iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 24/09/2026

Because PSPACE-Completeness still matters www.wsj.com/tech/ai/...

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

STOC call for papers is out. Deadline is November 2. acm-stoc.org/stoc202... New rules for the AI era: limited submissions, public posting and a required video. Is it a coincidence that the camera-ready deadline is April Fools Day?

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 04/09/2026

Bill posts on the passing of Richard Stearns and his lesser known work on automata. blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 23/08/2026

Sad news from Hervé Moulin, the ousted editor of Games and Economic Behavior, a journal focused on game theory that had a long history of collaboration with the computing community. Elsevier "strategic priorities" guts yet another good journal. gametheorysociety.or...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 14/08/2026

From an old U Chicago newsletter, a picture of me using the new cutting edge technology, "Electronic Mail".

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 22/07/2026

The new OSTP reports "Science: A New Golden Age" is not great for universities but here is a silver lining for the theory community. Report: www.whitehouse.gov/s... WSJ Gifted Article: www.wsj.com/politics...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 29/06/2026

Celebration for Avi Wigderson's retirement together with 30 years of the Computer Science and Discrete Mathematics (CSDM) program at the Institute for Advanced Study next June. www.ias.edu/math/eve...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 21/06/2026

I ran into the Finsler-Hadwinger theorem about squares in geometry, and asked Chatty to create an interactive demo. This is way too easy. lance.fortnow.com/Fi...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 18/03/2026

Charlie Bennett and Gilles Brassard win the Turing Award for Quantum Information Science. Most notably they developed the theory for a provably secure quantum key distribution protocol. awards.acm.org/about...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 24/02/2026

Oxford is one of the universities with a much nicer humanities building than computer science.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 16/02/2026

Joe Halpern passed away Friday at the age of 72. He was a leader in mathematically reasoning about knowledge. www.linkedin.com/pos...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 28/01/2026

Revisiting an old friend by visiting it for the first time. blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 13/01/2026

This one captures the reason we study Kolmogorov complexity. I also wrote a blog post when Dilbert ended. blog.computationalco... 2/2

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 13/01/2026

RIP Scott Adams www.nytimes.com/2026... Whatever you think of the man, his Dilbert creations captured the tech world. Just call me Dan. 1/2

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 23/12/2025

TIL that now, in Australia's summer, Brisbane is a half hour behind Adelaide in time despite being nearly 900 miles further east.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 08/12/2025

The architect Frank Gehry passed away last Friday at 96. Among many other projects, he designed the Stata Center, the CS building at MIT.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 19/11/2025

Every year I track the number of CS faculty jobs ads in the November issues of CRA News. It's not a perfect measure but it is forward looking to the upcoming job season. This year at 27 pages is down 69% from last year, 83% from the peak in 2022 and the lowest since 2011.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 22/10/2025

ChatGPT pulse yesterday on its own accord saw that I was teaching basic circuit in my class, and it gave me formatted notes on a high-level intuitive approach to the switching lemma. Even had the class date, time and location. Bowing to my AI overloads, I used the example in my lecture today.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 14/10/2025

You certainly shouldn't count on me for investment advice but I want to say something about trying to time bubbles. Here is a piece from a New York Times article on the tech bubble of the 90's. 1/2

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 13/10/2025

Which of these people is not like the other? The story of Bill and the two Charles Lins blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 24/09/2025

Whenever someone tells me "wait until you see what quantum and AI will do together", I'm reminded of this passage from the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 18/09/2025

When I went to college in the early 80's, it was a faux pas to wear a backpack using both straps. Four decades later I still find myself slinging my backpack over one shoulder.

Four college students each wearing a backpack over one shoulder

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 16/09/2025

Here's the answer to yesterday's question. Q: Suppose we have a Turing machine with a stay-put option, δ:QxΓ→QxΓx{L,R,S}. Can you create an equivalent Turing machine with only L,R moves without enlarging Q or Γ ? Answer in the picture. Formatted by AI.

See https://chatgpt.com/share/68c97b37-1b7c-800e-86ba-1278378c9534

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 24/08/2025

Bill wants to know: What's the best invention in the last 50 years? blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 21/08/2025

I was trying to explain tracks on a Turing machine tape by talking about using cassette tapes in my Walkman to a room full of students who probably don't remember the iPod.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 20/08/2025

I asked ChatGPT to draw me a computer to make a point in my class and then asked it it was a computer: Depends how you frame it. 1/3

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 11/08/2025

Bill goes down a rabbit hole, or does he? Depends on the definition. blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 30/06/2025

Bill on new and old proofs of the Pythagorean theorem. blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 29/06/2025

For the New York Times, perfection is just above average.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 26/06/2025

What if you took a 1-D "random" walk where in the nth step you switched directions if n is prime? What if you took a 2-D walk where you go up, down, left or right based on the last digit of the next prime? Alberto Fraile and Daniel Fernández guest post. blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 16/06/2025

Bill can't handle a White Sox loving pope. blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 02/06/2025

I had more than a few papers start this way. "There's something wrong in complexity and I have to fix it." Of course when I write the paper, it's "we extend the seminal work of ....".

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 23/05/2025

The Economist runs a cover story on Trump's war on science www.economist.com/le... while the New York Times breaks down the NSF cuts www.nytimes.com/inte...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 24/04/2025

I hit a Google Scholar h-index of 50!

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 27/03/2025

It's opening day, and for at least a few hours, everything is good in the world!

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 17/03/2025

America's favorite binary tree, part II sports.cbsimg.net/im...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 17/03/2025

It's time again for America's favorite binary tree, part I sports.cbsimg.net/im...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 29/01/2025

I'm giving some of my open problems to DeepSeek R1. It's not solving them but I love watching it reason out, like a grad student bouncing around ideas.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 22/01/2025

Learning about art from AI and what art says about technological change. blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 21/01/2025

The new Chicago Bears coach, Ben Johnson, is a Math/CS nerd. paper.suntimes.com/i...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 25/11/2024

Still "learning the finer points" like which color moves first. Google does say a better chess game is coming. blog.google/technolo...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 20/11/2024

Every year I count the number of pages of faculty job ads in the November CRA News. We're continuing to see a downward trend. 2020 was covid. The 2022 issue came out days before ChatGPT.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 11/11/2024

Chegg fell into the classic innovator's dilemma story, but the speed at which it played out is unprecedented. There's a propensity for acting slowly and carefully with new technologies like AI, but that itself can be a major risk. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 30/10/2024

Having a great time at FOCS 2024. blog.computationalco...

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 28/10/2024

I'm at FOCS this week. Come say hi.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 15/10/2024

The most popular thing I ever published: A photo of a St Louis BBQ joint. Highly recommended by the way.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 29/08/2024

Illinois is running a contest to design a new flag. www.ilsos.gov/news/2... One of the rules: "Designs cannot be AI generated." Since I'll never win without AI, I cheated.

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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 25/08/2024

At the aquarium yesterday I took pictures of the tanks and fed them into Gemini and had it explain what I was looking at (through the headphones). AI as an automatic audio tour! It could have been making up the names of the fish for all I knew, but it was still entertaining.

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