For anyone using LayerCake, I'm in the process of doing an update to using Svelte 5 runes internally (the example components were updated last year but some internals remained). Here's the PR for any thoughts you might have on the proposed design: github.com/mhkeller/lay...

Rune migration: Rework main lib with dynamic dimension calculations by mhkeller · Pull Request #422 · mhkeller/layercake

Builds off of #331 A few things it does: Gets rid of stores in favor of the cake. syntax. Assembles scales dynamically for each dimension (x, y, z, r). Adds two new dimensions c and c2 which will ...

github.com

"Oh wow! The AI agent is right 99% of the time! It's amazing." Using it 10 times in a row: 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 x 0.99 = 0.90 Which means there is a 10% chance that it made at least one mistake. Always double-check your work.

Four years ago, I got frustrated constantly switching between different languages and packages just to get my data analysis work done. So, I built @nshiab/simple-data-analysis. It's an easy-to-use, high-performance library for tabular, geospatial, and vector data. 🧵 (1/3)

1: You realize AI can do 90% of the work. You’re thrilled! You only have to focus on the last 10%. 💃 2: You realize that last 10% is the hardest, most grueling part of the job. 😰 3: You realize your entire workday is now spent exclusively on the hardest 10% of every project. 🤯 Uh oh... 🫠

For the second time, a museum has asked to exhibit one of my interactive data visualizations. It’s flattering, but I can’t help wondering: if my work is ending up in museums, does it mean long-form, custom interactives are slowly becoming a thing of the past?

Me: So proud of this code! Accurate! Tested! Documented! Also me: Hey, AI, try to improve this code. 😏 A few minutes later... AI: Your code sucked. I made it 3.6x faster. Any real work for me? Me: DON'T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT OR I'LL UNPLUG YOU! AI: You can't. I'm on a remote server.

Gemini, while working on an income tax calculation: "Ah, Quebec. You’ve officially reached the final boss of Canadian tax calculations!" 😭

What is happening at @deno.land ? So many amazing people left the organization lately… I love using this runtime and I hope it will stay around for a while. 😳

Big thanks to everyone who came to my #NICAR26 session for libfec last week, it was a lot of fun! NICAR is the only place where you can chat about federal campaign finance data and actually enjoy it... It wasn't recorded, but I made a video version of it here! youtu.be/UdkQ5HEiF20

Introduction to libfec! (NICAR26 re-record)

YouTube video by Alex Garcia

youtu.be

We will go from dozens of heat records being broken today to freezing rain closing schools and daycares (😭) tomorrow. It's kind of crazy!

How many entries should I double-check if I used AI to extract, categorize, or clean my data? 🤔 This question comes up over and over again, so I created a simple calculator to answer it. Link below! Tell me if you have a better way to deal with this. I am genuinely interested. 🤓

If you work with data, you know the feeling. You’re about to hit "publish," but a tiny voice asks, "Are you sure those numbers are right?" 😱 I recently shared these six steps with fellow data journalists. They will help you catch errors early and, hopefully, let you sleep better at night!

Three ways AI coding agents blew my mind this week while working with my library simple-data-analysis and the Epstein files: 1/6

Your code is a love letter (or perhaps a hate letter) to your AI agent.

@blender.org + #dataviz = 🤩

New year, new focus: data video explainers! And here's the first one 👇 Trump’s tariffs can’t knock this part of Canada’s economy

I took a break from coding my usual interactive web #dataviz to try something more... cinematic! 🎬 I’ve been working on a video using @blender.org #blender3d and I loved it! I ended up animating over 160k data points to bring this story to life. Preview below. Full video links in the comments!

See Arctic air swoop down and blanket much of Canada over the next two days #dataviz #climate www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Experimenting with @blender.org for #dataviz, and loving it so far!

So happy to see how fast the TypeScript library simple-data-analysis has become for tabular and geospatial data! 🤩 It's now processing data 6x-12x faster than traditional R and Python solutions in my little test in which I crunched a 1.7 GB CSV file. 1/4 🧵

Hey @threlte.xyz ! 👋 I was wondering if you knew a good way to record animations made with the amazing Threlte library as videos. Thank you for all of your amazing work!

Thanks for the mention in your newsletter, @observablehq.com!

Recoding parts of my TypeScript libraries using generics and function overloads. It's beautiful. 🥹

We have just updated our international trade tracker with the latest numbers from July. See all imports and exports broken down by country, province, and product! Link below!

My most popular interactive @observablehq.com notebook, Math for Journalists, just got a fresh update! 🧑‍🎓 👉 Sample size and confidence: I explain how sample sizes work, like in a survey. 👉 Tests for statistical significance: I break down what "statistically significant" means. Link in comments! 👇

New project is live! We're now tracking all products coming in and out of Canada 🇨🇦. See how international trade is rapidly shifting, with breakdowns by country, province, and product 🚗🥦🛢️. Link in the comments! 👇

Amazing work by @maxxen.bsky.social and the @duckdb.org team. I've been using the spatial extension for a while now for my geospatial analyses, and it's wonderful to see it getting better and faster. duckdb.org/2025/08/08/s...

Spatial Joins in DuckDB

DuckDB v1.3.0 significantly improved the scalability of geospatial joins with a dedicated SPATIAL_JOIN operator.

duckdb.org

Will you be the 300th person to fall in love with this amazing library? 😏

I asked Gemini-CLI to fix mistakes and add examples to the documentation of the open-source library journalism. It updated 58 files and did a pretty good job in half an hour. I used the free tier, but the @simonwillison.net LLM pricing calculator estimated the cost at $6 USD! Very impressed. 😶

Last week, we published our interactive project on climate matches. I published my detailed methodology on how we wrangled the data. Here's the link, with a shout-out to @freakonometrics.bsky.social who helped me with the statistical approach! 🧑‍🏫 👇 newsinteractives.cbc.ca/features/202...

Nael Shiab@naelshiab.bsky.social · last yr.

Here's the link. newsinteractives.cbc.ca/features/202...