Since 2008, Microsoft (formerly Revolution Analytics) staff and guests have written about R every weekday at the Revolutions blog (http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com) and every month I post a summary of articles from the previous month of particular interest to readers of r-help. In case you missed them, here are some articles related to R from the month of July: A tutorial on using the rsparkling package to apply H20's algorithms to data in HDInsight: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/h2o-hdinsight.html Several exercises to learn parallel programming with the foreach package: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/foreach-exercises.html A presentation on the R6 class system, by Winston Chang: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/the-r6-class-system.html Joyplot, a ggplot2 extension for visualizing multiple time series or distributions: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/joyplots.html SQL Server 2017, with many new R-related capabilities, is nearing release: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/sql-server-rc1.html Ali Zaidi on using neural embeddings with R and Spark to analyze Github comments: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/neural-embeddings-nlp.html R ranks #6 in the 2017 IEEE Spectrum Top Programming Languages: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/ieee-spectrum-2017-top-programming-languages.html Course materials on "Data Analysis for the Life Sciences", from Rafael Irizarry: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/harvardx.html How to securely store API keys in R scripts with the "secret" package: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/secret-package.html An in-depth tutorial on implementing neural network algorithms in R: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/nnets-from-scratch.html Recordings from the useR!2017 conference in Brussels are now available: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/revisiting-user2017.html The conference was also livestreamed: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/user-2017-livestream.html Recording of my lightning talk, "R in Minecraft": http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/r-in-minecraft-lightning.html Uwe Ligges' useR!2017 keynote, "20 years of CRAN": http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/20-years-of-cran.html A framework for implementing a credit risk prediction system with Microsoft R: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/credit-risk-prediction.html The R Consortium is conducting a survey of R users: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/r-consortium-survey.html The rattle package (and R GUI framework) now supports XGBoost models: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/xgboost-support-added-to-rattle.html My presentation at useR!2017, "R, Then and Now": http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/how-perceptions-of-r-have-changed.html Seven Microsoft customers using R for production applications: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/more-companies-using-r.html And some general interest stories (not necessarily related to R): * A video explanation of the rolling shutters effect: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/because-its-friday-rolling-shutters-explained.html * How Bitcoin and other digital currencies work: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/because-its-friday-how-bitcoin-works.html * How sinkholes form: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/because-its-friday-hidden-holes.html * Air traffic control in Flight Simulator X: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/because-its-friday-o-captain.html * High school students build a facial-recognition drone: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/deep-learning-and-drones.html As always, thanks for the comments and please keep sending suggestions to me at davidsmi at microsoft.com or via Twitter (I'm @revodavid). Cheers, # David -- David M Smith <davidsmi at microsoft.com> R Community Lead, Microsoft AI & Research Tel: +1 (312) 9205766 (Chicago IL, USA) Twitter: @revodavid | Blog: ?http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com