There are advantages and disadvantages of both ways of doing things, but the CRAN and #rstats approach has an emerging benefit of resistance to typosquatting/slopsquatting attacks. npm practically feels like a malware distribution service in comparison

BASE R GIRLIES OUR TIME HAS COME Come hang with us, ask Ella questions (I know Isabella and I will), and learn something new. Don't think you use base R? You use it pretty much each and every time you use R! #baseRgirly Also, we're a delight ✨

There’s some cool recent research on this phenomenon! It turns out vision language models excel at image benchmarks *even when the actual images aren’t provided,* because the answers are implicit in the questions! arxiv.org/abs/2603.21687

Our latest @posit.co AI Newsletter swaps the usual roundup for something different. @sara-altman.bsky.social and I traced the (brief) history of agents for data science at Posit, from Shiny Assistant to Databot to Positron Assistant to our latest release, Posit Assistant. posit.co/blog/2026-03...

In exploring ways to use AI agents to help write R code I found that it was hard to extract profiling information in a way that they could interact with easily. Presenting {debrief}!! provides text-based summaries and analysis tools for {profvis} profiling output github.com/r-lib/debrief #rstats

We have summer internships y'all! Come work at Posit on the PyData, tidymodels, shiny, or Connect teams: grnh.se/tigz810a3us. You will have an awesome time, learn a ton, and help advance our open source and pro tools 🧰 #rstats #pydata

Today is the last day to apply for an Opportunity Scholarship for posit::conf(2026)! Our Opportunity Scholarship provides travel, lodging, & registration to attend posit::conf for underrepresented groups in data science. Learn more & apply by midnight tonight: posit.co/blog/apply-t...

Thoughts on OpenAI acquiring Astral and uv/ruff/ty simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/19/...

We’re thrilled to welcome Sara Altman and Simon Couch of the Posit AI Core team to the #positconf 2026 keynote stage! They’ll be sharing a practical, hype-free look at how AI is being thoughtfully integrated into the tools you use every day. ✨ See what’s next for AI in open source: pos.it/conf

1/5‼️Gigantic new #rayverse update + blog post! Introducing {skymodelr}: render 3D scenes in #RStats with realistically-lit skies 🌇 at a given location, using just a latitude, longitude, and a time. Blog: www.tylermw.com/posts/rayver... Github: github.com/tylermorganw... Site: www.skymodelr.com

I had wondered how today's GPT 5.4 releases might stack up in this eval. Indeed lower-latency and higher-performance than previous GPT generations, now in the ballpark of other frontier providers.

mcptools 0.2.1 is now on #rstats CRAN! A patch release with a couple tightenings-up that should make MCP servers deployed with the package compatible with GitHub Copilot. github.com/posit-dev/mc...

Six months from today, YOU could be joining us at posit::conf! A topic I plan to explore is how we best borrow ideas from across different fields (from DS to DE, team-of-one to enterprise, etc.) Ironically, that's also one of the magical things about the conf 1/2

In this edition of the @posit.co AI Newsletter, we share about new LLM features in RStudio, some vibe checks on the new GPT 5.4 / Qwen3.5 / Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite releases, and an overview of the Anthropic / Pentagon saga. Read it here: posit.co/blog/2026-03...

We are pleased to announce that Heather Turner @heathrturnr.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy has joined the R Core Team. She has been an active contributor notably via the R Dev Days, and has greatly improved cooperation between R Core and the R community in more ways #RStats.

I keep thinking about this demo of Llama 3.1 8B served at 15k-20k tok/s. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. For reference, GPT 5.4 is currently being served at ~44 tok/s, and the highly optimized deployment of Qwen3-8B powering RStudio's Next Edit Suggestions is ~1,300 tok/s.

I had (kinda jokingly?) wondered if there was a Skill that helps write Skills... and there is! From the Anthropic Skills marketplace: github.com/anthropics/s...

The March edition of posit::glimpse() is here! 🚀 Key updates include Posit AI, a new assistant in RStudio, Pointblank for synthetic data for #Python, mirai v2.6.0: 50% faster async #RStats ⚡, Positron's PDF viewer + Jupyter support, and more. Read the full roundup: posit.co/blog/glimpse...

gander 0.2.0 is now on CRAN! The package provides quick, granular AI assistance with #rstats code. This release substantially tightens up behavior in Quarto documents. Read more: github.com/simonpcouch/...

While working full-time & raising a child, Grace Wahba earned advanced degrees, completing her PhD at Stanford and becoming the first female faculty member in statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. #womenshistorymonth #statwomen magazine.amstat.org/blog/2026/03... #statssky

I will call it AGI when it stops suggesting I reword "yall"

RStudio now has next edit suggestions! I wrote a bit about how they work and have open-sourced the eval we used to engineer the system's prompt: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03...

These captchas just keep getting harder #rstats

Today we're releasing AI for RStudio. It's really, really good—I'd encourage you to point it at the messiest data sources you have and see what it can do. www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03...

Published some notes on the situation at Qwen - they released the Qwen 3.5 family (an outstanding family of open weight models) but now their lead researcher and several others all appear to have resigned within the past 24 hours simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/4/q...

We are covering 40 people's travel, lodging, and registration for posit::conf() this fall! If you are from a group that is underrepresented in data science or open source, please consider applying for the Opportunity Scholarship—we'd love to have you join. posit.co/blog/apply-t...

If you live in Chicago and you want to check your voter registration and see a copy of your sample ballot, the Board of Elections has you covered.

In this @posit.co AI Newsletter, GGML joins hugging face, and some reflections on a Docs-style interface to LLM code review in #rstats. posit.co/blog/2026-02...

Very, very excited to be keynoting at posit::conf() with @sara-altman.bsky.social. Dream come true.

Anthropic: "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War" www.anthropic.com/news/stateme...

I'm thrilled to be a fellow at the #NICAR26 data journalism conference this year! I'll also be coaching a hands-on session on #RStats data analysis + plotting using #tidyverse packages. 📊 Maybe I'll see you there! 👇🏽 schedules.ire.org/nicar-2026/#... #ddj @ire.org

this this this this this

There's promise in using LLMs for code review, but it's tricky things to make sure it's not overwhelming. I was looking at this new experimental package by Simon Couch and I really love how it allows you to review code iteratively. #rstats #ai #llms github.com/simonpcouch/...

Folks from underrepresented groups in data science and open source: we'd love to have you join!

this thread is blowing my mind

Want to check if code using #GenAI generates the responses you want? Here's how to automate LLM evals with the {vitals} #RStats 📦 by @simonpcouch.com @posit.co My latest at #InfoWorld: www.infoworld.com/article/4130... #LLMs

I'm very grateful that Luis maintains this guide. Very much recommend to those who haven't poked around there before! #rstats

I’m happy to announce Rapp v0.3.0 — a package that makes it easy to build and share polished CLI applications written in R. Read more: www.tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02...

I've recently been wondering whether the "median query" is still the right level of observation to speak about electricity usage of AI. Increasingly popular interfaces like coding agents and research/web search are much more compute-intensive. www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01...

@sara-altman.bsky.social and I’s latest newsletter includes a somewhat atypical call to action: if it’s been more than ~4 months since you’ve tried a coding agent, I’d urge you to try Claude Code or Codex with today’s models. The models and harnesses have progressed a lot. posit.co/blog/2026-02...

I got access to RStudio's AI enhanced beta, and oh my is it nice... Much number crunching to be had here, and way easier then copy/pasting between Claude Code/Codex and RStudio.

Short musings on "cognitive debt" - I'm seeing this in my own work, where excessive unreviewed AI-generated code leads me to lose a firm mental model of what I've built, which then makes it harder to confidently make future decisions simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/...

A new edition of the @posit.co AI Newsletter is out! A step change in coding agents' abilities, posit::conf(2026) call for talks, and a demo of a data science agent coming soon to RStudio. posit.co/blog/2026-02...

mirai 2.6.0 is on CRAN — R's async framework now deploys from your laptop to Posit Workbench with a single call. New HTTP launcher, C-level dispatcher with near-zero overhead, `race_mirai()` for process-as-completed patterns, and sync mode for debugging. tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02/mirai-2-6-0/

I just whipped up this little #QuartoPub site last week that demonstrates how I teach p-values/hyp-testing through simulation both with live OJS and with #rstats, and I think it's super neat! It has examples for diff-in-means, diff-in-props, and regression slopes nullworlds.andrewheiss.com #statsky

I built an R package that turns Shiny apps into UIs that render directly inside Claude Desktop or ChatGPT. It's called shinymcp. Drop-downs, plots, tables all inline in the chat. github.com/jameshwade/shinymcp

You can totally point out that some aspects of AI are overhyped, you can believe that AGI is not possible, you can criticize how the companies and governments developing AI are using or being coopted by these tools. There is a lot to criticize. But "it doesn't work and is fake" is just wrong now.

Join us on Tuesday at the Data Science Lab 🧪 We are joined by @sara-altman.bsky.social, who will show us how to explore and analyze data using AI assistants in #RStats or #Python! Feb 3 @ 12 pm ET: pos.it/dslab

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics? 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

Nice post from @simonpcouch.com here, on why the "median" LLM query is not a good way to examine the system's broader energy costs. Visualised very nicely: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01...