109 children rescued, 244 arrested in Operation Soteria Shield, exposing widespread child exploitation in North Texas


Authorities call it a successful round up of child sex offenders, but it also shows how widespread the crime is in North Texas.

The Dallas FBI office and some of the 70 law enforcement agencies that participated announced the results of Operation Soteria Shield on Tuesday.

These are the faces of the 244 men and women charged with exploiting children for the purpose of sex trafficking or pornography.

It's the end of a month-long investigation by federal and local enforcement of a crime that authorities say is a year-round problem.

"The number of offenders arrested and the children rescued in this operation are stunning," said Jay Combs, the U.S. Attorney Eastern District of Texas. "It's stunning to hear them repeated here."

Operation Soteria Shield, which began in April, led to the rescue of 109 children.

"During this operation, many of the children recognized or rescued were previously unidentified," said Plano Police Department Assistant Chief Dan Curtis. "They'd never been reported missing. They had never had their abuse known to authorities."

[SOLVED] Recover deleted partition table - Guys, i need help!


My disk was dos labelled (MBR). So I 'fdisk'-ed my disk and entered 'o' to convert it to GPT and wrote it to the disk. Now all the partitions are gone. I want those back. I care about the data rather than the partitions

Edit 0:

Solution:
- install testdisk
- run testdisk
- choose "Create" log
- choose target disk. Eg: /dev/sda
- Choose appropriate partition type. Mine was MBR and I chose "Intel" and select "analyze"
- Now you'll see deleted partitions. Giveem appropriate flags like "*" for boot (efi partition) and "P" any other using space or arrow keys and press enter
- choose "write" and press y on the prompt to write those found partitions to the disk.

Thanks guys for the help

This entry was edited (9 hours ago)

'We're done with Teams': German state hits uninstall on Microsoft


in reply to RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]

This article is terrible.

In less than three months' time, almost no civil servant, police officer or judge in Schleswig-Holstein will be using any of Microsoft's ubiquitous programs at work.

Instead, the northern state will turn to [an unnamed, gaping information hole] open-source software to "take back control" over data storage and ensure "digital sovereignty", its digitalisation minister, Dirk Schroedter, told AFP.

"We're done with Teams!" he said, referring to Microsoft's messaging and collaboration tool and speaking on a video call -- via an [unnamed, gaping information hole] open-source German program, of course.


What will they use instead? Who the fuck knows! The article omits this crucial piece of information.

And don't say it's TBD; they're not going to say they're "done with Teams" without knowing what they're switching to. Or, even if they haven't put the final nail in the decision, they have a short list.

This entry was edited (11 hours ago)
in reply to Deceptichum

"So what you had was that the world's two major propaganda agencies, for their own quite different reasons were claiming that this destruction of socialism is socialism. And it's very hard to break out of the control of the world's two major propaganda agencies when they agree, and they agreed for different reasons, but they agreed, and then that becomes doctrine and dogma."

When were you wrong about something?


I think it’s a healthy thing to do to admit when your wrong as it places importance on truth rather than self image.

Some examples:

I thought pay-per-view was paper-view because you had to fill out a form to watch it.

This morning I insisted there was a noise outside to my partner and it was in fact the refrigerant in the fridge gurgling.

I thought the cat wanted to be pet— it did not.

Why is Lemmy so toxic?


A few days ago I made an account and posted a few joke/meme comments that got a lot of engagement. Unfortunately, the replies seemed to be mostly personal attacks on me disguised as jokes, when all I was doing was trying to be funny in a harmless way. I deleted that account and this one will be temporary. You people complain about this site lacking content compared to Reddit, about communities with only one person posting regularly and there not being enough niches, but how do you expect any growth to occur if the first thing someone experiences when posting on a new account is getting dogpiled on? It wasn't my first account either, it was my latest attempt to reenter the fray after feeling like I was becoming the butt of the joke on an account before that, just engaging with the community in the way that I like to. It almost felt like on both accounts my comments were being deliberately mass upvoted just as a setup to be humiliated. Some people have horrific lives IRL that would make any reasonable person want to kill themselves, and are stuck in those soul crushing situations for years and years with no way out. It would be nice to find a place to joke around and feel even just the simulated warmth of human connection without the same kind of nastiness I encounter in everyday life, so I'll keep looking. You say Reddit is toxic? I deleted my account there a long time ago, but my experience was that Reddit is like a big metropolis and Lemmy is more like a small town. Yes Reddit has jerks, but they don't tag you with their third party app and follow you around, giving you the illusion of being accepted with (probably fake) upvotes while subtly mocking everything you say and passing it off as a joke. You can blend with the crowd there and not become a target. I really, really don't want to give Reddit and OpenAI my data, but if I want a real social media experience that isn't being gatekept by assholes who enjoy bullying on the internet because they're too scared to do it IRL I may have to. I hope Lemmy can fix itself, but my experience with small towns in real life is that those "big" (small) fish in their small, stagnant pond don't want anything to ever change because the status quo suits their mediocrity and reinforces their egos. Which would be an ironic fate for the supposed "future" of social media. Almost none of the content, all of the toxicity. Why is it so hard for people to be respectful of others?

Mandatory img:

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

I almost quit my job today but I didn't have the courage to walk into my boss' office. (Vent)


I feel so awful. I have multiple panic attacks. I want to cry. My body feels like it is not mine. I want to quit but my legs are like noodles. I can't even get up.

I know it is all in my head (perhaps) but I really think people don't trust me anymore. I don't trust myself too.

Please don't send me any self harm alert. I am not thinking about that. I just want to vent.

US Senator Alex Padilla forcibly removed from Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference in LA.


I have never seen a US senator handled this way.
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice


Full text due to weird cookies banner

The Danish Ministry of Digitization is to completely abandon Microsoft in the coming months and use Linux instead of Windows and switch from Office 365 to LibreOffice. Minister Caroline Stage (Moderaterne) announced this in an interview with the daily newspaper Politiken. It comes just a few days after the country's two largest municipalities initiated similar steps. This summer, half of the ministry's employees will be equipped with Linux and LibreOffice. If everything goes as expected, the entire ministry will be free of Microsoft by the fall, Politiken summarizes.

The Ministry of Digitalization's move away from Microsoft is therefore taking place against the backdrop of a new digitalization strategy in which the Kingdom's "digital sovereignty " is given priority. According to newspaper reports, the opposition is also calling for a reduction in dependence on US tech companies. Just a few days ago, the administration of the capital Copenhagen announced its intention to review the use of Microsoft software. The second-largest municipality, Aarhus, has already started to replace Microsoft services. Stage has now told Politiken that they should cooperate and that it is not a race. All municipalities should work together and strengthen open source.

When asked how her ministry would react if the changeover was not so easy, Stage replied that they would then simply return to the old system for a transitional period and seek other options: "We won't get any closer to the goal if we don't start." So far, she has only heard from employees who welcome the move. But in her ministry, which is mainly concerned with digitalization, she expects a lot of interest anyway. She also assured them that the initiative is not about Microsoft alone, as they are generally far too dependent on a few providers.

As background to the move, the article also refers to the events at the International Criminal Court, where an email account operated by Microsoft was disconnected. This caused an uproar across Europe. In Denmark, there is also the fact that the new US President Donald Trump has been announcing for weeks that his country wants to take over Greenland. The island in the North Atlantic is a self-governing part of Denmark, and the outrage at Trump's proposal is huge. The desire to reduce dependence on US companies is therefore evidently even greater there than in the rest of Europe.

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

Republican South Carolina House member charged with distributing child sexual abuse material


A Republican South Carolina House member who prosecutors say used the screen name “joebidennnn69” has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of distributing sexual abuse material involving children.

RJ May was arrested Wednesday at his Lexington County home after a lengthy investigation and is scheduled to appear in federal court on Thursday.

An indictment says the three-term Republican used several online names including “joebidennnn69” to exchange files on the Kik social media network.

https://apnews.com/article/sex-crimes-south-carolina-lawmaker-rj-may-81901be6f700f24a99ba3346086f8b61

in reply to KittenBiscuits

Thank you for caring. If you need to or just feel it's best, there are all sorts of safe live animal traps out there, if you need it or any more coons relocated..

youtube.com/watch?v=xCZprBPFDV…

YouTube Music Downloader


Hey guys i have been using Navidrome to stream my music from my server and its been amazing. I primarily use YT Music because of discoverability so I have all of my "primary" playlists (about 8 of them really, but supporting a somewhat arbitrary limit would be nice) in YouTube.

Im looking for an automated way to download the music and keep my navidrome instance updated with a couple playlists. I started working on some Python script to handle it, but its just not working super well so i would prefer to use someone elses solution haha.

Anyone have any good recommendations? I tried this one but I couldn't actually find the music and it seems to only support one playlist at a time. It would also be nice to download the album art and set some ID3 tags too

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Lv_InSaNe_vL

Just to throw out an easy option: if the music is well-labeled on Youtube, you can get pretty close to that full suite with just yt-dlp by using --embed-thumbnail as a stand-in for album art, dumping your files with an “Artist - track - album” naming structure using the --output-template flag — then using an awk or python script as a second pass to add the artist/track/album names to each file as tags.

E: and in case it isn’t self-evident, you don’t have to give yt-dlp a URL for each track; it’ll work fine with a playlist URL.

This entry was edited (2 days ago)

Your username is your prompt, what does it look like?


Rerunning an idea, I'm curious how image generators have improved/changed.

Feel free to break up the words in your username, and let us know if you added anything like "a logo for..." Or "an avatar for..."

Let's run it through as many different generators as you have access to, and see what happens. You might just find your new avatar picture!

How level is "level" to the naked human eye?


I was putting up some wall decorations earlier today and was painstakingly realigning everything until it looked level to my eyes. It might be just a hair off, but if I don't correct it, I'll see the misalignment almost instantly and get bothered for the rest of time until I fix it. Has anyone investigated, or is there literature on the minimum perceptible angle from level to the naked eye?

Does the share button on pixeled do nothing?


I created a secondary Pixelfed account to test the share functionality, but none of the posts I've shared from my main account are showing up in the new account’s feed.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to rumimevlevi

if your two accounts are on a different instance, federation takes a while, your follow signals to your instance to synchronize the content from the other account, and it's not instantaneous, it's queued along the requests of everyone else on your instance.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

How to screen record regions while showing the region boundary?


I want to see either a persistent rectangle box on the edges of the region being recorded (anything outside the box isn't recorded), or dim the parts of the screen that aren't being recorded. I looked for screen recorders for hyprland & wlroots and didn't find any with this functionality. wf-recorder + slurp works for me but I want a boundary visual.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

Ghostty in review: how's the new terminal emulator?


A few months ago, a new terminal emulator was released. It's called ghostty, and it has been a highly anticipated terminal emulator for a while, especially due to the coverage that it received from ThePrimeagen, who had been using for a while, while it was in private beta.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

Airlines Don't Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS


Full text to bypass paywall:

A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected U.S. travellers’ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal CBP documents obtained by 404 Media. The data includes passenger names, their full flight itineraries, and financial details.

CBP, a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says it needs this data to support state and local police to track people of interest’s air travel across the country, in a purchase that has alarmed civil liberties experts.

The documents reveal for the first time in detail why at least one part of DHS purchased such information, and comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailed its own purchase of the data. The documents also show for the first time that the data broker, called the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), tells government agencies not to mention where it sourced the flight data from.

“The big airlines—through a shady data broker that they own called ARC—are selling the government bulk access to Americans' sensitive information, revealing where they fly and the credit card they used,” Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement.

ARC is owned and operated by at least eight major U.S. airlines, other publicly released documents show. The company’s board of directors include representatives from Delta, Southwest, United, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, and European airlines Lufthansa and Air France, and Canada’s Air Canada. More than 240 airlines depend on ARC for ticket settlement services.

****Do you work at ARC or an agency that uses ARC data? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.****

ARC’s other lines of business include being the conduit between airlines and travel agencies, finding travel trends in data with other firms like Expedia, and fraud prevention, according to material on ARC’s YouTube channel and website. The sale of U.S. flyers’ travel information to the government is part of ARC’s Travel Intelligence Program (TIP).

A Statement of Work included in the newly obtained documents, which describes why an agency is buying a particular tool or capability, says CBP needs access to ARC’s TIP product “to support federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to identify persons of interest’s U.S. domestic air travel ticketing information.” 404 Media obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

A screenshot of the Statement of Work. Image: 404 Media.

The new documents obtained by 404 Media also show ARC asking CBP to “not publicly identify vendor, or its employees, individually or collectively, as the source of the Reports unless the Customer is compelled to do so by a valid court order or subpoena and gives ARC immediate notice of same.”

The Statement of Work says that TIP can show a person’s paid intent to travel and tickets purchased through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories. The data from the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP) will provide “visibility on a subject’s or person of interest’s domestic air travel ticketing information as well as tickets acquired through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories,” the documents say. They add this data will be “crucial” in both administrative and criminal cases.

A DHS Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) available online says that TIP data is updated daily with the previous day’s ticket sales, and contains more than one billion records spanning 39 months of past and future travel. The document says TIP can be searched by name, credit card, or airline, but ARC contains data from ARC-accredited travel agencies, such as Expedia, and not flights booked directly with an airline. “[I]f the passenger buys a ticket directly from the airline, then the search done by ICE will not show up in an ARC report,” that PIA says. The PIA notes the data impacts both U.S. and non-U.S. persons, meaning it does include information on U.S. citizens.

“While obtaining domestic airline data—like many other transaction and purchase records—generally doesn't require a warrant, there's still supposed to go through a legal process that ensures independent oversight and limits data collection to records that will support an investigation,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told 404 Media in an email. “As with many other types of sensitive and revealing data, the government seems intent on using data brokers to buy their way around important guardrails and limits.”

CBP’s contract with ARC started in June 2024 and may extend to 2029, according to the documents. The CBP contract 404 Media obtained documents for was an $11,025 transaction. Last Tuesday, a public procurement database added a $6,847.50 update to that contract, which said it was exercising “Option Year 1,” meaning it was extending the contract. The documents are redacted but briefly mention CBP’s OPR, or Office of Professional Responsibility, which in part investigates corruption by CBP employees.

“CBP is committed to protecting individuals’ privacy during the execution of its mission to protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nation’s economic prosperity. CBP follows a robust privacy policy as we protect the homeland through the air, land and maritime environments against illegal entry, illicit activity or other threats to national sovereignty and economic security,” a CBP spokesperson said in a statement. CBP added that the data is only used when an OPR investigation is open and the agency needs to locate someone related to that investigation. The agency said the data can act as a good starting point to identify a relevant flight record before then getting more information through legal processes.

On May 1, ICE published details about its own ARC data purchase. In response, on May 2, 404 Media filed FOIA requests with ICE and a range of other agencies that 404 Media found had bought ARC’s services, including CBP, the Secret Service, SEC, DEA, the Air Force, U.S. Marshals Service, TSA, and ATF. 404 Media found these by searching U.S. procurement databases. Around a week later, The Lever covered the ICE contract.

A screenshot of the Statement of Work. Image: 404 Media.

Airlines contacted by 404 Media declined to comment, didn’t respond, or deferred to either ARC or DHS instead. ARC declined to comment. The company previously told The Lever that TIP “was established after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to provide certain data to law enforcement… for the purpose of national security matters” and criminal investigations.

“ARC has refused to answer oversight questions from Congress, so I have already contacted the major airlines that own ARC—like Delta, American Airlines and United—to find out why they gave the green light to sell their customers' data to the government,” Wyden’s statement added.

U.S. law enforcement agencies have repeatedly turned to private companies to buy data rather than obtain it through legal processes such as search warrants or subpoenas. That includes location data harvested from smartphones, utility data, and internet backbone data.

“Overall it strikes me as yet another alarming example of how the ‘Big Data Surveillance Complex’ is becoming the digital age version of the Military-Industrial Complex,” Laperruque says, referring to the purchase of airline data.

“It's clear the Data Broker Loophole is pushing the government back towards a pernicious ‘collect it all’ mentality, gobbling up as much sensitive data as it can about all Americans by default. A decade ago the public rejected that approach, and Congress passed surveillance reform legislation that banned domestic bulk collection. Clearly it's time for Congress to step in again, and stop the Data Broker Loophole from being used to circumvent that ban,” he added.

According to ARC’s website, the company only introduced multifactor authentication on May 15.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)