alastair rushworth

The R Data Scientist 04-11-2025 R ecosystem updates, ggplot2 visuals, map-making techniques, Shiny testing and more!

✨ The R Data Scientist, 04-11-2025

R ecosystem updates, ggplot2 visuals, map-making techniques, Shiny testing and more!

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Despite this, 75+% of creators will lose their livelihoods, simply because they weren't creating anything authentic or thoughtful.

Maybe contrarian opinion about effects of AI:

as AI content becomes the norm on social sites, the ability to think and write in an authentic human voice will become much more valuable and sought after, not less.

powRSS home screen

@cassidoo.co writes:

"I’ve been thinking a lot about the internet lately, like as a concept. I don’t know where everyone went...
When the algorithms are determining everything we should be seeing, it’s a much less personal internet"

In response I made powrss.com to rediscover the personal web.

Should have said that the point of the cheat was that you could pre multiply some cholesky factors involved and get very quick evaluations as a result!

This looks cool! Tangential, but back in my PhD days I used the hutchinson estimator for a kind of AICc hyperparameter-esque search. I cheated by using the same random vectors for every evaluation, so whatever optimum I reached was biased but it was often good enough (good in strong air quotes)

Weekly Recap (Oct 31, 2025) AI in science, Quarto, biodiversity, changed grant titles, new papers & preprints, Nextflow plugin registry, Via Scientific, R updates from R Data Scientist, rOpenSci, Posit, R Weekly, and R Works 🎃

Weekly Recap (Oct 31, 2025) 🎃: What's new with AI in science, Quarto, biodiversity, changed grant titles, new papers & preprints, Nextflow plugin registry, Via Scientific, #Rstats updates from R Data Scientist, rOpenSci, Posit, R Weekly, and R Works doi.org/10.59350/np5...

Vibe coders everywhere having a snowday

this is partly why I lower case my name everywhere too, and exactly the same experience. mail merge isn't dead yet it seems!

This must be really wearing. I've been out of higher ed for a long time, how is this being treated when it gets caught - is it penalised the same way as plagiarism? Or too much hassle to chase every case?

Interactive: explore England’s new deprivation map Data analysis reveals ‘cheek by jowl’ inequalities in first study of country’s disadvantaged areas since pandemic

Interactive: explore England’s new deprivation map ft.trib.al/NVmE4Gg

ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web - Anil Dash A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Quite thought provoking read. I won't touch atlas for the reasons listed. But as much as it pains me to say, I think a lot of people don't care about make direct contact with websites, and this idea (not necessarily openAIs implementation) is going to be popular.

www.anildash.com//2025/10/22/...

I'm saying that if it's easy to do, then the alpha has probably already been earned. Past tense already. What do you think?

Isn't the mere fact that this can be done quickly and cheaply an argument that such alpha will be traded out pretty quickly?

0 < ROI < 1 still means you get less back than you put in to build it.

This slide does not make me want to read the report.

The R Data Scientist 28-10-2025 R-community news, data skills training, innovative software development, map visualizations and more!

This week's edition of The R Data Scientist just published, subscribe to future issues at rstats.blaze.email! #rstats #databs

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Liking this so far. Wondering if authors would like to be tagged when a post of one of their articles go up? Wouldn't be super tricky to add.

YouTube video by Laphroaig Whisky Laphroaig x Willem Dafoe - The Taste

I'm something of connoisseur myself
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rcg...

📣THREAD: It’s surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but you–not AWS, not Signal, not anyone–can access your comms).

It’s also concerning. 1/

What's new in data science, AI, #Rstats, biosecurity, etc. this week: Polyglot data science pipeline with rixpress, EuroBioC2025/BCN, Python packaging for R devs, Python in 2025, R/Pharma, DARPA, ASHG, the R Data Scientist, Quarto, universities and AI blog.stephenturner.us/p/weekly-rec...

blaze.email site update - just a cute little static site now 😎

The R Data Scientist Move to buttondown, community, stats, packages

The R Data Scientist dropped from blaze. This week newsletters were all moved to buttondown, I hope you like the new look and features that come with it! #rstats

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Love plotnine

For anyone thinking of starting a newsletter, I seriously recommend buttondown. Its both easy to use and incredibly powerful, and not overpriced. And the user support is ridiculously good.

Ok it's not going to be substack. It was, then it was pointed out to me that substack has a bit of a moderation problem.

blaze.email is moving completely over to @buttondown.com (first emails tomorrow) which honestly is better in just about every way.

A picture of a foggy street

Edinburgh castle failing to render, likely thanks to the AWS outage

I intend to create several of these across different academic topics (eg. physics, chem, etc), but will hold back until the balance of content is right across a smaller number first. the auto-moderation is ok, but it's harder to get right handling new items sequentially.

🚨 feed for mathematicians is up too now bsky.app/profile/math... (basically just a filtered list of math-related posts from a wide range of blogs)

Scrolling through computer desks on the 2001 Argos catalog. Surprisingly narcotic experience if you’re an elder millennial