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Ryan Williams

@rrwilliams.bsky.social
1.5K followers 183 following 54 posts

professor of EECS at MIT. working in theoretical computer science namely algorithm design, complexity theory, circuit complexity, etc. i'll let you know when P != NP is proved (and when it's not)

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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Ben Brubaker (and Rahul Ilango) strikes again! A great article on a mind-bending result!
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Congratulations to Scott!! It's a good feeling to agree so wholeheartedly with a committee's decision ☺️
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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 17/12/2025
Learning a lot at the first #FOCS2025 Best Student Paper award, by Rahul Ilango!
A slide about Charmin and Kirkland toilet paper
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
studying chatgpt's busy beaver number: how long can it run and still halt. finished one prompt in slightly under 24 hrs. the response was just as unhinged as a human would sound after grinding that long
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Finding new ways to break ChatGPT
Screenshot showing that ChatGPT 5 has been thinking for 3347m and 27s on a prompt
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Today at IAS, I gave a 2 hr 15 mins lecture on why TIME[t] is in SPACE[√(t log t)]. You can watch it here! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThLv...
youtube.com
Simulating Time With Square-Root Space (And With Details) - Ryan Williams
YouTube video by Institute for Advanced Study
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
A related anecdote: as a PhD student, I was assigned to be a teaching assistant for my advisor's cryptography course. When I asked Manuel how I should prepare for this, he replied: "Read every paper that Adi Shamir has written." I tried to follow this advice. At least I read the abstracts :)
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Marek @marek.onl · 26/03/2025
Adi Shamir's advice to young researchers: 1. Read, read, read. Back in the eighties, I read every cryptography paper out there. Once that became impossible, I read the abstract of every paper. Now I read at least every title.
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FOCS 2026 @focs2026.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
💡 For students, the yearly IEEE (or ACM) membership costs less than USD 20. And leads to a #FOCS2025 registration fee reduced by USD 80...
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Suresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
This is very impressive. Breaking the sorting barrier for directed single source shortest paths search.app/wnEUo
search.app
New Method Is the Fastest Way To Find the Best Routes | Quanta Magazine
A canonical problem in computer science is to find the shortest route to every point in a network. A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks.
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
It's fun to publish something 20 years ago which refutes a recently published proof of P ≠ NP
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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 04/08/2025
Springer publishes a P ≠ NP "proof" and Eric Allender has words to say. blog.computationalco...
blog.computationalcomplexity.org
Some thoughts on journals, refereeing, and the P vs NP problem
A guest post by Eric Allender prompted by an  (incorrect) P ≠ NP proof   recently published  in Springer Nature's Frontiers of Computer Scie...
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Tom Gur @tomgur.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Hirahara, Illango, and Loff posted on the arXiv a lovely result, showing that determining the communication complexity of a function f is NP-hard. A fundamental question first asked by Yao in '79. The proof is very clean and elegant. A fun read for the weekend! arxiv.org/pdf/2507.104...
arxiv.org
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Ryan O'Donnell @booleananalysis.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Spread the word: there is a new prize in Theoretical Computer Science in honor of Luca Trevisan-- cs.unibocconi.eu/call-nominat... (Intent-to-nominate letters due by July 31.)
cs.unibocconi.eu
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
CCC’25 will take place August 5-8 at the Fields Institute in Toronto! Students/postdocs (from any institution) are eligible to apply for a travel allowance. For full consideration, please apply by June 20; awards to be announced on June 25. www.computationalcomplexity.org/travelAllowa...
computationalcomplexity.org
Computational Complexity Conference
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Lance Fortnow @lance.fortnow.com · 07/06/2025
The 2025 Gödel Prize is given to Eshan Chattopadhyay and David Zuckerman, “Explicit two-source extractors and resilient functions”. Paper: doi.org/10.4007/anna... Favorite Theorems Blog Post: blog.computationalco...
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
ChatGPT 4o thinks 27 < 10
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Michael Nielsen @michaelnielsen.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
One strange thing about writing is that the harder you work, the easier many people think it was to do
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TCS+ @tcsplus.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
The link for Ryan Williams' talk (@rrwilliams.bsky.social) is now available on our website. See you tomorrow, 1pm ET! www.tcsplus.org/welcome/next...
tcsplus.org
TCS+ - Next TCS+ talk
Our fourth TCS+ talk of the season will take place on April 23 (10:00am Pacific Time, 1:00 pm Eastern Time, 19:00 Central European Summer Time, 17:00 UTC — check yours here). Ryan Williams, from MIT, ...
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TCS+ @tcsplus.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Ryan's talk is this Wednesday! forms.gle/fZa3ATXC7n14...
forms.gle
TCS+ RSVP: Ryan Williams (2025/05/23)
Title: Simulating Time With Square-Root Space
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Josh Alman @jalman.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
NY Theory Day is returning on Friday April 11 at Columbia! It's free to attend but you have to register on the website by April 4. We have a great speaker lineup: Rachel Cummings (Columbia) Bill Kuszmaul (CMU) Nick Spooner (Cornell) Ryan Williams (MIT) sites.google.com/view/nyctheo...
theory day website
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Greg Bodwin @gbodwin.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
when my family asks me about the impact of my research
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FOCS 2026 @focs2026.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Please nominate candidates to the 🏆 Knuth Prize, to be awarded this year during #STOC2025! The prize recognizes "major research accomplishments and contributions to the foundations of Computer Science over an extended period of time." ⏰ Deadline: March 31 www.sigact.org/prizes/knuth... #TCSSky
sigact.org
ACM SIGACT - Knuth Prize
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
The STOC 2025 Theory Fest is looking for workshop proposals! Apply here: stoc2025theoryfest.netlify.app Deadline is March 9th, so act fast!
stoc2025theoryfest.netlify.app
Vite + React + TS
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Useless? Hmpf... Could someone send a link without the paywall? I'd like to read about what else I said 😅
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
I've posted a lightly revised version (mostly revising the discussion at the end) to ECCC eccc.weizmann.ac.il/report/2025/...
eccc.weizmann.ac.il
ECCC - TR25-017
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 21/02/2025
Adding full storage space can in principle make computers more powerful. This idea is at the very heart of catalytic computing, a burgeoning theoretical framework. buff.ly/4i6G7Tz
buff.ly
Catalytic Computing Taps the Full Power of a Full Hard Drive | Quanta Magazine
Ten years ago, researchers proved that adding full memory can theoretically aid computation. They’re just now beginning to understand the implications.
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
New paper: Simulating Time With Square-Root Space people.csail.mit.edu/rrw/time-vs-... It's still hard for me to believe it myself, but I seem to have shown that TIME[t] is contained in SPACE[sqrt{t log t}]. To appear in STOC. Comments are very welcome!
people.csail.mit.edu
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
DIMACS workshop on fine grained hardness of approximation, July 21-23 Information and registration here, looks interesting! dmac.rutgers.edu/events/detai...
dmac.rutgers.edu
DIMACS :: Details
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Online Parallels (mastodon @onlineparallels) @onlineparallels.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
We are launching an 𝐮𝐧𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 and experimental online parallel event for the conference ITCS25, aimed at everyone who cannot attend the conference in person for whatever reasons. (1/2) sites.google.com/view/itcs202... #ITCS25 #ITCS2025 #OnlineParallels
sites.google.com
ITCS'25 online parallel
What we do Welcome! This site is about an online parallel event for the conference ITCS'25 that aims to provide an inclusive platform for the TCS researchers unable to attend the conference in person....
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
I recently gave a general CS lecture at the University of Washington on some long-running threads in my research. Hope you enjoy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQZL...
youtube.com
A Dogged Pursuit For Satisfaction–Ryan Williams (MIT CSAIL)
YouTube video by Paul G. Allen School
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dreichman.bsky.social @dreichman.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Check out ITCS 2025. I look forward to attending in person! itcs-conf.org/itcs25/itcs2...
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Ryan Williams @rrwilliams.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Hi everyone! I'm looking forward to hanging out in this new space :) Expect sporadic complexity-theoretic updates and dad humor
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