🚨 I am co-chairing ALT 2026 this year with Matus Telgarsky. The submission server is open so please submit your best work! Deadline: Oct 2, 2025 AoE Confernece: Feb 23-26, 2026 in Toronto! Website: algorithmiclearningtheory.org/alt2026/

The best move in chess isn't a function of only the current position because whether or not you can castle, capture by en passant, or draw by repetition/50 moves depends on what happened in the past.

The announcement from the University of Michigan that they will no longer provide their transgender patients with all of the healthcare options available is shameful, dangerous, and potentially illegal. www.freep.com/story/news/h...

Seriously, why doesn’t this platform have a bookmark feature? What’s the big mystery?

Registration is open for CCC 2025 in Toronto. Early registration until July 25: computationalcomplexity.org/Archive/2025...

cant believe that this response from a sitting member of Congress from Florida, to one of his Dem colleagues, is real

Horrifying teports from Palestinians were confirmed by soldiers www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

This year TCS for All Inspiration talk will be given by Sofya Raskhodnikova, Boston University on June 27th at our STOC 2025 TCS for All Meeting. Join us. We are relocating the TCS for All Rising Star Workshop to FOCS 2025 this year. Stay tuned. SIGACT.org/tcsforall/ #stoc2025 @ccanonne.github.io

Happening now!

Grounds for impeachment but let’s continue doing nothing and see the world end.

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

Speaking to my parents in Iran right now, and could hear the bombs being dropped on them in the background. Hope that helps the armchair experts on the internet.

Spread the word: there is a new prize in Theoretical Computer Science in honor of Luca Trevisan-- cs.unibocconi.eu/call-nominat... (Intent-to-nominate letters due by July 31.)

"My name is Greta Thunberg and I am from Sweden. If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces, or forces that support Israel."

Disgusting abomination

As part of STOC 2025 we'll be hosting an online poster session at the conference (6/23, 6-7pm local time). Our hope is that people who cannot come in person to attend STOC can still join in the festivities for a while, either as presenters or participants. Details below: acm-stoc.org/stoc2025/cal...

Disastrous news for graduate education in the US.

Congratulations to Ilias Diakonikolas, who received the Grace Murray Hopper award! awards.acm.org/award-recipi... This is for his contributions to the field of algorithmic robust statistics: "new techniques to robustly estimate high-dimensional distributions" (and algorithmic applications)!

Shameful and good riddance. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/outgo...

Microsoft is shutting down Skype. They keep all Skype credit on your account and don't seem like the funds can be refunded or transferred to any other service. In other words, they just steal your money. How is that legal?

This prosecution was wrong & I think public pressure on Dana Nessel worked. I feel such relief for our students and community members, as this was a complete surprise for them today. Dems largely own this mess, and we must identify the political entanglements - esp. with President Ono resigning.

JUST IN: University of Michigan President Santa Ono says he's planning to take the role of president at the University of Florida.

Iranian PhD student detained by ICE because NP≠coNP: “he didn’t sufficiently prove that he wasn’t a national security threat.” www.huffpost.com/entry/ap-us-...

Inclusive teaching means that you must leave all politics at the door when you teach. I agree with Boaz Barak on that. Any activism outside class though, even if it's of existential significance, would suffice for an abusive government to label academics as the enemy. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/o...

NSF moves to 15% overhead as well (beside stopping to award new grants and funding existing ones): www.nsf.gov/policies/doc...

Pro tip: If a website says your password is too insecure, pass your desired password through MD5 and use the result as your password. Your password is still equally insecure and memorable but the website likely won’t complain anymore :)

Trump’s Support Surges After He Points Gun At Nation

There is a word for this: Exile. Not sure why it’s not used.

I'm pretty sure Pete Hegseth also uses this "Look for Duplicates" feature:

Every time I try to use the "Look for Duplicates" feature in Apple Contacts, not only does it not merge duplicates but it even seems to replicate them and I end up with even more duplicates! Anybody has this issue? Now I have a dozen copies of each contact :)

(Alt Text:) "Rümeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street in my town one month ago." xkcd.com/3081/

📣 Call for Papers (EXTENDED DEADLINE!) 📣 The deadline for the IEEE BITS Special Issue on Error-Correcting Codes has now been extended by about two weeks. The new deadline for the 3-page "white paper" is now May 2, 2025: www.itsoc.org/sites/defaul...

Research faculty positions in the US are generally abusive. They shouldn't exist.

US-born American citizen falsely imprisoned by ICE, and judges can do nothing about it: "[Judge]said during the hearing that '[birth certificate] is indeed an authentic document,' but that she did not have jurisdiction beyond finding no probable cause for the charge." www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/...

US scientific exodus has begun "They were offering... three years of funding at their facility for about 20 researchers. On Thursday the university said it had received 298 applications in a month... The applicants hailed from institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Nasa, Columbia, Yale and Stanford"

Whose genius idea at Apple was it for the macOS behavior that when you minimize a window, another non-minimized window from the same app immediately pops back to the top, blocking windows from all other apps. Sometimes you have to minimize a dozen windows just to be able to see other windows again.

The next step is here: Professors getting their visas revoked. www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/new...

The situation with Trump these days:

TurboTax keeps trying to trick you to buy an upgraded plan that you don't need every few pages and if you're not really careful and click the wrong button there's no easy way going back. Is this even legal?

The submission deadline for the 2025 IEEE Information Theory Workshop has been extended to ⏰ April 21 AoE. Information Theorists: submit your work, come present it in beautiful #Sydney! www.ieee-itw2025.org/call-for-pap... #ITW25

Harvard FINALLY realizing that they've been fooled all along. Something that was trivial from day 1. Surprisingly, other universities still don't seem to have realized this. #Stupidity

If the U.S. government is going to take the position that, once removed from the United States, folks can’t be brought back, then it sure seems to me that federal courts should be reflexively and categorically barring *all* removals until they’re 100 percent certain that the removals are lawful.

another politically motivated firing at @umich.edu

This is DEFINITELY the right time to join and support your union. (Also it's ALWAYS the right time).

Embarrassed to say I did not join AAUP until this year. But if you are a faculty and staff member, they are representing your interests.

From immigrants to protesters to students and green card holders, now is the turn for naturalized citizens. Next will be US born citizens. Speak up before it’s your turn, it’s just a matter of time and nobody is safe. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

Abstract:

With my great students Yeyuan Chen and Nikhil @nikhilshagri.bsky.social, we explicitly construct linear bit-fixing extractors that extract all entropy with only a *constant* seed length (optimal up to a constant factor). This has many interesting consequences such as: (1/2) arxiv.org/abs/2504.03090

WTF? President of Columbia proudly clarifying that her act of intervention to block due process is unprecedented.