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Videos of the Week (2008/32)

Four videos this week…

Lightning in super-slowmotion (via Wissen belastet):

More of these here.

A lone swimmer at the Sydney Olympics… (via mlogger)

The mystic solution for computer problems! ;) (via Bad Astronomy)

Rhabarberbarberabarbarbier… oder something like that. :rotfl: (via Resistance Is Futile) – yes, German, but give it a try!

I’d prefer dating scam spam…

100% safe…since there’s ususally a photo included, but you can’t have it all, another Anghela is hard to find. So this mail here (the image on the right was not included) is just a generic 419 scam – except that it’s not from Nigeria but South Africa (or at least claims to be) –, promising a multi-million sum for a pretended money transfer.

And, alas, the senders translated their English (which is maybe not completely perfect, and at any rate quite complicated for automatic translation) automatically into German, making it somewhat funny – in German, that is, so this is not really something funny for you English readers, sorry… Let me just mention that their statement about this business being “100% safe” turned into “100%-Safe”, i.e. a 100% safe/vault, hence my little image on the right.

Their English original (which they also included) isn’t really worth reading, but for the sake of completeness, I included it here:

Show the English scam text ▼

“You can see more my photo’s”

Dating scam spam just keeps on flowing – now it’s a pretended Helen from the USA who wants to find friends, and if it really was an American who wrote this, (s)he’s not better than an automatic Russian–English translation program, not only because of the silly plural apostrophes:

You can see more my photo’s

Hallo, my name’s Helen

Im 28, i live in Ashville NC, USA.
I am woman who’s looking to meet some new people and friends.
You can see more my photo’s and about me
at my Website Home Page: http://[…].110mb.com
if you wanna chat plz send me letter.

my peronal e-mail: kurey.helen@gmail.com

i’ll be wait 4 your letter with a great impatience :-) :-) :-)

Helen

p.s Du darfst mir auf dem Deutschen schreiben.
Ich verstehe ein wenig Deutsche die sprache.

The last two lines in wrong German re-translate to “You may write to me on the German. I understand a little Germans the language.”

The page (on a normal free hoster; I downloaded it with an editor, so there might actually be a browser switch that tries to infect e.g. Internet Explorer) is kind of a profile page with a few brief specifications where the city now is called “Asheville” and where she dreams about the sea and finding friends, “and if any good things developed from a solid friendship, then it would be a great bonus!!”

Yeah, sure, that’s why “she” sends the mails via a Norwegian PC (probably a zombie) with a different sender name & address.


I won’t publish the enclosed photo this time – not because it were pornographic, but because I’m scared its kitschiness might scare off my visitors. :mrgreen: Just as the other photos that are linked to on that page (which were apparently grabbed elsewhere, as the path names indicate, and which don’t contain any malware according to VirusTotal) could hardly be more kitschy.


Update: To summarize the German comments below (thanks!): “She” kept mailing the same mails to many others, mentioning “she” were back in Russia and the language becoming typical for automatic translation, “she” hardly or never reacted to what the men replied, wants to know address and airport, and finally wants money – and there you have it, just a typical love scam. So just ignore “her”!

In October, “her” name’s now Lauren…