It's true that there has been a lot of practical progress and even theoretical progress, though often of the form "we improve 1.8^n running time to 1.65^n". But

It's true that there has been a lot of practical progress and even theoretical progress, though often of the form "we improve 1.8^n running time to 1.65^n". But... > As a result, these problems are more deeply understood now. I think that the gap to poly time is closing fast. I'd disagree. As we develop more and more understanding of these problems, we still are only improving exponentials to other exponentials (in theory - practice may be different) and so we remain in a fundamental sense as far away from polynomial-time solutions as ever, despite improved understanding.