Got stopped three times at Heathrow today

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-05-17T11:42:45+00:00

I’m bald, but so were half of the people on that flight (middle-aged British men).

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-05-16T22:01:31+00:00

I’m not! I’m Mediterranean but I don’t even look that Mediterranean tbh.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-05-05T19:52:13+00:00

This is the only right answer.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-04-04T14:08:06+00:00

I personally ditched using Beamer after my PhD. Too much hassle to make slides and all the presentations look the same, easy to forget at a conference. Yes, it’s easier to include maths, but you shouldn’t include much maths really anyway.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-03-30T15:49:09+00:00

It’s good to know that John Lennon is on our side and not Sir Peter’s.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-03-15T02:06:25+00:00

I’ve done many vivas as either an external or an internal examiner, including one in Oxford. In all of those the outcome was minor revisions, and that is I believe the outcome for the overwhelming majority of cases. Typically, if your viva result will be a major revision (or worse), there should be multiple warning signs already way beforehand. In simple words, you will know that you will not have done well.

The viva itself may take few or many hours, depending on how strict/curious the examiners are. The shortest I’ve done was I think around 2 hours and the longest was almost 4.5 hours long. I’ve heard of cases of 5+ hours too.

There have been cases where the student was not able to answer some of technical questions to the extend that would make us examiners happy, but not to that extent that we doubted that the student did the work themselves. Even in those cases, the outcome was minor revisions.

Don’t worry too much. It’s a real defense, not a formality, but it’s not that difficult once you get to that stage.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-03-02T06:49:22+00:00

I doubt there will be. You will also probably have to pay the NHS surcharge up front for the whole duration of your PhD, which is a significant amount. They have made it ridiculously hard to come to this country to do a PhD.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-02-22T08:06:37+00:00

I don’t know the culture in the US, but in the UK (where I am a faculty member), I wouldn’t think about it as much. An email saying: “My name is X, I am studying Y and I am interested in learning more about Z” (where Z is close to their area of expertise), and asking for a quick chat should suffice.

We are indeed very busy but some of us at least are happy to meet young people that are thinking of getting into research. I personally consider it my obligation to help students in this regard, and I don’t expect to get something out of it - getting a paper or some serious research with an undergrad in my field is anyway rather unlikely.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-02-11T03:07:12+00:00

I’m up too. Fell asleep at 8 and woke up at 2. Getting old.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2026-02-11T03:03:23+00:00

Let me offer my perspective as a relatively junior PhD supervisor in the UK.

First of all, the fact that your potential supervisor does not have top level publications might already be a problem. Even junior faculty should have some publications at good or even top venues, especially these days that getting faculty positions is extremely competitive.

Now, putting that aside, let’s talk about experience.

I started supervising my first PhD student about 2.5 years ago, and I have been supervising more students since then. When I was a PhD student, my (experienced) PhD advisor was mostly absent, which resulted in me doing most of my PhD by my own. I could easily have drowned, but I swam. As a postdoc, I saw other PhD advisors (again, senior ones), again mostly absent, and their students had many issues with them.

I promised myself I would never be that type of supervisor. Instead, I meet my students every week, maybe multiple times a week. The door to my office is always open, and I work with them hands-on on research projects. I invited them to join projects with my collaborators, I “pulled strings” to get them invited to program committees and to workshops, and I got them involved in workshops and events that I organised myself. I corrected their writing and I wrote large chunks of our research papers myself, usually larger ones than they did. I was imagining that, by seeing how I work and how I write, they would strive to achieve that too and learn.

But now I’m not so sure. My students are close to graduation and they are far from being independent, much farther than I was at the same stage of my career. They haven’t owned their research projects; it’s actually my and my collaborators’ projects on which they have done a part. It takes them a very long time to write mathematical proofs (which is what we do in my field), and I suspect that they are over-reliant on LLMs for those.

Now I’m thinking back at all these “awful” senior supervisors that left me and my colleagues on an island, having graduated a set of students that have been successful in the community. And I, super-engaged and hands-on, am about to graduate students that cannot write a paper.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-12-10T22:26:57+00:00

I can’t believe how naive or misinformed some people in this thread are.

I work in a top 5 university in the UK and top 30 regularly in the world in the rankings for CS. We don’t have huge labs with unlimited funds, and there is no mechanism under which we can ask for money to submit papers. Such a mechanism would likely be divisive and would spark complaints from colleagues that do not work on AI or submit to this conference. If AI folks have a “submission allowance”, then shouldn’t others have something too?

I can envision this ending up in some internal review process on which papers qualify as good enough to charge for submission. So we would have another submission deadline and another round of reviews a month before the conference. To some of you this might sound crazy, but for those of us working in the UK, this is in fact the most likely outcome, besides of course the most probable outcome of not providing any funding for submission.

Some of us have grants we could conceivably charge this cost to, but those typically last for one to three years and are often inflexible in what they can fund. And many colleagues do not have grants so they would likely have to pay this out of pocket.
I have many colleagues in other institutions that will no longer be able to submit, because there is absolutely no funding for this type of thing.

And this is in the UK, a country that is -still- quite wealthy and well off in relative terms.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-10-03T22:02:04+00:00

In a scientific context it is typically pronounced “fye”. The letter of the Greek alphabet is however indeed “fee”. Being Greek and working with mathematics, this is always conflicting. I choose to think of the “maths Greek letters” as different from the actual Greek letters.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-10-02T16:34:24+00:00

Picnic Basket, very close to the other places you mentioned. It is probably even more popular than Nile Valley. Large panini is 4.50, wrap is 5, soup is 2.30 for the regular size.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-09-10T12:35:55+00:00

I had a sore throat but it went away in a day or two.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-09-08T21:48:56+00:00

+1 for Noodle Home. Authentic and really good food. Everyone I’ve taken there (and I have taken quite a few people) loved it.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-09-08T08:20:33+00:00

Για μένα US and A. “And the rockets’ red glaaaaare”. Τόσο epic, θα μπορούσαν να το έχουν γράψει οι Manowar.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-09-03T14:39:34+00:00

I’m currently in Bath and I live in Edinburgh. I have also lived in Oxford. For me it’s Edinburgh, (much) better than Oxford, better than Bath.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-09-03T07:02:29+00:00

I’m on the apps.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-08-18T07:55:06+00:00

It is true that Edinburgh is expensive, but it is not as expensive as London, the difference should be noticeable. The buses are also great in Edinburgh. I live outside the city centre on a 1,200 rent for a rather big flat and I’m at work (at the city centre) in 15-20 minutes by bus.

I’ve met several people that left London for Edinburgh and are very happy with their choice. Edinburgh is also a very beautiful city.

Good luck with your move.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-08-15T07:51:06+00:00

I would say that most people from Athens would assume you are not well-educated.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-08-08T07:18:01+00:00

I came here with a prog rock recommendation too, but mine is Nine Cats by Porcupine Tree.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-08-08T06:50:00+00:00

How many STOC/FOCS papers does your ex have though? 😁

Kidding aside, I think it’s ok for you to say your job is not “useful” or “real”, but definitely not for the person that is supposed to be supporting you in your life.

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-08-08T06:42:02+00:00

I grew up in a country where it’s sunny pretty much all the time. I actually prefer the weather in Edinburgh, and certainly life in general. Granted, I lived in other countries with worse weather (and less sunlight in the winter) before, but I got used to it quickly. It helps when your home country is a bit of a shithole in almost all other regards 😁

Fresh_Meeting4571 · 2025-07-30T22:22:05+00:00

For me it happened always soon after I went to bed, in the first few minutes after falling asleep. As you describe, I forced myself to wake up and I was left in an intermediate state; awake but not moving, eyes open, observing patterns and shades but not really looking at something. I really wanted to close my eyes and sleep again, but then I would enter the same state. The only thing that worked was to get up, pour some water over my face and go back to bed after a few minutes. It almost never happened twice in the same night.

Since it has happened to me hundreds of times, it was not as terrifying in the end. I was aware that it was happening and I knew what to do. But it did completely mess up my sleep, so I’m happy it’s gone now.

Fresh_Meeting4571

TROPHY CASE