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FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried accused of fraud

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Sam Bankman-Fred, founder and former CEO of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been charged with fraud by US authorities. The 30-year-old was also known as SBF Arrested in the Bahamas on Monday.

Today, a An unsealed grand jury indictment The US Department of Justice detailed the criminal charges against Bankman-Fried. He is charged with eight counts of defrauding his clients, money laundering and violating campaign finance laws.

The indictment says that Bankman Fried and his associates “knowingly” devised a scheme to defraud clients by misappropriating funds in order to “pay the expenses and debts of Alameda Research,” Bankman Fried’s private crypto fund.

Bankman-Fried was one of the major political donors who promised to contribute $1 billion to the 2022 US midterm elections – a commitment it has reneged on. However, the Justice Department said he violated campaign finance laws and deliberately misled the Federal Election Commission by funneling donations through other people.

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In addition, this morning the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a filing civil complaint against Bankman-Fried, which accused him of masterminding “a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of trading platform clients’ funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire.”

The SEC complaint asks Bankman-Fried to pay damages to FTX customers and additional fines for defrauding customers. The SEC is also seeking to prevent the businessman from serving as a director or officer in any company in the future.

The SEC said Bankman-Fried transferred the funds to Alameda, its investment fund, while assuring clients that their funds were safe and that “Alameda is an entity entirely separate from FTX.” The SEC said he “knew or recklessly ignored that these statements were false and misleading”.

Once clients’ money reaches Alameda, Bankman Fried will loan it to itself and its executive team, the SEC said. These loans were “poorly documented, and sometimes not at all,” but according to the SEC, between March 2020 and September 2022, he lent himself more than $1.3 billion, which he spent on large political donations and luxury property in the Bahamas.

Even as his scheme began to spin out of control, the SEC said, Bankman Fried “continued to mislead investors and the public.” In early November, after public claims that FTX would run out of funds, the founder of FTX said, in later deleted tweets, “FTX is fine. Assets are fine” and “FTX has enough to cover all client holdings.” The SEC said Bankman-Fred knew at the time that FTX risked bankruptcy.

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The company eventually entered bankruptcy on November 11, and Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO of FTX. His fortune has dropped from about $16 billion to almost nothing.

After his departure, Bankman-Fried continued to tweet about FTX and give interviews in which he apologized for the company’s collapse while denying that it was a scam. He was supposed to appear in Congress today to testify before the House Financial Services Committee.

“We argue that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors it was one of the safest buildings in cryptocurrency,” said Gary Gensler, Chairman of the SEC. statement. He warned, “The alleged fraud committed by Mr Bankman-Fried is a clear call to crypto platforms that they need to comply with our laws.”

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I let the AI ​​pick my makeup for a week

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I Fine artist. Almost every aspect of my life is driven by a desire to create, no matter the medium — from DIY projects to Cosplay and elaborate facial makeupI am constantly making something new. I am always eager to try new technologies, tools and technology, so I am naturally fascinated by AI generators. While I am aware of the ongoing rhetoric surrounding AI art, incl Lawsuits and ethical discussions, my curiosity is much stronger than my apprehension about it.

That’s why I decided to let the AI ​​pick my makeup over the course of five days. For consistency, I used a A dream from Wombo The app to create all the themes featured below. (I also picked this app because there was a 200-character limit per prompt, and I loved the challenge of shorter prompts.) While I did my best to faithfully recreate the look in AI images, I took human liberties based on the supplies I had on hand. And my own hobbies. This is what I made with the help of a machine.



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Twitter will only put paid users on your feed

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This comes after a few days Twitter announced Those older verified accounts will lose their blue check mark starting April 1 unless they sign up for the paid Twitter Blue. At the same time, Twitter is working on a method for paid subscribers Hide blue checksprobably because it might seem awkward to have one if all it means is that you paid for it.

Together, both changes could get more subscribers (Twitter hopes), but also ensure that the For You page becomes a collection of shoppers, ramblers, and anyone else who wants to pay for Twitter. Oh, and the brands. By limiting amplification to only a small amount of paid users, it makes the For You page more open, and brands can get more traction and amplification in a free Tweet for paying for Blue than buying ads.

Normal, unpaid accounts are only supposed to be visible in the following feed, the time feed of only people you follow — basically, what Twitter used to be.



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We spoke to the man behind the viral photo of the Pope

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Over the weekend, a photo of Pope Francis looking dapper in a white puffer jacket went viral on social media. The 86-year-old seated pope appears to be suffering from some serious cataplexy. But there was just one problem: the photo wasn’t real. Created with Midjourney’s artificial intelligence technical tool.

As word spread across the internet that the image was created by artificial intelligence, many expressed their surprise. “I thought the pope’s puffer jacket was real and never thought about it again,” Chrissy Teigen chirp. “No way can I escape the future of technology.” Garbage Day newsletter writer and former BuzzFeed News correspondent Ryan Broderick invited him “The first real mass-level AI misinformation case,” it follows in the aftermath Fake photos of the arrest of Donald Trump by police in New York last week.

Now, for the first time, the image’s creator has shared the story of how he created the image that fooled the world.

Pablo Xavier, a 31-year-old construction worker from the Chicago area who declined to give his last name due to fears he would be attacked for taking the photos, said he was stumbling through dorm rooms last week when he came up with the idea for the photo.

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“I try to figure out ways to make something funny because that’s what I usually try to do,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I try to do funny things or tripartite-psychedelic things. It just dawned on me: I have to do the Pope. Then it came like water: “The Pope in a fluffy Balenciaga coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome, Paris, things like that.”

He generated the first three images at around 2pm local time last Friday. (He first started using Midjourney after the death of one of his brothers in November. “It almost all started, just dealing with grief and taking pictures of my ex,” he said. “I fell in love with her after that.”)

When Pablo Xavier first saw the Pope’s photos, he said, “I thought they were perfect.” So he sent it to a Facebook group called AI Art Universe, and then on Reddit. He was shocked when the photos went viral. He said, “I didn’t want it to explode like that.”



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