Purposeful joy

09 Jun 26

The current purpose for a select few is to help computer programs replace the purposeful labour of a generation of uniquely idiosyncratic human beings. Yet the relationship of those being replaced to their own intrinsic purpose is categorically indistinguishable to that of those people doing the replacing. The end point of any logic of AI-replaceability is hierarchical collapse, the auto-CEO, and economic death. The saving grace is that, unlike purpose, joy steadfastly resists hierarchical direction. And that makes joy arguably one of the most important non-capturable resources left.

Our goodpractice Package Has New Superpowers

05 Jun 26

We have worked hard over the past few months on major upgrades to our goodpractice package. Checks are now grouped into categories, making it easier to control which checks are run. The biggest change has been adding over 100 new checks, from new lints to many new CRAN checks.

Centralisation, reversibility, and restarting

22 May 26

Technical progress tends toward centralisation: telephone multiplexing made calls easier and centralised the entire telephone industry; GitHub made coding easier and centralised the world of software development. Technical centralisation is mostly reversible. The economic and political centralisation that rides alongside it is not. The real binding force is neither the technology nor the data but the interfaces imposed to make it all work together. One of the best ways to ensure centralising tendencies can be reversed is to find ways to keep those interfaces simple.

Debugging C++ code in R with a single command

30 Aug 22

There are several great references for how to debug C or C++ code in R, but descriptions of how to start a debugger are often not so informative. This post describes how to start a debugging session in R with a single command.

Timeout on parallel jobs in R

14 Jan 22

Python's `multiprocessing` and `threading` libraries both have a timeout parameter for re-joining threads after they've finished. This provides an easy way to launch multi-threaded jobs while ensuing that no single thread exceeds a specified timeout. This post describes two ways to implement equivalent functionality in R.

GitHub notifications from the terminal

27 Oct 21

I work almost entirely from the terminal, and regret the few remaining tasks which still require me to venture elsewhere, such as a web browser. Until recently, one of my main reasons for constantly switching to my browser was to check my GitHub notifications. This post describes how I view my notifications within the terminal, including an option to mark them as "read" on GitHub.