Zhongtang Luo
@zhtluo
http://zhtluo.com / 羅中瑭 / CS PhD @LifeAtPurdue with @aniketpkate / Interned @Meta / Undergrad @sjtu1896 / Cryptography & Network Security / Codeforces @Zhtluo
Do you know that a system paper might be worth 3 AI papers in computer science according to some dubious metric? I launched an interactive website to measure the relative effort spent on one top-tier paper in each computer science field. cspubs.org
Maybe the real trick is to write your paper with a misaligned AI that always gives overly positive feedback on papers written authored by yourself , and hope the token distribution pattern influences the reviewer LLM x.com/owainevans_uk/…
New paper & surprising result. LLMs transmit traits to other models via hidden signals in data. Datasets consisting only of 3-digit numbers can transmit a love for owls, or evil tendencies. 🧵
In a parallel universe, there's no Bitcoin. No blockchain industry. Not even digital signatures to sign transactions. In that universe, U.S. science lacked the strong federal support it had here after WWII. We're headed that way now. Open letter from 9 U.S. colleagues and me:
An open letter from leading academics highlights the critical role of university research in driving crypto and blockchain innovation. They argue that the U.S. can't lead crypto innovation through regulation alone; it needs top-notch research. Opinion. trib.al/h1mMrF5
A petition to SIGOPS to adopt the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC) and retain its steering committee docs.google.com/document/d/1wK… (not sure whether it can be done by SIGOPS alone, but it's great to let the voice be heard)
During the weekend I finished building a little app I call "zkLabeler" (zklabeler.netlify.app). It's a zkTLS powered labeler for BlueSky. It's a cool application of zkTLS, and a fun learning experience of BlueSky's take on decentralization.
Wrapped up Stanford CS336 (Language Models from Scratch), taught with an amazing team @tatsu_hashimoto @marcelroed @neilbband @rckpudi. Researchers are becoming detached from the technical details of how LMs work. In CS336, we try to fix that by having students build everything:
Wut Chinese grad student admissions denied after preliminary acceptances purdueexponent.org/campus/general… via @purdueexponent
“Whatever Harvard’s past failings, core campus rights cannot and will not be secured by surveillance, retaliation, and censorship.”
BREAKING: FIRE statement on Trump administration revoking Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification The Department of Homeland Security’s decision to escalate its assault against Harvard University by revoking its ability to enroll international students is…
BREAKING: FIRE statement on Trump administration revoking Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification The Department of Homeland Security’s decision to escalate its assault against Harvard University by revoking its ability to enroll international students is…
This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus. It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments…
Gave one technical talk and one short talk at @IEEESSP . Definitely a memorable experience :) Photo thanks to Yanxue Jia (yanxue820.github.io). She is also hiring PhD students for 2026!
Glad to announce that I will also be presenting my recent measurement --- ICLR Points: How Many ICLR Publications Is One Paper in Each Area? --- at @IEEESSP 's short talk session, starting from 4.40 pm on May 13 (Tuesday).
Exciting week ahead as four of our projects will be appearing at @IEEESSP:
Sad to see the sunset of @usenix ATC. It owns some of my favorite systems research like UVM, QEMU, DTrace, ZooKeeper, Raft, not to mention Sendmail, NFS, Kerberos, X, Tcl, etc. It loses its identity in recent years, but is still among the most hacky conferences I truly enjoy.
USENIX ATC discontinued. usenix.org/blog/usenix-at…
Look to connect and exchange ideas!
Looking forward to attending TLDR's 20205 Conference in NYC on May 12-13. @EtherCS will present our work, Frontrunning on DAG-based Blockchains (eprint.iacr.org/2024/1496) on Day 1.
Looking forward to attending TLDR's 20205 Conference in NYC on May 12-13. @EtherCS will present our work, Frontrunning on DAG-based Blockchains (eprint.iacr.org/2024/1496) on Day 1.
TLDR's 2025 Conference tickets are now available for May 12-13, bringing together academics, engineers & practitioners to advance the state of DeFi research. → Keynotes: @gakonst & @segfaultdoctor → Program Schedule: thelatestindefi.org/schedule → Tickets: bit.ly/tldr-25
If you are a student and are considering attending @ACMSigmetrics 2025, please note that the Call for Posters is out now. Those presenting a poster will also receive partial financial support for travel. See sigmetrics.org/sigmetrics2025….
Checked out our new paper "Insecurity Through Obscurity," where we uncover smart contract vulnerabilities hidden under code obfuscation. We used our tool to analyze MEV bots. TLDR: $$$ at risk is quite big (see quote). arxiv.org/pdf/2504.13398
Applied to real-world MEV bots, SKANF finds vulnerabilities in 1,028 contracts and generates exploits for 373, with potential losses over $9.0M. We further identify 40 real-world attacks targeting the same vulnerabilities uncovered by SKANF, causing $900K in actual losses. (3/n)
Prof. Ninghui Li @ninghui_li 's statement on the matter surrounding Prof. Xiaofeng Wang's leave from IU: drive.google.com/file/d/17q7Bro…
