Many graph (algo) theorists mention Facebook friendships as example of a graph. Why? Surely, if graphs are useful, we can have better examples? Examples where there's actual interesting questions worth answering?

> This is perhaps the ultimate showcase that human computers remained important well into the mid-1950s: humans were solving LPs, by hand, to decide in what order the different computing tasks should be solved (also by humans). Off to a good start :)

Today I redesigned my website + started a blog :) sophie.huiberts.me/blog/2026/ha...

Ketchup plot twist: I think this LP was solved by hand?!

By-the-book analysis updated! • Better theorems • More experiments • Fewer bugs • Discussion section So very proud of this work

we live in precedented times

Has anyone written about the NETLIB LP instances, and what they are about? I would love to know what types of problems they are

The first commercial use of linear programming in the oil industry. This was pioneered in 1951. The food industry was fast on its heels. In 1953, a 'major producer' used LP to ship ketchup from plants to warehouses!In 1966, food processors were 'perhaps the second most active user of LP' Source:

In the 1960's, if you bought or rented a computer then you would get a free LP solver to use. These were major investments, with manufacturers like IBM spending ~$500,000 to develop such codes! Source:

Math genealogy is such an important resource. I don't understand how other fields can do without. My favorite use is to check if a potential reviewer is COI or not

Must-read story by @drilledmedia.bsky.social and @propublica.org. Beyond Denial: How Oil Execs Shaped a Landmark Climate Study @themadstone.bsky.social @amywestervelt.bsky.social @katieworth.bsky.social

MIP Europe 2026 will feature a poster session. If you wish to participate, make sure to register by July 10th. www.mixedinteger.org/EUROMIP/2026... (Poster submission deadline itself is August 31, July 10 is deadline to register)

Interesting paper today on analysis of paging algorithms

You can trust me with your institutional Bluesky account. I write serious and professional alt text

I've been thinking about power a lot, both because it underlies a lot of my work and because so many of the most consequential debates right now are fundamentally about it. This is the first post of a series where I try to make sense of it. open.substack.com/pub/senykama...

me: wolfram alpha can you convert a quart to liters? wa: its 827 km from quart (italy) to litér (hungary). that takes 56 minutes by aircraft or 4ms for light in a fiber optic cable 😊

Has anyone ever used the criss-cross algorithm? It has a Wikipedia page but I think its neither notable nor useful

26th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP 2027) Amsterdam, The Netherlands July 25–30, 2027 ismp2027.mathopt.nl

This is very kind, and I only saw it six days after it was posted. When I write things down or give non-research talks, it feels like shouting into the void. I have no idea if anyone hears it, cares or values any of it. So comments like this are genuinely surprising and inspiring

I made some animations for our next STOC video. Here is a preview of one!

MOSEK just posted their slides from SIAM Optimization. The talk by @hafriberg.bsky.social on their new simplex method implementation is pure gold!

We got in 😱🤩😱🤩😱🤩

🥳

Does this interview count? youtu.be/yruMOjjxdQg

Ed Klotz of Gurobi found one!

you can only know that you know what you need to know when you know substantially more than you need to know

There are still (free!) tickets available for MIP Europe 2026. Get one while they last

I can hardly overstate the impact that Seny's thinking has had on my approach to research. He writes about cryptography but the lessons apply to computer science much more broadly

for any BDG fans at #SIAMOP26

George Dantzig died in 2005. Does anyone have any color photographs of him?

When questioned about why the CACM had allowed such slop to be published, Moshe Vardi: "it is just a blog. Get over yourself" What a time to be alive!!!

Today at #SIAMOP26, Alex Black will explain why the simplex method runs in polynomial time! Session MS8 at 10:30

A legend, an icon and a trailblazer.

Recently I've been obsessed with this 1994 paper by Hooker. Among other things, he explains the (largely unexamined) empirical content of NP-completeness theory. More theorists need to read it

Krunal Patel makes a brilliant video series about the internals of MIP solvers. One of the best resources for learning

It's my favorite time of year: making a video for #STOC2026 🥳

I fully agree with this post by @gautamkamath.com on how preparing talks is one of the best ways to upgrade my own thinking. So, I certainly do not want to waste that opportunity by delegating it to AI. kamathematics.wordpress.com/2026/05/27/m...

Ambros Gleixner gives the first keynote of #cpaior2026 on the numerical correctness of MILP solvers. By solving LP relaxations, MILP solvers may need variables with long representations. That is at odds with the use of floating-point arithmetic, which begets the use of tolerance parameters. 1/N

The #STOC2026 TheoryFest will include an online poster session, held on Gather.Town, for those unable to attend in person! Details, and how to submit a poster: acm-stoc.org/stoc2026/cal... (Deadline ⏰ Friday, June 12) An initiative led by Ian Mertz and Ninad Rajgopal!

Suppose I have a tall skinny matrix A. I sample a random unit vector Z and solve maximize Z^T x subject to Ax <= 1 This process has an expected value, and it is a type of condition number of the matrix. Does this condition number sound familiar to anyone? Does it have a name?

"In the space of a few years, the UK has moved from a broadly inclusive status quo to being the most aggressively anti-trans developed democracy in the world." If you want to read up on just how bad things have gotten in the UK, read this article.

oh this is excellent. a clear and thoughtful read from top to bottom

Suppose I was a company planning a trillion dollar IPO, and if I wanted to do a mathematical proof-based advertising campaign to show off my Consumer Product. Would a billion dollars in compute be a reasonable budget?

When a mathematician finds a clever new argument, they get credit for that. But they also get a responsibility: to see what other problems can be solved now. When capital solves a problem, who inherits that responsibility?

And that's a wrap for the semester! All the talks of the season are now available on our website: sites.google.com/view/tcsplus... and YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@TCSplusSemi... Thank you to all attendees, and to our wonderful speakers—and see you in the Fall! #TCSSky #TheoreticalCS

Sensitivity analysis is getting hot again at the #mip2026 workshop! First, Anna Deza talked about new work on generalized sensitivity on linear programs and mixed-integer linear programs. 1/N

emailed viXra asking for their opinion on the arXiv AI policy changes. they're at least as credible as the guys complaining it's too much work to check that their references exist, so i feel they ought to have their pov represented

I submitted a speedrun for GDQ and I am more nervous than when submitting my research for publication 😅

May 9: computer scientist wins prize for his academic blog May 13: blogpost with genocide denial What must we learn from this?