Stephen Turner
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View article: Most graduate students propose to do too much
Most graduate students propose to do too much Open
I recommend subscribing to Claus Wilke's newsletter, Genes, Minds, Machines. I've linked to many of his essays in recent weeks. This one was a good read. Now that I'm back in academia and will be taking on Ph.D. students in my lab, this wa…
View article: Most graduate students propose to do too much
Most graduate students propose to do too much Open
I recommend subscribing to Claus Wilke's newsletter, Genes, Minds, Machines. I've linked to many of his essays in recent weeks. This one was a good read. Now that I'm back in academia and will be taking on Ph.D. students in my lab, this wa…
View article: Asymmetries in Biosecurity
Asymmetries in Biosecurity Open
In cybersecurity, defenders have to get everything right. Cyber defense must patch every vulnerability, secure every endpoint, anticipate every exploit. Attackers, by contrast, only need to find one overlooked flaw. That imbalance, which h…
View article: Asymmetries in Biosecurity
Asymmetries in Biosecurity Open
In cybersecurity, defenders have to get everything right. Cyber defense must patch every vulnerability, secure every endpoint, anticipate every exploit. Attackers, by contrast, only need to find one overlooked flaw. That imbalance, which h…
View article: Positron: data explorer exports dplyr code
Positron: data explorer exports dplyr code Open
The most recent release of Positron (2025.10.0 build 199) has a few updates to the data explorer. Among other things, the actions you take in the data explorer like filtering and sorting can be converted to code: dplyr code for data frames…
View article: Positron: data explorer exports dplyr code
Positron: data explorer exports dplyr code Open
The most recent release of Positron (2025.10.0 build 199) has a few updates to the data explorer. Among other things, the actions you take in the data explorer like filtering and sorting can be converted to code: dplyr code for data frames…
View article: Weekly recap (Oct 10, 2025)
Weekly recap (Oct 10, 2025) Open
Happy Friday, colleagues. It's the end of the week and once again I'm going through my long list of idle browser tabs trying to catch up where I can. Lots of R and AI-related news this week. Subscribe now Strengthening nucleic acid bios…
View article: Weekly recap (Oct 10, 2025)
Weekly recap (Oct 10, 2025) Open
Happy Friday, colleagues. It's the end of the week and once again I'm going through my long list of idle browser tabs trying to catch up where I can. Lots of R and AI-related news this week. Subscribe now Strengthening nucleic acid bios…
View article: Weekly recap (Oct 10, 2025)
Weekly recap (Oct 10, 2025) Open
AI x biosecurity, R updates (Blaze, RWeekly, R Consortium), genome engineering & conservation, AI &
View article: All Roads Lead to Philosophy
All Roads Lead to Philosophy Open
Over the weekend I stumbled across an interesting conference paper: Evaluating and Improving Navigability of Wikipedia . The article shows if you follow the first link in the main text of an English Wikipedia article, and then repeat the…
View article: All Roads Lead to Philosophy
All Roads Lead to Philosophy Open
Over the weekend I stumbled across an interesting conference paper: Evaluating and Improving Navigability of Wikipedia . The article shows if you follow the first link in the main text of an English Wikipedia article, and then repeat the…
View article: Weekly recap (Oct 3, 2025)
Weekly recap (Oct 3, 2025) Open
Happy Friday, colleagues. It's the end of the week and once again I'm going through my long list of idle browser tabs trying to catch up where I can. Lots of R and AI-related news this week. Subscribe now Emil Hvitfeldt: Slidecrafting (…
View article: Weekly recap (Oct 3, 2025)
Weekly recap (Oct 3, 2025) Open
Happy Friday, colleagues. It's the end of the week and once again I'm going through my long list of idle browser tabs trying to catch up where I can. Lots of R and AI-related news this week. Subscribe now Emil Hvitfeldt: Slidecrafting (…
View article: Construct objects with idiomatic R code
Construct objects with idiomatic R code Open
Today I discovered the constructive package and the construct() function for creating R objects with idiomatic R code to make human-readable reproducible examples. CRAN: https://cran.r-project.org/package=constructive Source: https://g…
View article: Repost: Construct objects with idiomatic R code
Repost: Construct objects with idiomatic R code Open
Reposted from the original at https://blog.stephenturner.us/p/construct-objects-with-idiomatic-r-code --- Today I discovered the constructive package and the construct() function for creating R objects with idiomatic R code to make human…
View article: Construct objects with idiomatic R code
Construct objects with idiomatic R code Open
Today I discovered the constructive package and the construct() function for creating R objects with idiomatic R code to make human-readable reproducible examples. CRAN: https://cran.r-project.org/package=constructive Source: https://g…
View article: Repost: Construct objects with idiomatic R code
Repost: Construct objects with idiomatic R code Open
Reposted from the original at https://blog.stephenturner.us/p/construct-objects-with-idiomatic-r-code --- Today I discovered the constructive package and the construct() function for creating R objects with idiomatic R code to make human…
View article: Voice control ggplot2 with ggbot2
Voice control ggplot2 with ggbot2 Open
Today I learned you can create and customize ggplot2 visualizations using your voice alone.
View article: Weekly recap (Sep 26, 2025)
Weekly recap (Sep 26, 2025) Open
Happy Friday, colleagues. September has gone by at warp speed.
View article: Charlottesville R Users
Charlottesville R Users Open
Last night we had our first event in the newly (re-)launched Charlottesville R Users (CRU) group. We had about 30 or so attendees — about half from academia and half from industry, with a few from local government organizations.
View article: De-extinction technology and its application to conservation
De-extinction technology and its application to conservation Open
De-extinction, once the realm of science fiction, has evolved into a tangible scientific endeavor thanks to breakthroughs in genome sequencing, engineering, advanced assisted reproductive technologies, and stem cell biology. Alongside this…
View article: Weekly recap (Sep 19, 2025)
Weekly recap (Sep 19, 2025) Open
Happy Friday, colleagues. Lots going on this week. Once again I'm going through my long list of idle browser tabs trying to catch up where I can. ElevenReader (no affiliation) has been helpful to catch up this week! Subscribe now The Arc…
View article: Mirror Life: Through the Looking Glass of Biology
Mirror Life: Through the Looking Glass of Biology Open
This month's debate: Should mirror life research be stopped? The idea of mirror life has captured imaginations and triggered warnings in equal measure.
View article: Closing my tabs (Sep 12, 2025)
Closing my tabs (Sep 12, 2025) Open
Happy Friday, colleagues. Once again I'm getting ready for the weekend, going through my long list of idle browser tabs trying to catch up where I can.
View article: 70 years of AI hype
70 years of AI hype Open
I recently came across this wonderful position paper by Olivia Guest and colleagues, where they pick apart the tech industry's marketing, hype, & harm, arguing for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic f…
View article: Single-cell analysis and infectious disease forecasting: Google's new AI scientist
Single-cell analysis and infectious disease forecasting: Google's new AI scientist Open
I've spent years writing bioinformatics tools (I've spent the last 6 years in industry and 90% of these tools I'll never publish or open-source) and building infectious disease forecasting models (most of these are open-source, like FOC…
View article: Positron Assistant: GitHub Copilot and Claude-Powered Agentic Coding in R
Positron Assistant: GitHub Copilot and Claude-Powered Agentic Coding in R Open
Reposted from the original at https://blog.stephenturner.us/p/positron-assistant-copilot-chat-agent I have a little hobby project I'm working on and I wanted to use the opportunity to fully make the switch to Positron from RStudio. I use…
View article: Make your development environment portable and reproducible
Make your development environment portable and reproducible Open
You upgrade your old Intel Macbook Pro for a new M4 MBP. You're setting up a new cloud VM on AWS after migrating away from GCP. You get an account on your institution's new HPC. You have everything just so in your development environment…
View article: Repost: Make your development environment portable and reproducible
Repost: Make your development environment portable and reproducible Open
Reposted from the original at https://blog.stephenturner.us/p/development-environment-portable-reproducible. You upgrade your old Intel Macbook Pro for a new M4 MBP. You're setting up a new cloud VM on AWS after migrating away from GCP. …
View article: Using OpenAI Codex in Positron
Using OpenAI Codex in Positron Open
Reposted from the original at https://blog.stephenturner.us/p/codex-positron. Last month I wrote about agentic coding in Positron using Positron assistant, which uses the Claude API on the back end.Positron Assistant: GitHub Copilot and …