iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 25/09/2026

Something similar can be done with vibecoding the algorithm from the lecture and exploring how its parameters affect the quality of the solution and the running time. So far, the students really liked this.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 25/09/2026

Usually I let the students read alone first. Then they talk to a partner who read the same paper. Then I form groups of 4 students (=2+2) and let them update each other about what the other paper was about. This gives them a motivation to do a good job. (One can replace the papers with LLMs ofc.)

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 25/09/2026

Not a project but I like to do active learning and it works well. For instance, I teach something like locality-sensitive hashing during a lecture. Then afterward I let them read a paper that gives better bounds or heuristics (I tell them which parts to read).

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Aviad Rubinstein @aviad-rubinstein.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Some teaching applied more stuff adapt by encouraging students to use LLMs and raising expectations from course projects. For mathier classes like undergrad algorithms, I mostly rely more heavily on in-person exams :-/ Alternatives? What should a theory class project with LLM look like?

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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 23/09/2026

Looking for takes by TCS (Theoretical Computer Science) senior academics/researchers about AI and their discipline/research values. E.g., essays, detailed blog posts. (Specifically TCS: there is a lot from Maths, but while adjacent there are enough differences in culture it's worth distinguishing)

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 22/09/2026

It worked with several versions of ChatGPT 5.x Extra High (6 will work as well). My writing process has been to first write sentence fragments (=brain dump) & then flesh them out into full sentences later. My impression is that if the fragments have enough "signal", the LLM won't do too much harm.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 22/09/2026

When you read the replies (also on Twitter), a lot of people want a cap on the number of submissions per author. Is this really such a big problem? From what I have seen for TMLR and ICLR (if I remember correctly), the problem is rather that now there *a lot* of newcomers who submit one slop paper.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 22/09/2026

I share your experiences. Sometimes I got okay-ish results when I had a lot of bullet points, each of them a sentence fragment, and asked the LLM to form full sentences. Still required a polish but was generally a lot better than what I’d get otherwise (and faster than me doing it).

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 21/09/2026

I propose that top reviewers who are authors of borderline papers should have an increased chance to get these papers accepted. This is a much bigger incentive than free registrations, because it has a much more direct impact on people’s careers.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 21/09/2026

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Kira Goldner @kiragoldner.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I'm deeply concerned by posts from colleagues and friends that go beyond criticism of work toward public shaming of authors. We need to debate today's standards, and criticism is part of research. But we can do that without personal attacks in a forum that invites pile-ons.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 15/09/2026

So many exciting new algorithms and complexity results in the last couple of days. So many of them AI-assisted. Brave new world.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 08/09/2026

We will need to find the fine line between ”ignores AI progress” and “too speculative”. Probably the distinguishing factor here will be (even more than before) how supportive one‘s own community is.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 08/09/2026

Probably the smart/professional move is just to ignore this. I also considered writing that by the end of the project we will have an AI prompt/harness that automatically generates results of type studied in the proposal. I think this is the way to go but too controversial now to get funded.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 08/09/2026

I wanted to submit a grant proposal this week and ended up not doing it precisely because of this. I have no idea how in a project that, say, lasts from 2027 to 2032, I can promise results that cannot be achieved by an LLM in 2031 with one person prompting.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 06/08/2026

OK, I am back from holiday. I spent most of my time offline (hiking in Austria is great!) but also did quite a bit of reflection on academia and AI. I will have some things to say. One of my intensions is to be more active on social media and I will also start a blog.

The view from a mountain. One can see two lakes and other mountains.

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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

“I got Claude Fable to do this analysis and write this paper. I’m posting it here, but I haven’t checked it yet.” WELL CHECK IT THEN. WHY ARE YOU POSTING THINGS YOU CAN’T BE BOTHERED TO READ.

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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 14/07/2026

Herman Chernoff, of Chernoff bound fame, passed away a few days ago at age 103. He was, truly, an outlier, and someone who left a deep mark in the field. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_...

en.wikipedia.org

Herman Chernoff - Wikipedia

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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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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 29/05/2026

When I was AC'ing recently, I wondered why they had to invent Moltbook given that we already have rebuttal phases. Several times my impression was that the review was AI-generated, the reply was AI-generated, the response to the reply was also AI-generated...

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 28/05/2026

Apply to work with Alexander! Alexander already joined our TU Wien Informatics faculty retreat in February and he is one of my favorite colleagues — and also a great PhD supervisor. TU Wien is ranked 11th in Europe on CSRankings. The combination with CSH is super great for interdisciplinary work.

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Timothy Gowers @wtgowers.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

It's not necessarily the end of mathematics, but it's hard to see how the all the social structures that support the subject will be able to avoid major disruption over the next few years.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 19/05/2026

We have more than 80 computer science professors, including 20+ assistant professors and young full professors. We are 11th on CSRankings in Europe, among the top 4 universities in the German speaking countries. We have some amazing students and Vienna is a great city. Apply, it's good here!

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 19/05/2026

Besides the “moving target”, I think the issue is the complexity of the assignments. Long projects are good if the students have to justify their decisions, but this comes with *a lot* of overhead in grading.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 27/04/2026

Two most deserving winners. Congratulations!

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AITHYRA Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences @aithyra.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

AITHYRA is recruiting an AI/ML STARTING PI Generative Models, Large Language Models, Agentic AI, Active & Reinforcement Learning, AI-driven Scientific Discovery & Lab Automation, ML-driven molecular simulations... Job Ad: aithyra.at/fileadmin/do... Apply by 30.4.2026 #StartingPI #AI/ML #AITHYRA

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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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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 11/03/2026

Welcome to BlueSky, @eatcs.bsky.social! I suggest everyone to follow the new account to stay up to the date with news from the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science.

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TCS+ @tcsplus.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

The schedule for the upcoming talks (stay tuned for the May speakers!) can be found on our website: exciting times ahead! sites.google.com/view/tcsplus/

4 Mar, Wed 1pm
TCS+ Talk: Sophie Huiberts (CNRS)

18 Mar, Wed 1pm
TCS+ Talk: Christopher Gartland (UNC Charlotte)

8 Apr, Wed 1pm
TCS+ Talk: Rahul Ilango (MIT)

22 Apr, Wed 1pm
TCS+ Talk: Yichuan Wang (UC Berkeley)

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Johan Ugander @jugander.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Panos Ipeirotis (NYU): "How I started using exit tickets (short feedback surveys after every class) and processing them through NotebookLM to generate follow-up materials before the next session. The feedback loop went from one semester to a few hours." www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2026/02/list...

behind-the-enemy-lines.com

Listening to My Students at Scale: Exit Tickets, NotebookLM, and the Tightest Feedback Loop I've Ever Built

It started at a teaching workshop, last semester: Craig Kapp and Rob Egan presented a seminar at the NYU Center for Teaching and Learning ...

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Sariel Har-Peled @sarielhp.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

You can now use ipe in the browser! ipe-web.otfried.org/index.html

ipe-web.otfried.org

Ipe Web Edition

The Ipe extensible drawing editor

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Rasmus Pagh @rasmuspagh.net · 10/02/2026

My awesome BARC colleague @nutanlimaye.bsky.social is starting a major research project in algebraic complexity. Anyone interested in joining as a PhD student should check out the call (deadline March 1). barc.ku.dk/news/profess...

barc.ku.dk

Professor Nutan Limaye receives DKK 12.8 million for research on algebraic complexity

The project explores fundamental limits of efficient computation, linking algebraic methods with randomness and parallelism to advance complexity theory.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 23/01/2026

There is a third-party app for this, you can find it here: bsky-follow-finder.theo.io My impression with bluesky is that a lot of things exist but there is just no way of finding them. @nkgarg.bsky.social

bsky-follow-finder.theo.io

Bluesky Network Analyzer

Find accounts that you don't follow (yet) but are followed by lots of accounts that you do follow.

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 23/01/2026

TU Wien is now on the 5th place among all computer science departments at German-speaking universities in the Times Higher Education ranking. Excellent news! @informatics.tuwien.ac.at @tuwien.at

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Tatjana Chavdarova @tatjanac.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

🚀 I’m very excited to share that I’ve joined TU Wien as Assistant Professor, and that I've received a €1.8M Vienna Research Group (WWTF) grant for Multi-Player Artificial Intelligence. I’m hiring interns, PhD students & postdocs in Game Theory × ML. 🔗 Apply: forms.gle/k6xkkF4jse58...

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TU Wien @tuwien.at · 15/01/2026

Meinungen und Einstellungen sind selten schwarz-weiß. Ein Forschungsteam der TU Wien zeigt, dass sich Positionen in gesellschaftlichen Debatten oft überschneiden und nicht klaren Lagern zuordnen lassen. Das neue Modell analysiert dafür Interaktionen zwischen Gruppen. 💬📊 #TechnikfürMenschen

tuwien.at

Jenseits fester Pole: Was Netzwerke über Polarisierung verraten

Forschende der TU Wien entwickeln ein Modell, das Meinungen nicht als diametral entgegensetzte Pole interpretiert, sondern als überlappende Bereiche auf Gruppenebene.

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Martina Lindorfer @lindorfer.in · 09/01/2026

Save the date: @katta.bsky.social and me are organizing the Austrian Computer Science Day #ACSD on June 1, 2026 at TU Wien with the motto CS in Modern Society: a Sign of the Times! More info and program coming soon here: informatics.tuwien.ac.at/acsd (CC) @tuwien.at & @informatics.tuwien.ac.at

informatics.tuwien.ac.at

Save the Date: Austrian Computer Science Day 2026

Join us on June 1, 2026, at TU Wien’s Kuppelsaal for the annual Austrian Computer Science Day!

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Rasmus Pagh @rasmuspagh.net · 09/01/2026

Consider signing this petition regarding restoring free access to the ACM digital library: www.ipetitions.com/petition/res...

ipetitions.com

Petition Restore Fully Free and Open Access to the ACM Digital Library

Restore Fully Free and Open Access to the ACM Digital Library

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Rasmus Pagh @rasmuspagh.net · 05/01/2026

The deadline for BARC's annual call for PhD positions is soon (January 10)!

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Jukka Suomela @jukkasuomela.fi · 29/12/2025

Reminder: we are hiring an Assistant Professor in computer science! All areas of computer science will be considered. We are in particular interested in candidates whose research is on datacenter-scale computing systems. Deadline: Monday, February 2nd, 2026. www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...

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Stefan Neumann @neumannstefan.com · 17/12/2025

I enjoyed reading this. I agree that throughout the last 10 years or so, CS has become a lot more empirical. This also means that there is a lot of work for theoretical computer scientists out there.

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Jukka Suomela @jukkasuomela.fi · 17/12/2025

We are hiring an Assistant Professor in computer science! This is a broad call, all areas of computer science will be considered! We are in particular interested in datacenter-scale computing systems. www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...

aalto.fi

Assistant Professor in Computer Science | Aalto University

Candidates applying to this call are considered for Assistant Professor position only. Applicants are required to have a doctoral degree and a publication track record in top journals and conferences in a relevant field.

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Thatchaphol Saranurak @eigx.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

I just gave a tutorial on Design Templates for Dynamic Graph Algorithms at IISc in Bangalore. The kindest words I received were "best tutorial I have listened to in the last 10 years." Hope it interests you. Video: www.youtube.com/live/L8ev24g... Slides: tinyurl.com/yetx3vxu

youtube.com

Frontiers of Graph Algorithms | Day 1 | 8th Dec 2025

YouTube video by CSAChannel IISc

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