William Lin

Competitive Programming Lover
IOI 20 Winner
MIT '24

[Devansh (⚡, 🥷) @0xAsm0d3us]

If you, like many, think relying just on `cat` command's output is enough to be sure about the integrity of a bash file. Think twice, you could get hacked. Read below 👇

[Matthew Prince 🌥 @eastdakota]

Trying to come up with analogy to explain #xzbackdoor to my mom. Best I’ve come up with so far:

Imagine a grizzled, tired, old oil pipeline maintainer was approached by a plucky young kid who was new to the small town the oil pipeline passed through. Slowly, over years, the kid gained the old guy’s trust and did more of the critical work of keeping the pipe well maintained, often without the grizzled veteran checking too carefully.

Most the work was actually helpful, but unbeknownst to anyone, once he had unfettered access the kid sprinkled nearly undetectable explosives into the flow of oil that would only detonate when they were turned into gasoline that ran in the vehicles that made up the Presidential motorcade.

It would have been the perfect way to get away with assassinating the President but a random Prius owner, who hyper optimized his car’s performance, noticed the gas he was getting was slightly less performant so analyzed its makeup and traced the explosive back to the source, foiling the kid’s plan.

Don’t love it, and resulted in lots of questions around how such explosives would actually work and survive the refining process, but best I’ve come up with.

Any better suggestions?

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

I have no choice but to stop working and go on a walk while scrolling through reels until gpt4 is up again

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

Proof that geometry is the dumbest math oly category and that it should be abolished

[Google DeepMind @GoogleDeepMind]

AlphaGeometry is a system made up of 2️⃣ parts:
🔵 A neural language model, which can predict useful geometry constructions to solve problems
🔵 A symbolic deduction engine, which uses logical rules to deduce conclusions

Both work together to find proofs for complex geometry theorems.

[Kevin Naughton Jr. @KevinNaughtonJr]

today i met 3 YouTubers who are better than me at coding @not_nang @nicholastao_ @tmwilliamlin168

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@cory @lkronhubbard this guy created a prank harvard dating site and got 1/5 of the undergrads to sign up

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@walden_yan I'm just about to depart

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

The start of my summer! Visiting Bay area for 2-3 weeks!

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@realmichaelye @GrahamStephan @TomFrankly @linguamarina @GoodCashHQ @trykarat @johncoogan @sebfung @mandyhong08 @nateobrienn @charlie__chang @alexandravbotez Insane stuff, excited to see where GoodCash is heading!

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@Huhh27 @theaqdas I have put some random learning videos on my second channel (and I plan to continue)

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

Kind of funny how I got my best rating on Codeforces after a year of barely practicing

Kind of makes me want to get back to doing more, but I probably won't have as much luck in future rounds

https://t.co/tnyS2O8UxV

Screencast: https://t.co/wGlr6tdQCD

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@theaqdas I have learned much more by myself than I have learned through courses here

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@ChandrangsuB Doing stuff that ppl do in college

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@artbot98074012 What happens on Friday nights 🤔

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

I've been having a pretty consistent sleep schedule since MIT:

Monday: 12am
Tuesday: 12am
Wednesday: 12am
Thursday: 12am
Friday: 5am
Saturday: 3am
Sunday: 1am

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@NgongOliver Around 8

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@AkshitMangotra Nah something happens exclusively on Friday nights

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

Just moved into my dorm

So tired 😴 but I still need to do Facebook Hacker Cup

[William Lin @tmwilliamlin168]

@realmichaelye @justinkan Justin you gotta collab with Michael this dude is sick