Beta logo, with winged snake wrapped around

beta.vero.site

obviously, a held item you can use to Mega Evolve into a betaveros.

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 (summer 2022) a security software engineer at Zoom by way of Keybase. My other major hobby is puzzlehunts; last year, I ran the 2020 Galactic Puzzle Hunt with ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈, after having written and run the 2021 MIT Mystery Hunt with them.

Previously, I finished a Masters of Engineering at MIT in computational music in 2020. Before that, I graduated from MIT (undergrad) with a double major in mathematics and computer science in 2019, and even earlier, I interned at SingleStore (formerly memSQL) and 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

Tech I've been involved with

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.

Blog highlights

My blog is very all over the place, but here's a very short list of posts that are some combination of popular and personal favorites.

Collecting this list made me realize that how much I like a post is bizarrely correlated with the length of the title I give it.

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.

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.

Not more about me

My first and last name are very common. I am not any of the following people:

Art

art by Trevor Fox Red dragon and rider. Digital illustration.