Avogadro's number is very close to 2 to the 79. That's all. Go on with your day.

I don't know if compactness or anything else applies, so maybe it should be called HBO Sup?

This editorial is indeed blunt, in your face, sweary, and absolutely 100% correct. I'm happy Science published it. It needs to be spread far and wide, because it strips away all the usual mealy-mouthed crap when it comes to discussing Trump and makes it clear who he is and what he's doing.

Alex Wild@alexwild.bsky.social · 2w ago

This is a blunt assessment of what the Trump regime is proposing for US science: they plan to take all the funding, essentially collapsing university-based research, in order to give that money to themselves, and they are lying about it.

I’m joining Cornell as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science this fall! My group will work on probabilistic machine learning for scientific discovery. I’m recruiting PhD students to start in Fall 2027 -- and stay tuned for postdoc opportunities!

Nicely put.

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · 4w ago

Pedestrian in the Age of Planes: a (cope?) 🧵. I grew up walking and biking to go places. My whole training, and later professional life, was done accordingly: I don't go really far, nor really fast, but I have a good sense of direction, and developed very specific muscles. Now we have planes. 1/

Five bunnies so far today on just a couple short walks around the neighborhood. Two adults, three young'uns. They have eaten most of our garden (they don't like collards), and that's not great. But they are cute.

My new book! Written w my pal Alex Townsend, it's about the math behind enormous systems (medical scans, AI, etc.) and what happens when they outgrow our ability to understand them. Pre-order at @barnesandnoble.com for 25% off -> www.barnesandnoble.com/w/big-math-s... @littlebrown.bsky.social

Anyone else hum the Ghostbusters theme to themselves when a story about the reflecting pool passes by?

The Strait is open The Strait is closed The Strait is second countable The Strait is totally disconnected The Strait is perfect The Strait is normal The Strait is Hausdorff The Strait is a Polish space

"How many AI monkey butlers will there be?" "Oh, one at first, but he'll train others."

Pete Stewart passed away this week at the age of 85. He was a mentor when I was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, and somebody I looked forward to seeing at conferences for a long time after.

After the Odyssey, Christopher Nolan is working on an adaptation of the myth of Sisyphus. According to sources, they've already cast The Rock

Dijkstra, “On the foolishness of ‘natural language programming’”: “When all is said and told, the 'naturalness' with which we use our native tongues boils down to the ease with which we can use them for making statements the nonsense of which is not obvious.” www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcr...

Thinking about my fall teaching, an upper-division undergrad systems programming course. And I am at 75% planning to use Rust (it was in C++ when Ken Birman taught it the past several years). Pointers to good models are welcome.

Thinking about my fall teaching, an upper-division undergrad systems programming course. And I am at 75% planning to use Rust (it was in C++ when Ken Birman taught it the past several years). Pointers to good models are welcome.

2.25 hours into my 2.5 hour final. Nobody is leaving early. I hope I did not badly miscalibrate the difficulty.

I used to joke that our department should offer a masters in computational evil, and had ideas for courses we could all contribute. I stopped telling it years ago, though.

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒@eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Going to fill an unmet demand and produce a “computer science for evil” course

A math degree is also great!

Andrew Gordon Wilson@andrewgwils.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"Does it still make sense to get a CS degree?" A CS degree has never been primarily about software engineering. It's about core skills, about learning how to think. That never goes obsolete. But really you should get a physics degree.

Spring in Ithaca. Mid 70s on Saturday, snow flurries yesterday and today.

Massive Attack. And Tom Waits. I mean just holy shit y'all. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVTV...

Boots on the Ground

YouTube video by Massive Attack - Topic

youtube.com

Good to know the "say Chebyshev three times" proof technique on a alive and well outside numerical analysis, too.

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · 4mo ago

The polynomial method (to prove quantum query lower bounds) is so elegant. 1. Any q-query quantum algo maps to a deg-(2q) polynomial p. 2. p must take high values on "yes" inputs and low values on "no" inputs. 3. Forget quantum: prove no low-degree polynomial can do that. (Say "Chebyshev" 3 times.)

Dear GOP: Please send Vance out to campaign for your candidates in the midterms.

This afternoon, we had a memorial seminar on the scientific legacy of Joe Halpern.

Lots of science fiction writing is as much (or more) about the some aspect of a cultural moment than it is about realistic projection. What's disturbing is when folks don't see the distinction.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 7mo ago

“An AI scientist, for example, could figure out how the human brain works, or deliver any gene to any cell in the body.” Yeah and a magic pony could shit bricks of 24k gold and piss a highly concentrated solution of pure heroin.

I spent some of the spring break week catching up with various research collaborations and some of it dealing with a backlog of email and administrative tasks after two weeks of a lot of travel. In between, I did some of my favorite type of sleuthing, which is too good not to share.

So, yesterday we had two consecutive meetings scheduled over the lunch break, with food provided. Which made me wonder if that was the worst possible. Turns out, yes: it is provably impossible to schedule more meetings in that time slot! This is called the No-Three-Lunch Theorem

I would rather have more certainty for science funding generally (for things other than AI), and it's a little sad given what happened to the rest of NASA, but part of me still gets excited about Artemis II. I surely hope there is a safe and successful launch this evening.

I'm visiting Colorado School of Mines for a couple days to meet up with people and give a talk at the applied math and stats colloquium. And it feels like summer! It's incredible!

"For sale: metaverse, never used."