(2024) - Sebastien Macke - Keeping up with the Pwnses

## The Infosec Firehose Problem

Sebastien Macke of L'atelier introduces Talkback, an internal tool built to tame security news overload. Before Talkback, the team relied on Twitter, Reddit, and chat, seeing the same links reposted endlessly while spending hours scrolling.

## How Talkback Works

Talkback ingests resources into a searchable database. Seeds come from Reddit, Twitter, and conference archives; it then discovers RSS feeds for high-value source sites and auto-subscribes when reputation scores justify tracking.

## Scoring and Curation

Each item gets a heat score based on social popularity and whether trusted curators previously featured the source domain. Simple rules flag news versus technical content, and separate menus let users focus on research write-ups instead of headlines.

## Open Sourcing the Approach

Macke shares the pipeline so others can replicate curated, deduplicated infosec reading lists. Talkback aims to make staying current efficient—surfacing signal once, ranking it, and reducing duplicate noise across platforms.