Paul Goldberg
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paulwgoldberg.bsky.social
Paul Goldberg
@paulwgoldberg.bsky.social

Professor of Computer Science, Oxford University. Research interest in Algorithmic Game Theory, also Computational Complexity.
Also interested in good urbanism & cartoons
https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/paul.goldberg/index1.html .. more

Paul Goldberg is a geologist specializing in geomorphology and geoarchaeology who had done extensive worldwide field researches.

Source: Wikipedia
History 32%
Geology 23%

New paper in the Int J Game Theory (with Edith Elkind and Abheek Ghosh): "Contest design with threshold objectives"

link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Contest design with threshold objectives - International Journal of Game Theory
We study contests where the designer’s objective is an extension of the widely studied objective of maximizing the total output: The designer gets zero marginal utility from a player’s output if the o...
link.springer.com

relatively inoffensive
Why did the New York Football Giants (NFL) not kick that Field Goal? ? ? Who would have done such a thing? It was CRAZY! I got to watch the end of the game and thought, when they went for the touchdown instead of the 3, “That’s Weird! ! ! ”

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Why did the New York Football Giants (NFL) not kick that Field Goal? ? ? Who would have done such a thing? It was CRAZY! I got to watch the end of the game and thought, when they went for the touchdown instead of the 3, “That’s Weird! ! ! ”

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Colorado is off to an important start with its AI Act, which protects us from automated decision-making. Now that state should strengthen its law, and other states should enact their own laws. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Strengthen Colorado’s AI Act
Powerful institutions are using automated decision-making against us. Fortunately, workers, patients, and renters are resisting. The Colorado AI Act is a good step in the right direction. Still, EFF
www.eff.org

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Eternal memory to all the victims of the 1932–1933 Holodomor genocide and the mass artificial famines of 1921–1923 and 1946–1947.

It's good to see some concern about UK Government usage of X. As I see it, the problem is not its amplification of harmful content, but rather that it belongs to a foreign entity whose interests are in no way aligned to the UK. Usage of X is an accident waiting to happen.
Labour MPs want the government to carry out a more serious, "minister-led" review of its use of X

A Whitehall review of government social media use is currently underway. However, Labour MPs say the process lacks rigour and proper ministerial involvement

@zoecrowther.bsky.social reports
Labour MPs Call For A More Serious Review Of The Government's Use Of X
Labour MPs are calling for ministers to take control of decisions over the government’s continued use of X, as concerns grow about the platform’s s...
www.politicshome.com
Labour MPs want the government to carry out a more serious, "minister-led" review of its use of X

A Whitehall review of government social media use is currently underway. However, Labour MPs say the process lacks rigour and proper ministerial involvement

@zoecrowther.bsky.social reports
Labour MPs Call For A More Serious Review Of The Government's Use Of X
Labour MPs are calling for ministers to take control of decisions over the government’s continued use of X, as concerns grow about the platform’s s...
www.politicshome.com

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Pro-tip: if you send me an email asking for an internship, a PhD or a postdoc position, don't copy/paste an over-hyped summary of one of my papers you just asked ChatGPT to spit out.

Pro-tip#2: don't do that with other professors as well. It's not just me.

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Former senior Darpa official picked as new Aria chief executive.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

We’re excited to introduce our new CEO: Kathleen Fisher.

ARIA is at an inflection point. We’re moving from launching ambitious research to driving it forward. Kathleen is the ideal leader to scale our work.

Read more: link.aria.org.uk/ceoannouncem...
Introducing ARIA’s next CEO
Kathleen Fisher will join us in February 2026.
link.aria.org.uk

I was looking through my old photos and found this one of a remarkably badly-designed sign (taken in 2010 in West Kirby, Wirral). Enjoy

Just for fun, here's a New Yorker cartoon from about 50 years ago

A welcome report, which deserves high marks for facing up to an unwelcome fact: Europe is indeed failing to compete with the USA in technology. The report also mentions the need for pension reform: it's hard to attract scientists to a patchwork of idiosyncratic pension systems.

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

In 2026, Europe needs to rebuild its military strength, revive economic growth and sustain its climate transition. Each of these tasks alone would be difficult. Together they are a nightmare
In Europe, the coming year hinges on guns, growth and greenery
Europe has turned calamity into opportunity before. Can it do the same in 2026? There are three big challenges facing the Old Continent
econ.st

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

@bostoncollege.bsky.social is launching a PhD program in Computer Science! Help spreading the word to interested undergrads would be appreciated; our department has faculty research clustered in ML and CS theory, and Boston's a nice place to be :) www.bc.edu/content/bc-w...
Ph.D. Program
www.bc.edu

They're just trying to steer clear of lèse-majesté

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Intriguing suggestion that ballot complexity means people learn more about the mechanics of voting, leaving less time to learn about how to achieve substantive change www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...
The story behind Australia's incredible democratic system
Behind the quirks of Australia's incredible democratic system are a series of complex human backstories.
www.abc.net.au

Separately to my other reply, your post reminded me of a 1970s cartoon that I just managed to find online

I can buy shares in fossil-fuel energy companies, so in a sense can afford to buy the means of production of non-renewables. So I don't think the distinction is really a matter what people can buy.

Liberal bias is like God: when you sincerely go looking for it, you find it absolutely everywhere!

The scientific literature really needs some sort of facility for researchers to publish "We spent this much time working on such-and-such a result, and got absolutely nowhere"
I spotted this on Mastodon and I find it horrible, not least for the speed with which this has happened.

It's good to see the focus on GDP per head, as opposed to just GDP. GDP per head is, of course, what we should care about.

New paper: we introduce classes of problems where any solutions must be unique, due to principles like:
"Every competition can have at most one participant who beats all others", or
"At most one agent can receive the lion's share of a shared resource".
Matan Gilboa, Paul W. Goldberg, Elias Koutsoupias, Noam Nisan
Complexity of Unambiguous Problems in $\Sigma^P_2$
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19084

Reposted by Paul Goldberg

Matan Gilboa, Paul W. Goldberg, Elias Koutsoupias, Noam Nisan
Complexity of Unambiguous Problems in $\Sigma^P_2$
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19084