The non-uniform version of Turing machines with an extra advice input tape that depends on the length of the input but not the input itself is a well-studied model in complexity theory. We investigate the same notion of non-uniformity in weaker models, namely one-way finite automata. In particular, we are interested in the power of two-sided bounded-error randomization, and how it compares to determinism and non-determinism. We show that for unlimited advice, randomization is strictly stronger than determinism, and strictly weaker than non-determinism. However, when the advice is restricted to polynomial length, the landscape changes: the expressive power of determinism and randomization does not change, but the power of non-determinism is reduced to the extent that it becomes incomparable with randomization.

In STOC'16, Fraigniaud et al. consider the problem of finding a treasure hidden in one of many boxes that are ordered by importance. That is, if a treasure is in a more important box, then one would like to find it faster. Assuming there are many searchers, the authors suggest that using an algorithm that requires no coordination between searchers can be highly beneficial. Indeed, besides saving the need for a communication and coordination mechanism, such algorithms enjoy inherent robustness. The authors proceed to solve this linear search problem in the case of countably many boxes and an adversary placed treasure, and prove that the best speed-up possible by $k$ non-coordinating searchers is precisely $\frac{k}{4}(1+1/k)^2$. In particular, this means that asymptotically, the speed-up is four times worse compared to the case of full coordination. We suggest an important variant of the problem, where the treasure is placed uniformly at random in one of a finite, large, number of boxes. We devise non-coordinating algorithms that achieve a speed-up of $6/5$ for two searchers, a speed-up of $3/2$ for three searchers, and in general, a speed-up of $k(k+1)/(3k-1)$ for any $k \geq 1$ searchers. Thus, as $k$ grows to infinity, the speed-up approaches three times worse compared to the case of full coordination. Moreover, these bounds are tight in a strong sense as no non-coordinating search algorithm for $k$ searchers can achieve better speed-ups. We also devise non-coordinating algorithms that use only logarithmic memory in the size of the search domain, and yet, asymptotically, achieve the optimal speed-up. Finally, we note that all our algorithms are extremely simple and hence applicable.

The lower bounds on communication complexity measures of language generation by Parallel Communicating Grammar Systems (PCGS) are investigated. The first result shows that there exists a language that can be generated by some dag-PCGS (PCGS with communication structures realizable by directed acyclic graphs) consisting of 3 grammars, but by no PCGS with tree communication structure. The second result shows that dag-PCGS have their communication complexity of language generation either constant or linear.