We study the Kaufman--Oppenheim coset complexes (STOC 2018, Eur. J. Comb. 2023), which have an elementary and strongly explicit description. Answering an open question of Kaufman, Oppenheim, and Weinberger (STOC 2025), we show that they support sparse direct-product testers in the low soundness regime. Our proof relies on the HDX ... more >>>

In this column, we overview recent progress by many authors on understanding the approximability of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) in low-space streaming models. Inspired by this recent progress, we collate nine conjectural lower bounds against streaming algorithms for CSPs, some of which appear here for the first time.

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We give an $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{n})$-space single-pass $0.483$-approximation streaming algorithm for estimating the maximum directed cut size (Max-DICUT) in a directed graph on $n$ vertices. This improves over an $O(\log n)$-space $4/9 < 0.45$ approximation algorithm due to Chou, Golovnev, Velusamy (FOCS 2020), which was known to be optimal for $o(\sqrt{n})$-space algorithms.

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A Boolean maximum constraint satisfaction problem, Max-CSP\((f)\), is specified by a predicate \(f:\{-1,1\}^k\to\{0,1\}\). An \(n\)-variable instance of Max-CSP\((f)\) consists of a list of constraints, each of which applies \(f\) to \(k\) distinct literals drawn from the \(n\) variables. For \(k=2\), Chou, Golovnev, and Velusamy [CGV20, FOCS 2020] obtained explicit ratios ... more >>>

An ordering constraint satisfaction problem (OCSP) is given by a positive integer $k$ and a constraint predicate $\Pi$ mapping permutations on $\{1,\ldots,k\}$ to $\{0,1\}$. Given an instance of OCSP$(\Pi)$ on $n$ variables and $m$ constraints, the goal is to find an ordering of the $n$ variables that maximizes the number ... more >>>