iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 11h

Virginia Vassilevska Williams wrote some thoughts about the 3-SUM breakthrough Josh Alman and her wrote an exposition of, how it happened, what it means, and some context about 'what could have been' in a world with more time and fewer models. Read it here: people.csail.mit.edu/virgi/though...

people.csail.mit.edu

https://people.csail.mit.edu/virgi/thoughts.txt

A week has passed since Josh and I posted our write-up on the arXiv, and I decided to write a few things. Much was said about our write-up. Some were excited, others enraged. Most everyone was scar...

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

How enforceable is the rule that presentations are by humans given how convincing deepfake videos are these days? (Genuine question: perhaps there’s some technology I’m not aware of or perhaps convincing deepfake videos are exorbitantly expensive?)

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I suppose that would be weeded out as “Reviewers are however permitted to reject a paper with a poor talk solely due to the quality of the talk with no consideration of the technical merits of the paper.”?

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It sounds like a typical conference talk is acceptable?

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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

OpenAI’s faster Fourier transform is less a mathematical breakthrough and more a malicious exploit of mathematical traditions.

argmin.net

Faster Fourier Transforms

The OpenAI algorithm for the FFT is less a breakthrough and more a malicious exploit.

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Steven Strogatz @stevenstrogatz.com · 12/10/2026

Hey, it looks like our The Joy of Why podcast has a serious chance of winning a Signal Award (in the science and education category). if you are a fan of our show, please vote for it – and tell all your friends to do the same! Let's win this thing! 🙏🕺 vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting...

vote.signalaward.com

The Signal Listener's Choice Award needs YOU

I just voted for this finalist to win a Signal Listener's Choice Award. You should too.

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Disclaimer: Not a naval expert, just vague recollections from reading the info signs around some of these lighthouses

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I’m pretty sure it’s as written, to illuminate dangers along the shore and to guide ships. Definitely don’t go too close to the lighthouse but it’s not something to avoid. Here’s for example lighthouses to guide ships into Sydney harbor

Screenshot of Google Maps of Sydney harbor

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

On the bright side, they could be turned into cat litter

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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 10/10/2026

I wrote a blog post on "TCS, AI, and the Adults in the Room," addressed to the senior researchers and established academics in our field: minorfree.github.io/Clement/ Thanks to @hunglv.bsky.social for lending me his blog!

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Antonio E. Porreca 🐳 @aeporreca.org · 07/10/2026

Me when OpenAI drops 547366156 LLM-written “papers”:

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Yeah I don’t understand why people are reporting problems being solved when the work of verifying these things have barely started.

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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This document is going to be an assigned reading in college classes that cover this moment in time, there's a lot happening in a few paragraphs... www.ahmath.org/statements

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heidi goodson @goodsiephd.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

My father-in-law made a bunch of index cards for me with -1 on them as a joke ("I found the missing -1's"). AI will never give us dad jokes when our math is wrong!!!

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TJ @tjtjtj.tj · 07/10/2026

As always, there’s a relevant Futurama clip

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Alexander Kasprzyk @amkasprzyk.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

OpenAI didn’t simply stumble upon all these results down the side of the sofa whilst cleaning. They chose to systematically invest huge sums of money to produce them. And to keep on going. And going. And going. They systematically took our motivational questions, perhaps with the… #MathSky #LLM

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The Random Sample @therandomsample.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

🎙️New podcast episode! Demand for people who can analyse, interpret & uncover meaning from data continues to grow, making #DataScience one of the most sought-after careers of the future. We introduce you to four data scientists whose careers have taken them down very different paths!

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Alexander Kasprzyk @amkasprzyk.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

More accurately, it’s about the future value of professional intellectual activity through the lens of unbelievably wealthy AI companies. That we are mathematicians isn’t the main point; the maths is playing a superficial role here. It’s about the future of society, and controlling the economy.

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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 02/10/2026

USyd 🇦🇺 is hiring in CS! Tenure-track equivalent, junior/mid-career: usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/USYD_E... With a focus on AI, but that includes TCS! Theory that helps building foundations of AI, gaining a deep understanding of it, or using AI in an ambitious way to solve deep problems...

usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com

Multiple Continuing (Tenure-Track) Academic Positions, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Sydney

Join a thriving Faculty of Engineering at a University ranked amongst the world’s best teaching and research institutions and help shape the future of artificial intelligence and its impact across eve...

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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I came across this parody of a rumored upcoming press release by OpenAI: "OpenAI Releases the Final Ten Minutes of 500 Previously Unreleased Films, Ushering in a New Era of Movie Watching" : x.com/Endings500/s...

x.com

Endings Fivehundred (@Endings500) on X

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 6th, 2026 OpenAI Releases the Final Ten Minutes of 500 Previously Unreleased Films, Ushering in a New Era of Movie Watching

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Excited for today’s lecture on undecidability

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Oh false alarm, that was just my joints clicking

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The Halting Problem is such a mind-bender, it only started clicking for me last year after teaching it for 3 years

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Lisa Carey @msleedy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Genuinely concerned about what's happening to the space-time continuum in this toilet.

A toilet door with a sign saying "Temporally Out Of Order"

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Joshua Grochow @joshuagrochow.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

U Colorado Boulder Computer Science is hiring in #Quantum Computation, including: - Quantum CS Theory - Applications of QC to important or emerging areas Details: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta... Pls help spread the word, and reach out to me if you have questions. #🧮 #AcademicSky #TCSSky

jobs.colorado.edu

Tenure-Track Faculty in Quantum Computation

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Don’t forget the one trick for rebuttals: “Haters gonna hate”

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

You gotta add: “Experts do not want you to know about this”

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Sam Power @spmontecarlo.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Still true in the ways that matter!

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Oh no! One less hour to stay up late!

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Thomas Dietterich @tdietterich.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Attention arXiv authors. Because of the exponential increase in submissions, arXiv is limiting the number of papers that a person can submit each month to two. blog.arxiv.org/2025/10/31/a...

blog.arxiv.org

Attention Authors: Updated Practice for Review Articles and Position Papers in arXiv CS Category

arXiv’s computer science (CS) category has updated its moderation practice with respect to review (or survey) articles and position papers. Before being…

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Dr Hannah M. Rowland @hannahmrowland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hope your day was better than Darwin’s, on this day 165 years ago

I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody &everything.

Charles Darwin
Letter to Charles Lyell
1st October 1861

202100352461

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Carla Winston @carlawinston.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In the midst of @unimelb.edu.au enterprise bargaining, this piece clearly identifies much of what I see as a union rep trying to improve working conditions. It's technically about firms, but might as well be about modern universities. @nteunion.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

journals.sagepub.com

Varieties of Firm Republicanism: Institutional Models of Workplace Governance - Sean Irving, 2026

Recent scholarship treats the firm as a regime of power in which workers are subject to arrangements analogous to those between state and citizen. Republican po...

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Training a Large Language Meowdel by osmosis

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Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Preparing a lecture on the practice of research and was reminded of this lovely essay on the importance of being comfortable with feeling stupid: fermatslibrary.com/s/the-import...

fermatslibrary.com

Fermat's Library | The importance of stupidity in scientific research annotated/explained version.

Fermat's Library is a platform for illuminating academic papers.

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Also unacceptable that there’s no legal consequences ❌ My dog ate my homework 💡 My agent did it

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sweet, thanks! Is it possible to also have the math be inline with text?

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

“yours out” i need to take my own advice

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Hi! Are there to plans to support math rendering, preferably latex?

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The trick is to give your phone coffee so that the phone’s jitters cancels your out

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Thanks for the example! FWIW, I’m not a big fan of these Mixture-of-Techniques papers even before LLMs…

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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 29/09/2026

A very important message from Omer Reingold to our TCS community, especially us (arg, already) senior researchers: "snap out of it." Please, digest, and share. theorydish.blog/2026/09/29/s...

As for depression: the next time you have the urge to lament, or even celebrate, being “the last generation of human mathematicians,” perhaps keep it to yourself. Contemplating the end of your profession from the relative comfort of an established, tenured career is a privilege, and it comes with responsibilities. Senior academics are not merely individual researchers; we are stewards of our field, and we owe our junior colleagues active leadership rather than abandonment.

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William Umboh @swumboh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

What are some examples of problems that were considered difficult then but not now?

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Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Since I became a professor, the only movies I can sit through are dumb, loud action movies. Everything else I can't get through. Depressed ruminations about the human condition? Buddy, that's my day job! Now, Sandra Bullock keeping a bus going above 50mph so it doesn't explode? I'm interested..

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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 29/09/2026

The report from the AI + TCS Working Group held at the @simonsinstitute.bsky.social is out, including "twelve concrete near-term recommended actions." Currently reading it: while I have some reservations, but there is some good in it! Notably items 7, 8, and 11. simons.berkeley.edu/ai-tcs-worki...

7. Best works and technical talks in interviews.

- Emphasize quality over quantity. Evaluate candidates on no more than three works of their choosing, with this fact explicit in the instructions for candidates and their letter writers.

- Test technical depth. Evaluate the depth of the candidates’ understanding of the aforementioned works more than was done normally until now.

8. Additional postdocs. Establish additional postdoctoral positions for the TCS community, a temporary measure that will be phased out after a few years.

9. Workshops for identifying new theory directions. First, organize a workshop (or several) with the goal of identifying a list of modern topics related to AI; and second, run a series of workshops on each of these topics to identify fundamental directions and establish foundations and agendas for future work.

10. “TCS in the Age of AI” series at the Simons Institute. Establish a recurring and widely accessible “TCS in the Age of AI” series at the Simons Institute.

11. Opportunities for training and evaluation without AI assistance. To ensure development of necessary skills for a successful career in academia, a PhD in TCS should partially include training and evaluation components where the use of AI is forbidden.

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