iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 09/09/2026

You might think you're prepping for the apocalypse but have you seen Victoria's LORA mesh networks?

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 14/08/2026

This stage of Fight Club, but at least the SANS crew showed up. 🥹🫠

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 02/08/2026

Since we are doing eating and Australia this is how you eat fast food sushi in Australia - one of the cheapest quick bites you can get anywhere.

One giant unsliced roll with a injected soy sauce fish

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 31/07/2026

I hate this. www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQu...

-hacks4pancakes-
•
6m ago
• Edited 3m ago

I was kind of thinking of doing a TikTok or something to reflect this. I am so tired of saying the same awful thing about cybersecurity on here hundreds of time, I'm not trying to be a gatekeeper or ahole.

I mentor young people for free. I want them to love IT and cybersecurity.

There. Are. No. Jobs. I'm soeffingtired. Cyber is full. There are no jobs.

The market has crashed. You will not get a job from a bootcamp. You will not get a career from WGU unless you did insane self study before hand. You will not get a job with a Security+ or CEH. HackTheBox and TryHackMe mean less than nothing to HR.

You had better have a Bachelors in CS from a credible school or similar. You had better have your Sec+ and CySA or OSCP. You had better be networking, doing projects, and getting top scores in CTFs. You had better have at least 2 years working in full time IT on your resume. You're competing with people with 4+ who have been laid off.

I am ready to throw fists at schools and influencers selling it otherwise. You have to fight to survive in this field these days and almost all of us have taken massive pay hits. It's not due to some magic AI. It's a rush on the field with glowing sales pitches, and a terrible global market.

Don't get into cybersecurity, or IT in general frankly, unless you have a box of torn apart computer parts on your shelf and a folder of projects on disk before even considering it. You will have to hustle. You'll get treated like crap and paid like crap. Your life will be old grey hairs like me telling you about how we got a job at a bar and you'll be finishing your 3rd 10.000 dollar cert. I can't fix that. Do it only if you love this stuff enough to deal with the unbearable market and all the shit you'll deal with for months looking for a low paid job. I see mentees in tears every single week and I am at the end of my rope.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 30/07/2026

Even the man stubbornly fights the man in Australia This is the KFC reaction to a postal worker getting fired after an unauthorised KFC break (other stuff too, but everyone likes a good tale)

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 22/07/2026

I'm in Singapore, and somehow I accidentally booked myself a tiny Disney princess hotel room that I can barely move around in without bonking my shins. It is tremendously goofy and fun but I have also been on 70 hours of flights so I'm very tired

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 20/07/2026

Having an in person international or national event in America? Are you weighing factors like lodging and transport? Cool stuff to do? Here's a map to consider if any of your attendees may possibly, even remotely be LGBTQIA. And you care about them.

Source: Movement Advancement Project (MAP) LGBTQ Equality Maps

See original source of US LGBTQIA safety study for tabular data by state.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 21/06/2026

When you're an atheist, but you join the UUC to do human rights activism - and you get to sing songs from the book of the dead on Sunday whilst talking about First Nations rights

As each day ends. From the Book of the Dead, 4500BCE
As each day ends, may I have lived That I may truly say
I did no harm to humankind, From truth I did not stray;
I did no wrong with knowing mind
From evil I did keep
I turned no hungry soul away
I caused no one to weep.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 10/06/2026

By far the sweetest Reddit moment of my life

"I follow Mike Holcomb and Lesley Carhart and I'm really excited about OT"
"Hi, I'm Lesley!"

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 31/05/2026

I'm at my friends pageant and sister showed up with a sword. The world needs to know. Go Anuja!

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 22/05/2026

This might be my favourite slide on quantum computing, ever. From Peter Gutmann at #AUSCERT

Re-examining the Physics Experiment (ctd)
When you see the latest announcement of a quantum breakthrough
• Don't say: "We're all going to die

Do say: "Where did they cheat this time?"
(Easiest to wait a week or two

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 21/05/2026

Four years later, AUSCERT. I'm home.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 03/05/2026

I let the Chinese alt Tom shop dress me

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 01/05/2026

I fully realise Singapore legalised being gay only three years ago, and I still feel safer here every time I visit than large swathes of America. My trans friend hasn't been harassed, once. We spent the evening lesbian bar hopping. Americans get lied to, so dismally.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 26/03/2026

Lesley, what were you like in the 90s starter pack

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 24/03/2026

This is kind of a silly take. Niantic are absolutely opportunists, who certainly didn't see AI coming when Pokémon Go or Ingress premiered. What they've always been interested in is being a *source of user geolocation data* which they can monetise. First way was lucrative Pokémon IP. Now it's AI.

Headline about Pokémon Go existing to build training data for AI

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 20/03/2026

When the AI company has decided your name is Nathan. Or everyone's name is Nathan. Yet manages to get the email address right. But thinks you're in another country. I definitely trust this AI company to spot security gaps. I desperately want to reply that my name is Lesley and I live in Australia.

“Hi Nathan,

Following up since teams like yours are losing time and money every month to stricter cyber insurance rules. Most Midwest security leads now work with vCISOs to keep up, which puts your clients at risk of falling behind.”

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 08/03/2026

DNC is just trolling us at this point

“Congrats, you've been selected! There are fantastic Democratic candidates running for Senate around the country, so we're asking top Democrats to make their voices heard before MIDNIGHT!

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗺𝗶𝗱𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝘀?
𝗬𝗲𝘀:
𝗡𝗼:

- DSCC

Text STOP to quit”

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 07/03/2026

This photo of Brian McGinnis is going to be in museums and history books if we aren't wiped out in nuclear fire.

A Marine Corps veteran suffered a broken arm as he was dragged out of a hearing in the US Capitol by police and a senator.

Brian McGinnis called out during a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing in protest of the US attack on Iran.

He was dragged out of the room and a sitting senator broke his arm in the process.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 03/03/2026

When your AI stealing t-shirt art just gives up au.shein.com/store/home?i...

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 02/03/2026

***Begging *** universities to stop forcing your cybersecurity students beg for strangers' free time on the internet to do pointless interviews instead of even practical mentorship or projects. We're exhausted, understaffed and the market is hell. None of us have time.

Said request for free interviews with multiple zoom calls.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 23/02/2026

Tag your favorite application that has added an LLM agent nobody wants, babes

“What in the everloving LLM hell was that?”

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 15/02/2026

Oh no. I was just mostly joking. This is kinda depressing given how important the Great Lakes are for freshwater.

Search result: “Melbourne tap water often tastes better than Chicago's due to its source from protected, pristine mountain forests in the Yarra Ranges, requiring minimal treatment. Conversely, Chicago draws water from Lake Michigan, necessitating higher chlorine levels for disinfection. Melbourne's water is also naturally filtered by soil and stored in reservoirs for up to five years, improving taste.”

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 08/02/2026

All of us geopolitical hackers rn. It is us.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 06/02/2026

I've had it with weird nerds shitting on Academy so thankfully I'm a bigger weird nerd.

-hacks4pancakes- • 4h
• Top 1% Commenter
"How dare these 17 year old kids not act like Picard or Geordi?"
127
mojorific • 11m
Missing the point entirely. It portrays them as dumb, so they can't put them in unrealistic situations. "I swallowed my com-badge" is not something a cadet would say.
•••
个
vote 少
-hacks4pancakes- • 2m
• • Top 1% Commenter
I can't decide whether the worst medical incident I had to deal with as a Sergeant in the military with trainees was the 19 year old who shocked his friend with a camera flash capacitor or the 20 year old who tried to sterilize himself with a radar dish so no, these seem unfortunately plausible.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 05/02/2026

A letter like this gets released because it's the only way to maintain a paper trail… h/t Sahil Kapur

The Honorable John Ratcliffe
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
McLean, VA 22101
Dear Director Ratcliffe,
I write to alert you to a classified letter 1 sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
Por Wyler
Ron Wyden
U.S. Senator

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 03/02/2026

This is very entertaining social ad footage for a cybersecurity product in 2026

The hacker in the video is plugging in a USB A to a PC with ps2 ports

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 29/01/2026

I need to tell you another unbelievable Australian fact for Americans which is that you just fill up your car at the service station and go pay inside when you're done on the honour system

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 12/01/2026

S C R E A M I N G I've become a cybersecurity fixture not a person

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 08/01/2026

I don't know how Teramind managed to get two people's photos completely mixed up with somebody else, tag a dead person as the future of cybersecurity, and include someone under community legal action, but this is the most egregious case of LinkedIn lists I have ever had the luck to be included in.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 23/12/2025

Here’s my last US appointment for the same -after- insurance in USD

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