@davej@dice.camp2025-11-20 11:58:46
This week’s #ThursdayFiveList is all about #Children, courtesy of @…:
1. Almost Vinyl, “That's a Fucking Ugly Baby”—
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2026-01-19 07:20:58
#Blakes7 Series D, Episode 11 - Orbit
EGRORIAN: A short range relay, now I see how they worked it.
SERVALAN: A bit late in the day, Egrorian!
EGRORIAN: Not so! It means that Orac is still on board the shuttle. We'll be able to recover it after the crash.
@cowboys@darktundra.xyz2025-12-18 16:50:52
Cowboys Salary Cap: High Quality Veteran May Be Cut in 2026 https://insidethestar.com/cowboys-salary-cap-high-quality-veteran-may-be-cut-in-2026
@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-01-13 11:35:53
Warhammer maker Games Workshop says it banned its staff from using AI in its content or designs and it is taking a "very cautious" approach to protect its IP (Philip Stafford/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/82bf41f4-7020-4c41-9ca6-f5b7390e9198…
@debellum@ludosphere.fr2026-01-15 12:06:19
@arXiv_csDS_bot@mastoxiv.page2026-02-10 09:06:51
Local Computation Algorithms for (Minimum) Spanning Trees on Expander Graphs
Pan Peng, Yuyang Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07394 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.07394 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.07394
arXiv:2602.07394v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study \emph{local computation algorithms (LCAs)} for constructing spanning trees. In this setting, the goal is to locally determine, for each edge $ e \in E $, whether it belongs to a spanning tree $ T $ of the input graph $ G $, where $ T $ is defined implicitly by $ G $ and the randomness of the algorithm. It is known that LCAs for spanning trees do not exist in general graphs, even for simple graph families. We identify a natural and well-studied class of graphs -- \emph{expander graphs} -- that do admit \emph{sublinear-time} LCAs for spanning trees. This is perhaps surprising, as previous work on expanders only succeeded in designing LCAs for \emph{sparse spanning subgraphs}, rather than full spanning trees. We design an LCA with probe complexity $ O\left(\sqrt{n}\left(\frac{\log^2 n}{\phi^2} d\right)\right)$ for graphs with conductance at least $ \phi $ and maximum degree at most $ d $ (not necessarily constant), which is nearly optimal when $\phi$ and $d$ are constants, since $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ probes are necessary even for expanders. Next, we show that for the natural class of \emph{\ER graphs} $ G(n, p) $ with $ np = n^{\delta} $ for any constant $ \delta > 0 $ (which are expanders with high probability), the $ \sqrt{n} $ lower bound can be bypassed. Specifically, we give an \emph{average-case} LCA for such graphs with probe complexity $ \tilde{O}(\sqrt{n^{1 - \delta}})$.
Finally, we extend our techniques to design LCAs for the \emph{minimum spanning tree (MST)} problem on weighted expander graphs. Specifically, given a $d$-regular unweighted graph $\bar{G}$ with sufficiently strong expansion, we consider the weighted graph $G$ obtained by assigning to each edge an independent and uniform random weight from $\{1,\ldots,W\}$, where $W = O(d)$. We show that there exists an LCA that is consistent with an exact MST of $G$, with probe complexity $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n}d^2)$.
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@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2025-12-14 19:24:23
Series A, Episode 13 - Orac
CALLY: We should keep on moving, they could be right behind us.
BLAKE: Yes, without weapons we don't stand a chance. Look, you keep going. I'm going to stay here and try and bring the roof down - block them off.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/113/347 …
@aardrian@toot.cafe2026-02-08 15:25:14
Last minute decision to go to philharmonic last night for Shostakovich. Was delighted with Miguel del Águila’s “Concierto en Tango” for cello (commissioned by BPO in 2014).
History: https://interlude.hk/the-less-classical-cello-concerto-miguel-de…
@jtk@infosec.exchange2026-01-05 19:18:19
NLNetLabs is sun setting their community mailing lists in favor of Discourse (which does support some email interaction).
https://blog.nlnetlabs.nl/introducing-the-nlnet-labs-community-forum/
One of the big netop adjacent orgs since EDUCAUSE I've se…
@arXiv_csDS_bot@mastoxiv.page2026-02-10 09:30:17
Robust Multiagent Collaboration Through Weighted Max-Min T-Joins
Sharareh Alipour
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07720 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.07720 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.07720
arXiv:2602.07720v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Many multiagent tasks -- such as reviewer assignment, coalition formation, or fair resource allocation -- require selecting a group of agents such that collaboration remains effective even in the worst case. The \emph{weighted max-min $T$-join problem} formalizes this challenge by seeking a subset of vertices whose minimum-weight matching is maximized, thereby ensuring robust outcomes against unfavorable pairings.
We advance the study of this problem in several directions. First, we design an algorithm that computes an upper bound for the \emph{weighted max-min $2k$-matching problem}, where the chosen set must contain exactly $2k$ vertices. Building on this bound, we develop a general algorithm with a \emph{$2 \ln n$-approximation guarantee} that runs in $O(n^4)$ time. Second, using ear decompositions, we propose another upper bound for the weighted max-min $T$-join cost. We also show that the problem can be solved exactly when edge weights belong to $\{1,2\}$.
Finally, we evaluate our methods on real collaboration datasets. Experiments show that the lower bounds from our approximation algorithm and the upper bounds from the ear decomposition method are consistently close, yielding empirically small constant-factor approximations. Overall, our results highlight both the theoretical significance and practical value of weighted max-min $T$-joins as a framework for fair and robust group formation in multiagent systems.
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