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 hi@johnnylin.co.
stuff i've built
- neuronpedia - 2024 - accelerating ai alignment/interpretability research [tweet post]
- shortify - 2023 - summarizer for every app, including youtube [product hunt]
- lockdown privacy - '20-'22 - 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]
media / writing
- 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]
misc
- build meaningful things
- avoid reading content i already agree with
- one quarter-caff in the morning
- doing stuff > complaining > not doing stuff
- rearrange the furniture occasionally