Joe Slowik

Joe Slowik

@pylos.co

Threat Intel / CTI / OT / ICS / Critical Infra stuff along with other things. I genuinely care, and wish others did too. Website: pylos.co Training/Consulting: paralus.co

8.7K followers562 following4.6K posts

Joe Slowik reposted

Someone sent this to me as a response to the Defense of Japan. "Pending appropriations" is so quietly savage.

Sebastian Bae@sebastianbae.bsky.social

I shall continue to grow my stack of Defense of Japan editions in my office. 🤓 Link below: www.mod.go.jp/en/publ/w_pa...

"Our switch in health insurance providers is an exciting opportunity to enshitify your health care coverage with greater restrictions and reduced coverage!" I swear people in US need to really look at lack of single payer health care as a competitive issue keeping people in jobs based on insurance

I have declined jobs due to health insurance plan reasons. I have left jobs due to changes in health insurance reasons given the needs of my kids. This is a non-trivial issue for a lot of folks, yet here we are.

"Hey, the 4th-largest democracy in the world just elected an octogenarian directly implicated in two of the worst corruption/influence scandals in his country's modern history!" "Wow, that seems bad!" "Wait, let me tell you about the OTHER guy..."

Don't get me wrong, def better than the Bolsonaro clan. But like many other places the options are not exactly appealing in terms of opposition to the hard/extreme right.

Some serious ethical questions about this - I'm guessing a non-zero number of people swept up in subsequent operations by various authorities experienced a bit more than just simple detention followed by release (if they were released at all).

I'm fully aware we're talking covert ops performed by an org that's executed scientists and impliticly refers to children killed by exploding pagers as acceptable collateral damage, but this degree of publicly stated "meh" seems a bit much even by those standards. Just STFU.

What is the number of “non involved” persons worth sacrificing to detention, torture, or execution to protect an asset? Is it zero? A handful? “It depends?” Have some entities even considered this question, or does all fall away in the face of “the mission?”

A bit late by my standards, but got my Influenza and COVID-19 vaccines/boosters today. Current status: BOOSTED

“Oh hey seems like a reasonable overview of basic security steps for people WAIT WHAT THE FUCK???”

Jeez UCLA might as well be winless. I think there are HS games with more butts in seats than what I’m seeing on TV

The current PHP shitshow is especially vexing because on the one hand, it is very much a big deal, but on the other, there is no widespread SUCCESSFUL exploitation of this vulnerability YET. Despite the latter, a whole lot of asshats are hyping the former for clicks and soundbytes.

Craven, ass-licking piece of shit

Ron Filipkowski@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff to Vladimir Putin today: “You talk so much about Trump being a humanitarian, you are a humanitarian also, sir. And I salute that. I commend you.”

Employers: enact RTO's for no discernible reason, change insurance providers with no input from employees, and maintain an "at will" employment status where you can be let go anytime for any reason. Also employers: gee, you job hop a bit, where's your loyalty to a company?

Screw PHP. Let’s just turn the whole internet off and leave it that way. We’ll be better off.

Joe Slowik reposted

I have been trying to think of what Trump’s hideous “ballroom” project reminds me of — and I finally have it — it is Nicolai Ceausescu’s infamous and unfinished House of the People in communist Romania, which also brought awfulness to a lovely downtown.

Bumping this one because of how fucking accurate it is.

Joe Slowik@pylos.co

It isn't wrong, but holy shit. On the other side, at least SOMEONE is calling this out for what it is - and leave it to military Onion to do so since the actual "press" in this country fucking sucks.

Agreed with this take. Nuclear weapons and the high cost/low sustainability of high-end conventional conflict (see: Iran, also Ukraine but RU doesn't care about sending a million people into a meat grinder) mean peer conflicts like WW3 unlikely or very short/bad. But lots of near peer shit to come.

Thomas Cheney@thomascheney.bsky.social

Good article, I think my concern is less the prospect of WWIII and more that weve returned to a 19th century 'world of imperial violence' to borrow Lauren Benton's phrase, which doesnt preclude stumbiling into a 1914 but probably means more Ukraines and Irans. www.ft.com/content/3a56...

Joyce is right that IR firms are fucked right now, but is misdiagnosing the cause. The “vulnpocalypse” is less about volume - most CVEs are pointless noise - and more about speed for a fraction of the items emerging. Emphasizes what we already knew: “just patch” is not defense on its own.

Joe Slowik reposted

Replying to @lookitup.baby

Hacking a voting machine (as suggested in the teaser) isn't the problem. That's how you find and fix weaknesses. The problem is that they were told not to tell the vendor (or anyone else) what they found, so the result could be kept on the shelf and used to cast doubt on election outcomes. Yikes.

It isn't wrong, but holy shit. On the other side, at least SOMEONE is calling this out for what it is - and leave it to military Onion to do so since the actual "press" in this country fucking sucks.

The spirits responding to the emergence of right (and left!) wing populism in the 2020s:

I don't agree with all of it, but it would be nice if instead of being governed by ignorant bullies we were led by individuals that read (and understood) MacIntyre's 𝘼𝙛𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙑𝙞𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙚

Joe Slowik reposted

We're all acting like this is such an egregious thing to hear an American military commander say when we just lived through 20 years of them swearing they were "turning a corner" in Afghanistan and the Taliban were totally defeated year after year.

MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com

Yikes. In a desperate-sounding video, CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper insists the Strait of Hormuz is “controlled by the United States… not Iran” and “open for business,” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Joe Slowik reposted

In early 2025, I assumed the Trump regime would delete the Department of Justice’s press releases and other statements related to more than 1,000 Jan. 6 cases. So I downloaded them. We’ve now made them available to the public with a search tool. They can’t erase history. jan6memoryproject.org

jan6memoryproject.orgThe January 6 Memory ProjectA public archive of Department of Justice news releases and related court filings concerning prosecutions from the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“ShinyHunters” is the new “Anonymous” - FFS everyone just jumping on that “brand” now

Lise Meitner is the sadly overlooked and unsung hero of nuclear physics. Her career and her escape from Germany are both amazing stories, yet no films… www.sciencefocus.com/science/lise...

sciencefocus.comLise Meitner: the nuclear pioneer who escaped the Nazis - BBC Science Focus MagazineWe uncover the little-known story of the Austrian physicist who launched the nuclear age.
Andrea Devon@andreadevon.sheshed.rocks

Lise Meitner was the 2nd woman to earn a physics PhD at the Univ of Vienna and Germany’s first female physics professor. She fled Nazi Germany, helped explain nuclear fission, and has an element named for her. 49 Nobel nominations, she never won. Her male colleague did. #SheShed #VivaHerAlliance

Jimbo from Mount Greenwood who's been saying Tyson Bagent was the real QB1 on the roster but just needed a chance is very quiet tonight