The directed next-to-shortest path problem was solved by 2 undergrads! arxiv.org/abs/2511.04345 Look out for Kuowen Chen and Yiran Zhang this PhD application cycle.

\'Edouard Bonnet, Tuukka Korhonen, Hung Le, Jason Li, Tom\'a\v{s} Masa\v{r}\'ik: Separator Theorem for Minor-Free Graphs in Linear Time https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01587 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.01587 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.01587

I hate conference deadlines, but somehow, deadlines make magic happen. A week ago, we had a jumble of texts, but now we have what looks like a nice paper.

The connection between distributed algorithms and descriptive set theory featured in Quanta: www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-bridge...

I used AI to create an easier-to-navigate schedule for SODA and SOSA 26 here: soda26.netlify.app The original one is hard to see the overview. meetings.siam.org/program.cfm?...

Kuowen Chen, Nicole Wein, Yiran Zhang: A Polynomial-Time Algorithm for the Next-to-Shortest Path Problem on Positively Weighted Directed Graphs https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.04345 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.04345 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.04345

📢 Our first TCS+ talk of the season will be Wednesday, Oct 8 (10amPT, 1pm ET, 19:00 CEST): Janani Sundaresan, from U Waterloo, will tell us how "Distributed Triangle Detection is Hard in Few Rounds"! RSVP to receive the link (available one day prior to the talk): forms.gle/sHdV8uoKYVpq... #TCSSky

Some questions on spanners in my talk at the Simons Institute. Since the talk, progress has been made on a few questions, but most are open. minorfree.github.io/SpannerQues/