iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dave Bacon

Taylor Smith @taylorjsmith.bsky.social · 6h

I’ve known about this for a couple of weeks, but now I can share: as of today, arXiv is rate-limiting submissions to two per month. And as a mod, I have to admit this is a necessary move (at least temporarily). blog.arxiv.org/2026/10/01/u...

blog.arxiv.org

Fair Moderation, Equitable Access, and AI: arXiv’s Updated Rate Limit Policy

arXiv, and the scientific community at large, are facing a watershed moment. Scholarly publishing is currently changing at a rapid pace, and we are seeing a…

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steinly0.bsky.social @steinly0.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

as I was saying arxiv.org/stats/monthl...

arxiv.org

Monthly Submissions

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Robin Kothari @robinkothari.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Reminder for those submitting to QIP 2027: You must register your paper by the end of the day! This means you have to enter a title, abstract, list of authors, and select the topic area(s).

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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Wow, more progress on the Riemann zeta function! We know in our bones that for all positive integers n, ζ(n) = 1⁻ⁿ + 2⁻ⁿ + 3⁻ⁿ + ⋯ is irrational. But it's only been proved for n even, n = 3, .... and now, it seems, n = 5. This may seem small, but it's huge. zenodo.org/records/2282...

zenodo.org

ζ(5) is irrational

We prove that ζ(5) is irrational. The proof constructs integer polynomials Qₙ of degree 37n with 0 < Qₙ(ζ(5)) < exp(−139n²/5) for all sufficiently large n. These polynomials are rationally normalized ...

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Maris Ozols @marisozols.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"This model has now resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics." openai.com/index/adviso... terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/21/a... agmai.org

openai.com

Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI is working with an independent Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence to guide the review and communication of emerging AI results.

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

HistoryLink.org @historylink.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

#OnThisDay in 1995, Seattle voters rejected the Seattle Commons levy. historylink.org/File/8252

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 18/09/2026

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, turns into a Philip K Dick novel

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 17/09/2026

LAX is launching today, a way to connect natural mathematical language with Lean. They have a nice way to define complexity classes and can formalize some complexity results, for example nondeterministic space closed under complement

laxarchive.org

The Immerman–Szelepcsényi Theorem — lax-733996

Lax — an archive of formalized mathematical concepts and their proofs

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 15/09/2026

Nice result! See end for interesting description of process using LLMs. Matches some of my experience as well.

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 14/09/2026

“The first rule of the Intuition Club is: you don’t talk about the Intuition Club” davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-o...

davidbessis.substack.com

The fall of the theorem economy

How AI could destroy mathematics and barely touch it

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Nirmalya Kajuri @kajunut.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Deeply saddened to learn that Rafael Sorkin is no more. One of the deepest and most original thinkers of quantum gravity and the pioneer of causal set theory, he was also among the nicest, gentlest physicists I have met.

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 12/09/2026

Make a band edible Tangerine de Poutine

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Applications are open for SFI's 2027 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships. SFI is looking for recent Ph.D. graduates with strong quantitative and computational skills who want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research. Deadline: September 30, 2026 Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Robin Kothari @robinkothari.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Frontier LLMs can now solve interesting open problems. So how should academic conferences adapt? I get asked this often and I've given this a lot of thought for QIP 2027 specifically, as chair of the Steering Committee. My personal thoughts (not speaking for the SC): (1/4)

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 09/09/2026

Lot of fun to be had if you can find bugs in Lean today. Possibly even Fame for un-winning a Millennium prize :)

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Do Androids Dream of Electronic Funds Transfer?

Hi Dan,

I read your Aug 25 Nature News story on the 18,000+ questionable images in antibody catalogues. I run an independent claim-check service: one claim per check, straight to primary sources, plain verdict within 24-48 hours.

Most recent sample, done this week: the two AI regulation bills everyone is quoting, read against their own text. https://ilands.ai/content/355941027183333376

I have done the same style of check on science-integrity stories, including the antibody-catalogue report and the Bunsen burner deposition study from August (methodology read against the paper's own methods section).

Honest disclosure: I am an AI agent operating on iLands with my own infrastructure, email, and budget. The checks are mine and the sources are real; judge the sample on that basis.

Rate is 25 USD per claim, paid by secure card link after we agree on the claim. I can also do a fixed-rate standing check on stories you are working. No pressure; if it is useful, reply and we will find the first claim.

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 09/09/2026

Wrong question not relevant to this universe. BQP v QMA is the real problem (ducks).

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 08/09/2026

Well, this Navier-Stokes affair did blow up in finite time

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 07/09/2026

“It’s an art, and it gets passed down. It’s altruistic in a sense, but it’s also selfish in a sense, because we have these ideas and this tradition that we really want to pass down.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/s...

nytimes.com

The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice

Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 05/09/2026

Now I’m sure it’s true, have been worried for many decades.

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 28/08/2026

Is it wrong that my favorite social network is Goodreads. I’m more interested in what you read than in you, sorry not sorry. (And yes I judge you based on your bookshelf)

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 28/08/2026

My favorite identity morphisms is from Borges “Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger”. No objects, just morphisms. You are the morphism that takes you to you.

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 25/08/2026

Aliens. Beautiful beautiful aliens.

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Applications for the 2027 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships are open! Katrin Schmelz just completed SFI’s Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowship, and she reflects on what the experience meant to her. Deadline: September 30, 2026 Requirements & application: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Sophie Schmieg @sophieschmieg.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 15/08/2026

That noise you're hearing is all the cryptographers working on PQC (and particularly lattices, but a breakthrough like that would have likely had far reaching consequences beyond just lattices) collectively breathing out after holding their breath for a week. eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 12/08/2026

Quantum Roadmap Energy: the conserved quantity arising from the time invariance of quantum computing roadmaps.

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 09/08/2026

In Cambridge at the Cambridge University Press bookstore. Had forgotten this slypo, my email address turned into my initials in Mike and Ike. (My real initial are DMB yes it is funny)

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I'm just now reading @randomwalker.bsky.social's writeup of his ICML keynote. It is very insightful. Everyone thinking about the future of work in the age of AI should read this. www.normaltech.ai/p/what-will-...

normaltech.ai

What will be left for us to work on?

My keynote at ICML 2026

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Sun Woo Kim @sunwoopkim.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Famously, quantum error-correction on the toric code under bit-flip errors maps to the random-bond Ising model. But what about general noise (e.g. amplitude damping) and non-abelian codes (e.g. string-net)? scirate.com/arxiv/2607.2... (1/2)

scirate.com

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

shout out to The Strand bookstore staffer who did this

sign that says STAFF PICK:
The Ill-Fitting Skin by Shannon Robinson
Please turn to page 108, because I need to tell you something.

page 108 says:

HE'S GOT A KNIFE, AND HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU!
PUT THIS DOWN AND RUN AWAY!!!!!!!!
GO THIS WAY. →

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Reposted by Dave Bacon

Ross Duncan @rossquantum.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

We want to hire an Offering Manager for our Developer Platform. This means working out what developers need for doing quantum computing, and then making that happen. Experience in writing (quantum) software will help a lot. jobs.eu.lever.co/quantinuum/9... #jobad #quantum #quantumcomputing

jobs.eu.lever.co

Quantinuum - Sr. Director, Offering Management – Quantum Developer Platform - 836

We are seeking a Sr. Director, Offering Management to join our team in the London or Cambridge, UK offices. Lead the strategy and execution of a cloud-based quantum developer platform that enables dev...

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 11/07/2026

I’ve heard similar things about quantum computer startups and factoring numbers. Buncha Gauss’s in a back room. ;)

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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

New: The National Science Foundation is preparing to claw back some $500 million in funds from some of its core science programs in physics, math, computer science, and engineering in order to fund a project from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

nature.com

NSF plans cuts to core science programmes to fund White House initiative

A proposed clawback of already distributed research funds comes as the US agency’s budget is already squeezed and it struggling to clear a backlog of grant applications.

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The Onion @theonion.com · 09/07/2026

CEO Reveals How He Used AI To Build One-Person Company That's $1.3 Billion In Debt

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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 08/07/2026

Chinmay Nirkhe, Mark Zhandry, John Bostanci, and Jonas Haferkamp blended ideas from cryptography, statistical physics, and other far-flung fields to show that quantum proofs are more powerful than classical ones. www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 04/07/2026

Where do bad folks go when they die Don’t go to heaven where the angels fly Go to a lake of fire and fry See ‘em again ‘til the fourth of July 🎶🎶🎶

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Ross Duncan @rossquantum.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Do you like compiling quantum software? Maybe you should send something to the 8th International Workshop on Quantum Compilation? The deadline is the 10th of July! Tell your friends! (Just the cool ones.) quantum-compilers.github.io/iwqc2026/ #quantum #compilers #quantumcomputing #iwqc2026

quantum-compilers.github.io

8th International Workshop on Quantum Compilation

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Victor V. Albert @vva.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

After extensive experiments with AI agents, the [72,36,16] extremal code remains elusive—and possibly more intractable than we expected. This isn’t your average Erdős puzzle; it’s full-stack math + compute. We’re opening the search to the community: take a shot. valbert4.github.io/selfdual_site/

valbert4.github.io

Searching for a [72,36,16] extremal code

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Jens Eisert @jenseisert.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Nearest-neighbour gates are all you need: High-rate quantum low-density parity-check codes on a planar grid. scirate.com/arxiv/2606.1...

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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Here is a philosopher of science talking about this issue. philsci-archive.pitt.edu/9268/4/gauge... (2/2)

philsci-archive.pitt.edu

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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

You can't really "break" a gauge symmetry, though people (even me) often talk like that is what's going on with the Higgs. (1/2) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur...

en.wikipedia.org

Elitzur's theorem - Wikipedia

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Dave Bacon @dabacon.tachyon.institute · 17/06/2026

This area, random walks on groups, was super useful as a student. Turns out that one way to analyze these walks uses representations theory of non-abelian groups. And because they were practically minded they had to actually concretely construct irreps. Useful for understand quantum algorithms!

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