The State of Peer Review in Empirical Software Engineering For our regular SEN-ESE column in the ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (see https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3772008.3772012), we would like to discuss insights into the current state of peer ...

The State of Peer Review in Empirical Software Engineering

If you review papers in software engineering, answer this survey at forms.gle/S8qVvF4TLTKa...

Do you want to be my new colleague in Stuttgart?

We opened a tenured professor position for researchers in Programming Languages. So, if you are working in this field, please consider applying.

If you are not in this field, please repost and boost. 📣
www.f05.uni-stuttgart.de/en/faculty/n...

Tony Hoare (1934-2026) Turing Award winner and former Oxford professor  Tony Hoare passed away last Thursday at the age of 92. Hoare is famous for quicksort, ALGO...

blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2026/03/tony...

it was going to happen, death comes for us all. but man. what a legend

👇

Together with @mrjimmyblack.com (and Claude) we developed a tool that helps detecting hallucinated references in academic papers! This evolved from a simple python script into a full system written in Rust to quickly go through thousands of citations. Check it out!

github.com/gianlucasb/h...

Conference rankings and the FM symposium This survey collects the opinions of members of the formal methods community about conference rankings, and the ICORE rankings in particular. It has been organized by the board of Formal Methods Europ...

@formalmtds.bsky.social We are collecting the opinion of the formal methods community about the role of conference rankings (in particular for the FM symposium). If you're part of the formal methods community, we'd love to hear your opinion (it only takes 5 minutes) forms.gle/NwqWVx7R8mtA...

Great news, many congrats! 🎉👏

We are organizing the third edition of the "Fuzzing and Software Security Summer School 2026", at NUS on 26th–29th May 2026. We have a stellar set of speakers and will also have a Hackathon. Please share, and/or consider joining! fuzzingsummerschool.github.io/index.html

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

Congrats, well deserved! 🎉

FM 2027: Call for Organizers · Formal Methods Europe FME is now inviting proposals to host the 28th edition of the International Symposium on Formal Methods in autumn 2027. Since FM 2026 will take place in Asia, FM 2027 should preferably be held in…

FME is inviting proposals to host the 28th International Symposium on Formal Methods in Autumn 2027 (#FM2027), preferably in Europe

Dates
* Optional 01 Dec 2025: Expression of Interest
* 15 Jan 2026: Proposals
* 15 Feb 2026: Notification

Details: www.fmeurope.org/2025/09/14/f...

Congratulations, Andreas! 🎉 🏆

"International Conference on Foundations and Formal Methods for Software and Systems". In the first editions the full name will also include "(iFM + FASE)" for traceability...

This will be the last edition of the iFM conference. Starting from 2027, iFM will merge with FASE into a new ETAPS conference called iFS. 2/2

Caterina Urban, Ferruccio Damiani, and Marie Farrell on stage.

General chair @caterinaurban.bsky.social opening #ifm25 at Inria Paris with PC chairs Ferruccio Damiani and Marie Farrell. 1/2

Reminder of the preferred approach when sharing arXiv preprint links

📣 We are #hiring a tenure-track Assistant #Professor in Theoretical Data Science and Machine Learning - find out more and #apply now!
👉content.usi.ch/sites/default/files/stor...

#TheoreticalDataScience #MachineLearning #Switzerland

🚀 The 14th FormaliSE conference is coming to #ICSE2026!

A unique venue at the intersection of #FormalMethods & #SoftwareEngineering — from requirements to verification, safety, AI, and real-world applications.

🔗 Join the community: bit.ly/4nqwiCL
#FormaliSE2026

Formal Methods Europe @formalmtds.bsky.social is looking for proposals to host the Formal Method symposium in autumn 2027 (or later years). You're welcome to get in touch with FME's board if you have any questions. Proposal are due by 15 January 2026.
www.fmeurope.org/2025/09/14/f...

FM 2026: Call for Papers · Formal Methods Europe FM 2026 is the 27th international symposium on Formal Methods in a series organized by Formal Methods Europe (FME), an independent association whose aim is to stimulate the use of, and research on,…

New Post: Call for Papers for #FM2026

FME's 27th International Symposium on Formal Methods, this year in Tokyo.

Papers due on 2nd of Dec 2025 (AoE) with special tracks on Tests & Proofs and Tutorials, plus Industry Day and the Doctoral Symposium.

www.fmeurope.org/2025/04/10/f...
#FormalMethods

FM 2026 FM 2026 will be held in Tokyo from May 18 to 22, 2026. FM 2026 is the 27th international symposium on Formal Methods in a series organized by Formal Methods Europe (FME), an independent association…

This year, the Formal Methods Symposium will be in Tokyo, 20th to 22nd of May 2026.

FM2026 is interested in work that develops and applies #FormalMethods in a wide range of domains.

Abstracts: 25th Nov, 2025 (AoE)
Papers: 2nd Dec 2025 (AoE)

Details: conf.researchr.org/home/fm-2026
#FM2026

Registration for #iFM2025 and its affiliated events is now open! ifm2025.ens.psl.eu/registration/

🚀 #SIESTA2025 is live! The 5th International Software Engineering Summer School has kicked off!

Over three days, top researchers will cover topics like ML4SE, Test Case Generation, Empirical Studies, Impostor Syndrome, and LLM!

More info: siesta.si.usi.ch/2025

The Hardest start to a level ever YouTube video by LilKirbs

Bonus post: if you're wondering: "how hard can a SMM2 level really be?" here's a short demonstration 🤯
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O58R... 7/6

What Makes a Level Hard in Super Mario Maker 2? Games like Super Mario Maker 2 (SMM2) lower the barrier for casual users to become level designers. In this paper, we set out to analyze a vast amount of data about SMM2 user-written levels, in order ...

That's it for this short summary. See the paper's preprint 📜 for many more details! arxiv.org/abs/2507.21078 6/6

A topic sentiment analysis of the comments 💬 left by players indicates that the harder levels are often polarizing, as they rack up comparatively more comments expressing negative 😡 ("mad") or positive 🤩 ("great level") terms, as opposed to more neutral ones. 5/6

A regression analysis suggests that levels using recent game styles ⚡ (e.g.,New Super Mario Bros. U) are associated with lower clear rates (i.e., they're more difficult). In fact, each style adds new game mechanics that may compound the difficulty 🤹. supermariomaker2.fandom.com/wiki/Game_St... 4/6

A few years ago, a huge dump of level data has been made publicly available by a community effort. In this paper, we set out to analyze this data 🔎, focusing on a fundamental question: what characteristics of a level are related to it being easy or hard? 📊 3/6

Mario Maker 2 🍄 is a popular game for the Nintendo Switch where users can design new courses and share them with other users by uploading them on Nintendo's servers. Since 2019, millions of "makers" 🧰 unleashed their creativity producing tens of millions of levels of all kinds and styles. 2/6

At the upcoming IEEE 2025 Conference on Games 🎮, @andreamocci.bsky.social will present our joint work: "What makes a level hard in Mario Maker 2?" Definitely an unusual topic for a publication of mine! This short 🧵 explains what's that about. cog2025.inesc-id.pt/accepted-pap... #cog25 1/6