Notices by Dr. Anna Latour (anna@mathstodon.xyz)

Last week, I presented the work I did with prof. Kuldeep Meel and prof. Arunabha Sen at IJCAI 2023.

We showed the benefits of reducing a problem to a computationally harder problem (yes, you read that right!), by demonstrating how it allows us to solve much larger problem instances.

It was so much fun to finally share this work with so many fantastic researchers at IJCAI! Thank you to all organisers for making this conference possible. I'm also super grateful to the reviewers who gave us great feedback!

Please find our paper, slides, poster, a short video, and our open source tool, gismo, here: www.annalatour.nl/publication/2023-08-01-Solving-the-Identifying-Code-Set-Problem-with-Grouped-Independent-Support

#IJCAI2023 #IJCAI #AcademicMastodon #FOSS #PostdocLife #ConstraintProgramming #BooleanSatisfiability #Complexity #AcademicChatter #OpenSource #OpenSourceSoftware

Sir Terry Pratchett was one of two people who I quoted directly in my dissertation. This line from Feet of Clay was the motto for my introductory chapter:

"This is where we’ve filled ourselves up with so many questions that they’re starting to overflow and become answers."

It resonated with me, because this is what doing research often feels like for me.

#GNUTerryPratchett #AcademicChatter #PhDLife #AcademicMastodon #Bookstodon #Fiction #Discworld #DiscworldQuote #FeetOfClay

I guess "You can be any sex you like provided you act male." would've also worked to describe the PhD experience. At least on some levels. Would've been a more depressing choice, tho.

@jeromechoo Thanks! They belonged to my grandmother, who passed away when I was living in Singapore. After I moved back, I found them among my things. I guess my mom must've taken them from my grandmother's house when clearing out her things, and decided that I should have them ❤️

@aral

Sunday breakfast! Cc: @jeromechoo @aral

#MakanApaToday #FediGoreng #MastMiGoreng #Food #Indomie #SilentSunday

@jeromechoo @aral I have big plans for this weekend 💅

#MakanApaToday #MiGoreng #Food #IndoMie

I'm in a friend group where people regularly share articles and TikToks etc claiming all kinds of findings.

I am that person who then tries to find the sources of the original information, then reads academic papers to gauge if the "headlines" that are shared can actually backed up by proper science.

In this process, I often find myself uttering the words "I hate to be this person again, but... *in mice*. They did *one* small study with *mice* and found an effect *in mice*."

I love this.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/04/genetically-modified-woolly-mice-mammoth

#Science #InMice #Mice #Mammoth #WoollyMammoth

@aral Wa that's excellent!

No joke: while you were sending these updates, my friend sent me this pic of the lunch menu that they were looking at.

@jeromechoo

@aral @jeromechoo lol I can order them online, but only in quantities of at least 40 packs at a time. My partner had so much Indomie that they actually got a giant Indomie branded reusable shopping bag with their order ^^

@aral When I was in London in 2023, 2 hours of London drizzle achieved what 2 years of Singaporean sky Niagaras never managed: water damaging my phone.

@jeromechoo @aral Tip: bring an umbrella, since the designated waiting area does not have shelter.

@aral Turns out Roti King has been there for a while 👆

@jeromechoo

@aral no idea how long they've been there, but they have a designated queuing area with a marked start of the queue, and multiple reminders to behave while queuing, so I'm guessing they're established enough to need all of that.

@aral And yes, the food is definitely worth queuing for.

I had a blast in London, feasting on laksa (so excited that I forgot to take a pic), hot teh tarik, prata planta with condensed milk, vegan nasi lemak, vegetarian char kway teow, kueh bingka ubi kayu, kueh salat and kueh dadar.

I couldn't go to all the restaurants that I wanted to visit because they weren't all open and I had very limited time, but I was very happy to at least go to Roti King at Euston station (https://maps.app.goo.gl/PGap2APC3JCxYcLh8), Rasa Sayang in China Town (https://maps.app.goo.gl/hMQxjYhDqNPbuGmU8) and Makan Cafe at Portobello Road (https://maps.app.goo.gl/6jfayYo8mXCaQZsj9). Would definitely recommend all of these places!

Roti King's prata was super crispy and indulgent, Rasa Sayang's nasi lemak was good, but I probably would order something else next time because I missed the crispy fried tempeh that I'm used to getting with vegetarian nasi lemak, and personally don't much like the vermicelli in the sayur lodeh. Their food tasted delicious, though, and I really liked their kueh bingka ubi kayu. Will definitely return to Makan Cafe. They have a great vegetarian selection, but I found out too late that I could've ordered sambal or chili on the side, and I want to try their nasi campur. Their kueh salat was super fresh, tender and delicious.

Many thanks to @cendawanita, @happydisciple, @spacehobo and @clanwilliam for all your recommendations!

#MakanApatoday #London #Food #NasiLemak #KuehSalat #Prata #PrataPlanta #Makan

@skinnylatte @loke Ya, I ended up temporarily living with someone who was super abusive. Managed to find something marginally better after a few weeks, thankfully, but it made me feel super unsafe.

@loke @skinnylatte lol ya I remember when my landlord increased my rent from 2500 SGD/month to 3500 SGD/month. I told him that I couldn't afford that and would move out if he did that. He offered me a 100 SGD discount for the first month 🤦♀️

I also remember the first propertyguru email with the news that an HDB had sold for > 1 million.

@gvwilson

Okay so I tried this, and initially it didn't look so bad, until I hit enter again and copilot came up with a new suggestion...

I then deleted the test file, created a new empty file, and opened it with a different editor to see what would happen if I prompted it with "calculateManSalary(baseSalary". Got an opposite result, of sorts.

My friend and I exchange unsollicited duck pics whenever we encounter good ones in the wild.

I'm presenting at a symposium tomorrow and am working on my slides. Was trying to figure out how to create a slide containing only one slide-filling image and nothing else in LaTeX beamer, and this gem came up (make sure to also check out the answer). 🤩

https://stackoverflow.com/q/71372167

@gsverhoeven this you?

#AcademicLife #Latex #UnsollicitedDuckPics #Ducks #Duck #Presentation

Another afternoon of protesting the announced budget cut of 1 billion (yes, 9 zeros) euro on higher education in the Netherlands. Due to circumstances, I could not make this protest, but my fabulous colleagues at TU Delft kindly shared some pics with me and gave me permission to share them with you.

Pics by Alex Neagu.

#WOinActie #AcademicMastodon #AcademicChatter #BudgetCuts #Education #HigherEducation