|\---/| americanfish13 is a
| o_o | cat/dog feeder
\_^_/ he is very cool and friendly and
trying to be artistic
he likes making things
on guitar or on these
comfy clicking pawboard things
he likes nyc and south beach miami
he likes little humanic things
he likes rainy days
he likes poloraid btw
he likes talk to other
he dont talk to much sometime
he is funny and friendly
fish,
meow.
- his cat
Seriously, who are you?
You hit the good one here, Who am I? Such a philosophical question that depends on what makes you "You". Honestly, I don't quite have an accurate answer for that. At the end of the day, we only see a part of who we are, and the different parts that others see define who we are to them.
From the part of me that I'm proud of the most, or things that interest people the most, it probably sums up to two words: Hacking and Art.
Outside of my ordinary life as a plain old high school weirdo who thinks too much, I focus a lot on doing security research in cybersecurity, or *"Hacking"* *(You can refer to it this way, but I hate the word "Hacked" since this word is so overrated and sounds phony-cool)*
This work really brought me the fortunes and appreciation I dreamed of. I am lucky that I am good at it. I made around 15k this year , mostly through security research on AI/ML (In English, AI securities that matter to AI companies like OpenAI, Google..., and matter to AI developers (There's actually a considerable amount of people doing AI development))
It's a hell of a competitive work, although I prefer to call it "freelancing". It's literally "research" - unlike those cool hacking scenes you see on TV, most of the time, it's just burying your head into sophisticated C++ code and dealing with binary-level debuggers *(You will really, I mean really, know how a computer works from assembly, registers, and other higher level computer terms. Probably 90% of people working in our research field know how to build a computer from scratch in Minecraft)* Most of the time you might spend over 2 days with no sleep on a project and end up finding nothing. The good thing is they're sort of worth it sometimes - imagine the excitement you get after spending weeks to find the treasure, and that moment you realize you did it. Other than that, 15k is lots of money for a 15-year-old, *especially back at the time when I received my first bucket of gold in Shanghai, where things are like 1/5 the price they are in the States. I could finally buy my friends dinners and things I wanted for years.* Of course, I am pretty careful when spending. I used part of the money I earn to start my startup "Questy" *(basically a SaaS Gig Economy Platform for campus)* - we're still working on that and hopefully we can see some good results :)
Of course, I did more cool-looking work other than researching AI. I found vulnerabilities in a governmental educational service that allowed me to change the life-trajectory of 2 million high-schoolers; in Evernote, which allowed users to control others' devices through shared notes; and in ManageBac that allowed me to hijack teachers' accounts by injecting JS through the RTE. I did interesting research in my school (related to HID 10301 formats and other stuff) that allowed me to bypass teacher authorization and arbitrarily enter protected buildings. Another fun thing to mention at any type of dining occasion: I was able to bypass security to send a stupid "meow" mail using my computer science teacher's account to every student in my high school. Of course, that's a long story and I got in lots of trouble for that.
Damn it, I just can't stop writing about these things I love about myself the most *(Even though these fun things that sound impressive to most people are much easier than most of the work. This sounds stupid but true)*. I don't want to sound as over-confident as those arrogant Silicon Valley jerks, but I just love to talk about these fun things I did (another thing you'll learn if you're a friend of mine for a long time - I am definitely not one of those arrogant Silicon Valley jerks, quite the opposite most of the time). I have this introvert thing where I am over-careful and overthinking things (or overly-nice but in a bad way) in social scenarios; my shrink said it's partly side-effects of the job, and I've been working on that.
Speaking of my personality, it's hard to say. Remember that "part-of-me-you-see" theory? People have different "perspectives" of me. I have an impression of being nice and friendly to some people I meet, being extremely inaccessible to others, or being a reckless and debating junkie to yet others. I am aware of and embrace it as a part of who I am, and I love it (Just don't mentally overload when I act like another person when I am triggered). I can't really explain what past parts of me made me the way that I am, but I would be happy to discuss it with you. Oh, btw I love both cats and dogs.
I love things. I would say I am an "observer", a big fan of our planet Earth, or a human enthusiast. This is so weird but I would love to mention it in case anyone might feel the same. I love observing things, probably another contributing factor to my overthinking head. I like to "observe" things happening around me - people, things, nature. For example, I would be on the street at Rockefeller Plaza in NYC, and just start to look around, taking glances at people, trying to sense how others are living their lives in the present by what they're wearing and how they act. It's interesting when you just enter "observation mode" in front of crowds of people. This inspired me to write something called "Rockefeller", something J.D. Salinger Holden-Caulfield-ish I am writing during breaks (fun fact: I bought a Holden Caulfield hat from Amazon, but it looks horrendous on me). Writing has been something so important yet casual to me since I had to write so much at work, but recently I started to "enjoy" it a little bit, thanks greatly to my English and drama teacher :) (With that being said, I still suck at it.)
That brings up the Art part of me (I was wondering how should I bring it up). I have a huge passion for music. I can't name which part of it but I listen to pretty much every kind of music. I am a huge Olivia Rodrigo fan, you'll know when you see these OR stickers on my guitar case; I am a huge SRV / John Mayer fan, I struggled to learn their licks and improv techniques for so long; Floyd Pink / Smashing Pumpkin fan (such a weird way to sort), Metallica fan; Taylor, Gracie, Chappell Roan fan (you'll be surprised to see how many guys from all-boy high school hates Taylor Swift just to make themselves look cool); Less well-known Syd Matters (pretty alternative), Touche Amore (pure emo metal). I also love Joshua Bassett for lots of reasons.
I play guitar, mostly bluesy and jazzy things, I love to Jam! (music theory guy) Creating things is probably one of the sources of this indescribable passion thing. I enjoy making music so much with my past guitar teacher back in Shanghai, Jake - He's one of these talented musicians who totally have the talent for it but didn't make it in TS band because of life. He's Filipino, he will tell you these little stories about how he found guitar strings, how his father gifted him his first guitar when he was young, how he started a band with his teenage friends, that they will have to learn every song through radio. I really love working and jamming with him, we would come up with a simple melody, or a bass line, then make an entire song in Logic Pro, recording vocals and guitars line by line. (Fun thing I once "stole" a super-cool guitar lick Jake wrote and showed it off to my friends as if I wrote it). I really miss it back then, one of the most mesmerizing experiences in my life.
Musical Guy, you probably can see it a little in me from what I wrote about me previously. I spent lots of time on Broadway, West 45th & 46th Street is probably my favorite location in NYC, and I love New York City. I watched Hamilton 3 times in Richard Rogers (I probably listened to it around a couple of hundred times on Apple Music), SUFFs once when I wrote this (One the best shows I have seen), and The Outsiders once, There was an interesting interaction I had with Brody Grant, Pony-boy from The Outsiders, one the best person I met with. I wrote about this in my past Instagram posted about (by here I really have to complain about Instagram's word limit), take a read if you want, If I didn't private my account for some reason.
I played Troy Bolton back in my middle school high school musical production, it was definitely stressful, and lots of basketball-ing playing Troy, but I would say we nailed it, I love our company so much and I miss it a lot. (If you ask about my range I would say I am a Baritone if I want to sing comfortably, I can be a Tenor when with mostly head-mix, but my head-mix is extremely unstable when I am nervous so I don't know.)