TCS in a nutshell? 🙊

David Gleich@dgleich.bsky.social · last wk.

Me: Ahh! new “almost-linear time matching algorithm” … can we implement it? Codex: No. It just uses a normal algorithm for anything with less than ~10^(30000000000000000000000) vertices. Me: Oh, my graphs aren’t that big.

Same thing for academics: you're writing for that paper? Adds time. Working on the content, proofs, experiments? Adds time. Tweaking the latex template? Substrat time. Getting an LLM to mess up the template for you? Remove all the time budget.

Jim Nielsen@jim-nielsen.com · last wk.

Free app idea: It’s a timer. When you write blog posts, it adds time. When you code your blog, it subtracts time - at 2x the rate! If you’re out of time, your codebase is locked and you can’t work on it until you’ve poured more time into writing. I’d hate it & I’d be your first subscriber lol

Asking here in case: does anyone know a good jurist or lawyer in Germany specialized in citizenship, the precise requirements for applications? Not for me, and yes this is for an edge case of the standard procedures

I reviewed way too many papers this year. Frankly I would probably decline reviewing for a venue that explicitly puts the pressure of evaluating (and thus understanding) slop on the reviewers instead of the authors

Huck Bennett@huckbennett.bsky.social · 2w ago

I really appreciate the report from the Simons Institute's AI + TCS working group (simons.berkeley.edu/ai-tcs-worki...), even though I don't agree with all of its recommendations. The central thing that I'm wary about is 3.1/3a as a blanket policy. 1/2

Sure humankind has been bending fire and electricity, but I was today-year old when I learned that Nice has been bending chards into a dessert: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourte_...

Tourte de blettes — Wikipédia

fr.wikipedia.org

And when I say I got Deutsche Bahned, I don't mean a cute little delay, I mean that I should be around Burgundy and I'm currently watching someone eat a Belgian waffle 🫠

Mathieu Besançon@matbesancon.xyz · 4w ago

@deutschebahn.com has Deutsche Bahned me again: insane delays but not enough to claim reimbursement, missed connection to an international train and left to fend for myself finding another connection Is it me or is network reliability getting *even* worse? Are there dashboards monitoring it?

@deutschebahn.com has Deutsche Bahned me again: insane delays but not enough to claim reimbursement, missed connection to an international train and left to fend for myself finding another connection Is it me or is network reliability getting *even* worse? Are there dashboards monitoring it?

And you'd think that a 45 min correspondence is enough to be safe, you'd THINK

Mathieu Besançon@matbesancon.xyz · 2mo ago

Deutsche Bahn advertising *relaxed* trips on the screen while I spend 4 hours estimating our real delay and plausibility of my correspondence because their updates are systematically over-optimistic. Did not miss this 🫣

Deutsche Bahn advertising *relaxed* trips on the screen while I spend 4 hours estimating our real delay and plausibility of my correspondence because their updates are systematically over-optimistic. Did not miss this 🫣

I get that @arxiv.bsky.social is under massive submission loads, but not all rules give good filters. Our paper got flagged for repeated text. Without more info, we can only guess that it is about restated things (w/ thm-restate). But it has the .tex source, it could check the source directly no? 🤔

I like living risky but receiving the dreaded "Changes of your trip" email from Deutsche Bahn, that's too much

Non-humble brag: we got an "outstanding paper of the year" award of the Mathematical Programming Computation journal for our work on the Boscia framework! link.springer.com/journal/1253...

Mathematical Programming Computation

Mathematical Programming Computation (MPC) publishes original research articles advancing the state of the art of practical computation in Mathematical ...

link.springer.com

Whatever we think of CS conf rankings, they are used by hiring committees, etc. The sub-domain bias is pretty striking on CORE. The few integer optimization conferences are now all rank B I believe. Searching for computer vision gives me a bunch of A* ones.

So have we reached the "Freedom Waffles" stage on every US menu already?

@proton.me I haven't found a definitive answer on the various forums, is there a way to "send as" in proton from another email (a professional email)? For academics that have 3+ email addresses this is essential

For academics organizing workshops: EasyChair or ScienceConf? I could cope with making a website separate from the CFP if needed.

The blanket requirement of ML conferences on ethics and impact statements, regardless of the contribution, and without any training in ethics, is really just clutter on papers and additional noise, with the same empty paragraphs slapped in all of them.

For people speaking languages with a distinction of formal and informal "you", are you also looking up through piles of emails to see if you're on an informal basis with someone?

I'll be at the jump.dev workshop and SIAM OP26 in Edinburgh! Come say hi to chat on computational optimization, constrained first-order methods, or hunt down the best specialty coffee and bouldering gyms in town!

Pretty late to the party, but I was honored to receive the Robert Faure prize 2026 from the French Operations Research Society! matbesancon.xyz/post/2026-04...

Robert Faure Prize 2026 | μβ

I’m proud and honored to have received the Robert Faure prize 2026, alongside two fantastic peers Salma Makboul and Julien Grand-Clément. The prize is awarded by the French Operations Research Society...

matbesancon.xyz

Yeah sure AGI but when will train platforms apply reduction cards correctly on a trip?

Inria (sadly not here yet) will be preparing candidates for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Program scholarships. The institute also centralized a whole list of hosting teams (including GHOST, mine!) with potential topics: www.inria.fr/en/marie-skl...

Les Grenoblois quand les Lyonnais viennent en rando en chaussures bateau et chino

France Culture@franceculture.fr · 8mo ago

Vous pensez que la peine s’arrêtait à la mort. Au XVIe siècle, à Grenoble, les exécutés restaient suspendus des semaines au gibet, exposés pour rappeler à tous qu’un crime de sang ou un acte de rébellion envers l’autorité du roi se payait au prix fort. ➡️ https://l.franceculture.fr/yYY

Don't get me wrong I have nothing against doing that theoretical upper bound research. The drama is that I struggle to find real improvements to maxflow (or more generally flow?) algorithms that came from this theoretical progress. Isn't that one role that theoretical algorithmic should fill?

Mathieu Besançon@matbesancon.xyz · 8mo ago

And yes, this is brought to you by maxflow

<academic rant> I am always amazed and annoyed at the same time that there is a research field of "algorithms" in which you need to spend an enormous amount of time to understand if any new method has a slim chance of ever being run

Early Christmas for MIP folks!

arxiv math.OC@arxiv-math-oc.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Christopher Hojny, Mathieu Besan\c{c}on, Ksenia Bestuzheva, Sander Borst, Jo\~ao Dion\'isio, Johannes Ehls, Leon Eifler, Mohammed Ghannam, Ambros Gleixner, Adrian G\"o{\ss}, Alexander Hoen, Jacob von Holly-Ponientzietz, ... The SCIP Optimization Suite 10.0 https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18580

The SCIP 10 optimization suite has many new interesting features and is fully open source. For binaries and downloads, check www.scipopt.org/index.php#do...

arxiv math.OC@arxiv-math-oc.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Christopher Hojny, Mathieu Besan\c{c}on, Ksenia Bestuzheva, Sander Borst, Jo\~ao Dion\'isio, Johannes Ehls, Leon Eifler, Mohammed Ghannam, Ambros Gleixner, Adrian G\"o{\ss}, Alexander Hoen, Jacob von Holly-Ponientzietz, ... The SCIP Optimization Suite 10.0 https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18580

I got hyped and then read the last line 😑

Probably my lazy french brain but some journal allowing delays in paper reviews for "exceptional personal circumstances (e.g. vacation)" gets my teeth grinding hard 😬 Of course with 3 vacation days per year I guess that falls into exceptional

Barely have a permanent position and already called old by the new generation, academia is brutal

Guillaume Dalle@gdalle.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Bold move from someone who couldn’t even display a title