created under a startup called Rabble.

Now, public libraries in Pittsburgh, Nashville, Fort Worth, and most recently New Orleans have launched their own community-oriented streaming services using MUSICat's open source software. Joshua Smith works at New Orleans Public Library and has been embedded in the city's rich music scene for over a decade. He oversaw the launch of Crescent City Sounds with help from a team of curators that represent local artists and business owners, music journalists and historians and more. "They helped me get the word out to the music community," Smith told Motherboard, noting that their community status helped spread the word that the library now accepts digital music submissions. Smith says that for this first round, the curators accepted albums from artists that were released in the last five years, and that while living within city limits wasn't necessarily a deal breaker, not gigging regularly in the area was. To be considered, applicants needed to submit at least one track from their album. [...] He says each selected artist received a $250 honorarium to license their music to the New Orleans Public Library for five years -- a far cry from the fractions-of-a-penny per stream paid to independent artists by platforms like Spotify. This honorarium and licensing agreement is roughly the standard for public libraries following Rabble's process model. Austin does insist that libraries using MUSICat meet the basic criteria of paying artists to license their work to their libraries. But for everything else, Austin notes that these pre-established models are guidelines, not guardrails.

One example of a public library that took MUSICat and ran with it is Capital City Records -- the music streaming platform of the Edmonton Public Library in Alberta, Canada. An early adopter of MUSICat, the library's collection has grown to amass over 200 local musicians. The project also created opportunities for the library to engage in spin-off projects like limited run of vinyl pressings and running library-focused music events throughout the city. While over 2,000 artists are featured on one of MUSICat's music platforms, Austin says the company wants to continue forming partnerships with libraries on the local level. So for music lovers looking to jump ship from Spotify, he has a clear message: "This is not Spotify for libraries," Austin said. "It's a little different. The localness is kind of key. I don't think we could, for example, use the same strategy on the same fee to license on aggregate collection, which was all the local music from all the libraries available on the music hat app, right, like something like that would need to, it would need to be about the local collections and take people to them and let them play that music in context."

A Slashdot reader writes: First published in Jan. '21, a new publication entitled Measurement Quantization affirms the #42 is the address of our universe (Appx. AC), a distinguishing feature of our construct that ultimately answers the question to life, the universe and everything – from a physicist's point-of-view. Importantly, the International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics – is a top-tier journal indexed to NASA's Astronomical Data System (ADS), the after peer review version of arXiv.org.

With just over 500 equations, the paper resolves a comprehensive physical description of dark energy, dark matter, discrete gravity, and unification. Resolving over 30 outstanding problems in modern physics, the paper derives the physical constants from first principles, demonstrates the physical significance of Planck's units, resolves discrete versions of SR and GR, derives the equivalence principle, presents a parameter free description of early universe events, discovers a new form of length contraction not related to Einstein's relativity and identifies the discrete state of our universe – 42. Forty-two is what defines our universe from any other version of a universe. It also determines the rate of expansion and the ground state orbital of an atom, thus reducing the number of stable universes as we understand them to just a few.

So, while Douglas Adams may have just been randomly picking numbers when writing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, perhaps we also live in a universe that likes to humor itself.

"Cixin Liu's sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem can't stop jumping to other formats," reports Gizmodo: In addition to next year's Netflix series from The Terror: Infamy's Alexander Woo and Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss, last year saw the release of a serialized podcast (different from the audiobook version).

And for 2022, we've got an animated series that's premiering actually pretty soon.

Come December 3, an anime version of The Three-Body Problem will release on the Chinese streaming platform Bilibili. This series was originally announced in 2019 with a trailer, but things have been fairly quiet on that front up until now. Developed by CG studio YHTK Entertainment in partnership with The Three-Body Universe, a studio built specifically for the purpose of managing the franchise, a new trailer for the upcoming anime was released earlier in the week during a Bilibili anime showcase.
"Having enjoyed the book, I think it looks promising," writes Slashdot reader Camembert. The 2008 book was the first in Liu's hard sci-fi series Remembrance of Earth's Past — and according to Gizmodo, this is just the beginning: Bilibili's adaptation is the first of a larger initiative called the Three-Body Global Creator Project. Per the press release, animation studios across the world are permitted to explore the Remembrance franchise to showcase its global potential through various art and animation styles....

And if animation or Netflix aren't your bag, Tencent Video has made a live action version of The Three-Body Problem, though that version has yet to receive a release date.

"Apple is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly harvesting iPhone user data even when the company's own privacy settings promise not to," reports Gizmodo: The suit, filed Thursday in California federal court, comes days after Gizmodo exclusively reported on research into how multiple iPhone apps send Apple analytics data, regardless of whether the iPhone Analytics privacy setting is turned on or off. The problem was spotted by two independent researchers at the software company Mysk, who found that the Apple App Store sends the company exhaustive information about nearly everything a user does in the app, despite a privacy setting, iPhone Analytics, which claims to "disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether" when switched off.

Gizmodo asked the researchers to run additional tests on other iPhone apps, including Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, and Stocks. The researchers found that the problem persists across most of Apple's suite of built-in iPhone apps....

[I]n the tests, turning the iPhone Analytics setting off had no evident effect on the data collection, nor did any of the iPhone's other built-in settings meant to protect your privacy from Apple's data collection. Mysk's tests on the App Store found that Apple receives that data along with details that can identify you and your device, including ID numbers, what kind of phone you're using, your screen resolution, your keyboard languages and how you're connected to the internet — the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple's surge Thursday was one for the record books. The world's most valuable company added $190.9 billion in market value, the most ever by a US-listed company, as softer-than-expected inflation data buoyed equity markets across the board. The jump eclipsed Amazon's $190.8 billion gain in February, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Apple, which after Thursday's 8.8% jump has a market capitalization of $2.34 trillion, now accounts for four out of the top five biggest daily gains. The stock remains down 17% this year.

Following the collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX, Bitcoin fell 12% to just under $16,000, hitting a low not seen since November 2020. "It reached its all-time high of $68,982.20 one year ago Thursday," notes CNBC. From the report: Cryptocurrencies extended their slide for a second day Wednesday as the market absorbed the potential collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX. Prices were pressured to start the day and plunged by late afternoon as Binance, the largest global exchange by volume, abandoned plans to acquire Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX after a due diligence exam and recent reports of mishandled customer funds and alleged U.S. agency investigations of FTX.

The Bankman-Fried empire quickly unraveled after a report last week showed a large part of the balance sheet at Alameda Research, the trading company where Bankman-Fried was also CEO, had been concentrated in FTX Token (FTT), the native token of the FTX trading platform. After some light sparring on Twitter with Bankman-Fried, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced his company was offloading the FTT on its books, leading to a run on the popular FTX exchange and a liquidity crisis. FTX counts some of the biggest names in finance -- including SoftBank, BlackRock, Tiger Global, Thoma Bravo, Sequoia and Paradigm -- among its investors. "Given the public-facing nature of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the size of FTX, we believe that the week's events could cause some loss of consumer confidence in the crypto industry, beyond that seen in the aftermath of the 3AC, Celsius, and Voyager events that took place earlier this year," especially if panic spreads and crypto prices keep dropping, KBW analysts said in a note Tuesday. "It may take time for customers to regain trust in the industry, broadly speaking (and we think regulation could help this)."

A new antitrust class-action lawsuit accuses Apple and Amazon of colluding to raise the price of iPhones and iPads, according to Hagens Berman, the law firm representing consumers against two of the world's largest companies in today's filing. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington accuses Apple and Amazon of seeking to eliminate third-party Apple resellers on Amazon Marketplace in a scheme to stifle competition, and maintain premium pricing for Apple products. The class action alleges an "unlawful horizontal agreement between Apple and Amazon to eliminate or at least severely reduce the competitive threat posed by third-party merchants," which attorneys say violates federal antitrust laws and has cost consumers.

The lawsuit says the parties' illegal agreement brought the number of third-party sellers of Apple products on Amazon Marketplace from roughly 600 to just seven sellers -- a loss of 98%, and by doing so, Amazon, which was formerly a marginal seller of Apple products, became the dominant seller of Apple products on Amazon Marketplace. The consumer-rights law firm behind the filing has bested Apple in multiple antitrust lawsuits, including a $400 million settlement related to price-fixing of e-books and a $100 million settlement on behalf of iOS developers harmed by App Store policies. Hagens Berman has also brought multiple pending antitrust cases against both defendants.

Ian Allison, reporting for CoinDesk: Cryptocurrency exchange giant Binance is highly unlikely to go through with its proposed acquisition of struggling rival FTX after less than a day of reviewing the company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Binance's non-binding letter of intent for the takeover -- announced Tuesday as FTX's financial position appeared to be spiraling out of control -- hinged on Binance performing due diligence. Roughly half a day into that process of reviewing FTX's internal data and loan commitments has led Binance to strongly lean against completing the transaction, the person said. UPDATE: Binance has scrapped its letter of intent to buy rival crypto exchange FTX, according to a Binance spokesperson.

"As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged U.S. agency investigations, we have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX.com," the spokesperson told CoinDesk. "In the beginning, our hope was to be able to support FTX's customers to provide liquidity, but the issues are beyond our control or ability to help. Every time a major player in an industry fails, retail consumers will suffer. We have seen over the last several years that the crypto ecosystem is becoming more resilient and we believe in time that outliers that misuse user funds will be weeded out by the free market."

"As regulatory frameworks are developed and as the industry continues to evolve toward greater decentralization, the ecosystem will grow stronger," the spokesperson added.

Hot on the heels of Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao declaring that Binance is liquidating its stash of FTX's native exchange token FTT, mass withdrawals from FTX have accelerated, with weekly stablecoin outflows from FTX reaching a whopping $451 million, according to Nansen data. Conversely, Binance has seen net inflows of more than $411 million over the same period. Decrypt reports: This mass exiting of tokens from the FTX exchange comes amid reports that Alameda Research, the trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, held as much as $5.8 billion in the exchange's native FTT token -- $3.66 billion in "unlocked FTT" and $2.16 billion in "FTT collateral." Given such large exposure to FTT, some have speculated that this could mean a liquidity crisis for Alameda should the markets move against FTT, dropping the token's value.

Shortly after these reports hit the market, CZ took to Twitter to announce that he would be offloading the firm's FTT holdings. Binance received funds in FTT as part of its exit last year from an early equity position in FTX it had since 2019. "Due to recent revelations that have come to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books," CZ tweeted on Sunday. CZ said that he "won't support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs."

The FTX boss also cited Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, who said, "that specific balance sheet is for a subset of our corporate entities." Ellison also claimed that the firm has over $10 billion of assets "that aren't reflected there." SBF went on to thank "those who stay level-headed during crazy times," adding that withdrawals and deposits at FTX were working fine and the exchange had already processed "billions of dollars" worth of transactions. As for Binance's decision to dump its FTT holdings, Ellison offered to buy the exchange's remaining FTT holdings over-the-counter (OTC) for $22 if CZ was looking to "minimize the market impact" of the sudden move. UPDATE 11/7/22, UTC 04:33: "Fears over another 'Three Arrows' event, but this time tied to FTX and its hybrid investment fund/market maker Alameda Research, gripped the markets Tuesday morning Asia time, sending FTX's exchange token FTT down nearly 20%," reports CoinDesk in an updated article. "Data from CoinGlass shows that there continues to be building short interest in FTT as open interest has surged 8% during the last hour to a total of $215 million."

"THIS WEBSITE HAS BEEN SEIZED," declares the home page of three different domains, attributing the seizure to the America's Federal Bureau of Investigation "in accordance with a warrant."

Bleeping Computer reports the domains were seized early Friday morning — and that the domains belong to the popular Z-Library online eBook repository. Z-Library is ranked in the top 10k most visited websites on the Internet, offering over 11 million books and 84 million articles for free via its website....

WHOIS information initially showed that the U.S. government seized the domains and switched their DNS servers to NS1.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM and NS2.SEIZEDSERVERS.COM, two DNS servers commonly used by the U.S and law enforcement in domain seizures. However, since then, the DNS servers for these domains have been switched to Njalla, an anonymizing hosting provider. It is unclear how Z-Library could transfer the domains to the new hosting provider....

While the court order for the seizure is unavailable at this time, the site's domains were likely seized because many of the files were uploaded without the license of the original authors. Complaints to copyright protection offices in the past have resulted in legal actions forcing the platform's registrar to seize the Z-Library domains in 2015 and further domain blockages and DMCA notices in the U.S. and France in 2021. The USTR (United States Trade Representative) has recently launched an investigation on the platform... As reported by TorrentFreak last week, TikTok decided to block hashtags related to Z-Library, reportedly responding to copyright holder's complaints.
Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for suggesting the story.