Github experimenting with a formalised approach for using Actions/repositories as datastores. Interesting to see their end-to-end approach, including, in particular, custom VS Code plugins for generating configurations; it's a neat and accessible way to build end-user UI.

Good notes on the value of interaction in data visualisation. I particularly like the emphasis on interaction as 'plussing', rather than a requirement.

"The most notable “discovery” in the dataset was that if you simply plotted the number of steps versus the BMI, you would see an image of a gorilla waving at you (Fig. 1b). While we teach our students the benefits of visualization, answering the specific hypothesis-driven questions did not require plotting the data. We found that very often, the students driven by specific hypotheses skipped this simple step towards a broader exploration of the data. In fact, overall, students without a specific hypothesis were almost five times more likely to discover the gorilla when analyzing this dataset (odds ratio = 4.8, P = 0.034, N = 33, Fisher’s exact test; Fig. 1c). At least in this setting, the hypothesis indeed turned out to be a significant liability."

Highly valuable for all affected, and yet still completely absurd to think about. Technology Is People (and is also a complete nuisance).

On the problems of machine-learning and medical data.

A 'yes' to all of this; English Weird as a thing, and Christmas is the time of English Weird. TDIR begins on December 20th; time to read along.

Filed away for a thing on data next year.

I love jq at the command line for even the simplest tasks; I need to go over this at some point.

This, like everything Tony and Taylor did, is very good. Not just on film, but on creative work, too.

Excellent overview and collection of links on cryptocurrencies from the Co-op Digital Newsletter; some useful links in here for A Thing.

"pv – Pipe Viewer – is a terminal-based tool for monitoring the progress of data through a pipeline. It can be inserted into any normal pipeline between two processes to give a visual indication of how quickly data is passing through, how long it has taken, how near to completion it is, and an estimate of how long it will be until completion." Looks very handy.

"xsv is a command line program for indexing, slicing, analyzing, splitting and joining CSV files. Commands should be simple, fast and composable." iiinteresting.

OK, this is great: Bret Victor's library for exploring interactive documents. Tidy – thanks to its use of data-attributes – but super-clear. Really nice to have a web-based library, too, and one focused on text. Now thinking about this conceit again.

"There was also one late night when a stranger opened the door and walked into the house when August should have auto-locked the door. (The stranger was trying to enter our next-door neighbor’s house and didn’t realize he was at the wrong door.)" YOU HAD ONE JOB etc.

Rather looking forward to seeing this play out: thirty days of processing and spelunking CSV, from Paul Downey. Lots of new tools and tricks emerging already.

Really nice exploration of a small stack for poking data at the commandline. I'm a fan of jq and its ilk already, so this extends some of those techniques.