Abigail
@abigailgentle.com
CS PhD at @sydney.edu.au. Working on Differential Privacy. Interested in TCS and maths, particularly learning, testing and statistics
I really need to switch to a newer Obsidian Zotero connector, but I've got such heavy scripting debt in this ancient abandonware plugin that I cant fathom how long it'll take me to port everything over
November 14, 2025 at 1:42 AM
I really need to switch to a newer Obsidian Zotero connector, but I've got such heavy scripting debt in this ancient abandonware plugin that I cant fathom how long it'll take me to port everything over
Reposted by Abigail
November 10, 2025 at 10:32 PM
Just caught myself writing D(P\|Q) on paper
November 4, 2025 at 4:49 AM
Just caught myself writing D(P\|Q) on paper
I'm running a mock-conference for students using OpenReview, and have developed an appreciation for how nuanced that software is. But also an appreciation for conference chairs because of how much of a headache that software is
October 13, 2025 at 5:58 AM
I'm running a mock-conference for students using OpenReview, and have developed an appreciation for how nuanced that software is. But also an appreciation for conference chairs because of how much of a headache that software is
Reposted by Abigail
My petition to the 🇦🇺 Australian government: make part-time PhD students' stipends tax exempt!
📋 Read and sign here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...
⏰ Deadline: October 1
📋 Read and sign here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...
⏰ Deadline: October 1
e-petitions
e-petitions
www.aph.gov.au
September 3, 2025 at 5:54 AM
My petition to the 🇦🇺 Australian government: make part-time PhD students' stipends tax exempt!
📋 Read and sign here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...
⏰ Deadline: October 1
📋 Read and sign here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...
⏰ Deadline: October 1
with great power (arXiv endorsement ability) comes great responsibility (quack emails)
August 11, 2025 at 6:10 AM
with great power (arXiv endorsement ability) comes great responsibility (quack emails)
Reposted by Abigail
New (solo) #privacy paper by @abigailgentle.com, PhD student at
@sydneycompsci.bsky.social: "Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation," to be presented at the Information Theory Workshop (ITW'25)!
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
@sydneycompsci.bsky.social: "Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation," to be presented at the Information Theory Workshop (ITW'25)!
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation
Local differential privacy represents the gold standard for preserving the privacy of data before it leaves the device, and distribution estimation under this model has been well studied. Recently, pr...
arxiv.org
August 8, 2025 at 4:10 AM
New (solo) #privacy paper by @abigailgentle.com, PhD student at
@sydneycompsci.bsky.social: "Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation," to be presented at the Information Theory Workshop (ITW'25)!
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
@sydneycompsci.bsky.social: "Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation," to be presented at the Information Theory Workshop (ITW'25)!
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
Thank you differential privacy bot :)
Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation
Abigail Gentle
http://arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
Abigail Gentle
http://arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
August 8, 2025 at 5:14 AM
Thank you differential privacy bot :)
Workshop paper up on arXiv!
Bringing together a collection of necessary conditions on optimal LDP frequency estimation algorithms, and showing they restrict us to a specific class of combinatorial objects.
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
Bringing together a collection of necessary conditions on optimal LDP frequency estimation algorithms, and showing they restrict us to a specific class of combinatorial objects.
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation
Local differential privacy represents the gold standard for preserving the privacy of data before it leaves the device, and distribution estimation under this model has been well studied. Recently, pr...
arxiv.org
August 8, 2025 at 2:11 AM
Workshop paper up on arXiv!
Bringing together a collection of necessary conditions on optimal LDP frequency estimation algorithms, and showing they restrict us to a specific class of combinatorial objects.
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
Bringing together a collection of necessary conditions on optimal LDP frequency estimation algorithms, and showing they restrict us to a specific class of combinatorial objects.
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
submitted a paper to arXiv, which has already passed peer review, but I'm still staring at a wall wondering if there's anything obviously dumb I've missed
August 7, 2025 at 9:21 AM
submitted a paper to arXiv, which has already passed peer review, but I'm still staring at a wall wondering if there's anything obviously dumb I've missed
P=BPP is so interesting a problem it almost makes me want to study complexity theory
August 5, 2025 at 7:31 AM
P=BPP is so interesting a problem it almost makes me want to study complexity theory
Greatest unsolved problem of our time: creating nice tables in a document
July 31, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Greatest unsolved problem of our time: creating nice tables in a document
Does anyone know of a good collaborative pdf mark-up website or program? Kami works ok, but is a bit broken, regularly asks for permissions, and needs aggressive access to either Google drive or OneDrive
July 30, 2025 at 2:39 AM
Does anyone know of a good collaborative pdf mark-up website or program? Kami works ok, but is a bit broken, regularly asks for permissions, and needs aggressive access to either Google drive or OneDrive
God bless the LLMs: "I added a new macro for X late in writing, please identify where I've used X and replace it with the macro" is saving my life regularly (I plan my writing poorly)
July 3, 2025 at 11:12 AM
God bless the LLMs: "I added a new macro for X late in writing, please identify where I've used X and replace it with the macro" is saving my life regularly (I plan my writing poorly)
Annoyed that vscode has turned out to be the best LaTeX editor I've used so far. I'm sure nvim is competitive, but I haven't used it since undergrad
July 2, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Annoyed that vscode has turned out to be the best LaTeX editor I've used so far. I'm sure nvim is competitive, but I haven't used it since undergrad
Quite unbelievable density of cool talks going on, even while its past midnight in the US where most of these researchers are based
May 29, 2025 at 7:05 AM
Quite unbelievable density of cool talks going on, even while its past midnight in the US where most of these researchers are based
Fiddling with llms: Gemini seems to hallucinate a lot more obviously than any other models I've tried when asked for literature reviews
May 21, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Fiddling with llms: Gemini seems to hallucinate a lot more obviously than any other models I've tried when asked for literature reviews
Optus (phone provider) doesn't have our current address in it! I was so shocked I had to download the national address database and make sure our fairly new apartment is in it, and of course it is. Optus, put me in charge of your db I'll remember to download the quarterly updates for a modest salary
May 13, 2025 at 8:34 AM
Optus (phone provider) doesn't have our current address in it! I was so shocked I had to download the national address database and make sure our fairly new apartment is in it, and of course it is. Optus, put me in charge of your db I'll remember to download the quarterly updates for a modest salary
I've been to one baseball game in my life and it was to see the Sox fail badly against the second worst team, which of course made me an instant fan
Best Chicago controversy of the new Pope is the Cubs trying to lay claim to him and his brother having to speak up to clear up that he's a Sox fan. blockclubchicago.org/2025/05/08/p...
Pope Leo XIV Is A Sox Fan, Despite The Early Hope From Cubs Fans, His Brother Confirms
The Cubs' Marquee Sports Network, citing ABC News, said the new pontiff supports the North Siders. But his brother said that is not true.
blockclubchicago.org
May 9, 2025 at 5:32 AM
I've been to one baseball game in my life and it was to see the Sox fail badly against the second worst team, which of course made me an instant fan
Reposted by Abigail
Best Chicago controversy of the new Pope is the Cubs trying to lay claim to him and his brother having to speak up to clear up that he's a Sox fan. blockclubchicago.org/2025/05/08/p...
Pope Leo XIV Is A Sox Fan, Despite The Early Hope From Cubs Fans, His Brother Confirms
The Cubs' Marquee Sports Network, citing ABC News, said the new pontiff supports the North Siders. But his brother said that is not true.
blockclubchicago.org
May 8, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Best Chicago controversy of the new Pope is the Cubs trying to lay claim to him and his brother having to speak up to clear up that he's a Sox fan. blockclubchicago.org/2025/05/08/p...
The 70s and 80s had way more of a randomised response boom than I ever imagined. These authors imagined the topic being taught in introductory statistics
May 5, 2025 at 6:46 AM
The 70s and 80s had way more of a randomised response boom than I ever imagined. These authors imagined the topic being taught in introductory statistics
I've been trying out Typst a little and I'm glad to see them taking a definitive stance on the superior epsilon
May 2, 2025 at 7:58 AM
I've been trying out Typst a little and I'm glad to see them taking a definitive stance on the superior epsilon
Being a researcher is so hard! I'm still working through the 3000 ICML papers from 2024 and now there's going to be another 3000?
May 2, 2025 at 7:05 AM
Being a researcher is so hard! I'm still working through the 3000 ICML papers from 2024 and now there's going to be another 3000?
In highschool our English teacher gave us an exercise to condense a paragraph into as few words as possible while retaining all of its meaning. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Relatedly I'm writing an abstract right now
April 20, 2025 at 3:51 AM
In highschool our English teacher gave us an exercise to condense a paragraph into as few words as possible while retaining all of its meaning. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Relatedly I'm writing an abstract right now