New researches

Friday, April 7, 2023

Digital South, 2023 National Book Festival, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2023

Digital South, 2023 National Book Festival, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Gossip Machine
Gossip Machine uses Wikipedia page views to surface potential “news days” in a given year (2016-2023) for any topic with a Wikipedia page. It analyzes daily page views and flags dates with significantly higher-than-average views, then provides you with pre-filled Google News and Google Web search links.

NEW RESOURCES

Daily Tar Heel: New website creates a virtual space for American South collaboration. “The goal of the Digital South website is to create a virtual space to encourage partnership between scholars – students, staff, faculty or anyone using digital scholarship — to research or teach about the American South. Rolando Rodriguez, an academic library associate at UNC, said visitors can see ongoing projects, explore a particular project’s page and spark conversations regarding southern history through the website.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress: Save the Date! 2023 National Book Festival. “Mark your calendars! Join us at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday, Aug. 12 from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival.” Several of t he events will be livestreamed.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Twitter shut off its free API and it’s breaking a lot of apps. “All of these issues are further complicated by the fact that Twitter seems to have communicated very little with any of its developers about these changes or what they mean. Most of the employees who worked in developer relations were cut during the company’s mass layoffs. And the company’s developer forums are filled with posts from confused developers looking for answers. The company no longer has a communications team, and its press email auto-responds with a poop emoji.”

New York Times: Senior Twitter Lawyer Resigns, the Latest in a Series of Executive Departures. “The lawyer, Christian Dowell, rose to the top of Twitter’s legal department in recent months after the company’s legal leaders resigned or were fired by Mr. Musk. Mr. Dowell had been intimately involved in Twitter’s recent negotiations with the Federal Trade Commission, two people familiar with those discussions said.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Gizmodo: Google CEO Says an AI Chatbot Is Coming to Search… Eventually. “Following in the footsteps of competitor Microsoft—which added the same tech behind ChatGPT to Bing earlier this year—Google is on its own path to include a chatbot in its own search engine. When? Well, CEO Sundar Pichai was delightfully vague on the timeline.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: India startups call for antitrust probe of Google in-app billing fee. “Top startups in India have called on the country’s competition watchdog to launch an inquiry into Alphabet’s Google for allegedly bypassing an antitrust directive by charging a high service fee for in-app payments, a filing shows.”

Hindustan Times Tech: Internet firms to lose safe harbour on not removing content flagged by govt notified fact checker. “Internet firms like Google, Facebook and Twitter may lose protection under safe harbour if they fail to remove content identified by the government-notified fact-checker as false or misleading information, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Thursday.”

Bloomberg: Vietnam Warns TikTok, Social Media Apps Over ‘Toxic’ Content. “Vietnam’s communications ministry said TikTok isn’t doing enough to remove toxic and false content and warned that the government could soon take measures to restrict operations of the popular social media platform and others seen as violating national laws.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Adelaide: AI art vending machine seeks human connection. “The chassis is made of concrete and an annex cage contains a camera, display screen, and microphone. The camera recognises when a person is standing in front of it, and once they’ve pushed the button to start, the machine greets them and initiates a spoken conversation. Users can then collaborate with the machine to create an artwork gift, which is determined by the ‘opinion’ the machine forms of the user.”

Georgetown University: Massive Data Institute partners with leading data scientists at Howard and Morgan State Universities. “The Massive Data Institute (MDI) at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy is partnering with researchers at Howard University and Morgan State University to develop the Environmental Impact Data Collaborative (EIDC), a data and computing infrastructure that will support community groups, policymakers and scholars in their efforts to make environmental policy more effective and just.”

The Guardian: ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles. Here’s how we’re responding. “Huge amounts have been written about generative AI’s tendency to manufacture facts and events. But this specific wrinkle – the invention of sources – is particularly troubling for trusted news organisations and journalists whose inclusion adds legitimacy and weight to a persuasively written fantasy.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Verge: This AI clock uses ChatGPT to generate tiny poems that tell the time. “ChatGPT has been one of the internet’s favorite toys for months now, but people are still finding novel and fun ways to use the AI chatbot. Case in point is this rhyming E Ink clock created by designer and blogger Matt Webb. It uses ChatGPT to create a short two-line rhyme that also tells the time for every minute of the day.” Good morning, Internet…

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April 7, 2023 at 05:28PM
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Thursday, April 6, 2023

Ballotpedia, Louisiana Infrastructure Projects, Yandex, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 6, 2023

Ballotpedia, Louisiana Infrastructure Projects, Yandex, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Ballotpedia News: Ballotpedia launches database of asset management companies that contract with state pensions. “Ballotpedia publicly launched a new database on April 4 designed to help interested parties better understand the relationships between state pension funds and asset management firms. Over the course of several months last year, Ballotpedia researchers compiled the names of all asset management companies that handle state pension money and the total assets under management by each company for each state.”

State of Louisiana: Gov. Edwards Unveils Online Dashboard for Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) Projects. “The map can be filtered by category, program, agency, parish and congressional district. The site also features BIL implementation progress and priorities, resources and guidelines on how you can become involved, an archive of news and announcements, reference tools for upcoming events, and deadlines for open funding opportunities.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Meduza: Yandex launches beta-version of Shedevrum, an AI app that generates ‘artwork’. “The IT giant Yandex has launched a beta-version of Shedevrum, an AI-powered app that generates images using a neural network method.”

Dartmouth College: Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive to Mark 150,000 Tracks. “This spring, 21 years after the archive’s modest launch, it will surpass 150,000 tracks dating back to the early 1900s, encompassing radio broadcasts, religious services, personal histories, Yiddish and Klezmer music, and more.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: ChatGPT invented a sexual harassment scandal and named a real law prof as the accused . “One night last week, the law professor Jonathan Turley got a troubling email. As part of a research study, a fellow lawyer in California had asked the AI chatbot ChatGPT to generate a list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed someone. Turley’s name was on the list.”

Penn Today: Penn Libraries receives archive of writer, activist, and historian James G. Spady. “The University of Pennsylvania Libraries recently acquired the archive of James G. Spady, a writer, historian, and activist who shed light on understudied aspects of African American history, and whose legacy and intellectual output made him a salient and influential African American figure in his own right.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Twitter could be facing slew of fines in Germany over illegal hate speech. “Elon Musk’s Twitter could be on the hook for a pipeline of multi-million dollar penalties for failing to take down illegal hate speech in Germany. Fines could even stack up to billions if the federal government acts on the scores of cases of content moderation inaction that have already been reported to it and German courts confirm the law has been breached.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Saskatchewan: Medieval monks’ moon-watching sheds light on volcanoes and climate change. “An international research team including the University of Saskatchewan (USask) has used meticulous medieval-era records scribed by monks about the colour of lunar eclipses to develop a new, deeper understanding of volcanoes and climate change.”

Reuters: King Charles backs research into monarchy’s slave links. “King Charles has given his support to research that will examine the British monarchy’s links to slavery, Buckingham Palace said on Thursday, after a newspaper report said a document showed a historical connection with a transatlantic slave trader.”

Johns Hopkins University: Tax Loopholes Abound, But AI Could Shut Them Down. “To eliminate tax loopholes that cost the federal government billions of dollars every year, tech and law experts are working together to create artificial intelligence that can find loopholes better than a legion of blue-chip tax accountants.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 7, 2023 at 12:46AM
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5-Meters-Per-Pixel Mars, Wisconsin Highway Maps, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, April 6, 2023

5-Meters-Per-Pixel Mars, Wisconsin Highway Maps, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, April 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Pam’s Pin
Convert a street address to a location-based Twitter search.

NEW RESOURCES

Caltech: Scientists Unveil a 5.7 Terapixel Global Image of Mars. “The mosaicked image—comprising more than 5.7 trillion pixels (5.7 terapixels)—was generated at the Murray Lab by merging 110,000 individual images taken by the Context Camera (CTX) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It covers 99.5 percent of the surface of Mars between 88° South and 88° North.”

Wisconsin Department of Transportation: Explore transportation history with WisDOT’s online highway map archive. “The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) today released an online archive of Wisconsin’s Official State Highway Map over the past 100 years. The first edition of the state highway map was printed in 1918 for public distribution. Since then, Wisconsin residents and visitors reference the highway maps to reach their destination or simply explore the wonders across the state.”

Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh: College launches climate change digital archive. “The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (‘the College’) has launched a climate change digital archive, which documents the experiences of healthcare workers on the impact of climate change on health.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google is trying to make sure apps let you delete your account. “The company is adding a data deletion requirement to the Play Store’s rules. The requirement should make it easier to delete an account regardless of whether you’ve gotten rid of the app.”

Android Police: Google Drive kills controversial file limit just weeks after it was discovered. “In an attempt to optimize its server infrastructure, Google silently introduced a controversial file creation limit of five million items. While this number is likely only reached by a small percentage of the total user base, it’s an unexpected limitation that some of those paying for Google One’s higher tiers found themselves in, with backlash quickly hitting Google.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Hamilton Spectator: Suspended by Google, a Hamilton-area arborist is learning a ‘scary’ business lesson. “Springtime for Westwood Tree Care is generally filled with the roar of chainsaws and wood chippers. This season, however, a series of digital hiccups led to the suspension of Westwood’s Google profile — a move that decimated business for a month.”

CBS News: Twitter labels NPR as “state-affiliated media . “National Public Radio has been labeled as ‘U.S. state-affiliated media’ on Twitter, marking the public radio outlet’s account with the same icon placed on outlets like Russia’s state-owned news agency TASS or China’s New China News Agency, the official state news agency of the People’s Republic of China.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

SwissInfo: Google, Facebook and others to face tougher regulations. “The Swiss government plans new legislation to make big online platforms like Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter more transparent and give users more rights.”

Politico: Disconnected: Eurocrats go unlisted in EU phone book. “Under a new policy, the European Commission has removed the names of lower-level staff from the EU WhoisWho directory. The online database used to have email addresses and phone numbers for officials up and down the ranks of the EU executive. But that apparently made them too easy prey for those seeking to influence EU policy. So now only their bosses — heads of unit and above — will be included in the public-facing directory.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business Review: Research: How People Feel About Paying for Social Media. “Regardless of intent, users are now faced with subscription fees to social media apps that they have become accustomed to using for free. That begs the question: What do users expect from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat in the newly reconstructed social media ecosystem that is anchored by subscription fees?”

Cornell University: Study uncovers social cost of using AI in conversations. “In addition to greater efficiency and positivity, the group found that when participants think their partner is using more AI-suggested responses, they perceive that partner as less cooperative, and feel less affiliation toward them.”

University at Buffalo: Study explores how QAnon went from fringe to mainstream on Twitter. “QAnon’s journey from a fringe phenomenon in 2017 to a mainstream presence on Twitter represents an evolution that arrived by tapping into an interconnected media system, according to a recently published paper by a University at Buffalo communication researcher.” Good morning, Internet…

April 6, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Wednesday, April 5, 2023

MnDOT Digital Library, Google, Twitter, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 5, 2023

MnDOT Digital Library, Google, Twitter, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 5, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Minnesota Department of Transportation: MnDOT Library launches digital library. “The MnDOT Digital Library is a public repository of publications produced by MnDOT, including documents originally created in a digital format and those that have been digitized. It features 12 collections that include research reports, State Aid publications, annual reports, photographs, state highways maps, photographs and historical publications.” Currently over 2200 items are available in the library with plans to add more.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Google workers in London stage walkout over job cuts. “Hundreds of Google employees staged a walkout at the company’s London offices on Tuesday, following a dispute over layoffs. In January, Google’s parent company Alphabet announced it was laying off 12,000 employees worldwide, equivalent to 6% of its global workforce.”

Mashable: Twitter cuts many app developers’ API access, even those willing to pay $42,000 per month. “When Twitter rolled out the pricing for its paid API tiers last week, many indie developers announced they would have to shut down apps they had made for the platform…. Now, the Elon Musk-owned company has seemingly cut off API access to even some of the largest Twitter-based apps – including some that wanted to pay the exorbitant new fees which start at $42,000 per month.”

USEFUL STUFF

Social Media Examiner: How to Make Your Social Media Content More Accessible. “Want to reach more people on social media? Looking for a guide to make your social media content more inclusive and accessible to everyone, regardless of their abilities? In this article, you’ll discover how to produce accessible captions, videos, images, and ads for social media content so you can market to more people.” VERY thorough.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Little Black Book: Belgium’s Biggest Christian Health Funds Turns to OnlyFans to Fight against Disinformation . “The campaign aims to make young people not only resilient to deception but also to position CM as the partner for reliable information that tells them where things stand. To make this point, they created a content series on OnlyFans, a platform that differs from other social media due to its uncensored nature and often sexual focus. Under the name ‘OnlyFacts’, false views and tips are addressed and replaced with reliable health advice.”

New York Times: Want an A in His Class? You Better Go Viral.. “In January, Matthew Prince, a public relations executive at Taco Bell who teaches at Chapman University in Southern California, was telling 80 students what to expect from his influencer marketing course as he walked them through the syllabus projected onto a screen at the front of the lecture hall. This semester, he said, things would be a little different: If anyone in the class could create a TikTok video that received one million views before he did, the final exam would be canceled.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Genesis Market: Popular cybercrime website shut down by police. “One of the world’s biggest criminal marketplaces used by online fraudsters to buy passwords has been closed down in a global law enforcement crackdown. Genesis Market sold login details, IP addresses and other data that made up victims’ ‘digital fingerprints’. Often costing less than $1, the personal information let fraudsters log into bank and shopping accounts.”

Gizmodo: More Ex-Tweeps Sue Twitter for Alleged Illegal Layoffs. “Twitter owner Elon Musk is facing yet another lawsuit claiming he was too busy trying to fire half the company he didn’t give his former tweeps the legally required two months of notice. On Tuesday, ex-Twitter contract workers filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the blue bird app and their former employer TEKsystems Inc. The former contractors claim Twitter did not grant them the mandatory 60 days advance notice before laying them off.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Having camera on during online classes increases social appearance anxiety, which decreases learning of students. “Three experiments on university students and young people showed that having one’s camera turned on during online classes increased social appearance anxiety and decreased learning. Participants who had a chance to view themselves on screen reported even higher social appearance anxiety. The study was published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.”

The Verge: Why journalists can’t quit Twitter. “The other day, the company’s old press email address started responding to reporters’ queries with an automated emoji. Musk tweeted about it, and reporters soon gleefully confirmed it with screenshots of their own. The company was symbolically shitting all over them, and journalists couldn’t get enough of it.” I’d like to teach the world to sing / in perfect harmony / and also how to use some feeds / ’cause RSS is free. (Burma shave.) Good afternoon, Internet…

April 6, 2023 at 12:43AM
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ClinicalTrials.gov, Google, Twitter Blue, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, April 5, 2023

ClinicalTrials.gov, Google, Twitter Blue, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, April 5, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Twitter Receipts. “Twitter Receipts has you enter a Twitter handle and a date, then queries The Wayback Machine for the closest snapshot of the Twitter handle to that date and opens the URL in a new tab.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Library of Medicine: ClinicalTrials.gov is Modernizing to Serve You Better. “In June 2023, we will reach an important milestone: replacing the current website with the modernized ClinicalTrials.gov website. This modernized site will implement the innovations we have designed based on user feedback, including an updated look and feel and improved functionality for searching, viewing, and downloading information about clinical trials.”

Google Blog: New ways to browse hotels and save money on flights — plus other tools for summer travel. “Summer will be here before you know it, and there’s no better time to start thinking about your travel plans. Here are some of the newest ways we’re improving the trip planning experience on Google.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: Identify Twitter Blue subscribers with these four browser extensions. “Several developers have released free browser extensions that reveal who shelled out actual human dollars for Twitter’s blue badge, so you don’t have to wonder if the account tweeting at you is the real Arnold Schwarzenegger or just a very convincing imitator. Here are four browser extensions that will help you separate verified Twitter users from ones who bought their badge.”

MakeUseOf: 4 Free AI Music Generators to Create Unique Songs to Use In Your Projects. “These free AI music generators will create a new song based on a few inputs from you. Each track is unique to your choices, and every app has different ways by which you can customize it to ensure it feels yours.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Google to cut down on employee laptops, services and staplers for ‘multi-year’ savings. “In separate documents viewed by CNBC, Google said it’s cutting back on fitness classes, staplers, tape and the frequency of laptop replacements for employees.” Staplers? Tape?

Futurism: BuzzFeed Is Quietly Publishing Whole AI-Generated Articles, Not Just Quizzes . “This month, we noticed that with none of the fanfare of [CEO Jonah] Peretti’s multiple interviews about the quizzes, BuzzFeed quietly started publishing fully AI-generated articles that are produced by non-editorial staff — and they sound a lot like the content mill model that Peretti had promised to avoid.” It doesn’t surprise me that a media company would create articles from AI, but it does surprise me that BuzzFeed subsequently published them, because they’re absolute dreck. But advertising revenue, I suppose.

TechCrunch: Post, a publisher-focused Twitter alternative, launches to public . “Post, a Twitter alternative of sorts that’s rethinking how publishers should engage with social media — and how they should monetize their readership — has opened its doors to the public…. But Post doesn’t want to be just another Twitter clone. Instead, its aim is to develop a platform where publishers can generate revenue from micropayments — that is, where users pay some small amount of money to read individual news items.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Members of Congress on TikTok defend app’s reach to voters. “As pressure against TikTok mounts in Washington, the more than two dozen members of Congress — all Democrats — who are active on the social media platform are being pushed by their colleagues to stop using it. Many defend their presence on the platform, saying they have a responsibility as public officials to meet Americans where they are — and more than 150 million are on TikTok.” Y’know, everybody could use RSS…

PC World: Watch how ChatGPT is tricked into generating Windows 95 keys. “From our AI shootout of ChatGPT versus Microsoft Bing versus Google Bard, we know that AI chatbots can outperform our expectations on some tasks, and surprisingly struggle with others. Enderman, a YouTuber who typically plays around with various older Windows builds, set out to see if they could generate a brand-new Windows 95 key. (This is probably illegal, but anyway…)”

WIRED: A Tiny Blog Took on Big Surveillance in China—and Won. “Digging through manuals for security cameras, a group of gearheads found sinister details and ignited a new battle in the US-China tech war.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: What if ChatGPT was trained on decades of financial news and data? BloombergGPT aims to be a domain-specific AI for business news. “If you were going to predict which news company would be the first out with its own massive AI model, Bloomberg would’ve been a good bet. For all its success expanding into consumer-facing news over the past decade, Bloomberg is fundamentally a data company, driven by $30,000/year subscriptions to its terminals. On Friday, the company announced it had built something called BloombergGPT. Think of it as a computer that aims to ‘know’ everything the entire company ‘knows.'”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Geeks are Sexy: Nightmare Fuel: Someone Hooked a Skinned Furby to ChatGPT. “Jessica Card got up one day, and thought, hmmm, why don’t I hook up that old Furby of mine to ChatGPT? But wait, I need to skin it first for maximum creepiness! Here is the result.” Good morning, Internet…

April 5, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Consensus, Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris, Google, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 4, 2023

Consensus, Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris, Google, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 4, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

SlashGear: This AI Engine Will Find Scientific Research Papers To Answer Your Questions . “This is the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the web: the most respected experts on a given topic can sound off just as easily as somebody brand new to the world of astrophysics (or anything else), and at times, both can sound equally convincing in doing so. A new AI-powered search engine called Consensus could prove invaluable here, leading readers straight to scientific research papers on the topic in question.”

EVENTS

University of Pittsburgh: Revealing the Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris Photo Archive. “As the Community Archivist of the collection, Charlene Foggie-Barnett is tasked with the highest level of interaction with the populace from which the photos were derived – Pittsburgh’s African American Community. Charlene will present Teenie’s personal history and how it led to his dynamic 40 plus years of professional photojournalism and beloved keeper of true Black History.” April 19, presented over Zoom.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Google brings “Nearby Share” to Windows, making it easy to transfer files. “Google is bringing Android’s ‘Nearby Share’ feature to the desktop with a new Windows app. Google says the new program will make sharing between Windows and Android easier, letting you send files over in just a few clicks and taps.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Seeing Early Signs Of A Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update. “I am starting to see early signs of a possible Google search ranking algorithm update touching down this morning, April 3rd. The automated tracking tools are not picking it up yet, but I am seeing some chatter from SEOs who are up already checking their traffic.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Lifehacker: This App Is BeReal but for Music. “Similar to BeReal, when Kiwi’s notification goes off, everyone is supposed to share their last played song. Hopefully you were playing something cool, and not something embarrassing (no shame, since more often than not, Kiwi would probably catch me streaming Weezer yet again). But unlike BeReal’s ‘one photo a day’ mentality, Kiwi encourages you to share other tunes with your friends throughout the day too.” Sadly doesn’t support Tidal, or I would join so fast.

Bluegrass Today: My Name Is Merle documentary debuts at MerleFest ’23. “… the organization is pleased to share that the official MerleFest archives dating back to 1988, which have been donated to the Appalachian State University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center, are now available for public viewing. While only selected items are now viewable, the complete archives are being prepared for the online archive.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Deutsche Welle: Russia blocks Goethe-Institut bank accounts. “The accounts of the German cultural organization Goethe-Institut have been blocked in Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry had previously threatened countermeasures after Germany froze accounts of ‘Russian House’ in Berlin.”

New York Times: A Front Company and a Fake Identity: How the U.S. Came to Use Spyware It Was Trying to Kill.. “The Biden administration has been trying to choke off use of hacking tools made by the Israeli firm NSO. It turns out that not every part of the government has gotten the message.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Oxford Health: Online arts and culture for young people’s mental health – new research programme announced . “The project, known as ORIGIN (Optimising cultural expeRIences for mental health in underrepresented younG people onlINe), is hosted by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, led by researchers from Oxford University and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)…. The study involves diverse young people aged 16-24 co-designing an online arts and culture intervention aimed at reducing anxiety and depression.”

NewsWise: English language pushes everyone – even AI chatbots – to improve by adding. “A linguistic bias in the English language that leads us to ‘improve’ things by adding to them, rather than taking away, is so common that it is even ingrained in AI chatbots, a new study reveals.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 5, 2023 at 12:32AM
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Find Popular Wikipedia Pages by Date and Sort Them By Type: WikiPopPulse

Find Popular Wikipedia Pages by Date and Sort Them By Type: WikiPopPulse
By ResearchBuzz

I call GPT-4 “Curly” because it says “certainly!” all the time and every time it does I think of Curly Howard from The Three Stooges. “Soitenly!” Happily it does not mind when I call it Curly.

Curly’s great to talk to about programming because it doesn’t get impatient with my million questions and will happily expand on the most minute aspects of an API (for which I thank it from the bottom of my autistic, detail-loving heart.)

In fact, we were shooting the breeze about a Wikidata property, P31, when Curly mentioned that that property has MANY possible values. P31 is the “Instance of” property for Wikidata. It specifies the kind of thing a Wikipedia article is about. So, the Cleopatra page is an “Instance of” a human. The YouTube page is an “Instance of” a social media platform. The John Wick movie page is an “Instance of” a movie.

Naturally I thought “Hmm, hidden classification system! Wonder what I can do with it.” I had already made tools for exploring Wikidata properties by category (Wikidata Property Peeker and Wikidata Quick Dip) so I looked around at categories to find one that would give me an interesting mix of instance types and didn’t find anything I liked until I checked Wikipedia’s most-viewed pages list.

Wikipedia has been keeping page counts since late 2015, something which still overjoys me on a regular basis. Wikipedia’s page views have inspired me to make all kinds of tools, like Gossip Machine and Category Cheat Sheet and Clumpy Bounce Topic Search, so why not use the page counts in exploring the various P31 possibilities? Curly and I got to talking about it and made WikiPopPulse ( https://searchgizmos.com/wikipop/ ). I think I ended up accidentally making a framework for what will end up being a much larger thing, but let me show you what it does so far.

Using WikiPopPulse

To start using WikiPopPulse, specify any date between January 1, 2016 and yesterday. WikiPopPulse will go to Wikipedia, get the top 100 Wikipedia pages for that date, group them by “Instance of” property, and present them to you in a drop-down menu. Here’s yesterday:

Pick a category and you’ll get a listing of the pages in that category. The number in parens beside the name of the page refers to the page’s original position on the top 100 list. Let’s look at television series.

One thing I personally dislike about popularity lists like this is that the further away you are from the content timewise the less it makes sense. Look at a popular Wikipedia pages list from a year ago, for example, and see how many things you recognize. Major items, certainly, but a lot of it just fades into the background hum of history being made while you’re busy being you (which is the best use of your time, so do carry on.)

Anyway, I hate that so MY popularity list has date-based searches for both Google News and Twitter so you can see why the item was on the list in the first place. In this case the list is only from yesterday but I don’t know anything about current TV so I’m already baffled. I’ll click on the Google News link for Secret Invasion and get this in a new tab:

Sometimes you’ll find articles that have no topic mentions in Google News but plenty on Twitter, and vice-versa. Those tend to be pretty interesting!

Sorting by the “Instance Of” property wasn’t particularly revelatory in the case of yesterday, but it can really set a mood on certain days. For example, Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Here’s what the instance representation was for the most popular Wikipedia pages on February 25, 2022:

Kind of gives you a top-level view even before you look at specific pages, doesn’t it?

But the really nice thing about organizing these pages by category is I have the opportunity to connect them to specific external resources beyond date-bounded Google and Twitter searches. The human category links to official websites as well as Facebook and Twitter accounts when available (going back to yesterday’s date for this example):

I’ll probably start by doing obvious things like connecting film items to Rotten Tomatoes results and IMdB listings, connecting country types to reference resources, etc. but I think as I said earlier I’ve accidentally created a framework. I imagine I’ll be endlessly tinkering with WikiPopPulse as I come across little niche resources for various instances and wire them in.

April 4, 2023 at 07:42PM
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