At the recommendation of Craig Gentry, I recently read the book "Factor Man" by Matt Ginsberg. This book is about a computer scientist that discovers an efficient algorithm for SAT, which starts off a international game of intrigue involving the FBI, NSA, Chinese spies, Swiss banks, and even some characters we know such as Steven … Continue reading Book Review: “Factor Man”

[Unrelated note: Huge congratulations to Costis Daskalakis - winner of the 2018 Nevanlinna medal!] As part of the CRYPTO 2018 conference (August 19-23, Santa Barbara, CA), there is a set of of affiliated events. The conference organizers (Tal Rabin, Elette Boyle, and Fabrice Benhamouda)  asked me  to advertise the workshop Beyond Crypto: A TCS Perspective (itself organized … Continue reading Beyond CRYPTO workshop: August 19

I just came back from a wonderful TheoryFest in LA. There was a fantastic program,  including not just the paper presentations, but also tutorials, keynote talks, plenary short papers, and workshops, as well as other events including the junior/senior lunches, STOC 50th birthday, and probably others that I am forgetting right now. Still, while we … Continue reading Theoryfest recap and FOCS call for workshops

Guest post by Sam Hopkins I just got back from dinner with some of the great speakers who will be at our TheoryFest workshop tomorrow afternoon on computational thresholds for average-case problems, and I am very excited for what's coming! Since I didn't get much chance to introduce the speakers in my last post, and … Continue reading Awesome Speakers at TheoryFest Computational Thresholds Workshop Tomorrow

Guest post by Sam Hopkins TheoryFest is in full swing in Los Angeles! There is lots to be written about the wealth of STOC talks, invited papers, keynotes, and (maybe most importantly) the excellent food hall across the street which is swarming with theorists and mathematicians. But for now I want to bring to your attention the workshops planned … Continue reading Workshops at TheoryFest (including shameless advertisement)

We had last week the "Women In Theory" workshop at Harvard. Thanks to the efforts of the organizers  Tal Rabin, Shubhangi Saraf, and Lisa Zhang, as well as the hard work of our staff at Harvard, it was (in my opinion) a huge success. But there is still so much more to be done. A … Continue reading Women in theory (and CS in general)

It's that time of the year again, where you can see TheoryFest decorations in every home,  and TheoryFest music is playing in shops and on the radio. For those making the pilgrimage to Los Angeles, I hope to see you there. There are many great papers, workshops, and other content in the program, but I … Continue reading Celebrating TheoryFest

By Boaz Barak and Jarosław Błasiok [Jarek gave a great informal exposition of this paper on Friday, and I asked him to make it into a blog post. My only knowledge of the paper is from Jarek's explanations: my main contribution to this post was to delete some details and insert some inaccuracies --Boaz.]   A … Continue reading On the Raz-Tal oracle separation of BQP and PH

A couple of years ago I posted about Theory Life Hacks. "Life" might be a bit too grand, but what I really mean are technological tools that can help in the day to day work. In the last two years, perhaps because of taking more responsibilities, I found myself using more technology and so I … Continue reading Theory Life-Hacks II