Komunitas
lemmy.ca
It is mostly a myth (and scare tactic invented by copyright trolls and encouraged by overzealous virus scanners) that pirated games are always riddled with viruses. They certainly can be, if you download them from untrustworthy sources, but if you’re familiar with the actual piracy scene, you have to understand that trust is and always will be a huge part of it, ways to build trust are built into the community, that’s why trust and reputation are valued higher than even the software itself. Those names embedded into the torrent names, the people and the release groups they come from, the sources where they’re distributed, have meaning to the community, and this is why. Nobody’s going to blow 20 years of reputation to try to sneak a virus into their keygen. All the virus scans that say “Virus detected! ALARM! ALARM!” on every keygen you download? If you look at the actual detection information about what it actually detected, and you dig deep enough through their obfuscated scary-severity-risks-wall-of-text, you’ll find that in almost all cases, it’s actually just a generic, non-specific detection of “tools associated with piracy or hacking” or something along those lines. They all have their own ways of spinning it, but in every case it’s literally detecting the fact that it’s a keygen, and saying “that’s scary! you won’t want pirated illegal software on your computer right?! Don’t worry, I, your noble antivirus program will helpfully delete it for you!” It’s not as scary as you think, they just want you to think it is, because it helps drive people back to paying for their software. It’s classic FUD tactics and they’re all part of it. Antivirus companies are part of the same racket, they want you paying for their software too.
Komunitas
sh.itjust.works
Tldr: meshcore is great. Rooms are buggy and disappointing. Flashing devices from Android would save at much time and effort on the go. Direct messages should automatically try flooding after the saved path fails, it’s confusing for normies that it doesn’t. Post: I started with meshtastic about 2 years ago, there was no activity in my area, and my friends were interested but never got onboard. I recently moved, and my new location has a strong meshtastic presence. I initially was excited, and played with it for a couple of weeks, before becoming frustrated. Even with access to a strong network with many repeaters, it was basically impossible to hold a conversation with anyone more than 1 hop away. I read about meshcore, and wanted to try it. I also had a camping trip coming up, a trip where I knew I’d have access to a tall hill that should cover a lot of beach and campsites. Also, meshcore promised store and forward messaging, via rooms. Which to me is THE most appealing part of meshcore. So I spun up a repeater and a room, and a couple companion devices. Now disclaimer: I did put the room into repeat mode, to save on wasting an extra device, since I only have so meant to play with. At home, it all worked perfectly. But once I got to the site, the problems started. The repeater was up almost 100ft relative to camp, but after a half mile full of trees, only the companions with high gain antennas could access it. So I had to drive to a library to use their computer to flash a companion into a repeater 🤦♂️ Can we get flashing and programming from Android please? But that worked, I strung that up about 15/20 feet into a tree at camp, companions had signal for at least a quarter mile in all directions. Once that was working, I started testing the killer feature I wanted: rooms. But suddenly they weren’t working anymore. The room was hosted on the repeater on the hill, so it was one hop to get to it. But even the second room hosted on the camp repeater wasn’t working properly. I could have two companions logged into the same room, each sending messages that the other never ever got. Then I’d fire up a third companion, and it would log into the room and download the messages from one of the companions but not the other, and then its own messages weren’t seen by anyone else. They just… didn’t work. Direct messages worked well, and messages to the camp channel and public channel all worked perfectly. Heck we even got some tropo across the lake from Michigan into Wisconsin, 60 miles direct! But the rooms were not working properly. Just failing silently, which is the worst failure mode. We only had 4 companions going, middle of nowhere, so it’s not like we were overloading it, this was the perfect use case. The other problem we had, was the remembered routes didn’t switch to flood when they failed. So if I was at camp, texting my buddy directly, zero hop. But then I went to the beach and tried to 2 hop from the hill to the camp repeater, it would try 5 times zero hop, then fail to deliver, and quit. The path would change from “direct” to “flood”, and if I manually resent the message, it would flood correctly and reach him, then change the path to “2 hops”. This is fine for me, I understand what’s happening. But my friend is not techy, and struggled to grasp and remember what was happening and how it works and why it wasn’t working. It was frustrating for them. I feel like this should happen automatically? Ultimately we did end up using them a few times. I used them a lot for testing and probing and seeing where I could ping the repeaters, and how far the signal goes. The two times we really needed them, the relevant people either forgot their companion at camp (but still had their phone), or forgot to check it at all before deciding to send out a search party for me when I was late back to camp. I was like guys, check your phone. They checked, saw my message sitting there, and were like oh sorry 🤦♂️ I plan to try it again. I just really wish those rooms would’ve worked, and I don’t understand why they didn’t. Next time I’ll have a dedicated repeater, and a dedicated room 🤷♂️ maybe room repeat mode just isn’t ready for prime time. (Yes I know in a strong mesh, it’s preferable to keep them separate). But otherwise it was awesome, very cool technology. I made 1.8 miles contact, over 2 hops, just by setting up some repeaters. So very cool! And practical!
Komunitas
lemmy.ca
This is the correct answer. It might also be the filename shown. If you can put your cursor over that it might become underlined. All big Download buttons are not to be trusted.
Komunitas
lemmy.ml
Hello all. I have been lurking on lemmy.ml for a while and learning about the fediverse and recently decided to jump in. I wanted to come here to share my story on switching to linux, effectively switching my mindset in the process. TL;DR: Around october 2025 I was going to update a system to windows 11 and opened a can of worms regarding the privacy eroding, invasive nature of it. Freaked me out for a while thanks to big techs horrible recommendation systems only making this worse but gradually learnt to escape its grasp. Learnt linux was the answer, learnt to research, aiding in escaping big techs control over me. Went with linux mint with full disk encryption, migrated to open source cross platform software on windows 10 to prepare, migrated my data. I am 90% of the way there and could not be happier with the results. Now all that remains is to convince friends and family members of the need to switch and to be confident enough in my capabilities to help. Oh, and I am a privacy advocate now. I have recently made the switch from windows 10 to linux mint. It was around the time windows 10 support ended in october 2025 that I started looking into things. I was looking to upgrade to windows 11 on an old system and began researching how to upgrade to windows 11 with a system that did not meet the required spec (inc tpm, cpu etc). Then I opened a can of worms. I started to learn about the privacy eroding, invasive nature of windows 11. I’ll be honest it freaked me out for a while. I struggled with it deeply. I could not believe how invasive windows had become in this new os. Youtube videos were freaking me out on this subject (thanks youtube recommendation system), and like I said, it really messed with my head. I’d like to say at this point my journey, over time, my research led me outside of big techs grasp and I began to take back control of the content I consumed rather than being fed negative swill that kept me coming back for more out of terror. In hindsight, a terrible, addictive, negative habit that I formed. They damn well know what they are doing, to prey on the vulnerable just to make more money and I was victim to it. Anyway, I started to learn about how linux was the way out of this thanks in part to the content creator https://odysee.com/@switchedtolinux:0. His videos did scare me at the time but they were also very helpful and informative. I finally found a good, reputable, reliable source of information whose aim was to help you regain your digital freedom. He was there to guide you from his own experience, especially his earlier videos discussing why you should consider switching. I highly recommend his content for those facing this situation and are looking for guidance. Switchedtolinux if you are reading this, thank you, you are a credit to society. His recommendation was linux mint, so off I went to do some research. Again, at the start I was in the big tech bubble so there was much fear mongering, but I learnt over time to escape this, mainly fuelled to help maintain sanity as most content was negative screaming about how every inch of privacy will be lost, not in a decade, not in a year, nor month nor week but tomorrow. I’m sure you know the type of content. But I eventually maintained composure and continued to look into linux mint. The more I read and watched the more appealing it became. I started to learn about open source, free as in freedom and the more I learnt the more I realised I had found something quite special. A digital life designed by the people for the people. I realised it was quite beautiful and wanted to be part of it. It was around this time, due to the research, I started to exist outside of big techs control and started to research and control the content I was consuming. I went back to big tech to consume content such as youtube, but I had specifically done my research and come to the conclusion that I wanted to consume the content instead of just being fed it. I decided to buy a new desktop computer however during that time I was unfortunately still under big techs influence, it was done in haste as it was around the time component prices started going through the roof and all the content was “buy it now before you can no longer afford to”, it was unknown how high the prices were going to go and what component was next. In hindsight more research should have been done to ensure linux compatibility but at the time I was freaked out with windows 11 et all and pressured by component prices going to unknown heights. Thankfully I did enough research to get an AMD gpu over NVIDIA. Very glad I figured out that much at the time. I am ashamed to say it but it was the result of a hasty AI query, but I am glad I knew enough to pose the question. So, I got the new computer and because I’d had no experience of linux I wanted to test the components so installed windows 10 but kept it offline along with disabling TPM in the bios as I had learnt about how microsoft were using that as a unique identifier if ever it were to go online. I used my existing windows 10 system for drivers and stress testing software etc to transfer over. I eventually settled on OCCT and hwinfo for stress testing the system which I did for several hours at a time along with h2testw for testing storage. Also ran memtest86+ overnight a few times. All looked good so, time for linux. I grabbed the latest version of linux mint cinnamon 22.3 , verified its checksum and got it installed. Everything just worked out of the box, colour me impressed. The first thing I did now as I was very much becoming privacy conscious was to install protonvpn. I did not know exactly what I was doing in the terminal but the instructions were coming from a trusted source, proton themselves, so I paid attention, followed the instructions to the letter and it all sprang into life. There were specific instructions not to install the system tray app on mint as it would install the entire gnome desktop environment. I knew enough about linux to know that this would be a bad thing for a beginner. However I was pleased to see that whist avoiding that installation step, I still got a tray icon. So with protonvpn installed I was online and ready to go. I had researched open source disk imaging tools and settled on rescuezilla as I wanted an option to revert if I did something catastrophic that I did not know how to undo. This was a completely foreign OS and wanted to take precautions. At an early point I tested a system image backup and restore and it worked perfectly, even with full disk encryption. One issue was that the screen would go black during the backup process. I thought there was a hardware fault but it turned out it was just a power saving feature but it sometimes would not come back when jostling the mouse. I think I worked around this by booting rescuzilla in basic graphics mode which prevented the screen going black. I cannot be absolutely sure of this but I think that did the trick. It was a shame there was not an option to disable this power saving feature in the software that I could find but there we are. I should mention that whilst learning about open source and my desire to move to linux I started switching to open source cross platform applications whilst still on windows to make the transition easier. Some of which I was already using, firefox (eventually to librewolf), joplin, keepassxc, libreoffice, freefilesync, virtualbox, vlc, veracrypt to name the main few. I should mention I did test linux mint in a virtualbox vm under windows 10 just to see what I was getting into before installing. When I had the basics, an internet connection and a browser, I began actually using the linux computer. I was so pleased everything was just working. I started to spend more and more time on the linux system, and I know it may sound silly, I still did not trust it with credentials. But the more I learnt with research and the more I got things working, the more I came to trust it and started logging in to things. It took a while before I even opened my password database on it. My data had not even come over at this point, I was still testing the waters. Is this something I could really trust? But over about a month linux mint earnt that trust and this is when after years of using macrium reflect for a one button blind faith backup I decided to use freefilesync to migrate data to the linux system and maintain a linux system backup. I spent a long time noting down every location my data could be on the windows system including appdata, portable apps, default user data folders, program files, different drives and other obscure locations. I still want to do a full system image with macrium at some point, not incremental but full, on two separate backup drives just in case I missed anything. I plan to wipe the windows computer completely. I’ll probably re-install with windows 10 iot ltsc as I’d like to have a windows system around still but the main thing is to get my data off of it going forwards, not just deleting it but a full re-install so there is not even a reference. The fact I used minecraft with a microsoft account I wonder if that and my data could ever be linked. Never has the OS been signed into microsoft account but I’d not put it past them to say “hey, you used minecraft with this micorosft account so we’ve logged your OS in and uploaded all your files to the cloud”. This is why I was switching to linux, I wanted control over my computer and its data. I do not want it uploaded to your cloud where any tom, dick and harry can nose around and have your AI systems use it for training. Hell, it seems that data does not even need to be in their cloud for this to occur now. No thank you. Now, I had started to take data security seriously and contemplated what would happen if my equipment was stolen. During the mint setup I configured full disk encryption, very easy to setup and worked well. The only option was to use KVM which to be honest it is still something I need to research more, ext4 fair enough but this KVM thing sounds more intimidating. But it worked. I also booted into a linux mint live usb and verified I could access my data on from the full disk encryption system which I could, a big relief as it was something I was so unfamiliar with and wondered how I could get at my data if the system no longer booted after a kernal update or something. I was being cautious. I used veracrypt for the backup drives, thankfully I have had experience with this software before and it was my first experience of an appimage (that I was very careful about running), I knew to verify checksums and found the gui tool gtkhash very useful for this but gpg was new to me (still is really) and required terminal work. But the main thing was knowing to verify that I downloaded from the official domain, like with windows. Once I learnt how to make it executable it was off, the gui was a little bugged and took a bit of a long time to dismount after a backup but later versions fixed that. Also, when playing around with appimages I learnt how to make them run in portable mode as this is something I like from windows using this documentation: https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/portable-mode.html. I was getting well underway and using the linux system more and more. I have yet to log into sites that use payment systems switching back to the windows system for this as I have been quite nervous about this part. No anti-virus, going off of only that I had done things correctly based on the research I had done and not contracted anything in the process. I think it is sensible until I am sure I have done everything in the correct manner, others may disagree. But this is a completely foreign system to me, it is taking a while to earn my trust, but it is most certainly coming slowly over time. It is not too far off now I think. I have yet to get into gaming as I want to limit closed source applications on this system. The only closed source application I think I have run on here thus far was OCCT. I think it had some telemetry but this was literally one of my first experiences with software after installing mint as I wanted to check hardware stability under linux and for me, it was the only option at the time as I was familiar with it from testing in windows and GUI stress testing applications appeared to be more complicated than just firing up OCCT and I wanted to test my hardware under linux as soon as possible. In hindsight, I could have handled this better but there we are. Steam has closed sourced components, as do games. This is something I plan to learn more about. For now I dabbled with hedgewars and luanti to test some open source games for system stability. So I am in the position now where apart from online payment systems and gaming, I am fully migrated over and loving every minute of it. Just getting everything setup so I can use it for 90% of what I need at the moment, even down to rhythmbox handling my music, adjusting the GUI to my needs. Tweaking things to my liking within the main confines of mint and the cinnamon desktop environment but at the moment that is more than enough. Also, finally having some freedom, true freedom. I am almost free of windows, I’ll not be completely satisfied until I wipe the old windows 10 system along with my data on it in the process to fully get it out of microsofts reach. Yes windows 10 iot ltsc will likely go on but my data will not. However, with the new encryption systems at play on linux it is taking a little getting used to in order to fully trust them from a reliability standpoint but I am getting there the more times I actually use the full disk encryption and veracrypt for backups. Trusting the encryption software to always work when I present the password, reliably. It is taking some getting used to the fact that I’ll never be able to access that data if the password is forgotten. But at least I am in control and not having windows 11 lock the system drive after a bad update and find I have no recourse. I know the passwords here, it is under my control as to how I remember those. No surprises. I hope to learn more leveraging this platform to ask for help on the newer more complicated stuff that I struggle to understand with just research alone. Something I have not done thus far, just taught myself everything. I’m not really a very social person so even online I struggle with this, but lemmy.ml looks like a good, caring community that shares my values and I think I will be happy to be a part of. I hope to be able to convince friends and family that moving to linux is something they should seriously consider. I have a multitude of reasons and am already finding much resistance because windows works for them and they do not care enough about privacy and/or do not really understand that their privacy is at risk and the implications / future ramifications of that. I am being called paranoid etc and and am at a bit of a loss as to how to help convince the majority of them. For those that want to make the switch I hope to learn enough to be able to aid them in the transition but at the same time do not want the responsibility of being blamed if something goes wrong or does not work as expected. For example I plan to help with locating their data and how to make backups following the 3-2-1 rule but make it unmistakeably clear it is their responsibility. If they loose anything / forget some data it is on them. I must make this so very clear. So, to end on a high note I am so thankful the open source community exists, it is truly a beautiful thing, a system built by the people, for the people. One day I hope to contribute however that may be, and I think it will simply be in helping others transition and use the software as I learn how to do so myself. This is my first post on lemmy.ml, my first post on the fediverse. I thought I’d detail my experience not only of switching to linux but a switch in the way I think now. Woken up to the sobering truth of that state of things. I am now, most certainly, a privacy advocate. Thanks for taking the time to read. I hope it was informative, maybe helpful to others, and I look forward to your responses.
Komunitas
lemmy.fmhy.net
It’s even worse apparently. Apparently someone looked at where the coins are going, and the coins are going to the 1337x admins, and the uploader is just getting a cut of those coins. Which explains why the admins are unlikely to really care because they’re profiting off their users. I have severe trust issues with any kind of pirated software so I basically never download it as a result, and shit like this is why. Even private trackers and “trusted” groups aren’t enough for me to download most software.
Komunitas
lemmy.dbzer0.com
As we push more average Windows users to Linux, we need to be prepared for these users to download and run completely untrusted code.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
Game. Changer. I live my life as FOSS-y as possible. This is the only subscription that I have. $2/mo or $16/yr is not even a blip on most people’s radar. The OG Sync was the most used app on my phone and tablet. So download, enjoy, and pay the dev! He’s phenomenal, approachable, and transparent. This isn’t some Flappy Birds knockoff. This is a polished app that allows us to connect with one another more easily. And I’d like to see what features he comes up with next. It takes a lot for me to trust an app/dev this much. Hopefully everybody else will too and we can help him do even more neat things.
Komunitas
sh.itjust.works
Some opinions as someone who has been on the other side of this: Recognize that if she decides to not divorce you, from now on, no matter what you do, how much of a new leaf you turn, etc., there will always be at least a little bit of doubt about you. That feeling when you find out you’ve been cheated on by a long-term partner never quite goes away - it gets smaller and less nagging, but never completely disappears. If you want to stay with your wife, you’re gonna have to accept this. My discovery happened almost a decade ago. I would have been well within my rights to dump her ass and never talk to her again, but I didn’t. I thought it was at least worth trying to stick around and see if we could work things out before doing that, given we made that whole “till death do we part” oath and were still breathing. She was not owed this - I did that for me. Things are better, and we are in a much, much better place than we were. Still, this pops to mind at least once a day, and has every day since it happened. Go see a couple’s therapist yesterday - first, to create a venue where she can express her feelings about all of this, what she wants to do, and what she needs; next to start having an open, 100% honest discussion about where your head is at and behaviours, and finally to start shopping tools for completely transparent communication going forward. Treat this seriously and pay fucking close attention. Follow this up with some therapy for yourself - very few people choose to cheat because they’re loving life. Start identifying where you need to work your own shit out. Again, take this deadly seriously. Encourage her to do the same. 100%, no exceptions, complete and utter honesty and transparency going forward. She wants to see your phone? Hand it over. She wants to know where you’re going/what you’re doing? Tell her, with proof. She wants you to have a tracking app? You download that shit. She wants the nastiest details about what the hell happened? Do warn her you’re concerned it will hurt even more, but if she wants to hear it anyway you tell her. By dint of your actions, you’ve lost your right to both be in the relationship and keep a self-defined level of privacy - if you don’t like it, start looking at divorce. If you two start healing, the need for this kind if stuff may start to diminish as the level of trust comes back up. Check in with her, often. How she’s feeling, what she needs, etc. Pay attention, respect it even if it involves something that may hurt you emotionally. Do NOT throw shit in her face - keep in mind, YOU’RE the one who fucked up, and who now wants to move on with her as your partner. She just discovered her husband did one of the shittiest things a spouse can do to someone they claim to love. It’s a very different experience. You could do everything right, do all the therapy, open communication, working on yourself and the relationship you want. If she decides that she can’t do it, she can’t. Recognize this. Accept this. She doesn’t owe you shit. Not gonna lie to you man - you have a tough row to hoe. I will say, with time and a shit ton of work, it’s possible to remain together, and both of you be happy about it. But there will now always be a pre-cheating and post-cheating division when thinking about your marriage. The goal, if you are remaining together, is to build something much better and stronger than what you had before. That may happen, that may not. But putting the work in gives the greatest probability of success. Best of luck to you - seriously, you fucked up, and fucked up BIG, but we are all human, and therefore liable to fuck up. No matter what the outcome of all this is, learn from it and grow.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
I gave Premium a shot. Then the one time I wanted to use the feature Google said I was paying for - being able to download videos - I found out that it was just a glorified pre-buffer. Can’t view the video outside the youtube app or the website, source video file encrypted ✅️ Can’t view the video if you havent connected to the internet in 3 days ✅️ Does less than your average youtube downloader that you can find for free with one search ✅️ Literally just saving Youtube bandwidth because they destroyed every benefit you would get if it was actually reasonable ✅️ Enshittification isnt just limited to free users folks. Slammed that cancellation button right then and there. Good luck earning back my trust, I’m happy to pay if you didnt scream so loudly that even if I paid, you were going to treat me like shit anyways.
Komunitas
news.abolish.capital
Zakharova condemns move as censorship while VK calls decision ‘arbitrary and unacceptable.’ On Thursday, Apple announced that the App Store will no longer include the applications of the social media network VKontakte (VK), VK Video, VK Messenger, VK Music, VK Znakomstva, Dzen and Odnoklassniki. RELATED: Russia Fines Apple and Mozilla for Failing to Remove Banned Information These Russian applications have been removed from Apple’s app download service and will no longer be able to send notifications to mobile devices through VK’s services. In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova highlighted what she described as censorship by Western countries against forms of communication that run counter to their geopolitical interests. “The removal of VK apps from the App Store will not isolate Russian digital services but will demonstrate the true value of Western declarations on free speech and an open Internet. No one should have illusions that Western IT infrastructure is not being used as an instrument of pressure and censorship,” she said. About the attack on VKontakte The last thing I want to do is complain about the enemy’s behavior, accuse them of censorship, or appeal to the conscience of the side that has been waging war against us for years. And the removal of Russian apps from the App Store is just as much… https://t.co/I9gcFtcl7t — Yuri Podolyaka (@YuriPodolyaka) June 25, 2026 For its part, VKontakte, which is the most popular social media network and dominant technology platform in Russia, described Apple’s decision as “arbitrary and unacceptable.” “Through its actions, Apple is limiting Russian users’ access to popular services used daily by tens of millions of customers. Apple’s actions will prevent users from receiving push notifications for messages,” VK added. The Russian platform said it would continue working “in the interests of users” and would take “all necessary measures to ensure convenient and secure access to its products and services.” Android users can continue to access VK services in full through RuStore, Google Play, Huawei AppGallery, Samsung Store, Xiaomi Store and the official application websites. In early June, Apple also removed the Russian messaging service MAX from its app platform. The service has been promoted by authorities as a secure alternative to Telegram and WhatsApp and is subject to state control. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his deepest condolences for the tragic consequences of the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24. "We express our solidarity and support for the Venezuelan people, with whom we share a friendly relationship, in these… pic.twitter.com/kL3WWDtP59 — teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) June 25, 2026 teleSUR/ JF Source: EFE From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
news.abolish.capital
After the world’s largest producer of wood pellets built what it called a state-of-the-art biomass facility near Ruby Bell’s home in Faison, North Carolina, she started organizing. Bell told her residents about the potential impacts, and tried to prevent the company from adding to the area’s environmental burden. It has been an uphill climb. The retired educator recalls the day that the reality of the effects set in. She had spent the afternoon talking to residents about their experiences living near the new wood pellet facility. By the time she got home, Bell says she was sniffling, her nose was running, and her eyes were burning. “I thought ‘what in the world is going on?’ Then it dawned on me: I sat outside for 20 minutes talking to a resident. There was all this dust and my pants were covered from sitting in a chair,” she recalls. “If it’s like this after 20 minutes, I can only imagine what it’s like for those people living there.” Seeing experiences like Bell’s — ordinary residents pushed into the role of frontline advocates — helped draw Sherri White-Williamson deeper into environmental justice work, changing the course of her life. After decades working for federal agencies in Washington, D.C., White-Williamson wanted to return to North Carolina and confront industrial pollution. Believing she could make a bigger impact as a lawyer, she enrolled at Vermont Law School at the age of 63. After graduating, White-Williamson founded the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN), a grassroots organization dedicated to empowering rural communities to defend their environment and health. Sherri White-Williamson at the EJCAN office in Sampson County, NC. Mallory Cash She says EJCAN’s role is to educate community members so that they can advocate for themselves. “This work is much more effective when it’s done by somebody who’s actually directly affected,” she says. The group initially focused on ground water contamination and air quality issues caused by North Carolina’s industrial hog farms and the state’s largest landfill, which had exposed nearby communities to toxic chemicals. But soon, White-Williamson began to organize against the growing wood pellet industry, too. More than a decade after Enviva Biomass opened its facility, Bell’s initial skepticism has been justified. The company’s pledges of bringing hundreds of well-paying jobs went unfulfilled, while its operations increased noise, truck traffic, and worsened the region’s air quality. White-Williamson says the biomass rush began in Europe in the late 2000s, when the European Commission developed a new climate and energy policy. It mandated a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a 20% increase in renewable energy consumption and a 20% improvement in energy efficiency compared to 1990 levels. The American South’s abundant forests were to play a vital role in achieving those goals. Today, the non-profit Dogwood Alliance estimates that Enviva facilities in North Carolina alone consume about 50,000 acres of forest each year, leading to flooding and deforestation. After the trees are felled, they are hauled to a processing plant, where they are chipped, dried, and pressed into small pellets. Enviva claims that its impact on forestland is minimal because it only uses wood that is unsuitable for other purposes, such as tree limbs and leftover wood from timber harvests. Environmental groups like Dogwood Alliance and the Southern Environmental Law Center have documented evidence to the contrary, capturing images of clear-cut logging and mature downed trees bundled in neat rows along the perimeter of barren dirt fields to supply the pellet mills. Felled trees wait to be processed at Enviva’s biomass facility. Cornell Watson White-Williamson points out that none of this energy is produced for US consumption. “The pellets are going overseas, and the trees are getting cut down over here,” she says, pointing out that these forests would otherwise be storing carbon. A growing body of research) shows that burning wood pellets emit even more carbon than burning coal. Although trees are a renewable resource, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated that in some instances, it would take more than a century for young trees to absorb as much excess CO2 as the forests they replace. The social and environmental consequences extend far beyond carbon. Recent data found that Enviva’s wood-pellet facilities are 50% more likely to be located in vulnerable communities already besieged by polluting industries and environmental injustices. Oversight has often failed to keep pace with these impacts. Although the facility had received several citations for emitting too many toxins, in 2019 the Department of Environmental Quality granted Enviva’s request to expand its production capacity over community objections. “The story is always the same,” says White-Williamson. “The community that doesn’t have the power or the access to power, or politicians or decision makers is always getting the short end of the stick.” This raises considerable health risks for the people living nearby, says Danielle Purifoy, a professor of geography and environment at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health. The pellet manufacturing process releases a toxic combination of particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). A community sits close to the Enviva biomass facility in Faison, North Carolina. Cornell Watson “We have seen the same kind of things happening in similar industries, like timber and wood pulp, where they grind trees to make paper,” says Purifoy. “We already know that those pollutants tend to have impacts on respiratory systems and sinuses that can be harmful for folks who have asthma and any other kind of respiratory illness. Anything that’s going to kick up a lot of dust is creating air pollution that has the same kind of impacts.” The Southern Environmental Law Center recently led a coalition of local and regional organizers to gather quantitative data on the experiences of nearby residents. Their report showed that air pollution, dust, noise, and traffic have a measurable impact on quality-of-life. “The results of this survey confirm what we have known for years: Biomass wood pellet plants do incredible amounts of harm to nearby communities, which are more often than not communities of color, or lower-wealth communities,” said SELC staff attorney Jasmine Washington. “When they were asked, they shared very openly about their frustrations at the daily impact from this pellet mill.” Eager to talk about their experiences after having their concerns ignored for years, respondents complained of the constant plant and traffic noise, needing to wash their cars almost daily, and no longer feeling comfortable sitting on their porches. Some said they were even forced to wear masks indoors. “Folks are speaking up more because they now understand that there is a direct link between what they or their family is experiencing, and what’s going on around them,” says White- Williamson. The survey findings underscore the importance of EJCAN’s work helping communities document harm, and building collective power to advocate for protections. The Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) is a North Carolina–based nonprofit that works to advance environmental justice in rural communities, particularly in Sampson County. The organization supports residents facing pollution and other environmental harms by providing scientific research, water and air monitoring, education, and advocacy. EJCAN also helps communities access legal and technical resources, empowering them to hold polluters accountable and push for cleaner air, water, and soil. LEARN MORE This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The hidden toll of wood pellet power on Jun 23, 2026. From Grist via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
infosec.pub
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/48271760 New Zealander Everlee Wihongi has been released after two months in ICE detention, but has been left without her passport, Green Card or drivers’ licence, her mother says. The 37-year-old Ngāpuhi woman was detained by ICE while attempting to return to the US on a Green Card - or Permanent Resident Card - after a three-week holiday in New Zealand in early April, because of a 2016 cannabis conviction. Everlee’s mother Betty Wihongi and sister-in-law Courtney Wihongi told Saturday Morning of their huge sense of relief after confirmation she had been released near Phoenix, Arizona. After initially being unable to find out whether today’s scheduled hearing had gone ahead, and frantic attempts to get through, they were finally able to make contact and speak with the just-released Everlee on FaceTime who got out about 6am NZ time. “I can’t even put into words how we are feeling right now,” Courtney said. "That’s when it really hit that she’s actually out and that she’s actually free. “It’s been a rollercoaster the past 24 hours.” New Zealander Everlee Wihongi freed from ICE detention Saturday Morning19 June 2026 Everlee was originally detained in California on 10 April, but was later transferred to Arizona. On release, Everlee had been given back the bags and clothes she entered the US with and put on a bus from the ICE detention centre. “She went through an out-take process where they gave back her personal belongings, and she put on regular clothes,” Betty said. "Then they put her on a bus and sent her to the [Phoenix International Welcome Centre], an hour away from [the Eloy Detention Centre]. But it took like five hours because they had to stop at different detention centres to pick people up. "We’re just relieved and happy that we’re at this point right now. “We’re on the way to the airport right now. We’re looking forward to seeing her.” However after the ordeal and uncertainty, Betty was frustrated the essential government identification documents had not been among Everlee’s personal belongings that were returned on release. It meant her daughter could not even book a hotel room for herself until her family were able to fly across the US to meet her. “We’re trying to organise a place for her to go and stay at while she’s waiting for us to arrive”, Betty said. Once reunited, the family plan to get her back home to Wisconsin in the next few days. Courtney said her sister-in-law would need to do some healing after the experience and the conditions, including being housed in rooms with up to 60 other people at a time. “At the moment she’s so content to be out and to be free.” But: “It’s no conditions that any human being should have to endure … it’s been terrible,” Courtney said. Betty said the New Zealand government’s response had not been good enough. “I’m just really disappointed with the New Zealand government, and with a lot of the misinformation that Winston Peters put out, it just really hurt our case with the lies that he put out.”
Komunitas
infosec.pub
New Zealander Everlee Wihongi has been released after two months in ICE detention, but has been left without her passport, Green Card or drivers’ licence, her mother says. The 37-year-old Ngāpuhi woman was detained by ICE while attempting to return to the US on a Green Card - or Permanent Resident Card - after a three-week holiday in New Zealand in early April, because of a 2016 cannabis conviction. Everlee’s mother Betty Wihongi and sister-in-law Courtney Wihongi told Saturday Morning of their huge sense of relief after confirmation she had been released near Phoenix, Arizona. After initially being unable to find out whether today’s scheduled hearing had gone ahead, and frantic attempts to get through, they were finally able to make contact and speak with the just-released Everlee on FaceTime who got out about 6am NZ time. “I can’t even put into words how we are feeling right now,” Courtney said. "That’s when it really hit that she’s actually out and that she’s actually free. “It’s been a rollercoaster the past 24 hours.” New Zealander Everlee Wihongi freed from ICE detention Saturday Morning19 June 2026 Everlee was originally detained in California on 10 April, but was later transferred to Arizona. On release, Everlee had been given back the bags and clothes she entered the US with and put on a bus from the ICE detention centre. “She went through an out-take process where they gave back her personal belongings, and she put on regular clothes,” Betty said. "Then they put her on a bus and sent her to the [Phoenix International Welcome Centre], an hour away from [the Eloy Detention Centre]. But it took like five hours because they had to stop at different detention centres to pick people up. "We’re just relieved and happy that we’re at this point right now. “We’re on the way to the airport right now. We’re looking forward to seeing her.” However after the ordeal and uncertainty, Betty was frustrated the essential government identification documents had not been among Everlee’s personal belongings that were returned on release. It meant her daughter could not even book a hotel room for herself until her family were able to fly across the US to meet her. “We’re trying to organise a place for her to go and stay at while she’s waiting for us to arrive”, Betty said. Once reunited, the family plan to get her back home to Wisconsin in the next few days. Courtney said her sister-in-law would need to do some healing after the experience and the conditions, including being housed in rooms with up to 60 other people at a time. “At the moment she’s so content to be out and to be free.” But: “It’s no conditions that any human being should have to endure … it’s been terrible,” Courtney said. Betty said the New Zealand government’s response had not been good enough. “I’m just really disappointed with the New Zealand government, and with a lot of the misinformation that Winston Peters put out, it just really hurt our case with the lies that he put out.”
Komunitas
sh.itjust.works
TL;DR: If it’s also integrated into firmware, it has full-device access. If it’s just this specific app, per Kaspersky, it still has “elevated privileges” and can install crap. It cannot be disabled without breaking the UI. Doing a scan without copying the apk: As you can see from main screenshot, the APK would have been accessible for scanning. I copied it to Download directory as that one gets real-time monitoring, but it will pick it up elsewhere after a scan as well. Anyway: VirusTotal report Found 4 months ago by Kaspersky And I found my device in list on blog post from Sophos. Unfortunately, they only provide a partial list, as they mention this affects “nearly 50 models”. From listed domains, with help of strings I found launcher(dot)szprize(dot)cn, although it doesn’t seem to resolve to anything at the moment. Also something interesting from Kaspersky: When integrated into the firmware, the malware behaves differently depending on several factors. It will not activate if the language set on the device is one of Chinese dialects, and the time is set to one of Chinese time zones. It will also not launch if the device doesn’t have Google Play Store and Google Play Services installed. Now what? I’ve been using it for nearly 2 years, so there’s that… I am thinking of contacting the retailer I bought this device from, as it’s still in sale. But I am not sure if they will care about it. Also, the only way I seem to be able to contact them is via tech support, so there’s the chance of just getting a copy-pasted answer. As for my particular unit, I’ll probably try to update the software to newest version to see if it’s still (visibly) present. Unfortunately, updates on these devices are unstable as fuck, so I’ll have to deal with that. I also hope it won’t make me loose access to MediaTek EngineerMode band selection as that’s something I quite want to keep using. Or perhaps try to return it under warranty. Since QuickStep also controls navigation (both gestures and 3-button) it can’t even be disabled even if I used alternative launcher.
Komunitas
news.abolish.capital
In a direct challenge to the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and a potential model for the rest of the nation, Montana campaigners announced Tuesday that they had collected nearly 20,000 more signatures than required to force a statewide vote in November on a ballot measure to block corporations from dumping money into elections. The high court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision opened the floodgates for companies and other organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money on US politics. If approved by voters, “The Montana Plan,” as advocates in the state are calling the legal strategy behind the proposed Initiative 194, would “stop corporate and dark money cold” in Big Sky Country. Initiative 194 would bar “artificial persons,” including “nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, corporations, trade associations, or unincorporated associations,” from “contributing anything of value to candidate elections, supporting or opposing political parties, or supporting or opposing state or local ballot issues.” Violators would be “punished by forfeiting all privileges to do business in Montana.” The Transparent Election Initiative in March got the go-ahead to start collecting signatures to put the initiative on the ballot, and as of Tuesday, TEI’s all-volunteer campaign had collected nearly 50,000 across all 56 counties, “far surpassing Montana’s 30,121-signature statewide qualification threshold.” As of last week, the Montana Secretary of State had already verified 34,906 of them. “This campaign has been powered by Montanans from the very beginning,” said Jeff Mangan, TEI’s founder, in a statement. “To the out-of-state corporate and special interests trying to spread disinformation about who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish: Look at the power of this volunteer army.” “More than 500 Montanans gathered signatures in all 56 counties, without a single paid signature gatherer, and blew past the 30,121 signatures needed to qualify,” he noted. “That is what grassroots democracy looks like.” Mangan, a former Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, also acknowledged that “we know the road to November will be a tough fight.” Already, the campaign secured a key legal victory earlier this year, when the Montana Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge filed by “a group of corporations and industry groups—comprising the Montana Mining Association, the Montana Chamber of Commerce, Montana Stockgrowers Association, Montana Petroleum Association, Montana Trucking Association, Montana Contractors Association, Treasure State Resource Association and Billings and Kalispell’s respective chambers of commerce,” as the Daily Montanan reported in April. Mangan said Tuesday that “this is David versus Goliath. Corporate and special interests are going to spend millions of dollars on TV ads, mailers, and scare tactics trying to make Montanans afraid of their own power. But the way we win is the same way we got here: real Montanans, in real communities, having real conversations.” “Over the next six months, we’re going to be everywhere—answering questions, sharing the facts, and looking voters in the eye,” he pledged. “The Montana Plan is about a simple principle: Real people should govern, not artificial persons created on paper. A vote for The Montana Plan (I-194) is a vote to put Montanans back in charge of Montana elections.” TEI’s announcement came a month after Democratic Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed into law a bill that also takes aim at the infamous ruling that corporations are effectively people in terms of political spending—legislation that Michael Beckel, who directs the Money in Politics project for the advocacy group Issue One, also called a “model for the country.” At the federal level, progressives have repeatedly introduced bills that would abolish super political action committees (PACS) and overturn the Citizens United decision—though, at least until the November election, both chambers are controlled by the GOP. “Corporations are not people and money is not speech,” US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) stressed while introducing a constitutional amendment to reverse the ruling last year. “In every election cycle since the disastrous Citizens United decision, we have seen more and more special interest dark money poured into campaigns across the country—this year, with a billionaire paying millions to buy a seat as Shadow President.” “My We the People Amendment hands power back to the people,” she explained, “by finally ending corporate constitutional rights, reversing Citizens United, and ensuring that our democracy is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people—not corporations.” From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Komunitas
lemmy.ml
::: spoiler [2026-05-13] ParaPower Mapping [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!IoNV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7aaa4f96-383e-4ce0-84e4-2df642e9b2a7_1290x1246.jpeg) From this point forward, I’m going to be apportioning out written drafts of the material for the forthcoming first season on PPM in slightly more digestible, article sized chunks contrary to 50 page essays that require serious mastication and a bovine belly with multiple chambers to break down. I”m comfortable enough with this approach because I feel like I did enough heavy lifting in the first two parts to the point that readers are relatively up to speed and will be able to follow along and make the requisite mental connections to tether the revelations herein back to the larger thrust of this project. We’ve set enough of the varying scenes and furnished you with enough preliminary evidence to firmly establish that Epstein agitated against the Islamic Republic throughout his life and entered the worlds of international arms deals and espionage through his understudy role under Khashoggi and Leese as the American parastate egged on the Iran-Iraq War in hopes of seeing the proxy conflict destroy the two Middle Eastern upstart revolutionary governments. You’ll hopefully recall the latter sections of the previous essay and our introduction to Bandar Bush and Epstein’s considerable links to the former Saudi Ambassador to the US, a relationship he appears to have cultivated over decades, as shown by the sampling of evidence I laid out stretching from: Prince Bandar bin Sultan’s instrumental role as a Contra slush fund beginning in ‘84 his addressee appearance in the first Black Book Epstein’s lawyer / handler Alan Dershowitz inadvertently divulging meetings with the recent head of Saudi intelligence when trying to build an alibi regarding Virginia Giuffre’s allegations Bandar’s purchasing of a massive mountainside manse in Aspen (a property that was passed to another Epstein associate in John Paulson and which is located in the billionaire summer house hub that Wexner also called home) the inclusion of multiple Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud progeny in Epstein’s email contacts Having firmly established these ties, we will soon use the Epstein - Bandar friendship as a springboard to examine the possibility that Epstein was party to Al Yamamah, the priciest arms deal of all time, struck between the Saudis and the British in 1985. We’ll also mull whether Epstein even served as a go-between to Bandar and helped iron out the finer points of the arrangement whereby the Prince personally financed the Nicaraguan paramilitary at Reagan’s behest in early Iran-Contra. But to construct such an argument and assess the persuasiveness of these theories, we must first tango with the doctored passport that was found in Epstein’s possession and the identity of the man for whom it was reportedly issued, conducting a forensically thorough sifting of its contents with a finetoothed comb to see what kinds of secrets get caught in its teeth. Along the way, we’ll juxtapose the various aspects of the passport identity’s past that lend themselves to the notion that he and Epstein were known quantities to each other and likely parastatal fellow travelers. This is what we will concern ourselves with today before unpacking the implications of the documented travel itinerary as filtered through the figure of Prince Bandar bin Sultan next time out. In the latter part of 2025, pictures of Epstein’s Austrian passport under the real and/or double identity of Marius Fortelni finally entered the public domain. You can view the passport in its redacted entirety at the bottom of this article. From the present vantage, it’s likely impossible to say definitively what kind of arrangement was struck to permit the financier to step into the Austrian architect and restaurateur’s shoes on occasion (or whether there’s an even more fantastical tradecraft explanation wherein the Austrian died and Epstein stole his identity like some informal cover or else the Company phased in the use of real life individuals as cold bodies). There are sundry brainpicking interviews from the last couple of years regarding Fortelni’s oceanside, smart home condo development Forté Luxe in Jupiter Island and biography-bolstering ephemera dating back as far as 1989 in the American newspaper record that support the flesh and blood, corporeal existence of the sometimes Fort Lauderdale or Miami Beach based real estate developer. Still, one should be forgiven for being skeptical or wondering if all is not as it appears, as Epstein and Fortelni cut symmetrical paths across the planet and cropped up in similar places time and again, from Saudi Arabia to New York to West Africa to Florida. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6jJs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe47113a6-6ddb-4664-a263-3cdb70191dcc_1290x747.jpeg) I can conceive of a few different explanations for how the passport came to Epstein and was then doctored, Fortelni’s photo X-ACTO bladed off and swapped with a square dimensioned, black and white picture of a preppy Epstein in plaid. Cue: saucy To Live and Die in LA Willem Da-forgery montage. This is one of those contingency theory scenarios where I’ll ask you to hold these alternating possibilities in your mind at once. Each is beset with a hole or two and no size fits all. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DDoI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2489661f-6c9d-4035-b04c-5df0d58cf7b9_1290x1595.jpeg) I could see Epstein and Fortelni having been in cahoots in an organized criminal capacity and that Jeffrey secured the docs that way, with Marius a henchman or adopted consigliere of sorts. I could also see a scenario where they both were CIA assets with slightly different remits and the agency set Epstein up to inherit an old set of Fortelni’s papers (they were born only a year apart and while not doppelgängers, do have some slight facial similarities). It’s also not inconceivable that Epstein could have pilfered the passport, stolen it from Fortelni’s draftsman desk or something. And lastly, while this strikes me as most outlandish, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that Fortelni could be a concocted cover identity or cold body that various assets or agents could slip into in the field. From what I’ve gathered from others and his bio online, it sounds like Fortelni is the son of a successful German actor and real estate developer, so this last option seems highly doubtful, but the whole situation is such a profoundly cumbersome head scratcher that I struggle to dismiss the notion entirely. For example, if the fraudulent passport’s solitary purpose was to protect Epstein in case of a PFLP-era hijacking, as his legal team’s story goes, why on earth would you hold onto it for an additional 32 years past its expiration? Was Epstein simply a packrat hoarder who couldn’t let such evidence of passport forgery criminality go out of sentimentality? Such a notion runs counter to the portrayal of Epstein that is constructed by the Files of a meticulous scrubber of hard drives and digital evidence of his crimes. I reckon the passport must have had a continued usefulness for him to keep it as long as he did. There are seemingly only 5 hits for Fortelni on Newspapers.com. The most recent results date to February 2015, both of them Notices of imminent sale of items held in lapsed, unpaid storage units in the Fort Lauderdale area. How strange for the big shot real estate developer to have failed to make payments on one of his storage units for so long that they were about to auction off his stored items as shown by this South Florida Sun Sentinel issue… Seems uncharacteristic. Do you know who did exhibit a characteristic pattern of dispatching private investigators to move hard drives, laptops, and dirty magazines from storage unit to storage unit so as to evade the feds, though? Do I even need to say it? Was Epstein using the old Fortelni passport as ID to keep a degree of separation between himself and a storage unit with a trove of particularly sensitive items? Or is this sheer coincidence? [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TgJa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F173d8653-48de-4eba-ab49-5661f15e2bf2_1290x1575.jpeg) In the Oct. 29th, 1989 edition of Newark, New Jersey’s The Star Ledger, the paper’s food critic William A. Raidy reports back from his visit to the recently ribbon-cut Via Via restaurant on the Upper East Side. Founded by “international restaurateurs” Marius Fortelni and David Teller, he waxes rhapsodical about the girls “three deep at the bar”; the “generous highballs”; the samplings of ravioli Genovese, calamari al inferno, and veal paillard on arugula beds. Then located at 1294 Third Ave. near 74th Street, Via Via would have been mere blocks from Epstein’s E. 66th St. flat in the Solo Building that was his much more modest New York residence and temporary office of the Intercontinental Asset Group in the late 1980s before he inherited the townhouse from Wexner. It’s not hard to imagine Epstein having helped Fortelni populate the bar with the girls that Raidy was all agog over. This earliest mention of Fortelni that I’ve uncovered in American newspapers bears a couple blink-you-could-miss breadcrumbs. The UES Via Via was apparently cousin to another on 37th Street that was opened a little less than 2 years prior, meaning that the flagship appears to have debuted in NYC in 1987, right around the time Epstein was undergoing that post Iran-Contra career change. Auspicious timing for this Austrian double of Epstein’s to suddenly pop up in the U.S. (note: this is the same year the Fortelni Passport in Epstein’s possession expired). There’s also mention that Fortelni comes from a Milanese family of restaurateurs that have been setting white linen tablecloths for “discriminating diners” in Northern Italy since the early 1800s. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!b9FH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F48cd84dd-e8c8-4604-a18d-a0016d5f1e0b_1290x534.jpeg) My curiosity is piqued more so by the passing mention that Via Via owners Fortelni and Teller met at the “American (International) School in Vienna”, though, and for good reason, as we’ll see. As tradition dictates for such institutions, the American International School in Vienna’s student body demographics include a 30% chunk of American children, an approximate 30% or so of natural born Austrians, and a plurality consisting of 70 other nationalities making up the rest. Most of the American students are the spawn of diplomats and assorted Embassy and intergovernmental sector employees. By virtue of this reality, it’s well within the realm of the reasonable that Fortelni could have had classmates whose parents were CIA. The AISV has strong ties to the State Department as illustrated by its highlighted inclusion in the Overseas Schools Fact Sheet and the singular seat on the 10-person school board that is strictly appointed by the U.S. Ambassador alone. AISV’s most recognizable alumni name is likely Romanian-American actor Sebastian Stan who enjoyed a starring turn as a young protege of Roy Cohn aka pre-hairpiece Trump in the recent film The Apprentice, to bring this aside full circle. Anyways, could Fortelni have been recruited by Central Intelligence straight outta secondary school? Read on, dear reader. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vUcj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6c0af31-b3aa-4a83-a968-b11057b70a25_1290x898.jpeg) Turning to the final “Marius Fortelni” search result in the digitized newspaper archives… In 1991, the Philadelphia Daily News gossiped about some “tent bash” he threw in the Hamptons to sample the “French and Russian delicacies he intends to serve when he opens his trendery this fall”. Lo and behold, the obligatory salacious anecdote that saw the party’s inclusion in the Philly paper’s gossip section: some paparazzi caught Aussie supermodel Elle Macpherson peeing in the bushes in a revealing tube dress. Elle Macpherson was inseparable from Epstein madam-in-waiting Naomi Campbell in the 1990s, with whom she helped cohost Miss Universe in 2001 smack dab during Trump’s peeping tom ownership of the pageant, and Macpherson’s also been snapped arm in arm with Ghislaine Maxwell and Black Book addressees Fiona Feeley and Tim Jeffries at a fundraising party for the Serpentine Gallery in 1999. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MVkw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2daa6285-d164-4f74-a02e-f5b0a76ea3c2_1290x1621.jpeg) [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oL1B!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F34a6aafa-8f3f-482d-82bc-babbfde6be45_1290x1767.jpeg) [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4J3D!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0c6093d-9083-46f4-906c-8fd1283efa19_1290x1190.jpeg) Not only that, but the swimsuit powerhouse once dubbed “The Body” by TIME-LIFE-CIA Inc. in the 1980s was also listed as part of a criminal grooming milieu by an alleged Epstein victim who filed a somewhat absurd online tip with the FBI. There’s just enough believability to stop me short of dismissing it as delusion at first glance, so I’ll leave it to you to decide. The redacted tipster weaves a strange tale wherein she attended a Hollywood high school with a number of Israelis and Serbians who were on a first name basis with the “princess of Yugoslavia” (presumably Catherine Oxenberg?). The tipster claims she was on the verge of applying for art school and had compiled her portfolio at which point the actor Matthew Settle of Band of Brothers and Gossip Girl c-list fame dated her under false pretenses and groomed her to be approached by Ghislaine for “modeling jobs”—it’s unclear if she even maintains she was actually victimized by Epstein in a sexual fashion. What she does feel particularly aggrieved about is that she is convinced Epstein et al “stole her portfolio” including the painting of Bill Clinton in the blue dress that was later attributed to NY Academy of Art Petrina Ryan-Kleid (a fellow Epstein NYAA alumnus with Maria Farmer, of course) and that all of her paintings and artwork were given fraudulent provenance and sold at inflated prices and the like. It is within this context that she lists Elle Macpherson and her manager Stuart as co-conspirators in this grooming art heist of sorts or at the very least related members of this modeling-art world rhizome. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jMBk!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe5292926-9e31-428d-81f8-39d9dfc9452b_1290x1266.jpeg) [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GnMJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc32c51d4-6d69-4e4c-b6cb-fad289da6bce_1290x1555.jpeg) [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Tdds!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F492a9d07-6621-40d2-ae12-99758549438a_1290x947.jpeg) Do I find her tale compelling? Not necessarily, although I don’t find it unbelievable either based on the ties to Macpherson that we documented and the much more well-known art academy links, so I’m duty bound to disclose, at the very least. To sum this section, though, we’ve shown that the identity contained within Epstein’s doctored passport corresponds with the Austro-German-Italian descendant of restaurateurs who attended a Viennese K-12 school for spy kids. This Marius Fortelni individual opened an eatery blocks away from the Epstein townhouse and a more modest apartment on the UES in the late 1980s, right around the time Epstein was settling back in the States post financial bounty hunting and gun running across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. We also discovered that Fortelni has thrown rambunctious enough outdoor saturnalias to land in the gossip pages and that they were attended by Epstein-Trump model trafficking nexus figures like Elle Macpherson. Finally, we speculated a tad about a Fort Lauderdale storage unit under Fortelni’s name that appears to have been emptied out to the Storage War wolves by the miffed proprietors, evoking Epstein’s use of storage liminal spaces like freeports for squirreling away the evidence of his crimes. The journalist Edward Szall previously speculated that the doctored Fortelni papers sporting Epstein’s photograph were issued by Ronald Lauder during his stint as Ambassador to Austria, which lasted all of April ‘86 - Oct. ‘87, claims that are also investigated in the 2nd volume of Whitney Webb’s blackmail omnibus. This would compute in the light of Epstein’s clientele relationship with the Estée Lauder heir, for whom he set up a fine art tax evasion LLC called Friends Ventures jointly owned with Leon Black that was used to purchase and share a Kurt Schwitters piece. Epstein and Lauder remained on friendly terms until at least 2017, with over 900 mentions of the Diddy-linked fragrance kingpin in the files and Epstein inviting him to Terje Rød-Larsen hosted soirées and the like. While it’s still a distinct possibility that the World Jewish Congress president Lauder helped set up Epstein with Fortelni’s documents, I think the evidence is increasingly pointing in a different direction. As previously acknowledged by Epstein’s lawyers in 2019 and now seemingly confirmed by the images, the Austrian passport was issued on May 21st, 1982, a full four years prior to Lauder’s brief stint at the Embassy. With an expiration date 5 years on, it seems unlikely that Epstein would have continued to carry the lapsed passport once defunct unless his lawyers’ official explanation that it was a crude failsafe in case of a hostage-taking onboard one of his flights by PFLP militants is genuine. Seeing as they contradicted themselves and refused to answer questions about how it was obtained and whether the stamp evidence proved it had been used by Epstein in transit, questions that were raised by the prosecution during proceedings regarding flight risk, I think we can dismiss their version of events out of hand. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vbHX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb61f670-590d-4c74-aa6e-b1c0faa5e948_1290x1586.jpeg) In which case, an expiry of 1987 is an intriguing detail, as 1987 would be right around the time that Iran-Contra had concluded, erm… Or put in other words, been outed by the Hasenfus Crash and the investigative derring-do of the Lebanese press and henceforth blown up in the public sphere, leading to Congressional and Presidential investigatory commissions. By 1987, Epstein was transitioning into life as a Ponzi schemer with Steven Hoffenberg and as the fresh faced financial advisor to one Les Wexner, pretty cozy landing spots coming out of the massive scandal (One Nation Under Blackmail, Webb). Also, mind you, his new jobs wouldn’t necessitate a doctored passport in quite the same way that being a transnational financial bounty hunter and Iran-Contra arms dealer might, at least on the face of it… Taking the timing into account, I’m inclined to believe that the Fortelni passport was used by Epstein as a cover identity during his globetrotting as the mentee of various Contragate players such as Douglas Leese, Adnan Khashoggi, Robert Maxwell, and Ehud Barak between 1982 - 1987. Back in 2019, after the expired subterfuge passport (amongst five others) was discovered in a safe with $70,000 in cash, 48 loose diamonds, and a U.S. Treasury Customs agent lapel pin in a credentials wallet (highly suspicious in the context of a doctored passport) during the raid on the NY townhouse, prosecutors alleged in one of the Epstein case hearings that the passport had received ingress and egress stamps from countries such as the UK, France, Spain, and Saudi Arabia on multiple occasions in the 1980s. We now have images and FBI internal emails to back up these claims. Furthermore, the passport lists Dammam, Saudi Arabia as Marius aka Epstein’s place of residence. Dammam is the fifth largest Saudi city, situated on the Persian Gulf approximately 400 or so miles West of the Strait of Hormuz as the crow flies and directly adjacent to the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain by bridge. From here, we ought to begin our close reading of the Fortelni Passport in earnest, starting with its point of origin and provenance. May 21st, 1982 - The Fortelni passport was issued in Austria under the authority of the “Bundespolizeidirektion Wien” (Vienna) by an Oberkommisar named Dr. Mikuskovics. Based on what I’m seeing, the “Dr.” is an abbreviation signifying Doktor, likely denoting a recipient of a top-level doctoral degree in law based on the immigration and law enforcement context, although I wouldn’t be shocked if it stood for “director” (a German speaking listener might be able to set this matter straight). One of the emergent wonderments that the Fortelni Passport poses in my mind is: Why an Austrian passport for Epstein specifically? Circumstance and convenience? Or something more? [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Xz5Q!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdd2e8d8-cef3-4b63-85ad-0f267af22267_1290x809.jpeg) Setting aside a reading where Epstein encounters Fortelni in Saudi Arabia and purchases it off him or else where the passport passes hands through Lauder’s doing, I can think of one characteristic of the city in which it was authorized that might shed light on the “Why Austria?” question. Vienna is arguably the spy capital of Europe, after all, a noir reputation gained from dusky monochrome Cold War cinema such as The Third Man, the classic about a penicillin-diluting racketeer who has staged his death so as to escape the British military police on his tail and which captures post-war Wien in all its quadripartite occupation district intrigue. Vienna has enjoyed the reputation of a European city of strategic import and espionage due to its central location bridging east and west for millennia, with even Marcus Aurelius noting its geographic advantages long before the cafe culture and baroque architecture cropped up, long before MI6 man Graham Greene sent his cowboy fictioneer character Holly Martins scurrying down bombed out ruins after the Cheshire phantom Harry Lime aka Orson Welles, a cinematic adaptation that may have been inspired by the Philby-recruited Soviet spy Hans-Peter Smolka. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7WWr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F60200e45-139d-42d1-8cf2-4dc1b0f2b69a_1290x1814.jpeg) This perception has only been solidified in recent years, with some estimates placing as many as 7k agents of varying services active on its streets today. In the years of the Third Reich’s rise cresting into the Anschluss, you might have encountered Kim Philby, Freud, or Trotsky in its cafes. More recently, the hotbed of snooping played host to the largest spy swap between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War, with British double agent and Russian military intel officer Sergei Skripal (later poisoned in Salisbury) and scarlet-haired Russian seductress Anna Chapman exchanged on the tarmac in Vienna in 2010. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jPBw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd442ecf7-b6fb-4cab-bc01-f0670f3e3f20_1290x670.jpeg) Part of this tacit acceptance of Vienna as second spy capital of Europe (only surpassed by Brussels) is due to its neutrality, its historical geographic convenience as an operational launchpad beyond the Iron Curtain into countries such as Poland and Yugoslavia, and the fact that it also plays host to a number of intergovernmental organizations today. These include one of four major United Nations headquarters, the UN Office of Vienna (UNOV) located in the Vienna International Center, a holdover from the idiosyncrasies of the four part occupation of the city by the U.S., British, French, and Soviets that I alluded to earlier. The UNOV is home to key agencies like the International Atomic Energy Agency (which would be of monumental interest to Epstein’s likely parent agency LEKEM, the Bureau of Scientific Relations), the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Control (UNODC), and UNIDO (international development office), among others. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aPhL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F833188e4-cfc8-43d0-8f52-a50bfd0ce34a_1290x980.jpeg) We may make a more thorough study of Epstein’s time in and ties to Vienna at a later date, but the Austrian capital hosts another intergovernmental organization we’ve already spoken about in Pt. I of this series and that may be even more germane to this line of inquiry. You’ll recall that we began to tease the thread of Epstein’s recruitment of recently resigned Slovakian national security adviser Miroslav Lajčák, onetime chair of the OSCE aka the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, specifically highlighting messages between the two in 2019 in which they discussed digital false flags and Epstein exhorted Miroslav to get the OSCE to take cybersecurity more seriously. The OSCE is officed in Vienna, of course. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Tfic!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9c83d5ca-6fc1-4300-b88c-38b5e231e354_1290x635.jpeg) Fascinatingly, it appears the issuance of the Fortelni passport, whether to Marius himself or to Jeffrey Epstein masquerading as the Austrian, arrived at a time when the U.S. Embassy in Austria was in crisis and transition following the March 1982 death of Reagan-appointed Special Envoy Theodore Cummings, a Jewish Austrian emigré and Food Giant supermarket magnate who first met Ronald in the 1960s as a GOP booster and who was a part of the actor’s informal “kitchen cabinet”. Apparently a Charge D’Affaires took charge of the Embassy until the following year, when another Reagan loyalist in the personage of Helene von Damm was promoted to the office. I’m unsure if this is a common occurrence, but even the State Department’s Timeline of the Chiefs of the Austrian Mission has a conspicuous void where the year during which the Fortelni Passport was issued should be placed, which is notable considering it found its way into the hands of American citizen and likely CIA and LEKEM asset Epstein. I’ve yet to find any indication which Embassy officer rose to handle diplomatic duties between Cummings’ unexpected death and von Damm’s appointment, so that’s slightly curious. More uncanny than curious is her almost shocking resemblance of the Maxwell Sisters, a young Isabel in particular, as seen in this “candid” pic from Air Force One or another of the Ambassador in a sun hat and baring her décolletage. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gY8y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffa22cc6d-6e0f-4a36-b5ce-e8ec4941052e_1290x843.jpeg) [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!R0V6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff0f7f8c0-4329-40de-9df1-10fc3787df34_1290x1759.jpeg) If von Damm had anything to do with the passport making its way to Epstein, this could be further evidence of Jeff the Financier’s entrenchment in Iran-Contra, as von Damm was not only Ronald’s former secretary but also a Reagan insider and among 5 campaign aides including Edwin Meese and Deputy Chief of Staff Deaver who received questionable payouts from the 1980 Reagan / Bush transition foundation. It’s also worth adumbrating von Damm’s biography quickly. Raised in Amstetten where her father toiled as an engineer for the paper company Neuesiedler Papierfabrik (now Mondi), she married a US Army corporal named Charles McDonald during the Soviet occupation and emigrated to the US—one groom in a line of four ex-husbands that came to include a German-American Bank of America executive, whose surname she ultimately kept. Helene dug up her roots in Chicago and traveled to California when she became smitten with Reagan’s ardent anticommunism as a “refugee” of a “socialist country” herself. She ascended from a lowly gubernatorial campaign envelope-filler to Reagan’s personal secretary and then Finance Director for the Northeast in 1980, a position parlayed into Director of Presidential Personnel and then the brief Ambassadorship in Austria. She resigned after her tempestuous liaison with the recently divorced owner of the prestigious Viennese Hotel Sacher became a source of “public fascination”, divorcing Peter Gürtler a year after she stepped down, walking away with alimony, seats on the boards of a couple European companies, and a Doubleday book deal. Gürtler “committed suicide” in 1990—curious timing, that, considering all the parastatal criminal activities of the Reagan and Bush years, the fall of the Soviet Union, and his nearly annulled, lightning quick marriage to the U.S. Ambassador. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EI25!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fba2ae6a6-3621-434b-96f9-11f04771530c_1290x656.jpeg) Sometimes a singular Google search leads to a eureka moment, sending you spilling out of the bathtub in a spray of foam and Epsom salt, racing naked for pen and paper to jot down a reminder of the revelatory piece of evidence that just fell into your lap. I was feeling like I was circling the drain a little bit, that I’d taken my Fortelni passport discoveries about as far as I could, when my mind stirred. “Klonny, you tried to find something linking Ambassador Helene von Damm to Iran-Contra… But did you ever search for an Austrian or Viennese Connection to the scandal more generally?”, so spoke my Shivers and Encyclopedia skills to me as I soaked like some wet dog Harry du Bois. Wouldn’t you know it, dear reader… With even just a perfunctory internet conjuring, I quickly found a source that would support the Fortelni Passport having been allocated to Epstein as cover during his involvement in Iran-Contra related travels, showing that the use of aliases and false passports were a part of the Enterprise’s OpSec modus operandi. And it gets better yet. Not only will I establish that they relied upon fake passports and cover identities while jetting about on Contragate business, I’ll also show that the Iran-Contra architects used fraudulent passports to travel to Vienna, Austria to negotiate with an Iranian delegation for the release of hostages specifically. But first, I ought to preface this by pointing out that even today, Western intelligence, national security think tanks like the Hudson Institute, and the Pahlavist anti-AOR lobby maintain that Vienna is the base of operations for Iranian intelligence networks in Europe due to its neutrality and lax regulations regarding covert activity. Per Die Presse, the Library of Congress released a report on Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence in 2012 that asserted Vienna is chock full of Iranian agents, with security experts estimating 100 or more individuals working for the ministry to surveil and pressure regime change advocates in exile there. The Library of Congress report alleges that Austria and Iran have enjoyed warm relations since the Islamic Revolution, meaning this dynamic was well-established prior to when the Fortelni Passport came into being in 1982. Which brings us to a mini research climax of sorts. Pulling from the Aug. 1993 Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters during Lawrence E. Walsh’s tenure. Take your magnifying glass to “Part VIII Officers of the Department of Defense” specifically, now scroll down to Item #22. This is numbered evidence of various notes, diary entries, and testimonies that were withheld from the Tower Commission and the Select Committees which show that Secretary of Defense Weinberger and many of his closest aides were routinely informed of Contragate arms shipment developments and were personally conducting high-level meetings in the White House and the field regarding the black op. In Items #21 and #22, the OIC team subverts the testimony of a classified “senior military officer” who feigned ignorance when asked whether he’d been considered for a meeting with Iranians regarding the hostage crisis and claimed to be wholly unfamiliar with Col. Oliver North, who he characterized as a “staff officer on the periphery”. [ ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pEt0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd76ff057-0f11-4d0a-81f0-601defc3cb5d_1290x1087.jpeg) To reiterate the underlined portions of the screenshot, Secretary Weinberger’s diary revealed that Oliver North and a Senior Military Officer whose identity was classified (national security reasons, ol’ chap) travelled to Vienna, Austria in September of 1985 to meet with Iranians about getting the hostages released. They did so at the express request of Robert McFarlane and with the permission of Weinberger and General Vessey. The Ambassador Robert B. Oakley helped to grease the wheels to get one of the false passports divvied out to the “Officer”, lending credence to the notion that the U.S. Embassy Charge D’Affaires or Amb. Von Damm could have put a finger on the scale related to the Epstein/Fortelni papers. The other two travel docs for North and Redacted were secured when Ollie invoked Admiral Moreau’s name. Finally, we see that their plane tickets and HOTEL RESERVATIONS were booked under their aliases (one of which was Goode). Their Iran-Contra negotiations trip to Vienna landed a mere month or two after Ambassador von Damm cabled a resignation letter to the White House, signaling her intent to step down over the growing din of gossip about her scandalous relationship with the hotelier. She would make good on the press release the following year, leaving her post in 1986, meaning… that Ambassador Von Damm was still in office at the time that a major secret meeting between the U.S. and Iranian Contragate delegations was held in her jurisdiction. Now, considering she and the recently divorced Gürtler shacked up together, got married in Feb. 1985 only a month after she’d finalized her divorce from computer industry consultant Byron Leeds (how fitting that the 4th wedding fell in the shortest month), and divorced again in the span of like 2ish years tops, I would be remiss if I didn’t speculate ever so slightly about the torrid-but-brief affair. At the very least, I think we can deduce that chances are the Hotel Sacher would have played host to various comings-and-goings of Reagan officials, whether Contragate-related or not. For example, from the same WaPo profile, we find tell of a meeting between von Damm and Secretary Shultz, Assistant Sec. for Euro Affairs Richard Burt, and National Security Adviser and major Contragate player Robert A. McFarlane in Vienna that very May, 1985 (emphasis added, see article’s final stretch). How much do you want to bet they rendezvoused at the Sacher or at the very least stayed there? And not just because it’s Vienna’s fanciest and most prestigious hotel. It would only be logical to hold certain deliberations in the private confines of a spare room or conference room within a hotel whose proprietor could be trusted to keep a secret (perhaps incentivized to stay mum by sexy time with the hot lady Ambassador?). If you’re attempting to have an off-the-books summit without inviting suspicion or the press sniffing it out, there are few better options than a five-star luxury hotel that caters to an international clientele in a neutral country. It’s called “hotel diplomacy”, for godsakes, I’m not just talkin’ out my rump here. To back up what I’m putting down, always going that extra mile, I’ve pulled a Wall Street Journal piece exploring the security and zipped lipped peculiarities of courting such business during the UN’s General Assembly of Nations and the background checks and metal detectors that hoteliers are expected to have on hand as an example. To conclude this section, I’ll leave you with two speculative, inquisitive ponderances. How would you rate the likelihood that von Damm honeypotted Gürtler for the express purpose of gaining influence over the Hotel through romantic means in advance of it serving as a neutral ground for top secret meetings? And secondly, with all of this splayed before you, what do you think the chances are that Fortelni’s Austrian passport fell into Epstein’s hands because it was to play a pivotal role in enabling him to get in and out of Austria and/or Saudi Arabia to meet with Iranian arms dealers and dignitaries with ease and without inviting suspicion? From the little I’ve dredged up so far, it seems that while entry/exit stamps for Austrian citizens were routine, they weren’t uniform or always strictly enforced (especially at land crossings), so even though there seemingly isn’t any inky proof of Fortelni/Epstein revisiting Vienna after the passport was issued, this doesn’t mean the holder never returned. There are more involved ways of explaining away such a discrepancy (if we’re thinking there’s a compelling case to make regarding Austrian activities specifically), as even the North and Redacted anecdote describes the use of secondary passports, which is not uncommon when you wish to enter a country without tipping Immigration and Customs off to your point of departure. [charlimit reached] :::
Komunitas
lemmy.sdf.org
The scam is not downloading Signal. The scam will come later when they say “You just got the job! I will send you a check to purchase your remote work supplies”. Do not deposit the check. At all. No matter what. It is not a legitimate check. It will never be a legitimate check. No matter how real the check looks, I guarantee that no company works like this! Do not respond to them. Block their number and ignore them for the rest of your life. What happens is: The check is fake and you deposit it. By law, your bank is required to credit your account with the check’s value within a couple of days. HOWEVER: Just because your account gets credited the amount, doesn’t mean the check is fully processed. The scammer will tell you to buy WFH supplies from a “trusted vendor”. You are “buying” your supplies from the scammer, using the money credited to your account. Then, in 2-3 weeks, the bank will reject the check as fake. They will subtract the value from your account and you will have paid for your “supplies” using your own money. You will never receive the “supplies” or get your money back. The bank might even suspend your accound because of the fraudulent check. A youtube channel that I follow actually released a video today about employment scams. In the section where he talks about red flags, compare them to the messages you just received. I bet you’ll notice some similarities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9g-y8wVzws
Komunitas
lemmy.world
If you download and install untrusted code extensions, you’re screwed. Not like it’s rocket-science.
Komunitas
programming.dev
You have the option of piping it into a file instead, inspecting that file for yourself and then running it, or running it in some sandboxed environment. Ultimately though, if you are downloading software over the internet you have to place a certain amount of trust in the person your downloading the software from. Even if you’re absolutely sure that the download script doesn’t wipe your home directory, you’re going to have to run the program at some point and it could just as easily wipe your home directory at that point instead.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
I have like 20+ years of Gmail messages. I want to download all of these messages to my hard drive. The plan is to get my data downloaded first before moving to another email provider. Sure, I can just forward my Gmail to Proton/Tuta but i prefer to keep those services clean. I will still keep my Gmail in case some old contacts / subscriptions need to email. But the important part is my 20+ years of data, I dont trust Google to keep everything. I have several options: Use Thunderbird and download using the IMAP option, so download every thing in every folder, e.g. Sent, Starred, Inbox, Important. iiirc, Google allows you to use the checkout feature to download a .mbox file. Is this feasible? So far I am on 1) and Thunderbird is taking a VERY long time to download. From my Google storage page , i have like 10 GB of emails. But the downloaded emails from Thunderbird are around 20 GB… So either Google is lying about their stat or Thunderbird is acting up. Still, i can see most of my old emails. It is still downloading though… Any input is appreciated