johnny lin

hey, im johnny lin. i build stuff, write, and am lucky to be living in this time.

i'm currently in san francisco. reach me at [email protected].

neuronpedia - 2024-now - accelerating ai alignment/interpretability research [tweet anthropic mit tr deepmind]
shortify - 2023 - summarizer for every app, including youtube [product hunt]
lockdown privacy - '20-'22 - (no longer affiliated) block trackers & ads [forbes zdnet 9to5mac]
openly operated - 2019 - a transparency standard for the internet [the verge]
confirmed vpn - 2019 - openly operated vpn [techcrunch]
berry browser - 2018 - dark-mode web browser [appadvice economic times]
wifi widget - 2017 - a widget for your wifi [lifehacker]
hemingboard - 2016 - 20 keyboard with thesaurus, rhymes, puns [macstories]
memoji - 2015 - before apple did a memoji, i did a memoji [the cut complex]

open sourcing circuit tracing tools may 2025 [anthropic]
google deepmind has a new way to look inside an ai’s "mind" nov 2024 [mit tech review]
gemma scope: helping the safety community shed light on the inner workings of language models july 2024 [google deepmind]
planned parenthood suspends marketing trackers dec 2022 [washington post]
- following overturn of roe, helped planned parenthood disable sending potentially incriminating health data (scheduling, location, procedure details) to third parties vulnerable to state subpoenas
the button asking apps not to track you is a 'dud' sept 2021 [business insider]
- if a third party service was recording your ip address and location every time you used an app, would you consider that "tracking"? apple doesn't.
‘privacy nutrition labels’ have a fatal flaw jan 2021 [fastcompany]
- the nutrition labels are based on the honor system and never verified. apps intent on stealing your data can (and do) simply lie.
virus scanner or malware? beware app store fakes jun 2017 [medium]
- top ranking scam apps employed various tactics to fool users into paying hundreds of dollars a month. top story on medium for a few weeks, covered by cbs news, mashable, ibtimes, and others.