(In this post I am following the venerable tradition of bloggers opining about matters on which they don't really know much about. I hope I learn something from the feedback --Boaz). Nothing is impossible, Child, nothing is impossible. Every bridge is crossable. Every tooth is flossable. Every win is lossable. Every worker's bossable. Every cookie's … Continue reading On the (Im)possiblity of intelligence explosion

[Guest post by Robi Krauthgamer;  note that there is no conflict in nominating the same work/person to be highlighted in both HALG and TheoryFest. --Boaz] Call for Nominations  3rd Highlights of Algorithms conference (HALG 2018) Amsterdam, June 4-6, 2018 http://2018.highlightsofalgorithms.org/  The HALG 2018 conference seeks high-quality nominations for invited talks that will highlight recent advances … Continue reading HALG 2018 Call for Nominations

In his State of the Union address in January 1984, president Ronald Reagan announced that he directed his treasury secretary to simplify and reform the U.S., tax code. Thus began a process of 1.5 years until in June 1985, the house Ways and Means committee began formal discussion on the bill, which it voted on … Continue reading The GOP Tax plan and universities

(This blog post is in the form of a Jupyter notebook. See here for an arguably better formatted version, and here for the version with the omitted code, this (Beta version) website allows you to see the code "live" without needing to install Jupyter on your machine.)

(Unrelated update: thanks to Shachar Lovett the posting form for cstheory-jobs.org is back online. This is a great place for both posting and checking ads for academic positions in TCS.) 2018 Theory Fest: Call for Plenary Talk Suggestions STOC 2018 will be part of an expanded 50th anniversary celebration and  Theory Fest (http://acm-stoc.org/stoc2018/ ) that will also … Continue reading STOC 2018 Highlighted Plenary Talks: Call for Nominations

Avi Wigderson is one of the most prolific and creative theoretical computer scientists (in fact, he is one of the most prolific and creative scientists, period). Over the last several years, Avi had worked hard into distilling his vast knowledge of theoretical computer science and neighboring fields into a book surveying TCS, and in particular … Continue reading Must-read book by Avi Wigderson

I just came back from the Simons Foudnations annual meeting for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Unfortunately, due to a flight delay I missed many of the talks, but the ones I did see were fascinating. One talk in particular caught my attention: Leonardo Rastelli's talk on "The Superconformal Bootstrap" who discussed the work of the Simons … Continue reading Doing Theoretical Physics with Semidefinite Programming

Following the Harvey Weinstein scandal, I'd like to believe that the academic environment at large, and theoretical computer science in particular, is a much better environment than Hollywood. But we would be misleading ourselves to think that we are completely without our issues. This story can be an opportunity for each of us, men and … Continue reading Do we have TCS “Harvey Weinsteins”?

The call for paper for STOC is up, see  http://acm-stoc.org/stoc2018/ and  here. The deadline is November 3, 2017 4:59pm Eastern Daylight Time. STOC 2018 will again be a Theory Fest and also celebrate the 50th anniversary of STOC. As part of the "retro" atmosphere, the STOC PC also asks submissions to be sent by mail in … Continue reading STOC 2018 CFP

[This is a guest blog post on behalf of MSR, communicated to me by Yuval Peres. Like everyone who knew Michael, I was incredibly shocked and saddened by the news. I had relatively few interactions with Michael, but he has made a deep impression. I was always hoping we'd get a chance to collaborate , … Continue reading Michael Cohen