axiom @axiom@mathstodon.xyz

Knots and Narnias, https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/knots-and-narnias/

Riffing on a video of a Bill Thurston lecture, Jim Propp explains that when a portal to another dimension has a knotted boundary, it can actually be a portal to several other dimensions.

Oh my god, this made my evening

Source: https://medium.com/alacris/what-do-formal-methods-actually-guarantee-d94ae8802be2

Super Mario 64 has been decompiled, in its entirety, basically by hand (writing code until it compiles into the right binary) https://gbatemp.net/threads/super-mario-64-has-been-decompiled.542918/

Chinese scientists guilty of ‘researching while Asian’ in Trump’s America: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3016267/chinese-scientists-guilty-researching-while
via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20319936

The story focuses on star cancer researcher Xifeng Wu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xifeng_Wu), forced to resign from the University of Texas, apparently because she fostered collaboration with Chinese cancer research institutions at the behest of her higher administration.

See also "The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers From Top Institutions", https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-13/the-u-s-is-purging-chinese-americans-from-top-cancer-research

@AngelooASDF @tn5421 @fence @Ste1lar @Feuerfuchs
azusa_nakano_yes_we_nyan_by_ral…

photo_2017-11-10_16-27-34.jpg

remote code execution vulnerability says trans rights

@lynnesbian what do u even need 2 hold

This is kinda disturbing, actually? In process memory encryption to keep the spectrehammers at bay.

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=156109087822676&w=2

University of Strathclyde proposes to axe combinatorics and their three strong combinatorics faculty members: https://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/combinatorics-at-strathclyde/
via https://gowers.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/the-fate-of-combinatorics-at-strathclyde/

This comes despite the group being both strong in research and important in undergraduate education. The apparent cause is Strathclyde's placement of combinatorics in computer science rather than in mathematics and in their use of standards aimed more at computer science than mathematics (like bringing in large grants).

Integer linear programming, change-making, and Presburger arithmetic: https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/danny-nguyen-and-igor-pak-presburger-arithmetic-problem-solved/

Integer arithmetic problems with O(1) variables and one level of quantifiers (example: given O(1) coin types, find the largest amount of money for which you cannot make change) have long been known to be polynomially solvable, but in FOCS 2017 Nguyen and Pak proved that only two levels of quantifiers make the problem hard. See also review https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=3734216 and paper http://www.math.ucla.edu/~pak/papers/hard_presburger3.pdf

Some company is advertising by handing out USBs that look like thumb drives, but actually act as keyboards and open the company's webpage on any OS, sometimes by using the windows run dialog. This has given the attack vector more publicity and hopefully will remind people not to plug in random USBs they find. https://v.redd.it/6aygvuaqdq431

What's written: WLOG

My brain: without loss of generality

Also my brain: wuh-log

"A Google employee spoke with the Bay Area Reporter on the condition of anonymity about the current mood among LGBTQ Googlers, saying by phone that, "I'm really worried that they [company leadership] don't know how unsustainable this is. They want to have it both ways: to monetize the engagement that comes from really odious content, but to bear no responsibility for it. And all of us queers who work here see how they're getting away with making money off people who hate us while doing nothing to stop them. Meanwhile, most queer creators' channels are demonetized or marked 'adult' because they use words like 'trans.' Google has no right to be at Pride. They're just capitalists. They don't care."

https://www.ebar.com/news/latest_news//277351/activists_ask_sf_pride_to_ban_google_after_homophobic_youtube_dust-up

If you're interested in the game of Hex, Matthew Seymour's online strategy book is the best one-stop guide to practical play that I know of (and it's not too easy to stumble across):
http://www.mseymour.ca/hex_book/hexstrat.html

The next time someone tries to use mathematical induction around you, just admonish them for making a slippery slope argument and move on