Nicola Romanò @nicolaromano@qoto.org

Introducing {fastpng} when you need to write PNG files, but you want to do it quicky.

{fastpng} allows for the tradeoff between compression and speed.

Writing PNGs can be 75x faster when compression is turned off.

Supports: arrays, rasters and native rasters.

https://github.com/coolbutuseless/fastpng

#RStats

This is an excellent argument by Jennifer Listgarten about why Large Language Models #LLM like #chatGPT are not a silver bullet for scientific discovery. I am also motivated to study #ExperimentalDesign using #MachineLearning for the reasons Jennifer argues in this paper.

We need better data in #science.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-023-02103-0

@Daojoan Alternatively, your corporate overlords have embraced M365, so you migrate data between a series of half-baked products and are then requested to extract said data into Excel/PowerPoint/Email because middle and upper management still haven't figured out how to log into any of the other Microsoft applications.

In case anyone was wondering about quarto and pseudocode:
https://github.com/leovan/quarto-pseudocode

Working on some, ahem, *colourful* new printing options for {palettes} 🎨 #RStats

Douglas Allchin, Jonathan Osborne, and I have a new paper out about teaching science in this age of online misinformation.

The idea is simple: we tell people to trust the science, but we rarely teach students about the social processes that make it trustworthy.

https://carlbergstrom.com/publications/pdfs/2024JCST.pdf

We finally got it! The source of the cake dataset:

https://www.sumsar.net/blog/source-of-the-cake-dataset/

Thank you everyone who engaged @dlakelan @kbroman @bbolker @millerdl @defuneste @JeremyNeedle
@mario_angst_sci + some I forgot 😊

`sshx` lets you share your terminal with anyone by link, on a multiplayer infinite canvas. It has real-time collaboration, with remote cursors and chat.

It's also fast and end-to-end encrypted, with a lightweight server written in Rust (so you know it's cool).

#ssh #terminal #collaboration #rust #rustlang #cli #encryption

🔗 https://sshx.io/

Today I learned about generating parameterized reports with R/Quarto from @RLadiesGlobal 's awesome course: https://jadeyryan.quarto.pub/rladies-dc-quarto-params/ Great slides, tons of helpful examples and exercises 🚀 . Thanks a lot for making the course available! 😍 #TIL #RStats #rladies #quarto

In major gaffe, hacked Microsoft test account was assigned admin privileges

How does a legacy test account grant access to read every Office 365 account?

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/in-major-gaffe-hacked-microsoft-test-account-was-assigned-admin-privileges/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

The Fedora Pride team is hosting a @Minetest gaming event tomorrow, Jan 27 at 7pm UTC (2pm EST)!

Minetest is an open source game inspired by Minecraft. If you've never given it a shot and are looking for that 'first time playing Minecraft' experience again, come join us!

Learn more: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/lets-play-minetest/101980

#Fedora #Minetest #Minecraft #OpenSource

Born in 1896, biochemist Gerty Theresa Cori became the 1st woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (and the 3rd to win a Nobel Prize).

Cori faced gender discrimination & was marginalized for years. But she never gave up.

With her husband Carl, she discovered how glycogen is broken down & eventually stored as an energy source (aka the “Cori cycle”). They also identified the Cori ester. http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/women/cori.htm #HistoryRemix #science #history

'Hilariously, Sunak insists anyone failing to get behind all this just wants to take us “back to square one”. Square one? Oh man – who wouldn’t take square one in a heartbeat? We’re somewhere near square minus 39 here, receding backwards through the squares until the place of utter darkness beyond all squares'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/19/tories-squid-game-rwanda-policy

Hello, what is 'synthetic data'? Specifically, how can synthetic data be sufficient for creating models to run on real-world data? Would it not replicate the narrowness of the small real data they had to begin with?

Do I know anyone on here who explored what kind of niches synthetic data helps & where its use is being over-shot beyond the effective boundary?

Tagging to hope to reach to someone who worked on this #machinelearning

This paper starts out amazing and just keeps getting better

https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.06133

Hey, congratulations on that new #rstats package! Or, maybe well done on keeping that old package maintained! Either way, have you thought about letting your users try it out in the browser straight away? It's really easy with WebR and #QuartoPub!

https://jamesgoldie.dev/writing/your-new-r-package-webr/

Wow. Start a friendly VoIP call with a target, record the audio, find patterns in their GPU activity (exploiting the fact the GPU's electro-magnetic fields are captured by the target's built-in PC microphone and can be distilled from the acoustic audio sources), match the patterns against pre-trained classifier and deduce some of the target's web activity, cryptographic secrets, position within a video game. It is mind-boggling. #cyber #security #research #machinelearning
https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~genkin/papers/lendear.pdf

Gendered hiring and attrition on the path to parity for academic faculty. #EDI #DEI https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/93755?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

Camembert is an endangered species! It relies on a mold that had lost the ability to reproduce sexually... and now, thanks to inbreeding, this mold has also lost the ability to reproduce using spores. Roquefort is also in trouble, but for Camembert it's worse:

"The world over, this other symbol of French gastronomy is inoculated exclusively with one single strain of Penicillium camemberti, a white mutant that was selected for Brie cheeses in 1898 and Camemberts in 1902.

The problem is that ever since then the strain has been replicated by vegetative propagation only. Until the 1950s, Camemberts still had grey, green or in some cases orange-tinged moulds on their surface. But the industry was not fond of these colours, considering them unappealing, and staked everything on the albino strain of P. camemberti, which is completely white and moreover has a silky texture. This is how Camembert acquired its now-characteristic pure white rind.

Year after year, generation after generation, the albino strain of P. camemberti, which was already incapable of sexual reproduction, lost its ability to produce asexual spores. As a result it is now very difficult for the entire industry to obtain enough P. camemberti spores to inoculate their production of the famous Norman cheese.

Worse still, while the Roquefort PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) standard retains a degree of microbial biodiversity, the PDO specifications for Camembert require farmers and other producers to use P. camemberti exclusively."

What to do about it? Read on....

(1/2)

#statstab #8 Step away from stepwise

Thoughts: Pretty straightforward, don't use stepwise regression. It is atheoretical and can produce causal inference mistakes; it is also a misuse of p-values.

#rstats #pvalues #regression #nhst

https://journalofbigdata.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40537-018-0143-6