Mike Thomas

Issue 2026-W09 Highlights Choice is good, but sometimes you may want a little help! Our first two highlights showcase approaches you can take to inform your next LLM for analyses…

Episode 222 of the R Weekly Highlights Podcast is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/...

🤔 Choosing LLMs with vitals @smachlis.bsky.social
👀 Pick a license (VP Nagraj)
📍 Git commits, mark your stitches @masalmon.eu

h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social & Sam Parmar 🙏

#rstats #databs

Issue 2026-W08 Highlights A glimpse into the R Consortium Submissions Working Group's recent successes and future work, and a new way to view those nested lists from a familiar face…

Episode 221 of the R Weekly Highlights Podcast is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/...

📰 Submissions WG successes and new plans @rconsortium.bsky.social
🕸️ Viewing nested lists @yihui.org

h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social & @batoolmm.bsky.social 🙏

#rstats #databs

Man I really need to go back and watch this show again

It’s called R

@yannco.bsky.social Brilliant! 😂

Computer screen showing Zoom event where JD Long is speaking, with coffee mug sitting in front of the screen.

Coffee & @jdlong.cerebralmastication.com to start the day… it’s a good Wednesday

Live look in at my code somehow not throwing any errors in prod

nanonext 1.8.0 nanonext 1.8.0 adds a low-level streaming HTTP/WebSocket server to R's web infrastructure, with TLS support, new async primitives, and redesigned documentation.

nanonext 1.8.0 is out - R now has a streaming HTTP/WebSocket server with bundled TLS.

Runs alongside Shiny in the same process. We're already using it at Posit to explore new real-time capabilities.

#Rstats #tidyverse

tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02/nanonext-1-8-0/

Can’t wait for this! 😁

Issue 2026-W06 Highlights A prominent leader at the intersection of data science and data engineering across multiple languages shares her insights, how a recent Git workshop…

Episode 220 of R Weekly Highlights is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/...

🎙️ @emilyriederer.bsky.social on Test Set @posit.co
💪 Git for data workflows @fgazzelloni.bsky.social @rladiesrome.bsky.social
🏗️ libdplyr @mrchypark.bsky.social

h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social & Jon Carroll 🙏

#RStats #databs

"LLMs [only] do a great job at interpreting plots that _don't_ contradict their expectations—it's sort of antithetical to the spirit of science." - @mike-thomas.bsky.social. Thanks for the coverage, yall!

More on @sara-altman.bsky.social and I's bluffbench eval: posit.co/blog/llm-plo...

Issue 2026-W05 Highlights The way LLMs can be a little stubborn when interpreting data visualizations, bringing new meaning to digging for your data and learning along the way, and…

Episode 219 of R Weekly Highlights is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/...

📊 LLM Plot Interpretations @sara-altman.bsky.social @simonpcouch.com
🌎 Soil flux @phytobio.me & John Zobitz
🏎 futurize @henrikbengtsson.bsky.social

h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social @jonathankitt.bsky.social 🙏

#rstats #databs

How to create a more accessible line chart – Nicola Rennie The default settings for chart software are not guaranteed to be accessible, and often need to be adapted for your own chart. In this blog post, we’ll transform a line chart to make it more accessible...

Hi Angelo! Nicola's blog post from last week's highlights shows a great example if you look at the title of the chart in this section of her post: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/accessi...

Issue 2026-W04 Highlights The inside story of how Claude Code with the proper scope provided a massive boost to drafting hundreds of pull requests, and debunking the myth on…

Episode 218 of the R Weekly Highlights Podcast is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/...

🤖 Semi-automating 200 PRs @davisvaughan.bsky.social
📈 Accessible Line Charts @nrennie.bsky.social

h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social & Jon Calder 🙏

#RStats #databs

Issue 2026-W03 Highlights It's a new year of R Weekly Highlights! In this episode we learn of the positive intellectual diversity impacting R and Python communities, a great…

A new year of R Weekly Highlights begins with episode 217! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/...

🤝 Polyglot to pluralism @emilyriederer.bsky.social
📚 RAG knowledge store setup @jumpingrivers.com
📦 tinyshinyserver (Lars Bernhardsson)

h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social 🙏

#rstats #databs

logo of Risk 2026 conference

Announcing Risk 2026 (Feb 18–19) - 2-day, 100% online

For anyone using R to measure, report, or mitigate risk (finance, insurance, healthcare, climate, cybersecurity, supply chain, etc.).

Keynote: JD Long, author of R Cookbook. Tickets $25/$50/$70.

rconsortium.github.io/Risk_website

#rstats

Statement by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell YouTube video by Federal Reserve

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG...
www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

Pushed a bug fix to {migrate} for all of the risk analytics folks out there 🚀

Excited to see this post by Heather Turner with more details on their recent RSMF grant for enabling future contributions to R.

I'd encourage #rstats folks to give it a read: there are some much-needed modernisation ideas in here.

blog.r-project.org/2025/12/17/r...

mutagen was started six (!!) years ago, and has taken a little while to get rolling. I admit I haven't contributed much beyond the hex 😅 we truly appreciate the highlight, @batoolmm.bsky.social, @mike-thomas.bsky.social, and @rpodcast.bsky.social!

Check it out here: github.com/gvelasq/muta...

Thanks to LinkedIn and its "Easy Apply" functionality; it has promoted the ad to ~1'200 people, burned through CHF 400 in 72 hours so that I could obtain 156 resumes: none of which meet ... Thanks to LinkedIn and its "Easy Apply" functionality; it has promoted the ad to ~1'200 people, burned through CHF 400 in 72 hours so that I could obtain 156 resumes: none of which meet the few requir...

Reposting a great opportunity to work with @john-coene.com at Opifex doing R/Javascript/Shiny work 👀

www.linkedin.com/posts/johnco...

Issue 2025-W50 Highlights How the recent frontier LLM model releases compare for successfully generating R code, our take on the new Test Set data science podcast, and a surprising…

Episode 215 of R Weekly Highlights is out! serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/...

🤖 AI Newsl @simonpcouch.com @sara-altman.bsky.social
🎙️ The Test Set @mchow.com @hadley.nz @wesmckinney.com
🤔 Haskell for DS @jonocarroll.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy

h/t @mike-thomas.bsky.social Sam Parmar 🙏

#RStats #databs

FDA logo

A milestone for #rstats: FDA expands accepted eCTD file formats for R packages, based on joint work between industry, FDA, and the R Consortium Submissions WG. Details: r-consortium.org/posts/expand...

#fda #regulatory #clinicaltrials

ffiec: R Interface to 'FFIEC Central Data Repository REST API' Service Provides a simplified interface to the Central Data Repository 'REST API' service made available by the United States Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council ('FFIEC'). Contains functions to retrieve reports of Condition and Income (Call Reports) and Uniform Bank Performance Reports ('UBPR') in list or tidy data frame format for most 'FDIC' insured institutions. See &lt;<a href="https://cdr.ffiec.gov/public/Files/SIS611_-_Retrieve_Public_Data_via_Web_Service.pdf" target="_top">https://cdr.ffiec.gov/public/Files/SIS611_-_Retrieve_Public_Data_via_Web_Service.pdf</a>&gt; for the official 'REST API' documentation published by the 'FFIEC'.

New on CRAN: ffiec (0.1.3). View at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ffiec

photo of JD Long

The R Consortium is excited to announce James “JD” Long as keynote speaker for R!sk 2026, our new online event on using R for risk. Join us Feb 18–19, 2026!

It's not just for insurance—if you use R in climate, healthcare, lots more...

Details: r-consortium.org/posts/r-cons...

#rstats #risk

Thanks @eddelbuettel.com ! And thank you (from all of us) for r2u!

@eddelbuettel.com CC

I believe there are DuckDB base images (Docker) that could help with the overhead of installing DuckDB

I’m pretty sure r2u only builds the most recent version of each CRAN package.