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The right to work
I've been a friend of Universal Basic Income for thirty years, but in the last twenty years, I have growing reservations about it, and many questions. This article about an experiment with a right to work was the first text in a while I read on it that substantially impacted my thinking on this (text is in German). I recommend reading it.
Work is not just a source of money, but for many also a source of meaning, pride, structure, motivation, social connections. Having voluntary access to work seems to be one major component that is necessary on a societal level, in addition to a universal basic income that allows that everyone can live in dignity. Note: I think work should be widely construed. If someone has something that fills that need, that's work. Raising children, taking care of a garden, writing a book, refining piano skills, creating art, taking care of others, taking care of yourself, all these easily count as work in my book.
I wish we were willing and able to experiment with different ways of structuring society as we are willing and able to experiment with technology. We deployed the Internet to the world without worrying about the long term consequences, but we're cautious about giving everyone enough money to not be hungry. That's just broken. I was always disappointed about the fact that sociology and politics as studied and taught by academia were mostly descriptive and not constructive endeavors.
Wikidata - The Making of
Markus Krötzsch, Lydia Pintscher and I wrote a paper on the history of Wikidata. We published it in the History of the Web track at The Web Conference 2023 in Austin, Texas (what used to be called the WWW conference). This spun out of the Ten years of Wikidata post I published here.
The open access paper is available here as HTML: dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3543873.3585579
Here as a PDF: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3543873.3585579
Here on Wikisource, thanks to Mike Peel for reformatting: Wikisource: Wikidata - The Making Of
Here is a YouTube trailer for the talk: youtu.be/YxWs_BS31QE
And here is the full talk (recreated) on YouTube: youtu.be/P3-nklyrDx4
20 years of editing Wikipedia
Today it's been exactly twenty years since I made my first edit to Wikipedia. It was about the island of Brač, in the German Wikipedia.
Here is the version of the article I have created: Brač (as of May 11, 2003)
How much April 1st?
In my previous post, I was stating that I might miss April 1st entirely this year, and not as a joke, but quite literally. Here I am chronicling how that worked out. We were flying flight NZ7 from San Francisco to Auckland, starting on March 31st and landing on April 2nd, and here we look into far too much detail to see how much time the plane spent in April 1st during that 12 hours 46 minutes flight. There’s a map below to roughly follow the trip.
5:45 UTC / 22:45 31/3 local time / 37.62° N, 122.38° W / PDT / UTC-7
The flight started with taxiing for more than half an hour. We left the gate at 22:14 PDT time (doesn’t bode well), and liftoff was at 22:45 PDT.. So we had only about an hour of March left at local time. We were soon over the Pacific Ocean, as we would stay for basically the whole flight. Our starting point still had 1 hour 15 minutes left of March 31st, whereas our destination at this time was at 18:45 NZDT on April 1st, so still had 5 hours 15 minutes to go until April 2nd. Amusingly this would also be the night New Zealand switches from daylight saving time (NZDT) to standard time (NZST). Not the other way around, because the seasons are opposite in the southern hemisphere.
6:00 UTC / 23:00 31/3 local time / 37° N, 124° W / PDT / UTC-7
We are still well in the PDT / UTC-7 time zone, which, in general, goes to 127.5° W, so the local time is 23:00 PDT. We keep flying southwest.
6:27 UTC / 22:27 31/3 local time? / 34.7° N, 127.5° W / AKDT? / UTC-8?
About half an hour later, we reach the time zone border, moving out of PDT to AKDT, Alaska Daylight Time, but since Alaska is far away it is unclear whether daylight saving applies here. Also, at this point we are 200 miles (320 km) out on the water, and thus well out of the territorial waters of the US, which go for 12 nautical miles (that is, 14 miles or 22 km), so maybe the daylight saving time in Alaska does not apply and we are in international waters? One way or the other, we moved back in local time: it is suddenly either 22:27pm AKDT or even 21:27 UTC-9, depending on whether daylight saving time applies or not. For now, April 1 was pushed further back.
7:00 UTC / 23:00 31/3 local time? / 31.8° N, 131.3 W / AKDT? / UTC-8?
Half an hour later and midnight has reached San Francisco, and April 1st has started there. We were more than 600 miles or 1000 kilometers away from San Francisco, and in local time either at 23:00 AKDT or 22:00 UTC-9. We are still in March, and from here all the way to the Equator and then some, UTC-9 stretched to 142.5° W. We are continuing southwest.
8:00 UTC / 23:00 31/3 local time / 25.2° N, 136.8° W / GAMT / UTC-9
We are halfway between Hawaii and California. If we are indeed in AKDT, it would be midnight - but given that we are so far south, far closer to Hawaii, which does not have daylight saving time, and deep in international waters anyway, it is quite safe to assume that we really are in UTC-9. So local time is 23:00 UTC-9.
9:00 UTC / 0:00 4/1 local time / 17.7° N, 140.9° W / GAMT / UTC-9
There is no denying it, we are still more than a degree away from the safety of UTC-10, the Hawaiian time zone. It is midnight in our local time zone. We are in April 1st. Our plan has failed. But how long would we stay here?
9:32 UTC / 23:32 31/3 local time / 13.8° N, 142.5° W / HST / UTC-10
We have been in April 1st for 32 minutes. Now we cross from UTC-9 to UTC-10. We jump back from April to March, and it is now 23:32 local time. The 45 minutes of delayed take-off would have easily covered for this half hour of April 1st so far. The next goal is to move from UTC-10, but the border of UTC-10 is a bit irregular between Hawaii, Kiribati, and French Polynesia, looking like a hammerhead. In 1994, Kiribati pushed the Line Islands a day forward, in order to be able to claim to be the first ones into the new millennium.
10:00 UTC / 0:00 4/1 local time / 10° N, 144° W / HST / UTC-10
We are pretty deep in HST / UTC-10. It is again midnight local time, and again April 1st starts. How long will we stay there now? For the next two hours, the world will be in three different dates: in UTC-11, for example American Samoa, it is still March 31st. Here in UTC-10 it is April 1st, as it is in most of the world, from New Zealand to California, from Japan to Chile. But in UTC+14, on the Line Islands, 900 miles southwest, it is already April 2nd.
11:00 UTC / 1:00 4/1 local time / 3° N, 148° W / HST / UTC-10
We are somewhere east of the Line Islands. It is now midnight in New Zealand and April 1st has ended there. Even without the delayed start, we would now be solidly in April 1st local time.
11:24 UTC / 1:24 4/1 local time / 0° N, 150° W / HST / UTC-10
We just crossed the equator.
12:00 UTC / 2:00 4/2 local time / 3.7° S, 152.3° W / LINT / UTC+14
The international date line in this region does not go directly north-south, but goes one an angle, so without further calculation it is difficult to exactly say when we crossed the international date line, but it would be very close to this time. So we just went from 2am local time in HST / UTC-10 on April 1st to 2am local time in LINT / UTC+14 on April 2nd! This time, we have been in April 1st for a full two hours.
(Not for the first time, I wish Wikifunctions would already exist. I am pretty sure that taking a geocoordinate and returning the respective timezone will be a function that will be available there. There are a number of APIs out there, but none of which seem to provide a Web interface, and they all seem to require a key.)
12:44 UTC / 2:44 4/1 local time / 8° S, 156° W / HST / UTC-10
We just crossed the international date line again! Back from Line Island Time we move to French Polynesia, back from UTC+14 to UTC-10 again - which means it switches from 2:44 on April 2nd back to 2:44 on April 1st! For the third time, we go to April 1st - but for the first time we don’t enter it from March 31st, but from April 2nd! We just traveled back in time by a full day.
13:00 UTC / 3:00 4/1 local time / 9.6° S, 157.5° W / HST / UTC-10
We are passing between the Cook Islands and French Polynesia. In New Zealand, daylight saving time ends, and it switches from 3:00 local time in NZDT / UTC+13 to 2:00 local time in NZST / UTC+12. While we keep flying through the time zones, New Zealand declares itself to a different time zone.
14:00 UTC / 4:00 4/1 local time / 15.6° S, 164.5° W / HST / UTC-10
We are now “close” to the Cook Islands, which are associated with New Zealand. Unlike New Zealand, the Cook Islands do not observe daylight saving time, so at least one thing we don’t have to worry about. I find it surprising that the Cook Islands are not in UTC+14 but in UTC-10, considering they are in association with New Zealand. On the other side, making that flip would mean they would literally lose a day. Hmm. That could be one way to avoid an April 1st!
14:27 UTC / 3:27 4/1 local time / 18° S, 167° W / SST / UTC-11
We move from UTC-10 to UTC-11, from 4:27 back to 3:27am, from Cook Island Time to Samoa Standard Time. Which, by the way, is not the time zone in the independent state of Samoa, as they switched to UTC+13 in 2011. Also, all the maps on the UTC articles in Wikipedia (e.g. UTC-12) are out of date, because their maps are from 2008, not reflecting the change of Samoa.
15:00 UTC / 4:00 4/1 local time / 21.3° S, 170.3° W / SST / UTC-11
We are south of Niue and east of Tonga, still east of the international date line, in UTC-11. It is 4am local time (again, just as it was an hour ago). We will not make it to UTC-12, because there is no UTC-12 on these latitudes. The interesting thing about UTC-12 is that, even though no one lives in it, it is relevant for academics all around the world as it is the latest time zone, also called Anywhere-on-Earth, and thus relevant for paper submission deadlines.
15:23 UTC / 3:23 4/2 local time / 23.5° S, 172.5° W / NZST / UTC+12
We crossed the international date line again, for the third and final time for this trip! Which means we move from 4:23 am on April 1st local time in Samoa Standard Time to 3:23 am on April 2nd local time in NZST (New Zealand Standard Time). We have now reached our destination time zone.
16:34 UTC / 4:34 4/2 local time / 30° S, 180° W / NSZT / UTC+12
We just crossed from the Western into the Eastern Hemisphere. We are about halfway between New Zealand and Fiji.
17:54 UTC / 5:52 4/2 local time / 37° S, 174.8°W / NZST / UTC+12
We arrived in Auckland. It is 5:54 in the morning, on April 2nd. Back in San Francisco, it is 10:54 in the morning, on April 1st.
Green is March 31st, Red April 1st, Blue April 2nd, local times during the flight.
Basemap https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_time_zones_of_the_world_%282012%29_-_Pacific_Centered.svg CC-BY-SA by TimeZonesBoy, based on PD by CIA World Fact Book
Postscript
Altogether, there was not one April 1st, but three stretches of April 1st: first, for 32 minutes before returning to March 31st, then for 2 hours again, then we switched to April 2nd for 44 minutes and returned to April 1st for a final 2 hours and 39 minutes. If I understand it correctly, and I might well not, as thinking about this causes a knot in my brain, the first stretch would have been avoidable with a timely start, the second could have been much shorter, but the third one would only be avoidable with a different and longer flight route, in order to stay West of the international time line, going south around Samoa.
In total, we spent 5 hours and 11 minutes in April 1st, in three separate stretches. Unless Alaskan daylight saving counts in the Northern Pacific, in which case it would be an hour more.
So, I might not have skipped April 1st entirely this year, but me and the other folks on the plane might well have had the shortest April 1st of anyone on the planet this year.
I totally geeked out on this essay. If you find errors, I would really appreciate corrections. Either in Mastodon, mas.to/@vrandecic, or on Twitter, @vrandecic. Email is the last resort, vrandecic@gmail.com (The map though is just a quick sketch)
One thing I was reminded of is, as Douglas Adams correctly stated, that writing about time travel really messes up your grammar.
The source for the flight data is here:
- https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ANZ7/history/20230401/0510Z/KSFO/NZAA
- https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ANZ7/history/20230401/0510Z/KSFO/NZAA/tracklog
No April Fool's day
This year, I am going to skip April Fool's day.
I am not being glib, but quite literal.
We are taking flight NZ7 starting on the evening of March 31 in San Francisco, flying over the Pacific Ocean, and will arrive on April 2 in the early morning in Auckland, New Zealand.
Even if one actually follows the flight route and overlays it over the timezone map, it looks very much like we are not going to spend more than a few dozen minutes, or at most a few hours, in April 1, if all goes according to plan.
Looking forward to it!
Here's the flight data of a previous NZ7 flight, from Sunday: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ANZ7/history/20230327/0410Z/KSFO/NZAA/tracklog
Here are the timezones (but it's Northern winter time). Would be nice to overlay the two maps: 
Where's Wikifunctions when it's needed?
The question seems to be twofold: how often do we cross the dateline, and how close are we to local time midnight while crossing the dateline. For a perfect date miss one would need to cross the dateline exactly once, at a 24 hour difference, as close as possible to local midnight.
Gordon Moore (1929-2023)
Gordon Moore was not only the co-founder of Intel and the namesake for Moore's law, the claim that every two years the number of components on a chip would double, he was also, together with his wife Betty Moore, one of the generous donors who made Wikidata possible. Gordon and Betty Moore were known for their philanthropy, and it is easy to find their names engraved at the universities, zoos, museums, and galleries in the Bay Area. Gordon Moore died today at the age of 94.
Thank you for enabling us to make Wikidata happen.
Last Unicorn dreamcast
One thing my sister and I were doing from time to time was to think, if the Last Unicorn was remade as a live action movie, who would we cast in the different roles? It is sad to see how many of our dreamcast have since died: our favorite Prince Lir was Heath Ledger, and King Haggard, unsurprisingly, Christopher Lee.
Since I was reading the book with Little One, and now watched the movie again (for the 120th time or so), I was again going through my current dreamcast. Here we go.
- Lady Amalthea - Anna Taylor-Joy
- Schmendrick - Zach Braff, Donald Glover
- Molly Grue - Mia Farrow
- Prince Lir - Owen Wilson, no, getting too old; Liam Hemsworth? Chloe Moretz would be an interesting choice
- King Haggard - Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson
Since it is en vogue, I also asked Bard and ChatGPT. Here's Bard:
- Jeff Bridges as Schmendrick the Magician
- Mia Farrow as Molly Grue
- Angela Lansbury as the Unicorn
- Daryl Hannah as Filidor
- Jeff Goldblum as Schmendrick's sidekick, Bungle
- Peter Dinklage as the Red Bull
- Uma Thurman as Mommy Fortuna
- Alan Rickman as King Haggard
OK, Alan Rickman is a great choice, but unfortunately dead. Uma Thurman as Mommy Fortuna is weird. Peter Dinklage as the Red Bull... why does the Red Bull need to be cast at all? Who are Bungle and Filidor? Angela Lansbury as the Unicorn / Lady Amalthea is... not the right choice. Also dead. Mia Farrow and Jeff Bridges are too obvious choices given their roles in the cast of the animation movie, also Angela Lansbury is from the original cast. I would give Bard a D for that answer.
ChatGPT says:
- Unicorn - Saoirse Ronan or Emma Watson
- Schmendrick - Timothee Chalamet or Eddie Redmayne
- Molly Grue - Meryl Streep or Helen Mirren
- King Haggard - Ian McKellen or Christopher Lee (if he were still alive)
- Prince Lir - Tom Holland or Ansel Elgort
- Mommy Fortuna - Tilda Swinton or Cate Blanchett
Not even close to my choice, but heck, those are good choices. Molly Grue and Mommy Fortuna seem both a bit over-cast. Prince Lir and Schmendrick are pretty brilliant choices. I am not particularly impressed by Emma Watson for Lady Amalthea, I could see Saoirse Ronan work.
I'd give a B+ to ChatGPT.
I feel like ChatGPT seems to go for actors and actresses that are popular with the crowd who likes The Last Unicorn? Not the worst choice.
I followed up with Bard to see who Bungle and Filidor are, because they don't appear neither in the book nor in the movie, if I remember correctly. So, "Bungle is a red unicorn who is Schmendrick's sidekick in the novel The Last Unicorn. He is a clumsy and incompetent unicorn, but he is also a loyal and brave friend. Bungle is played by Jeff Goldblum in the 1982 animated film adaptation of the novel." And "Filidor is a bard in the novel The Last Unicorn. He is a wandering minstrel who travels the land singing songs and telling stories. Filidor is a wise and kind-hearted man, and he is always willing to help those in need. He is played by Daryl Hannah in the 1982 animated film adaptation of the novel." That's entirely a fabrication.
Running out of text
Many of the available text corpora have by now been used for training language models. One untapped corpus so far have been our private messages and emails.
How fortunate that none of the companies that train large language models have access to humongous logs of private chats and emails, often larger than any other corpus for many languages.
How fortunate that those who do have well working ethic boards established, who would make sure that such requests are evaluated.
How fortunate that we have laws in place to protect our privacy.
How fortunate that when new models are published also the corpora are being published on which the models are being trained.
What? Your telling me, "Open"AI is keeping the training corpus for GPT-4 secret? The company closely associated with Microsoft, who own Skype, Office, Hotmail? The same Microsoft who just fired an ethics team? Why would all that be worrisome?
P.S.: To make it clear: I don't think that OpenAI has used private chat logs and emails as training data for GPT-4. But by not disclosing their corpora, they might be checking if they can get away with not being transparent, so that maybe next time they might do it. No one would know, right? And no one would stop them. And hey, if it improves the metrics...
Oscar winning families
Yesterday, when Jamie Lee Curtis won her Academy Award, I learned that both her parents were also nominated for Academy Awards. Which lead to the question: who else?
I asked Wikidata, which lists four others:
- Laura Dern
- Liza Minnelli
- Nora Ephron
- Sean Astin
Only one of them belongs to the even more exclusive club of people who won an Academy Award, and where both parents also did: Liza Minnelli, daughter of Vincente Minelli and Judy Garland.
Also interesting: List of Academy Award-winning families
The place of birth of Ena Begović
I stumbled accidentally over a discrepancy regarding the place of birth of the Croatian actress Ena Begović, and noticed that if you ask Google for the place of birth, it answers Trpanj, whereas Wikipedia lists Split. I was curious where Google got Trpanj from, and how to fix it (especially now that I am not at Google anymore).
The original article in English Wikipedia was created in August 2005 by Raoul DMR. The article listed her as a "native of Split", which in September 2005 was turned into "born in Split".
In April 2018, Lole484, a user who gets blocked for sockpuppeting later, adds that she was born in "Trpanj near Split". There is no Trpanj near Split, but there is a Trpanj on Pelješac. Realzing that, they remove the "near Split" part. In 2019, Ivan Ladic - a sockpuppet of Lole484 - adds a reference to the city of birth being Trpanj, Večernji list, a well known Croatian news magazine.
In April 2020, an anonymous editor changes the place of birth back to Split, and adds a reference to the Croatian national encyclopedia. Today, I changed it back to Trpanj, accidentally while not being logged in (thus anonymously), to possibly encourage a discussion, after starting a conversation on the talk page on English and Croatian a few weeks ago that had one reply.
Interestingly, within a minute after changing the text, I went to Google and asked again for the date of birth, and Google again shows me Trpanj - but this time with the Wikipedia article and the updated snippet as a source. That is impressive.
When I asked Bing, Bing was saying Split for the last three weeks, since I started this adventure, whenever I checked. Today, it still kept saying Split, referencing two sources, one of them English Wikipedia, although I had already changed English Wikipedia. Not as fresh. Let's see how long this will stick. (Maybe folks at Bing should also talk with my colleagues at Wikimedia Enterprise to improve their freshness?)
The Croatian article was created in 2006 after the English one already stated Split, and Split was presumably copied over from the English version. Lole484 changed it to Trpanj in May 2018, and was later also blocked on Croatian Wikipedia, for unrelated reasons of vandalism. The same anonymous editor as on English Wikipedia changes it back to Split in April 2020.
Serbian and Serbocroatian started their articles in 2007, Russian in 2012, Ukrainian in 2016, Albanian and Bulgarian in 2017, Egyptian Arabic was created in October 2020. They all had Split from the beginning and throughout until today, presumably copied from English, directly or indirectly.
Amusingly, Serbian Wikipedia's opening sentence, which includes the place of birth being Split, receives a reference in January 2022 - but the reference actually states Trpanj.
None of the other language editions had their article started in the 2018-2019 window when English and Croatian stated the place of birth as Trpanj.
The only other Wikipedia language edition that saw a change of the place of birth was the Bosnian. The article on Bosnian Wikipedia started a few months after the Croatian, in 2006 (and thus being the third oldest article), and presumably also just copied from either Croatian or English. Lole484 changed it to Trpanj in April 2018, just like on the other Wikipedias. Here it was reverted the next day, but Lole484's sockpuppet Ivan Ladic reinstated that change in January 2019. When I started this adventure, the only Wikipedia that stated Trpanj was Bosnian, all other eight language editions with an article said Split.
On Wikidata, the item was created in 2012, shortly after the launch of the site, based on the existing six sitelinks. The place of birth being Split is added the following year, imported from the Russian Wikipedia.
After I stumbled upon the situation, I added Trpanj as second place of birth, and added sources to both Trpanj and Split.
What's the situation outside of Wikipedia? Both places have pretty solid references going for them:
Trpanj
- Večernji list, article from 2016
- Biografija stated Trpanj, no date, but after 2013 (Archive has the first copy from October 2020)
- tportal.hr has an article on a photography exhibition in Trpanj about Ena Begović, saying the place is chosen because it is her place of birth, published 2016
- Jutarnji list, a well known Croatian newspaper, has a long article about the actress, calling their house in Trpanj the 'rodna kuća', their birth home, of Ena and her sister Mia. This does not necessarily mean that it is literally the house they were born in. Published 2010
- HRT (Croatian national broadcaster), published 2021
- Dubrovački Vjesnik, local newspaper close to Trpanj, lists Trpanj, article from 2020
- Slobodna Dalmacija, a local newspaper from Split, writes Trpanj (but note that this is the same author as the previous article)
- Juarnji list, published 2020 (but note that this is the same author as the previous article)
- Geni.com says Trpanj, last updated 2022
Split
- Croatian national encyclopedia, published in 2021
- Filmski leksikon from the same publisher, no date, but after 2008 (Archive has the first copy from 2022)
- Proleksis, but same publisher as above, as of 2013
- Gloria, a Croatian magazine, says she was born in Split, but Trpanj was her home, published 2020
- film.hr via Archive, from 2007
- Espreso.co.rs writes Split, published 2022
- Find-a-grave lists Split on the site, but more importantly, the photograph of her grave avoids a mention of the place, but only gives the date of her birth and death
- ČSFD (Czechoslovak film database)
- Prabook, from the World Biographical Encyclopedia
- Svensk Filmdatabas
- TMDB (The Movie Database)
- Discogs
24sata says she grew up in Trpanj, gives her date of birth, but avoids stating her place of birth.
Only very few of the sources predate the English Wikipedia article, most notably:
- net.hr published the news of her death and burial in 2000, and lists Split as the place of birth
- IMdb from April 2005 via Archive lists Split, and throughout (I guess?) until today
I also looked up her sister Mia and found her profile on Facebook and sent her a message, but I assume she never even saw this message request. At least I never received an answer (and I didn't expect to). For Mia, the situation is similar: her article originally stated Split, was changed by Lole484 and reverted by an anonymous user, both in English and Croatian, whereas the other languages just list Split throughout.
There were many other sources, and they were going one way or the other. Many of the sources probably just copied from each other. The fact that there were some sources, such as Večernji, that stated Trpanj before it ever made to Wikipedia, but after Split was listed in Wikipedia, was swaying me to think it is Trpanj. Also, it was not always the strongest sources (e.g. usually I would rank the national encyclopedia over Večernji) that said Trpanj, but it was the most in-depth articles, that looked like the authors actually took the time to do some research. Many of the sources looked like they were just bots copying from Wikipedia or Wikidata, or quick pieces taking the base data from Wikipedia.
But then, finally, I stumbled upon one more source: index.hr re-published in 2019 an 1989 interview by Kemal Mujičić with Ena and Mia Begović. Here's a quote from the interview:
Rođene su u Trpnju na Pelješcu.
Ena: Molim vas, to posebno naglasite: Svi misle da smo Dubrovkinje.
Mia: Zanimljivo je da smo u Trpnju rođene kao podstanarke. Roditelji su tek poslije sagradili onu kućicu.
Translation:
They (Ena and Mia) are born in Trpanj on Pelješac.
Ena: Please put an emphasis on this: everyone thinks we are from Dubrovnik.
Mia: It is interesting that in Trpanj we were born as renters. Our parents built the little house (in which we lived) only later.
Ha! It is amusing to see that Ena's worry was that everyone thinks they are from Dubrovnik. I couldn't find a single source claiming that (but she went to high school (gimnazijum) in Dubrovnik, which is probably the source of that statement from 30 years ago). Also, so much for birth house.
Given all of that, I am going with Trpanj, and making the changes to the Wikipedia languages as much as I can (if someone can help with Arabic and Egyptian Arabic for Ena and Mia, that would be swell, I cannot edit that language edition). Let's see if it sticks.
So, why did Google know the correct answer, even though their usual sources, such as Wikidata and Wikipedia where saying Split? I mustn't say too much but it is due to the Google Knowledge Graph team and their quality processes. Seriously, congratulations to my former colleagues at Google for getting that right!
Just for fun, I also asked ChatGPT (on February 15). And the answer surprised me: when I asked in English, it gave me, unsurprisingly, Split (certainly what the Web seems to believe). But when I asked in Croatian, it gave me a different answer! And the answer was neither Split, nor Trpanj, and also not Dubrovnik - but Zagreb! It is interesting that something like the place of birth of an actress would lead to different answers depending on the language. I would have expected this knowledge to be in the 'world knowledge' of the LLM, not in the 'language knowledge'. I can't check out Bing's chat interface, as I have no access to it, but I would be curious what it says and how long it takes to update.
Thank you for going along on this rather nerdy ride of citogenesis.
Update
Ah, only a few hours after this publication, Bing got updated. And they not only switched from Split to Trpanj, they use this very blogpost as one of the two authoritative references for Trpanj!
