How hard is it to create a bespoke gradescope-ish app for a particular pen and paper exam? My use-case is the following: I have a question paper that is all multi-select or short answer (fill in the blanks), and a bunch of scans from an exam that happened. +

Clocked ten years at IITGN today :) Thinking of writing a retrospective of sorts, if you have any ideas for what you might find useful in such a reflection, let me know!

ICYMI: a new phase of GIAN funding has been announced. If you are an eligible faculty member in India, great opportunity to play host, and if you identify as a "foreign expert" who'd like to visit, ping your friends here! Deadline: Sep 30. (1/2)

TIL that Pocket shut down :( Was my first read-it-later app. I haven't used it in ages, but still feel like I'll be missing it! I remember setting up IFTTT workflows to spam people when I tagged them on a pocket entry 😀

Happy to announce new editions of grok-a-book this term! We start effectively on the 8th of September (with a meet-and-greet type meetup on the 5th). Details in thread.

Recently vibecoded some slides in Manim via manim-slides: slides.neeldhara.com/evc/ The whole experience was... interesting. It's not replacing my current default for now, but might find ways of integrating it in modular ways.

Slightly niche question: does anyone have Obsidian web clipper working on the Orion browser?

Now I can give you a more complete reply, @neeldhara.bsky.social. The chess book I was thinking of is Chess: The Complete Self-Tutor by Edward Lasker. Here is a sample of the interactive style.

The closest thing for me as a young person learning about computer science was ‘The Turing Omnibus’ with its bite-sized chapters and categories. My memory is chapters would tell you what was next so you could follow the automata or cryptography ‘paths’. I only have the ‘new’ version.

Do you know of any examples of textbooks written in the style of interactive fiction?

TIL that Screenflow can’t import a MOV file generated by OBS studio :(

Anyone using the OBSBot Tiny 2 camera? Is it common for it to heat up and become laggy after about an 60-90 minutes of use? I don’t have AI tracking on and am using this on a Mac.

Slides for #EuroMIP25 are online!

My thoughts on the crucial importance of methodology on self-reported AI performance on mathematics competitions, and my policy on commenting on such reports going forward: mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1148814...

Has anyone tried AI video generation in Canva yet? What's your experience with it? Also couldn't figure out the pricing from a quick look, hard to imagine that unlimited usage would be included in the default plan...

We will be soft-launching a new initiative for teachers in the higher education sector in India, centered around a training program but will also feature a community and regular live events (workshops, talks, etc). Help us finalize a logo bu voting here: 99designs.com/contests/po...

I am super-pleased to be serving on the PC of the excellent and much-needed "Undone Science in CS" 2026: "to provide an opportunity to pause and reflect on the epistemological and ethical aspects of computer science". For much more information, please see: www.undonecs.org/2026/

Thinking it might be useful to compile interesting grading mechanisms. Would you share your favorite experiences from either side of the fence? I'm especially interested in policy innovations for large classes post-LLMs, but anything is welcome!

Encountered struggle from Math for Human Flourishing during our reading group today. It reminded me of this lovely video by Courtney Gibbons. I was little alarmed that the original tweet no longer exists: very glad to have found it on Youtube! www.youtube.com/watch?v=kenf...

Hypothetical grading policy. Would it be easy for participants to get grades that do not reflect their competence either in terms of underestimating it (i.e, the grading policy is unfair) or overestimating it (i.e, the policy is easy to game)?

We're looking for creative engineers/tinkerers/tool builders that want to engage with cutting-edge research questions in our lab at the @ncbsbangalore.bsky.social Please help me share the word!

Awesome new video about IITGN just dropped: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YB... Catch some wonderful glimpses, and let me know if you'd like to visit us!

I want to create a platform for crowdsourcing problems (the sort that go into exams/quizzes/assignments for undergraduate/graduate courses), with features like tagging, voting, comments, and easy export of problems/collections to typst/latex formats (with custom points). +

I've wanted to automate pulling up URLs of recent, unlisted videos on my YouTube studio into a plaintext list. Tried chatGPT operator, the now-sunset convergence AI, and some "agentic extensions" to Chrome, and nothing worked. Finally, today Fellou managed this with some nudging.

Is it just me, or is chatGPT operator slow to the point of being unusable, especially if you have to take control of the browser?

Back from #Paradox2025 at IITM! I have always had this sense that their online BS program attracts a diverse audience and "democratizes access", and it was nice to see this feeling being quantified in the numbers that were presented in the opening ceremony of the convocation. 🧵

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 new #math series in the New York Times, "Math Revealed," is aimed at everyone, whether you love math or not. Have a look! You can read it here for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Don't remember if I posted this before, but these slides by @henryyuen.bsky.social on the CHSH game and Bell's theorem are wonderful. On a laptop, on a phone, on a signal projected onto the clouds at night... henryyuen.net/fall2022/lec...

Lovable has been really nice for generating quick interactives/visualizations. Wanted to stare at some random tournaments and it did this on the first attempt: random-tournaments.lovable.app

I'm looking for examples of fake double counting proofs. Here's one example, and I'd love pointers to ideas for more for an upcoming tutorial/worksheet :)

I haven't used a reference manager in the longest time. Thought I'd take Papers and Zotero for a spin. The readcube site seems down, and as for the app, it won't parse metadata from a DOI, title matches seem really limited... meanwhile Zotero simply doesn't sync my libraries :(

🧩 Assume P=NP. Give an (explicit) algorithm solving 3-SAT in worst-case polynomial time, and argue its correctness and running time. #TCSSky #Puzzle

Anyone using Codex? What's your experience with it?

Experimenting with "AI first" email clients: Superhuman and Shortwave - mostly for search, not drafting :) An example of a thing I cannot do with vanilla search: "find me all the autograding solutions that I have tried out". +

Mock UI's generated by Bolt and Replit for a standalone peer review system. I am definitely setting myself up for a wasted weekend :) Equal parts excited about these experiments even being possible, and worried about all the unknown unknowns in terms of vulnerabilities and such.

Is there a peer grading solution that you recommend? Easily self-hosted or cloud on a reasonable budget? This is for a summer edition of Discrete Math with ~50 students. I'd hope for the s/w to let me upload a PDF rubric, do the matching and aggregate scores.

Brilliant talk (as always) by Rohit Vaish on the use of Sperner's lemma for solving fair division problems like dividing rent and cutting cakes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSCF...

New readings this summer! Proof and the Art of Mathematics by Joel Hamkins 05 May 2025 to 09 Jul 2025, 9AM IST, all weekdays Topics on Tournaments by John W. Moon 05 May 2025 to 01 June 2025, 9PM IST, all days +

Out today: a new special series from @quantamagazine.bsky.social about science in the age of AI! It explores the roots of AI in fundamental science, how researchers are trying to make sense of AI today, and the ways they’re grappling with an uncertain future. www.quantamagazine.org/series/scien...

Handy!

I'd shared a while ago that I'll be working on a discrete math text this summer. At the time, I also committed to sharing a draft of the first chapter this Monday, but that self-imposed deadline has, it turns out, whooshed past. I have instead some rambling thoughts... +

How do you cite memes in a book?

Claude's autocomplete in my .tex file 👀

I had the vaguest memory of watching a short video that made a case for base 12 being a better default. Finally rediscovered it today, thanks to llm search. The word I couldn't recall was dozenal! www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUAB...

So o1 pro mode is now 'legacy' while still being the main differentiating feature in a plan that's 10x more expensive? I assume o3 might be the new o1 and the pricing table is not updated, but it's still mystifying that there's no notification/explanation.

Firefox containers are turning out to be quite handy for doing multiple profiles/logins in a single window... even in a single workspace (as implemented by Zen Browser).

We're 3/4ths of our way through the second reading group on Grok-A-Book. Next up (in May) is Tournaments by Moon. In June, I plan to switch back to a non-technical read that's parsable in about a month. I have a couple of possibilities in mind, and recommendations are welcome!

Excited to announce the first in a series of seminars from the HOMI (History of Mathematics in India) initiative! This one starts off in an hour and is hybrid. Join us on Zoom if you can. More details at: seminars.historyofmaths.in/seminars/202... PS. The talk will be recorded.

Have you done a public speaking course (self-paced/cohort/hybrid) that you enjoyed very much? I'm looking for pointers to ones that preferably have a teaching focus and are India-based, low cost or free. Recommendations for courses/materials in Indian languages would be great!