betaveros's site

Introduction

Hi! I'm Brian, most common online handle betaveros. I'm interested in information security, UI design, and puzzles.

About Me

I'm currently (fall 2020) a software engineer (?) at Zoom by way of Keybase; most of my other spare time is going towards the 2020 MIT Mystery Hunt with ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈.

Previously in 2020, I finished a Masters of Engineering at MIT in computational music. Before that, I graduated from MIT (undergrad) with a double major in mathematics and computer science in 2019. One and two summers ago, I interned at MemSQL; four summers ago, Dropbox.

I have many other interests. Computers-wise, I'm pretty interested in programming language stuff — functional programming, type systems, formal verification, and language design. Math-wise, I enjoy complexity theory and combinatorics. I have also been known to sing/rap/play instruments inside or outside the shower, and graphic design is, as they say, my passion.

Personal Links

Things I've made:

bcodex: a command-line utility in Haskell (as well as tiny JS app) for flexibly converting between puzzlehunt/CTF-y “encodings”. 4861707079 cHV6emxpbmc=!
paradoc: a stack-based programming language that can be golfed or written “literately”. Let's solve a small Google Code Jam problem solution with 22 bytes: vo"Case #%: "oJ{S$p}^P
See more projects...

Tech I've been involved with:

Mavo, a tool for creating web applications using only HTML and CSS; I implemented server-side rendering.
MemSQL: I worked on MemSQL Studio, a visual interface for managing clusters. In particular, I co-created and blogged about Visual Explain, a visualizer of the operations used to perform database queries.
See more tech experience...

Groups I'm part of:

6.004, MIT's "Computation Structures": I was a lab assistant for the 2018–2019 school year and a teaching assistant for the 2019–2020 school year.
SIPB, MIT's (oldest) student computing group. We run many services, like scripts.mit.edu, which is currently serving this website.
ESP, a student group that runs educational programs for middle- and high-school students. I've worked a lot on the open-source ESP website, a custom Django site we manage our programs with.
Galactic Puzzle Hunt, an annual puzzle event held by ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈ since 2017.
See more groups...

Puzzles I've written:

If you aren't familiar with puzzlehunt puzzles, I also wrote a fairly comprehensive Introduction to Puzzlehunts.

Several puzzles in the DP Puzzle Hunt, including the easy Sleep Talk and debatably-easy Now I Know… (I also led the project and edited many other puzzles).
Unsafe (2019 GPH, with Jakob Weisblat): A text adventure.
The Answer to This Puzzle Is... (2018 GPH, with many other members of Galactic): A puzzle in a single sentence. Or is it?
Puzzle of the Day (2017 GPH): The first, easiest puzzle of the first GPH.
See more puzzles...

More about me:

I also like Vim, RSS, sushi, fish (shell), Pentatonix, Ace Attorney, and lots more things.

Through my elementary to high school years, I lived on a small East Asia island whose political status is complicated enough to get its own Wikipedia article.

In my spare time, I improve my mostly irrelevant FAQ; randomly link to TVTropes in order to enhance others' lives; insert hyperbole into literally every sentence; politely encourage people to use dashes instead of hyphens when appropriate; and fly my dragon companion.

Links of Whenever

I have a collection of links. I have an even larger collection of links that grew too long and disorganized and got mostly culled, but here is a list of links that I sometimes rotate when I feel like it.

beta.vero.site