Our candid takes on the state of CRAN's role in light of recent package archival events, how creative use of LLMs could greatly streamline your next literature review, and a few great illustrations of lazy being a good thing in your R session.
Episode Links

• This week's curator: Eric Nantz - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) & @theRcast (X/Twitter)
• Is CRAN Holding R Back?
• How to use large language models to assist in systematic literature reviews
• Lazy introduction to laziness in R
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2025-W08

Supplement Resources

• A guide to contributing to open-source Python packages https://arilamstein.com/blog/2025/01/02/a-guide-to-contributing-to-open-source-python-packages/
• Continue https://www.continue.dev/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music credits powered by OCRemix

• Gurgling Desert Pond - Final Fantasy Random Encounter - blackguitar - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02555
• Hotel Rhumba - Earthbound - The Pancake Chef - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00526

An illuminating set of tips for making the best out of the phrase "fifty shades of grey" in your next monochrome visualisation, how the unique formatting features of the Scotland census data were tamed with the power of R, and how the first-ever native mobile application powered by R has opened the doors wide open for innovation across many parts of data science.
Episode Links

• This week's curator: Jon Carroll - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @jonocarroll.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy (Bluesky) & @carroll_jono (X/Twitter)
• Designing monochrome data visualisations
• The life changing magic of tidying text files
• Rlinguo — Why Did We Build It?
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2025-W07

Supplement Resources

• ColorBrewer palettes https://colorbrewer2.org
• John's GitHub repository for tidying census files https://github.com/johnmackintosh/tidy-scotland-census
• Introducing Rlinguo, a native mobile app that runs R https://rtask.thinkr.fr/introducing-rlinguo-a-native-mobile-app-that-runs-r/
• mirai v2.0 - Continuous Innovation https://shikokuchuo.net/posts/25-mirai-v2/
• Key considerations for retiring/superseding an R package https://epiverse-trace.github.io/posts/superseding-bpmodels/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music powered by OCRemix

• Chillout - Mega Man 2 - sedure - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01175
• Black Genesis - Final Fantasy VI Balance & Ruin - Brandon Strader, Rexy - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02796

Context is king in a trifecta of R packages harnessing LLMs to be your virtual assistant in package development and data science, plus the world (of data) is at your fingertips for data exploration and sharing your insights using the innovative closeread Quarto extension.


Episode Links

• This week's curator: Jonathan Kitt - @jonathankitt.bsky.social (Bluesky)
• Three experiments in LLM code assist with RStudio and Positron
• Gapminder: how has the world changed?
• Downloading datasets from Our World in Data in R
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2025-W06

Supplement Resources

• From hours to minutes: accelerating your tidymodels code https://youtu.be/pTMiDHFIiPQ?si=4qZC3_NLUVhD5hAa
• Effecient Machine Learning with R https://emlwr.org/
• Closeread: Bringing scrollytelling to Quarto https://youtu.be/KqLxy66B3lQ?si=w7DIB4QhYk2u6cLG
• Closeread Posit contest submissions https://forum.posit.co/tag/closeread-prize-2024
• Extract Information From Images and PDFs With R & LLMs  https://3mw.albert-rapp.de/p/extract-information-from-images-and-pdfs-with-r-llms
• usgs geological survey mapping water https://waterdata.usgs.gov/blog/acs-maps/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music credits powered by OCRemix

• Costa del Sol DANCE - Final Fantasy VII - posu yan - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00095
• Aerobotics - Mega Man 8 - Just Coffee - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03323

Ready to bring your next presentation slides to the world of Quarto? Our first highlight has a batch of power tips you can use for your next slide deck. Plus terrific insights from first-time contributors to open-source software.
Episode Links

• This week's curator: Jon Calder - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @jonmcalder (X/Twitter)
• Seven tips for creating Quarto revealjs presentations
• From Novice to Contributor: Making and Supporting First-Time Contributions to FOSS
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2025-W05

Supplement Resources

• Emil Hvitfeldt's blog https://emilhvitfeldt.com
• GitHub Desktop https://github.com/apps/desktop
• GitKraken https://www.gitkraken.com/
• lazygit https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit
• Coworking mini-hackathons https://ropensci.org/blog/2025/01/24/coworking-hackathons/ 
• ShinyConf 2025 https://www.shinyconf.com
• Posit::Conf 2025 https://posit.co/conference/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music powered by OCRemix

• The Narshemellow - Final Fantasy VI Balance & Ruin - XPRTNovice - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03141

Bringing a little tidy magic to creating flowcharts in R, how data.table is addressing recent shifts in R's C APIs, and another showcase of R's visualization prowess in the realm of brain imaging. 
Episode Links

• This week's curator: Ryo Nakagawara - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @rbyryo.bsky.social (Bluesky) & @R_by_Ryo) (X/Twitter)
• Flowcharts made easy with the package {flowchart}
• Use of non-API entry points in data.table
• Intro to working with volume and surface brain data 
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2025-W04

Supplement Resources

• flowchart - R package for drawing participant flow diagrams directly from a dataframe using tidyverse https://bruigtp.github.io/flowchart
• Mermaid - Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text in a similar manner as markdown https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid
• DiagrammeR - Graph and network visualization using tabular data in R https://rich-iannone.github.io/DiagrammeR/
• RNifti https://github.com/jonclayden/RNifti
• gifti https://github.com/muschellij2/gifti
• CRAN Cookbook https://r-consortium.org/posts/user-friendly-technical-cookbook-style-cran-guide-for-new-r-programmers-ready/
• 2024 Posit Year in Review https://posit.co/blog/2024-posit-year-in-review/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music powered by OCRemix

• Secrets Abound (Matoya's Cave) - Final Fantasy: Random Encounter - Midgarian Sky - https://encounter.ocremix.org/
• Succumb to the Wilderness - Wild Aarms: ARMed and DANGerous - Level 99 - https://armed.ocremix.org/

The R Weekly Highlights podcast returns for Our first episode of 2025! We learn how hosted and self-hostem LLM's perform in the summarization of Bluesky R posts, as well as how models hosted on Azure infrastructure summarize cycling destinations. Lastly, we visit the visualization corner once again to bring a little (or a lot) of color in your next graphics created with R.
Episode Links

• This week's curator: Batool Almarzouq - @batool664 (X/Twitter)
• Bluesky conversation analysis with local and frontier LLMs with R/Tidyverse.
• Harnessing Azure OpenAI and R for Web Content Summarisation: A Practical Guide with rvest and tidyverse
• Working with colours in R
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2025-W01

Supplement Resources

• Rasa open-source documentation https://rasa.com/docs/rasa/
• Brand.yml https://posit-dev.github.io/brand-yml/
• {rix} updates https://docs.ropensci.org/rix/news/index.html
• Strategic Investment Analysis: Key Questions Generated by DoTadda’s Knowledge Platform https://www.spsanderson.com/steveondata/posts/2024-12-26/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music powered by OCRemix

• Peacemaker - Sonic Adventure - halc - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02187
• The Quick and the Blue - Mega Man 2 - The Megas - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02090

An evolution of asynchronous programming techniques to boost your Shiny apps, how a puzzle from over a century ago could tip the scales for mathematics algorithms solvable in R, and solving the recent 2024 Advent of Code puzzles with data.table.


Episode Links

• This week's curator: Colin Fay - @[email protected] [@_ColinFay]](https://twitter.com/_ColinFay) (X/Twitter) @colinfay.bsky.social
• Parallel and Asynchronous Programming in Shiny with future, promise, future_promise, and ExtendedTask
• Writing Signed Trinary: or, Back To the Four Weights Problem
• Advent of Code with data.table: Week One
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2024-W51

Supplement Resources

• Futureverse - A Unifying Parallelization Framework in R for Everyone https://www.futureverse.org/
• Non-blocking operations with ExtendedTask https://shiny.posit.co/r/articles/improve/nonblocking/
• Asynchronous Shiny apps with crew and mirai https://wlandau.github.io/crew/articles/shiny.html
• Bachet’s Four Weights Problem https://rworks.dev/posts/four-weights/
• Advent of Code 2024 https://adventofcode.com/
• Lime Bikes Summary Dashboard https://jokasan.github.io/Lime_Dash/

Chapter image credits

• Advent of Code https://thenewstack.io/advent-of-codes-programming-puzzles-set-new-global-record/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music credits powered by OCRemix

• J-Type - Tetris - Nostalvania - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04401
• I Just Skipped Time Yesterday - Puyo Puyo - Rexy - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03941

The future of R-Universe looks even brighter for 2025 and beyond, revisiting the key factors for possibly switching to the Positron IDE, and why there is more than meets the eyes when it comes to the potential of LLMs and AI (even in highly-regulated industries).
Episode Links

• This week's curator: Eric Nantz - @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
• R-Universe Named R Consortium’s Newest Top Level Project
• Positron vs RStudio - is it time to switch?
• Summer is Coming: AI for Shiny, R, and Pharma
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2024-W50

Supplement Resources

• rOpenSci Blog Post https://ropensci.org/blog/2024/12/03/r-universe-r-consortium-tlp/
• Positron IDE - A new IDE for data science https://drmowinckels.io/blog/2024/positron/
• Fun with Positron https://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2024/07/08/fun-with-positron/
• Open VSX Registry https://open-vsx.org
• Power Mode Extension https://open-vsx.org/extension/hoovercj/vscode-power-mode
• Joe Cheng's slides from R/Pharma keybote https://jcheng5.github.io/pharma-ai-2024/#/title-slide
• R Consortium Submissions Pilot 2 Shiny Application https://github.com/RConsortium/submissions-pilot2
• Daniel Sebanes Bove & Joe Cheng - Discussion of R/Pharma Keynote https://youtu.be/AU1MmcXYnJ0?si=A3V9JHYdZLiz-lvv
• Practical Tips for Using Generative AI in Data Science Workflows https://youtu.be/rPeOdc8jTSE?si=APtIhpRqlh2I_Ek1
• Apple Music Wrapped in R https://www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2024/12/04/apple-music-wrapped-r/
• Predicting Best Picture at the 2025 Academy Awards https://www.markhw.com/blog/oscars2025
• Navidrome - Your Personal Streaming Service https://www.navidrome.org/
• Scrubbing your music with Maloja https://wenkdth.org/posts/maloja-scrobbling/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music credits powered by OCRemix

• The Traveling Band's Last Song - Wild Arms: Armed and Dangerous - Artem Bank - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02588
• Secrets Abound - Final Fantasy - Midgarian Sky - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02452

As the holiday season enters the picture, learn how a humble R package helps you to give thanks to the contributors of your open-source package. Plus a practical introduction to missing value interpolation with a tried-and-true R package with a rich history, and a comprehensive analysis to predict an NBA superstar's next shot result (who has made a lot of shots already in his career).
Episode Links

• This week's curator: Jon Carroll - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @carroll_jono (X/Twitter)
• Give Thanks with the allcontributors Package
• How to Interpolate Missing Values in R: A Step-by-Sthttps://github.com/ropensci/allcontributors/?tab=readme-ov-file#contributorsep Guide with Examples
• Predicting NBA Score Plays - Steph Curry Shots
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2024-W49

Supplement Resources

• allcontributors - Acknowledge all contributors to a project https://docs.ropensci.org/allcontributors/
• Contributor section of {allcontributors} README https://github.com/ropensci/allcontributors/?tab=readme-ov-file#contributors
• zoo - S3 Infrastructure for Regular and Irregular Time Series https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/zoo/index.html
• mice - Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equations https://amices.org/mice/
• naniar - Data structures, summaries, and visualization for missing data http://naniar.njtierney.com/
• hoopR - Data and tools for men's basketball https://hoopr.sportsdataverse.org/
• BasketballAnalyzeR - Analysis and Visualization of Basketball Data https://github.com/sndmrc/BasketballAnalyzeR/tree/master
• Optimizing R/Shiny App Performance with Advanced Caching Techniques https://www.appsilon.com/post/r-shiny-caching-techniques

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music credits powered by OCRemix

• Diddy Kong Luau Party - Diddy Kong Racing - Guifrog - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02794
• From Downtown - NBA Jam - ktriton, Mustin, Steve Lella - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02111

What a way to close out the month of November with this batch of highlights! The ultimate teaser for the first-ever native mobile Shiny application (and yes, it is real), how you can expand your network on Bluesky from the friendly confines of R, and the potential of the S7 object-oriented paradigm to streamline and validate function parameters. Plus late-breaking news on the integrations of Bluesky and Quarto!
Episode Links

• This week's curator: Tony Elhabr - @[email protected] (Mastodon) & @TonyElHabr (X/Twitter)
• You’ve Been Waiting for Native Mobile Apps with R? The Wait Is Over.
• Expand your Bluesky network with R and the atrrr package
• S7 & Options objects - reimagining readr::read_csv()
• Entire issue available at rweekly.org/2024-W48

Supplement Resources

• Obtainium: Get Android apps straight from the source https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium
• F-Droid: Free and open-source Android app repository https://f-droid.org/en/
• {atttr} Wrapper for the AT protocol behind Bluesky https://jbgruber.github.io/atrrr/
• Bluesky network analyzer https://bsky-follow-finder.theo.io
• Bluesky comments extension (James Blastula) https://quarto.thecoatlessprofessor.com/bluesky-comments/
• Bluesky comments for Quarto (Garrick Aiden-Buie) https://pkg.garrickadenbuie.com/quarto-bluesky-comments/
• Classes and objects (S7 documentation) https://rconsortium.github.io/S7/articles/classes-objects.html
• {roxy.shinylive} A roxygen2 extension for Shinylive https://insightsengineering.github.io/roxy.shinylive/main/
• Introducing WebR to TLG Catalog (Pawel's talk from R/Pharma 2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaoDUrUscZA
• Spotify Wrapped: R and ggplot2 Edition https://rpubs.com/colebaril/spotify-wrapped
• Navidrome: Your personal music streaming service https://www.navidrome.org/
• Tailscale https://tailscale.com/

Supporting the show

• Use the contact page at https://serve.podhome.fm/custompage/r-weekly-highlights/contact to send us your feedback
• R-Weekly Highlights on the Podcastindex.org - You can send a boost into the show directly in the Podcast Index. First, top-up with Alby, and then head over to the R-Weekly Highlights podcast entry on the index.
• A new way to think about value: https://value4value.info
• Get in touch with us on social media
  • Eric Nantz: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @rpodcast.bsky.social (BlueSky) and @theRcast (X/Twitter)
  • Mike Thomas: @[email protected] (Mastodon), @mike-thomas.bsky.social (BlueSky), and @mike_ketchbrook (X/Twitter) 

Music credits powered by OCRemix

• Cammy's London Drizzle - Super Street Fighter II - MkVaff - https://sf2.ocremix.org/
• Voodoo, Roots 'n Grog - Secret of Monkey Island - Diggi Dis feat. Alex Jones - https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02180