Stro

[Greg]

The end of a long road arrives today. The final film festival announces their selections for their festival.

Oddly enough, The Wallachia International Film Festival has opted to select Stro for their competition. I am well chuffed.

[cranefly]

...only hundreds of meters away from Dracula’s former court in the grand Old Town! ?‍♂️?

Wow.  Nice way to finish up.  Congrats!

[Greg]

I really want to win the dragon trophy.

[Drunk Monk]

I really want to win the dragon trophy.

[Greg]

Update on Wallachia: Stro won Gold. That would have meant something if there weren't three places above Gold.

But enough about trophies, I just looked at the earning report for Stro on our distribution partner, FilmHub. They received royalties from 2 of the 7 platforms on which Stro streams and I have to tell you, it's pretty exciting. All told for the period from April to May, Stro grossed $1.60! Granted I still have to pay back the $75 for resubmitting the film but still. The money is just rolling in. We'll get Mark his money back in no time.

[Drunk Monk]

Update on Wallachia: Stro won Gold. 

That's all I'm reading here. The rest is just noise.

[Greg]

Funny story. Again.

I entered Stro:TMDS in the Chambal Film Festival. It was accepted to participate. I received Laurels. I actually received a letter offering me accommodations if I was attending. Since it was in India, I would not be attending. Then, a few weeks before the festival dates, the festival was cancelled. C'est la vie. So much for those ten bucks.

Today I received a letter from the Chambal Film Festival stating that Stro has been made a Quarter Finalist for Season Five of their festival. Odd. I check their website. They had a festival back in October for Season 4. I have a letter saying Stro was accepted for Season 4. This is all very confusing. I have sent out an email.

[Greg]

The Weirdness continues.

At lunch, I saw an email from the Chambal film festival on my phone. As I started to read it, the email vanished. I didn't delete it. It's not in the trash. The email is just gone.

Similar thing happened a week ago. I saw an email from Chambal, but before I even got a chance to read it, the email disappeared.

[cranefly]

I just looked up gmail's unsend feature.  Of course, I don't know that they are using gmail.   Assuming they are, the default is a 6-second window to unsend an email.  That's pretty impressive if they pulled that off twice.  Then again, I used to work with Indians at Oracle, and my goodness they were fast.  Also, it's possible those Chambalans changed the default to something more reasonable.  Like 7 seconds.

[Greg]

I just don't know. I'm still waiting to hear back. India is 12 hours ahead. I'm guessing Ghost in the machine.

[Drunk Monk]

Clearly you've never been to a cyber cafe in India. They're crazy. At least they were when we went nearly a quarter century ago. 

Maybe Chambai is one dude, sitting at an Indian Internet cafe, wondering how much betel he can buy with another $10...

[Greg]

Mystery solved. Chambal FF sent me an email. They were simply telling me about Stro:TMDS being a quarter-finalist at their festival. I was part of season 4 and not the upcoming Season 5. They even sent Quarter-Finalist laurels.

[Greg]

This is pretty scary! Except for the fact the website continues to function and I can access the backend to make changes......

I guess I'll know more in 7 days.

Your Site Has Been Hacked PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO SOMEONE IN YOUR COMPANY WHO IS ALLOWED TO MAKE IMPORTANT DECISIONS! We have hacked your website http://www.strothemovie.com and extracted your databases. How did this happen? Our team has found a vulnerability within your site that we were able to exploit. After finding the vulnerability we were able to get your database credentials and extract your entire database and move the information to an offshore server. What does this mean? We will systematically go through a series of steps of totally damaging your reputation. First your database will be leaked or sold to the highest bidder which they will use with whatever their intentions are. Next if there are e-mails found they will be e-mailed that their information has been sold or leaked and your http://www.strothemovie.com was at fault thusly damaging your reputation and having angry customers/associates with whatever angry customers/associates do. Lastly any links that you have indexed in the search engines will be de-indexed based off of blackhat techniques that we used in the past to de-index our targets. How do I stop this? We are willing to refrain from destroying your site’s reputation for a small fee. The current fee is $2500 in bitcoins (BTC). Please send the bitcoin to the following Bitcoin address (Copy and paste as it is case sensitive): 3LKf6NWhJA8L5cmD5p9u6WksjW9SC2jauu Once you have paid we will automatically get informed that it was your payment. Please note that you have to make payment within 7 days after receiving this e-mail or the database leak, e-mails dispatched, and de-index of your site WILL start! How do I get Bitcoins? You can easily buy bitcoins via several websites or even offline from a Bitcoin-ATM. What if I don’t pay? If you decide not to pay, we will start the attack at the indicated date and uphold it until you do, there’s no counter measure to this, you will only end up wasting more money trying to find a solution. We will completely destroy your reputation amongst google and your customers. This is not a hoax, do not reply to this email, don’t try to reason or negotiate, we will not read any replies. Once you have paid we will stop what we were doing and you will never hear from us again! Please note that Bitcoin is anonymous and no one will find out that you have complied.

[thatguy]

That looks like a standard phishing email. I get some with almost the same text at work a few times a month. I just ignore them. 

--tg

[Greg]

It looked like a phishing email.

I sent it off to the FBI cybercrimes people.