Clément Canonne
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ccanonne.github.io
Clément Canonne
@ccanonne.github.io
6.8K followers 600 following 2.4K posts
Senior Lecturer #USydCompSci at the University of Sydney. Postdocs IBM Research and Stanford; PhD at Columbia. Converts ☕ into puns: sometimes theorems. He/him.
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ccanonne.github.io
Australia, please explain
A Google maps screenshot, showing the "Eggs and Bacon Bay" in Tasmania
November 29, 2025 at 10:56 AM
ccanonne.github.io
This new magazine by the @simonsinstitute.bsky.social looks really cool! And great name, too. It was the best of times. Also the worst-case of times.

View online: simons.berkeley.edu/media/28058/...
The cover of the first issue of the magazine, "Polynomial Times" (2025-26) Featured articles: - Watermarks and Pseudorandom Codes - Edge Coloring in Nearly Linear Time - The Compressed Oracle Method and Its Generalization - Optimal List Decoding
November 25, 2025 at 11:46 PM
ccanonne.github.io
Hiked 3 hours, ate a dosa in front of the Opera House, am now reading some lecture notes* while (pretending to be) watching cricket.

Saturday's good!
A dosa, on a plate on a stone wall, with the Sydney opera house in the background.
November 22, 2025 at 6:46 AM
ccanonne.github.io
In case you aren't already aware of one of the nerdiest, nich-est online games: TeXnique, where the goal is to type LaTeX formulae as quickly as possible. texnique.xyz

It is "fun."
An example, here asking to recreate in LaTeX the definition of a pseudorandom number generator
November 21, 2025 at 9:14 PM
ccanonne.github.io
'“It’s the most shortsighted lack of investment by a federal government since before the Abbott government. And they were stupid," [a former long-serving researcher at #CSIRO] said.'

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne..., article by @sbasfordcanales.bsky.social and @donnadlu.bsky.social
A chart showing the CSIRO funding as fraction of the GDP since 1978. It has dropped consistently, and overall has been divided by 5.
November 21, 2025 at 8:01 PM
ccanonne.github.io
New game: how to upset as many theoreticians as possible in 5 symbols or less*
On a whiteboard: tilde theta of 2
November 20, 2025 at 10:49 PM
ccanonne.github.io
The jacaranda season is ending, but Sydney is still beautifully purple.
A close-up of a jacaranda tree, with a bunch of purple flowers
November 18, 2025 at 7:50 PM
ccanonne.github.io
There are four kangaroos in this picture. #recursion
Two kangaroos, grazing, with joeys in their pouch.
November 9, 2025 at 8:13 AM
ccanonne.github.io
Spotting a Canberra kangaroo on its way to Parliament
A kangaroo on the side of the road, hopping away
November 9, 2025 at 7:31 AM
ccanonne.github.io
Canberra is such a pleasure to visit.
A male red-rumped parrot, on the sidewalk A crimson rosella, on the ground
November 9, 2025 at 6:15 AM
ccanonne.github.io
Very good design, no notes.
Pixellated picture of the rabbit Max, from the Sam and Max video game series
November 8, 2025 at 12:39 AM
ccanonne.github.io
You monsters, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO RUDOLPH?!
Qantas releases images of ultra long range Airbus that will fly non-stop from Sydney to London and New York (The photo shows a plane with a bright red nose)
November 7, 2025 at 11:08 AM
ccanonne.github.io
From a paper I am enthusiastic about — coming soon to an #arXiv near you.
"Lower bound arguments do not tell researchers the impossibility results exist. Researchers already know that impossibility results exist. Lower bound arguments tell researchers how the impossibility results can be bypassed." G.K. Chesterton (mildly paraphrased)
November 4, 2025 at 9:01 PM
ccanonne.github.io
Saw this fluffball in the neighborhood coffee shop.
November 2, 2025 at 11:04 AM
ccanonne.github.io
A flashlight scary story meme, where yhe kid, her face lit up by the flashlight, says "when they turned around... The submission was 187 pages long"
October 31, 2025 at 12:12 AM
ccanonne.github.io
In more detail:
Grant number: DP260102458 Professor Anthony Wirth; Dr Clément Canonne; Associate Professor Julian Mestre; Professor Ronitt Rubinfeld Boosting Algorithm Performance with Imperfect Advice. This project aims to develop a suite of new methods to design algorithms that perform best with AI-derived advice, even when imperfect. Recent advances in AI show its power and compel its application. This project is a significant and timely contribution to knowledge, with principled methods of integrating AI into algorithms, without sacrificing safety or robustness. Expected outcomes include practical algorithms with provable guarantees that leverage advice to achieve better solution quality and memory utilisation, especially when data is streamed. These new algorithms will provide significant benefits in effectiveness and efficiency gains, and robustness guarantees, for real-world problems arising in transport, energy, and cybersecurity. 28/10/2025 The University of Sydney FoR code 4613 Amount funded: $646,671.00
October 28, 2025 at 12:52 AM
ccanonne.github.io
Exciting! Fingers crossed now... "The petition has been presented to the House and is awaiting a response from the Minister responsible for the matter(s) raised in the petition request." 🇦🇺
www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...
Petition EN7775 - Make part-time PhD students' stipends tax exempt Petition Status The petition has been presented to the House
October 27, 2025 at 9:53 AM
ccanonne.github.io
This @smbccomics.bsky.social on quantum computing really hits the mark regarding teaching theoretical computer science more broadly―or, I reckon, science.*

www.smbc-comics.com/comic/intuit... by @zachweinersmith.bsky.social

*Hey, how would I know, I'm not a scientist.
A stern-looking scientist saying "Please stay away while I blow your mind, sir"
October 26, 2025 at 10:39 PM
ccanonne.github.io
It's purple tree season again!
A bright purple jacaranda tree
October 25, 2025 at 11:10 PM
ccanonne.github.io
User-level privacy means that the local DP guarantee holds w.r.t. an entire user: the algo's output shouldn't leak much about any given user, even if their *all* of their m samples changed!

This is much harder than the m=1 case... and we want *practical* algos: no shared random seed, for instance!
As our focus is on capturing practically motivated settings, we also pay special attention to the type of algorithm we design, and how realistic their deployment would be. For instance, adaptive protocols, in which users interact sequentially and adapt their output to the previous message observed, are typically undesirable, as they introduce latency and a host of technical implementation challenges. For this reason, we consider non-adaptive protocols for this problem; which themselves come in several varieties. In particular a protocol can be public-coin or private-coin, and symmetric or asymmetric. A public-coin protocol assumes the existence of a shared random seed between all participants, while a private-coin protocol does not.
October 22, 2025 at 4:18 AM
ccanonne.github.io
David Harvey (UNSW) giving a very engaging talk at our Sydney Algorithms and Computing Theory (SACT) seminar on his upcoming #FOCS2025 paper,
"Integer multiplication is at least as hard as matrix transposition." @sydneycompsci.bsky.social
David Harvey, on the whiteboard, giving the overview of the reduction from matrix transposition to integer multiplication.
October 22, 2025 at 2:44 AM
ccanonne.github.io
In case you're wondering
A bar graph going up (exponentially increasing trend) with the legend "Jokes on BlueSky" for the y-axis, and "proximity to grant application deadline" for the x-axis
October 20, 2025 at 7:32 AM
ccanonne.github.io
Dec 11-13 at #USyd, just before #FOCS2025: "A Celebration of Theoretical Computer Science": now with a poster!

Info and (free) registration: sites.google.com/view/celebra... #TCSSky
Poster for the event, with the title (A Celebration of TCS), the location, the url and a QR code, and a picture depicting a range of people (as emojis) being the vertices of a highly connected graph.
October 20, 2025 at 3:29 AM
ccanonne.github.io
The potato is still growing. All hail our new potato master. 🥔
A giant potato plant, roughly 120cm high, on a balcony.
October 18, 2025 at 5:53 AM
ccanonne.github.io
"Graphic design is my passion" (creating a logo/poster)
A well-connected graph, whose nodes have emojis of various people, meant to represent the many faces of theoretical computer science
October 13, 2025 at 10:21 AM