Had a great time organizing (with Julian Mestre, R Ravi, and Mik Zlatin) a post #FOCS2025 2-day workshop on Trends in Approximation and Online Algorithms! Featuring an amazing lineup of speakers (from established experts to rising stars) + wiki edit-a-thon + gelato cart from Mapo 1/n

The summer internship applications for OpenDP, the Open Differential #Privacy project, are on! Open to undergrads, grad students, and established professionals (Visiting Fellows). Programs run from Jun 1 to Aug 7, at Harvard. Read more, and apply by ⏰ Feb 1: opendp.org/2025/12/15/o...

And that’s a wrap on 9 days of Theory Down Under!

PSA: This is not where the #FOCS2025 parallel session is held

#FOCS2025 banquet was right next to, fittingly, OPT

I wonder where this goes 🧐

It was great fun and an honor to moderate a Q&A session with such a distinguished panel!

The pre-recorded videos (for the talks whose authors opted in to submit one) are now available on our YouTube channel: m.youtube.com/@FOCS2025 They're also linked from the main website's schedule!

Help me complete this twist on the classic tongue twister: “She sold shiso by the seashore”

Exactly two weeks until #FOCS2025! The schedule is up, the sun is high, the workshops primed. Social activities: to be announced in the coming week. See you in a fortnight!

I believe eigen fly. I believe eigen touch the sky.

This looks amazing!

This new magazine by the @simonsinstitute.bsky.social looks really cool! And great name, too. It was the best of times. Also the worst-case of times. View online: simons.berkeley.edu/media/28058/...

Looking for inspiration for your #FOCS2025 pre-recorded talk? Check out this video youtu.be/Ygu5m-yPFhg

Reminder: the School of Computer Science at #USyd is hiring across the board, equiv. tenure-track positions! Join us at @sydney.edu.au! Deadline ⏰ December 1 🇦🇺

Usually, diagonalization is used to prove that the problem of deciding whether a given Turing machine M accepts a given input string w is undecidable. Some places, (eg Stanford CS103), make an analogy to the liar paradox. The following seems to more directly reflect the liar paradox. Am I right?

❌ paying for search engine optimization ✅ using a search term as the shop name

For nearly 80 years, an algorithm called the simplex method has been one of the most widely used tools for when a logistical decision needs to be made under complex constraints. A new update makes it faster than ever. www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

SODA notifications are in the inboxes, and this paper will be in the conference :) This is my second paper using extended formulations to prove running time lower bounds. I am surprised that people have been sleeping on this angle, but happy to fill in the gap where needed

Just realized I had bought “Indistractable” by Nir Eyal more than a month ago, and was too distracted to read it

Generating memes for a models of computation class

The Swiss Winter School in TCS 2026 will take place January 25-30, featuring amazing speakers Ankur Moitra (MIT), Avishay Tal (UC Berkeley), and Vera Traub (ETHZ). Application deadline: October 24 More information: theory.epfl.ch/WinterSchool...

It feels like an insult to the notion of objective reality to invoke “experts” to weigh in on a numerical fact you can verify with a pocket calculator

Official petition to the 🇦🇺 govt: make part-time PhD students' stipends tax-exempt! www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/... Stipends are low but at least tax-exempt. Unless they go part time, then it becomes taxable. This disproportionately affects PhD students w/ care duties, health issues, young children..

Hi, I’d like to report a wormhole: Departing Hong Kong 0 mins ago and arriving in Melbourne in 0 minutes.

Konnichiwa! My name is Weliam

Delighted to announce I have joined the board of the Association for Computational Learning (ACL) as Diversity and Inclusion Officer! With your help, let's strive to make the learning theory conferences and community more inclusive and welcoming to all! ACL website: learningtheory.org

Please nominate researchers for the #FOCS2025 Test of Time awards! This "recognizes papers published in past FOCS for their substantial, lasting, broad, and currently relevant impact." Nominations due by ⏰ Sep 15. Details and guidelines: tc.computer.org/tcmf/2025/08...

Wow, this is brilliant work by @samwho.dev! It even has a built in fidget toy (of course I kept clicking on the dog for the ❤️s).

As a highly visual learner, I’m lovijg this visual introduction to big O!

Really happy with how the algorithms display went at the University of Melbourne Open Day! We gave a demo of en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyer%E... using playing cards as votes and suits as the parties. Pairing up cards of different suits made it really clear what the algorithm is doing, IMO.

Guess what I found on a random walk in Melbourne

Can’t wait for part 2 youtube.com/shorts/IQp3a...

If you’re at a party that has six people, Ramsey theory says there must be three people who know each other, or three people who are all strangers. But if there are only five people, this statement is not true.

i think both sides are to blame here

The student and postdoc travel grant applications are open! focs.computer.org/2025/travel-...

I'm not saying that #FOCS2025 in #Sydney will be amazing, but here's a photo I took of the city center where #FOCS2025 will be, it'll be amazing

Sign in ice cream store Fluffy Torpedo in Brunswick: Fear not which choice you make, free will is an illusion

Just one more week left to apply for the International Visitor Program at SMRI! Please share this incredible opportunity with your #MathSky networks Full T+Cs and application: mathematical-research-institute.sydney.edu.au/internationa...

Accidental forced perspective at the beach

I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better

Soda drinks do not cause hangovers but #SODA2026 submissions do Good luck to everyone that submitted!

by applying a QR decomposition, any matrix can be written as a QR code multiplied by an upper triangular matrix

I know we are supposed to pronounce #melbourne as mel-bn but after coming back from sweltering Paris, it really should be pronounced mel-brrrrrrrr-n 🥶🥶🥶

STACS call for papers is out now

Are you a top US-based scientist wanting to relocate to Australia? We are now calling for formal applications from both Australian and non-Australian citizens based in the US whose work is internationally recognised as exceptional. 📅 Applications close: Aug 29, 2025 🔗 science.org.au/gtap/?utm_so...

Pleasantly surprised to see Melbourne’s magic coffee on the menu at a cafe in #paris 🙂 This is at Cafe Cayo in the 13th.

Our paper on local computation algorithms (LCA) for Knapsack–showing they cannot exist, then designing one :), with Yun Li (former MPhil student at @sydneycompsci.bsky.social) and William Umboh (@swumboh.bsky.social) will appear at #RANDOM2025! 📝 arxiv.org/abs/2504.01543

TIL pet means fart in French and that I just had nun’s farts (pets de nonne) for dessert. They were délicieux. #French (Image from Wikipedia en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nun%27s...)