diff --git a/404.html b/404.html index 83476d0..7d7820b 100644 --- a/404.html +++ b/404.html @@ -4,4 +4,4 @@ 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/about/index.html b/about/index.html index 0f0a99d..4f73a15 100644 --- a/about/index.html +++ b/about/index.html @@ -13,4 +13,4 @@ My work focuses on Infrastructure Performance and Customer Engineering, specific 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/authors/index.html b/authors/index.html index 078ba32..48022b0 100644 --- a/authors/index.html +++ b/authors/index.html @@ -4,4 +4,4 @@ 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/categories/index.html b/categories/index.html index 2b1d236..83a9e8f 100644 --- a/categories/index.html +++ b/categories/index.html @@ -4,4 +4,4 @@ 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/index.html b/index.html index 6a8d668..9316c05 100644 --- a/index.html +++ b/index.html @@ -1,8 +1,8 @@ -Eric X. Liu's Personal Page
avatar

Eric X. Liu

  • +
\ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/index.xml b/index.xml index a28fece..e4496b6 100644 --- a/index.xml +++ b/index.xml @@ -1,6 +1,7 @@ -Eric X. Liu's Personal Pagehttps://ericxliu.me/Recent content on Eric X. Liu's Personal PageHugoenSat, 03 Jan 2026 06:23:35 +0000Why Your "Resilient" Homelab is Slower Than a Raspberry Pihttps://ericxliu.me/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/<p>In the world of self-hosting, there are many metrics for success: 99.9% uptime, sub-second latency, or a perfect GitOps pipeline. But for those of us running &ldquo;production&rdquo; at home, there is only one metric that truly matters: <strong>The Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF)</strong>.</p> +Eric X. Liu's Personal Pagehttps://ericxliu.me/Recent content on Eric X. Liu's Personal PageHugoenThu, 08 Jan 2026 06:02:38 +0000Why I Downgraded Magisk to Root My Pixel 2 XLhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/rooting-pixel-2-xl-for-reverse-engineering/Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/rooting-pixel-2-xl-for-reverse-engineering/<p>For the past few weeks, I&rsquo;ve been stuck in a stalemate with my EcoFlow Bluetooth Protocol Reverse Engineering Project. I have the hci snoop logs, I have the decompiled APK, and I have a strong suspicion about where the authentication logic is hiding. But suspicion isn&rsquo;t proof.</p> +<p>Static analysis has its limits. I found the &ldquo;smoking gun&rdquo; function—a native method responsible for encrypting the login payload—but understanding <em>how</em> it constructs that payload within a strict 13-byte limit purely from assembly (ARM64) was proving to be a headache.</p>Why Your "Resilient" Homelab is Slower Than a Raspberry Pihttps://ericxliu.me/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/<p>In the world of self-hosting, there are many metrics for success: 99.9% uptime, sub-second latency, or a perfect GitOps pipeline. But for those of us running &ldquo;production&rdquo; at home, there is only one metric that truly matters: <strong>The Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF)</strong>.</p> <p>My detailed Grafana dashboards said everything was fine. But my wife said the SSO login was &ldquo;slow sometimes.&rdquo; She was right. Debugging it took me down a rabbit hole of connection pooling, misplaced assumptions, and the harsh reality of running databases on distributed storage.</p>How I Got Open WebUI Talking to OpenAI Web Searchhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/open-webui-openai-websearch/Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/open-webui-openai-websearch/<p>OpenAI promised native web search in GPT‑5, but LiteLLM proxy deployments (and by extension Open WebUI) still choke on it—issue <a href="https://github.com/BerriAI/litellm/issues/13042" class="external-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#13042</a> tracks the fallout. I needed grounded answers inside Open WebUI anyway, so I built a workaround: route GPT‑5 traffic through the Responses API and mask every <code>web_search_call</code> before the UI ever sees it.</p> -<p>This post documents the final setup, the hotfix script that keeps LiteLLM honest, and the tests that prove Open WebUI now streams cited answers without trying to execute the tool itself.</p>From Gemini-3-Flash to T5-Gemma-2 A Journey in Distilling a Family Finance LLMhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/<p>Running a family finance system is surprisingly complex. What starts as a simple spreadsheet often evolves into a web of rules, exceptions, and &ldquo;wait, was this dinner or <em>vacation</em> dinner?&rdquo; questions.</p> +<p>This post documents the final setup, the hotfix script that keeps LiteLLM honest, and the tests that prove Open WebUI now streams cited answers without trying to execute the tool itself.</p>From Gemini-3-Flash to T5-Gemma-2: A Journey in Distilling a Family Finance LLMhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/<p>Running a family finance system is surprisingly complex. What starts as a simple spreadsheet often evolves into a web of rules, exceptions, and &ldquo;wait, was this dinner or <em>vacation</em> dinner?&rdquo; questions.</p> <p>For years, I relied on a rule-based system to categorize our credit card transactions. It worked&hellip; mostly. But maintaining <code>if &quot;UBER&quot; in description and amount &gt; 50</code> style rules is a never-ending battle against the entropy of merchant names and changing habits.</p>Abouthttps://ericxliu.me/about/Fri, 19 Dec 2025 22:46:12 -0800https://ericxliu.me/about/<img src="https://ericxliu.me/images/about.jpeg" alt="Eric Liu" width="300" style="float: left; margin-right: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1rem; border-radius: 8px;"/> <p>Hi, I&rsquo;m <strong>Eric Liu</strong>.</p> <p>I am a <strong>Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead Manager (TLM)</strong> at <strong>Google</strong>, based in Sunnyvale, CA.</p> diff --git a/posts/benchmarking-llms-on-jetson-orin-nano/index.html b/posts/benchmarking-llms-on-jetson-orin-nano/index.html index 1755c22..1491204 100644 --- a/posts/benchmarking-llms-on-jetson-orin-nano/index.html +++ b/posts/benchmarking-llms-on-jetson-orin-nano/index.html @@ -62,4 +62,4 @@ After running 66 inference tests across seven different language models ranging 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/breville-barista-pro-maintenance/index.html b/posts/breville-barista-pro-maintenance/index.html index 567476a..5d8ad91 100644 --- a/posts/breville-barista-pro-maintenance/index.html +++ b/posts/breville-barista-pro-maintenance/index.html @@ -25,4 +25,4 @@ Understanding the Two Primary Maintenance Cycles Link to heading The Breville Ba 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/index.html b/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/index.html index 558a712..72f033f 100644 --- a/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/index.html +++ b/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/index.html @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ Why Your "Resilient" Homelab is Slower Than a Raspberry Pi · Eric X. Liu's Personal Page
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/espresso-theory-application-a-guide-for-the-breville-barista-pro/index.html b/posts/espresso-theory-application-a-guide-for-the-breville-barista-pro/index.html index 96aeaac..5aea70a 100644 --- a/posts/espresso-theory-application-a-guide-for-the-breville-barista-pro/index.html +++ b/posts/espresso-theory-application-a-guide-for-the-breville-barista-pro/index.html @@ -20,4 +20,4 @@ Our overarching philosophy is simple: isolate and change only one variable at a 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/flashing-jetson-orin-nano-in-virtualized-environments/index.html b/posts/flashing-jetson-orin-nano-in-virtualized-environments/index.html index f9dbd87..fbdb43e 100644 --- a/posts/flashing-jetson-orin-nano-in-virtualized-environments/index.html +++ b/posts/flashing-jetson-orin-nano-in-virtualized-environments/index.html @@ -168,4 +168,4 @@ Flashing NVIDIA Jetson devices remotely presents unique challenges when the host 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/how-rvq-teaches-llms-to-see-and-hear/index.html b/posts/how-rvq-teaches-llms-to-see-and-hear/index.html index 35ab140..9949ddf 100644 --- a/posts/how-rvq-teaches-llms-to-see-and-hear/index.html +++ b/posts/how-rvq-teaches-llms-to-see-and-hear/index.html @@ -18,4 +18,4 @@ The answer lies in creating a universal language—a bridge between the continuo 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/index.html b/posts/index.html index a27961d..56072b9 100644 --- a/posts/index.html +++ b/posts/index.html @@ -1,17 +1,17 @@ Posts · Eric X. Liu's Personal Page

Posts

Posts

\ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/index.xml b/posts/index.xml index c353add..aee07a3 100644 --- a/posts/index.xml +++ b/posts/index.xml @@ -1,6 +1,7 @@ -Posts on Eric X. Liu's Personal Pagehttps://ericxliu.me/posts/Recent content in Posts on Eric X. Liu's Personal PageHugoenSat, 03 Jan 2026 06:23:35 +0000Why Your "Resilient" Homelab is Slower Than a Raspberry Pihttps://ericxliu.me/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/<p>In the world of self-hosting, there are many metrics for success: 99.9% uptime, sub-second latency, or a perfect GitOps pipeline. But for those of us running &ldquo;production&rdquo; at home, there is only one metric that truly matters: <strong>The Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF)</strong>.</p> +Posts on Eric X. Liu's Personal Pagehttps://ericxliu.me/posts/Recent content in Posts on Eric X. Liu's Personal PageHugoenThu, 08 Jan 2026 06:02:38 +0000Why I Downgraded Magisk to Root My Pixel 2 XLhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/rooting-pixel-2-xl-for-reverse-engineering/Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/rooting-pixel-2-xl-for-reverse-engineering/<p>For the past few weeks, I&rsquo;ve been stuck in a stalemate with my EcoFlow Bluetooth Protocol Reverse Engineering Project. I have the hci snoop logs, I have the decompiled APK, and I have a strong suspicion about where the authentication logic is hiding. But suspicion isn&rsquo;t proof.</p> +<p>Static analysis has its limits. I found the &ldquo;smoking gun&rdquo; function—a native method responsible for encrypting the login payload—but understanding <em>how</em> it constructs that payload within a strict 13-byte limit purely from assembly (ARM64) was proving to be a headache.</p>Why Your "Resilient" Homelab is Slower Than a Raspberry Pihttps://ericxliu.me/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/debugging-authentik-performance/<p>In the world of self-hosting, there are many metrics for success: 99.9% uptime, sub-second latency, or a perfect GitOps pipeline. But for those of us running &ldquo;production&rdquo; at home, there is only one metric that truly matters: <strong>The Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF)</strong>.</p> <p>My detailed Grafana dashboards said everything was fine. But my wife said the SSO login was &ldquo;slow sometimes.&rdquo; She was right. Debugging it took me down a rabbit hole of connection pooling, misplaced assumptions, and the harsh reality of running databases on distributed storage.</p>How I Got Open WebUI Talking to OpenAI Web Searchhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/open-webui-openai-websearch/Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/open-webui-openai-websearch/<p>OpenAI promised native web search in GPT‑5, but LiteLLM proxy deployments (and by extension Open WebUI) still choke on it—issue <a href="https://github.com/BerriAI/litellm/issues/13042" class="external-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#13042</a> tracks the fallout. I needed grounded answers inside Open WebUI anyway, so I built a workaround: route GPT‑5 traffic through the Responses API and mask every <code>web_search_call</code> before the UI ever sees it.</p> -<p>This post documents the final setup, the hotfix script that keeps LiteLLM honest, and the tests that prove Open WebUI now streams cited answers without trying to execute the tool itself.</p>From Gemini-3-Flash to T5-Gemma-2 A Journey in Distilling a Family Finance LLMhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/<p>Running a family finance system is surprisingly complex. What starts as a simple spreadsheet often evolves into a web of rules, exceptions, and &ldquo;wait, was this dinner or <em>vacation</em> dinner?&rdquo; questions.</p> +<p>This post documents the final setup, the hotfix script that keeps LiteLLM honest, and the tests that prove Open WebUI now streams cited answers without trying to execute the tool itself.</p>From Gemini-3-Flash to T5-Gemma-2: A Journey in Distilling a Family Finance LLMhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/<p>Running a family finance system is surprisingly complex. What starts as a simple spreadsheet often evolves into a web of rules, exceptions, and &ldquo;wait, was this dinner or <em>vacation</em> dinner?&rdquo; questions.</p> <p>For years, I relied on a rule-based system to categorize our credit card transactions. It worked&hellip; mostly. But maintaining <code>if &quot;UBER&quot; in description and amount &gt; 50</code> style rules is a never-ending battle against the entropy of merchant names and changing habits.</p>The Convergence of Fast Weights, Linear Attention, and State Space Modelshttps://ericxliu.me/posts/the-convergence-of-fast-weights-linear-attention-and-state-space-models/Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/the-convergence-of-fast-weights-linear-attention-and-state-space-models/<p>Modern Large Language Models (LLMs) are dominated by the Transformer architecture. However, as context windows grow, the computational cost of the Transformer’s attention mechanism has become a primary bottleneck. Recent discussions in the AI community—most notably by Geoffrey Hinton—have highlighted a theoretical link between biological memory mechanisms (&ldquo;Fast Weights&rdquo;) and efficient engineering solutions like Linear Transformers and State Space Models (SSMs).</p> <p>This article explores the mathematical equivalence between Hinton’s concept of Fast Weights as Associative Memory and the recurrence mechanisms found in models such as Mamba and RWKV.</p>vAttentionhttps://ericxliu.me/posts/vattention/Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ericxliu.me/posts/vattention/<p>Large Language Model (LLM) inference is memory-bound, primarily due to the Key-Value (KV) cache—a store of intermediate state that grows linearly with sequence length. Efficient management of this memory is critical for throughput. While <strong>PagedAttention</strong> (popularized by vLLM) became the industry standard by solving memory fragmentation via software, recent research suggests that leveraging the GPU’s native hardware Memory Management Unit (MMU) offers a more performant and portable solution.</p> <h4 id="the-status-quo-pagedattention-and-software-tables"> diff --git a/posts/jellyfin-sso-with-authentik/index.html b/posts/jellyfin-sso-with-authentik/index.html index 6b8af0a..597030e 100644 --- a/posts/jellyfin-sso-with-authentik/index.html +++ b/posts/jellyfin-sso-with-authentik/index.html @@ -71,4 +71,4 @@ Do not rely on header forwarding magic. Force the scheme in the plugin configura 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/mixture-of-experts-moe-models-challenges-solutions-in-practice/index.html b/posts/mixture-of-experts-moe-models-challenges-solutions-in-practice/index.html index 25db4ce..e7d8ca9 100644 --- a/posts/mixture-of-experts-moe-models-challenges-solutions-in-practice/index.html +++ b/posts/mixture-of-experts-moe-models-challenges-solutions-in-practice/index.html @@ -44,4 +44,4 @@ The Top-K routing mechanism, as illustrated in the provided ima 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/open-webui-openai-websearch/index.html b/posts/open-webui-openai-websearch/index.html index 0b62295..10a6191 100644 --- a/posts/open-webui-openai-websearch/index.html +++ b/posts/open-webui-openai-websearch/index.html @@ -86,4 +86,4 @@ This post documents the final setup, the hotfix script that keeps LiteLLM honest 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/openwrt-mwan3-wireguard-endpoint-exclusion/index.html b/posts/openwrt-mwan3-wireguard-endpoint-exclusion/index.html index a5b92f0..51697f5 100644 --- a/posts/openwrt-mwan3-wireguard-endpoint-exclusion/index.html +++ b/posts/openwrt-mwan3-wireguard-endpoint-exclusion/index.html @@ -98,4 +98,4 @@ When using WireGuard together with MWAN3 on OpenWrt, the tunnel can fail to esta 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/page/2/index.html b/posts/page/2/index.html index 7d6a596..0f6d7d5 100644 --- a/posts/page/2/index.html +++ b/posts/page/2/index.html @@ -1,6 +1,7 @@ Posts · Eric X. Liu's Personal Page

Posts

Posts

\ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/page/3/index.html b/posts/page/3/index.html index e83ccdd..bf6e521 100644 --- a/posts/page/3/index.html +++ b/posts/page/3/index.html @@ -1,8 +1,9 @@ Posts · Eric X. Liu's Personal Page

Posts

Posts

\ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/ppo-for-language-models/index.html b/posts/ppo-for-language-models/index.html index c166e31..f30e8bf 100644 --- a/posts/ppo-for-language-models/index.html +++ b/posts/ppo-for-language-models/index.html @@ -25,4 +25,4 @@ where δ_t = r_t + γV(s_{t+1}) - V(s_t)

  • γ (gam 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/quantization-in-llms/index.html b/posts/quantization-in-llms/index.html index 30cd7da..6542164 100644 --- a/posts/quantization-in-llms/index.html +++ b/posts/quantization-in-llms/index.html @@ -7,4 +7,4 @@ 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/rooting-pixel-2-xl-for-reverse-engineering/index.html b/posts/rooting-pixel-2-xl-for-reverse-engineering/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b378174 --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/rooting-pixel-2-xl-for-reverse-engineering/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +Why I Downgraded Magisk to Root My Pixel 2 XL · Eric X. Liu's Personal Page

    Why I Downgraded Magisk to Root My Pixel 2 XL

    + +4-minute read

    For the past few weeks, I’ve been stuck in a stalemate with my EcoFlow Bluetooth Protocol Reverse Engineering Project. I have the hci snoop logs, I have the decompiled APK, and I have a strong suspicion about where the authentication logic is hiding. But suspicion isn’t proof.

    Static analysis has its limits. I found the “smoking gun” function—a native method responsible for encrypting the login payload—but understanding how it constructs that payload within a strict 13-byte limit purely from assembly (ARM64) was proving to be a headache.

    I needed to move from static analysis to dynamic analysis. I needed to hook the function at runtime, inspect the memory, and see the data before it gets encrypted. To do that, I needed a rooted Android device.

    The only candidate in my drawer? An 8-year-old Google Pixel 2 XL (“taimen”) that hadn’t been turned on since 2017.

    The Objective + +Link to heading

    Bring this relic back to life, update it to the final official firmware, and gain su access to install Frida and tcpdump. It sounds simple, but 2026 tools don’t always play nice with 2017 hardware.

    Phase 1: The “I Forgot My Password” Hurdle + +Link to heading

    The first problem was mundane: I didn’t remember the PIN. My only way in was a physical Hard Reset, which relies on a specific sequence of hardware button inputs:

    1. Fastboot Mode: Hold Power + Vol Down until the familiar bootloader screen appears.
    2. Recovery Mode: Use volume keys to select “Recovery Mode”.
    3. The “No Command” Trick: The phone reboots to a broken android logo. To get the actual menu, you have to hold Power and tap Vol Up once.
    4. Wipe: Select Wipe data/factory reset.

    The Catch: This triggers Factory Reset Protection (FRP). Upon boot, the device required authentication with the Google Account previously synced to the hardware. Since I verified my identity using the original credentials, I could proceed; otherwise, bypassing this security feature would have been a significant roadblock.

    Phase 2: The Update Trap + +Link to heading

    Once in, I checked the version: Android 10 (QP1A.190711.020). This was ancient. The Pixel 2 XL officially supports Android 11, and I wanted the latest possible base for compatibility with modern tools.

    I tried the easy route: Settings > System Update. +The Result: Failure. The phone refused to pull the final OTA (RP1A.201005.004.A1), likely due to the Google update servers no longer prioritizing this EOL device.

    The Fix: Manual Flashing + +Link to heading

    I had to bypass the OTA system entirely. I downloaded the final Factory Image from Google.

    # Don't rely on OTA. Flash the whole valid state.
+fastboot -w update image-taimen-rp1a.201005.004.a1.zip
+

    Note: I used the -w flag here since I had just wiped the device anyway. This gave me a pristine, stock Android 11 environment to break.

    Phase 3: The Magisk “Time Travel” + +Link to heading

    This is where “modern tools meets old hardware” caused the most pain.

    The Hypothesis: Rooting a Pixel is standard procedure.

    1. Extract boot.img from the factory zip.
    2. Patch it with the latest Magisk app.
    3. Flash it back.

    The Reality: Bootloop. +I used Magisk v30.6 (the latest as of writing). The patch process “succeeded,” but flashing the resulting image caused the phone to immediately crash back to the bootloader with a “Cannot find valid operating system” error.

    Debugging the Bootloop + +Link to heading

    I suspected a regression in how modern Magisk handles the antiquated boot partition structure of the Pixel 2 (A/B partitions, but pre-GKI).

    I decided to perform some “software archaeology” and use a version of Magisk that was contemporary with the device’s lifespan. I grabbed Magisk v25.0 (released around 2022).

    1. Repatch: I patched the exact same stock boot.img using the v25.0 app.
    2. Reflash:
    # Flash to both slots to be safe
+fastboot flash boot_a magisk_patched_25000.img
+fastboot flash boot_b magisk_patched_25000.img
+

    The Result: Success. The phone booted, and the Magisk app confirmed Installed: 25.0.

    ❯ adb shell "su -c id"
+uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=u:r:magisk:s0
+

    Key Insights + +Link to heading

    • Don’t Trust OTAs on EOL Devices: If you’re reviving old hardware, the OTA mechanism is likely broken or unreliable. Go straight to the factory images.
    • Version Matching Matters: Tools like Magisk evolve. Using a 2026 root method on a 2017 kernel is a recipe for instability. Sometimes, downgrading your tools is the only way forward.
    • A/B Partitions: Always flash your patched boot image to both slots (boot_a and boot_b) to avoid active slot mismatches causing boot failures.

    With root access secured, the path is now clear to install Frida and finally intercept those elusive EcoFlow authentication packets.

    References + +Link to heading

    1. Google Pixel Factory Images
    2. Magisk Installation Guide
    3. Magisk GitHub Releases
    4. XDA Guide: Unlock/Flash/Root Pixel 2 XL
    \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/secure-boot-dkms-and-mok-on-proxmox-debian/index.html b/posts/secure-boot-dkms-and-mok-on-proxmox-debian/index.html index 02bef76..32aae13 100644 --- a/posts/secure-boot-dkms-and-mok-on-proxmox-debian/index.html +++ b/posts/secure-boot-dkms-and-mok-on-proxmox-debian/index.html @@ -59,4 +59,4 @@ nvidia-smi failed to communicate with the NVIDIA driver modprobe nvidia → “K 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/supabase-deep-dive/index.html b/posts/supabase-deep-dive/index.html index 52e7968..1adf14b 100644 --- a/posts/supabase-deep-dive/index.html +++ b/posts/supabase-deep-dive/index.html @@ -90,4 +90,4 @@ Supabase enters this space with a radically different philosophy: transparency. 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/t5-the-transformer-that-zigged-when-others-zagged-an-architectural-deep-dive/index.html b/posts/t5-the-transformer-that-zigged-when-others-zagged-an-architectural-deep-dive/index.html index 5e61254..a35e89f 100644 --- a/posts/t5-the-transformer-that-zigged-when-others-zagged-an-architectural-deep-dive/index.html +++ b/posts/t5-the-transformer-that-zigged-when-others-zagged-an-architectural-deep-dive/index.html @@ -30,4 +30,4 @@ But to truly understand the field, we must look at the pivotal models that explo 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/index.html b/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/index.html index 162f3aa..5408d73 100644 --- a/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/index.html +++ b/posts/technical-deep-dive-llm-categorization/index.html @@ -1,9 +1,9 @@ -From Gemini-3-Flash to T5-Gemma-2 A Journey in Distilling a Family Finance LLM · Eric X. Liu's Personal Page

    From Gemini-3-Flash to T5-Gemma-2: A Journey in Distilling a Family Finance LLM

    7-minute read

    Running a family finance system is surprisingly complex. What starts as a simple spreadsheet often evolves into a web of rules, exceptions, and “wait, was this dinner or vacation dinner?” questions.

    For years, I relied on a rule-based system to categorize our credit card transactions. It worked… mostly. But maintaining if "UBER" in description and amount > 50 style rules is a never-ending battle against the entropy of merchant names and changing habits.

    Recently, I decided to modernize this stack using Large Language Models (LLMs). This post details the technical journey from using an off-the-shelf commercial model to distilling that knowledge into a small, efficient local model (google/t5gemma-2-270m) that runs on my own hardware while maintaining high accuracy.

    Phase 1: The Proof of Concept with Commercial LLMs @@ -73,4 +73,4 @@ It turned out to be a syntax error in my arguments passed to the Trainer[89dc118]

    \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/the-convergence-of-fast-weights-linear-attention-and-state-space-models/index.html b/posts/the-convergence-of-fast-weights-linear-attention-and-state-space-models/index.html index 16ab311..582776a 100644 --- a/posts/the-convergence-of-fast-weights-linear-attention-and-state-space-models/index.html +++ b/posts/the-convergence-of-fast-weights-linear-attention-and-state-space-models/index.html @@ -26,4 +26,4 @@ This article explores the mathematical equivalence between Hinton’s concept of 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/transformer-s-core-mechanics/index.html b/posts/transformer-s-core-mechanics/index.html index b0c85d4..e6f4fba 100644 --- a/posts/transformer-s-core-mechanics/index.html +++ b/posts/transformer-s-core-mechanics/index.html @@ -36,4 +36,4 @@ In deep learning, a “channel” can be thought of as a feature dimensi 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/unifi-vlan-migration-to-zone-based-architecture/index.html b/posts/unifi-vlan-migration-to-zone-based-architecture/index.html index 6e66354..5d8d24a 100644 --- a/posts/unifi-vlan-migration-to-zone-based-architecture/index.html +++ b/posts/unifi-vlan-migration-to-zone-based-architecture/index.html @@ -28,4 +28,4 @@ This article documents that journey. It details the pitfalls encountered, the co 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/useful/index.html b/posts/useful/index.html index 12b90a2..c6ecae5 100644 --- a/posts/useful/index.html +++ b/posts/useful/index.html @@ -9,4 +9,4 @@ One-minute read
    • [89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/posts/vattention/index.html b/posts/vattention/index.html index af77950..e89fcb8 100644 --- a/posts/vattention/index.html +++ b/posts/vattention/index.html @@ -31,4 +31,4 @@ The GPU TLB hierarchy is sensitive to page sizes.

      • 4KB Pages:< 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/series/index.html b/series/index.html index 259dffa..9b57202 100644 --- a/series/index.html +++ b/series/index.html @@ -4,4 +4,4 @@ 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/sitemap.xml b/sitemap.xml index 54ab83c..c7ca4c3 100644 --- a/sitemap.xml +++ b/sitemap.xml @@ -1 +1 @@ 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\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/tags/index.html b/tags/index.html index 93d28e5..9841a56 100644 --- a/tags/index.html +++ b/tags/index.html @@ -4,4 +4,4 @@ 2016 - 2026 Eric X. Liu -[89dc118] \ No newline at end of file +[3b1396d] \ No newline at end of file