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Reposted by European Association for Theoretical Computer Science

Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 23/06/2026

For the summer issue of the EATCS Bulletin, it was my pleasure to talk to authors of the Decentralized Thoughts blog: Ittai Abraham, Kartik Nayak, Ling Ren, and Alin Tomescu. I really like their opinions on how blogs can do more than papers and the theory and practice of blockchains.

A screenshot from the interview with the following text.

Question: Several of you contrasted blog posts with papers. What can a blog do that a paper usually cannot?

Ittai: A paper is written under very specific incentives. In practice, the incentive is often to get accepted by three reviewers. That is not the same as teaching the reader what is important. A paper is not always written to explain what really happened or what the reader should remember. A blog post has a different goal: it can simply try to improve understanding. It can say, “here is the idea, here is why it matters, here is how it relates to other ideas.”
A blog can also be updated. If you later find a better proof, a better explanation, or a useful external resource, you can edit the post and add links. That is much harder with a paper, and even a book update is a big event. A blog post can remain useful for years precisely because it can be improved.

Alin: Blogs are good at collecting scattered knowledge. For a primitive such as ECDSA, there may be many papers, but not one place that explains the scheme, public-key recovery, batch verification, malleability, why Bitcoin used it, why Ethereum used it, and what the practical tradeoffs are. A blog can be a focused survey of one idea or one primitive. It does not have to claim novelty; it can focus
on clarity.

Kartik: That is important because academic writing often does the opposite. To get a paper accepted, you emphasize the difference from previous work. But when you want to understand an area, it is equally important to know when two things are really the same idea in different languages. A blog post can make those similarities explicit.

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

the Summer issue of the EATCS Bulletin is now available! eatcs.org/images/bulle...

POV: you are reading on your ereader, sitting under the shade of a tree on a striped picnic blanket whose colors bear a suspicious similarity to the lesbian flag. There is a warm breeze that makes it comfortable to be outside, and because you have an ereader the wind doesn't perturb your pages. You are reading the 2026 Summer issue of the EATCS Bulletin and life is good

Picture i found on pixabay with the search term 'summer reading'. Thank you Perfecto_Capucine

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Reposted by European Association for Theoretical Computer Science

Anuj Dawar अनुज दावर انُج داور @anujdawar.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

the Summer issue of the @eatcs.bsky.social Bulletin is now available! eatcs.org/images/bulle...

eatcs.org

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

The 2026 Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing goes to the paper "Distributed Verification and Hardness of Distributed Approximation" by Atish Das Sarma, Stephan Holzer, Liah Kor, Amos Korman, Danupon Nanongkai, Gopal Pandurangan, David Peleg, and Roger Wattenhofer. 👏 👏 👏 Laudatio here:

podc.org

2026 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing – ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing

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Reposted by European Association for Theoretical Computer Science

Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 27/04/2026

I am honoured (and still a bit stunned) to receive the 2026 Presburger Award from @eatcs.bsky.social. This recognizes 1 or 2 young scientists for outstanding contributions in theoretical CS This honour is shared w my collaborators, students, institutions, & research community 1/7

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Call for nominations: Alonzo Church Award Subject: logic and computation Eligible: papers from 2001-2025 Deadline: April 17

eatcs.org

Church Award

European Association for Theoretical Computer Science

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Reposted by European Association for Theoretical Computer Science

Nutan Limaye @nutanlimaye.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

I got interviewed for my podcast in Bulletin of the EATCS! I am really delighted by this so, sharing it with you. eatcs.org/images/bulle... Thank you @eatcs.bsky.social and @neumannstefan.com. Here is a link to one of the episodes of my podcast. open.spotify.com/episode/3RNO...

eatcs.org

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Reposted by European Association for Theoretical Computer Science

Anuj Dawar अनुज दावर انُج داور @anujdawar.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I highly recommend this column by Hongseok Yang and two of his students giving a formal logic take on a powerful method from extremal combinatorics.

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

The BEATCS Viewpoint Column is my personal favorite, everyone always has an interesting take. This time, Wojciech Czerwinski gives his perspective on a recent discussion about the future of research in TCS Track B bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

bulletin.eatcs.org

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

The EATCS Bulletin and YouTube crew are always looking for contributions 👩‍🔬 Especially junior folks are warmly invited to write or film something 🎥✍️

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

In the Education Column, Ryan E. Dougherty and Tim Randolph report on their 2024 survey about courses in Theory of Computing bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

Picture of text. "somewhere in their computer science degree program. We identified the following trends:
1. Almost all responding institutions include proof techniques as part of
their CS curricula. We asked survey respondents about only one topic that did not fall under the heading of automata, computability, or complexity:
techniques for writing mathematical proofs. Proof techniques are a required part of the computer science degree program for about 90 % of respondents, and most of the remaining respondents specified that this skill was covered in a regularly offered elective course. This seems to illustrate a strong shared commitment to proof-writing among our sample. (Note that if proof techniques were part of a discrete mathematics class required for computer scientists, this would still be counted using our methodology.)
2. Almost all responding institutions cover at least one topic in automata theory, computability, and complexity. Approximately 90 % of institutions reported that they covered at least one ToC topic in automata theory in at least one course in their computer science curriculum. The same was true for computability and for complexity theory (each considered independently).
3. Automata theory topic coverage. Most responding institutions cover regular languages and (non-)deterministic finite automata in their computer science curriculum. Fewer, about half, cover context-free grammars and pushdown automata, and a minority cover other topics including other automata and language classes.
4. Computability and complexity theory topic coverage. Coverage of ToC topics in computability theory and complexity theory was somewhat less consistent than the core topics in automata theory. Most respondents reported covering Turing machines and basic computability and complexity-theoretic"

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Laurent Feuilloley has just joined as editor for the Conference Reports Column. In his first column for the BEATCS Spring issue, he reports on DISC 2025 🫡 I think Laurent would love your all's contributions! bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

bulletin.eatcs.org

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

The Concurrency Column surveys the theoretical foundations of runtime monitoring, covering classic regular properties, data-dependent properties, and hyperproperties. bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

Screenshot of first page, showing the Title "Foundations of Runtime Monitoring through the Lens of Concurrency Theory", the first few authors (Luca Aceto, Antonis Achilleos, Elli Anastasiadi, Leo Exibard and Adrian Francalanza from respectively Italy, Iceland, Denmark, Malta, Franca and Malta), and the pdf viewer's page count 2/42

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

In the Machine Learning Column, Pablo Barceló and David Saulpic interview Santosh Vempala, exploring explanations of hallucinations from a theoretical computer science perspective. bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

In the Computational Complexity Column, Edward Pyne and Roei Tell survey recent results on applying hardness-vs.-randomness techniques to the design of low-space algorithms. bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

bulletin.eatcs.org

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

In the Logic in Computer Science Column, Gyeongwon Jeong, Seonghun Park, and Hongseok Yang introduce Razborov’s flag algebras and explain their applications in extremal graph theory. bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

bulletin.eatcs.org

Bulletin of EATCS

An Introduction to Razborov’s Flag Algebra as a Proof System for Extremal Graph Theory

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

In the TCS on the Web Column, complexity theorist Nutan Limaye tells us about her Life of a Researcher podcast #CSTheory bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

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European Association for Theoretical Computer Science @eatcs.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Get to know Don Knuth in this BEATCS Spring issue interview by Chen Avin and Stefan Schmid bulletin.eatcs.org/index.php/be...

Don Knuth plays the organ. Photo credit Rajan P. Parrikar

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