... A big problem with theories floated on social media is that information can go viral simply because it is popular, whether or not it is true. Patrick Meier of the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) in Doha is building Verily, a system that allows users to submit verification requests for information they are interested in. Each request prompts a crowd of online workers to set off into their networks to figure it out. The system gathers evidence for and against the claim, though it won't pass judgement.
...By training machine learning algorithms on huge data sets, Meier is building up profiles of the classes of digital evidence that tend to be credible, and those that are not.
As an example, Meier points to a recent study of misinformation on Twitter after the 2010 Chilean earthquake. Carlos Castillo of the QCRI and colleagues showed that non-credible tweets tend to spark responses that question or rebuke them – a trait software can be trained to recognise. "Non-credible information propagates across the twittersphere leaving very specific ripples behind," says Meier. "You could absolutely start having a probability – a percentage chance that particular tweets are not credible."
I am glad to announce the third edition of the Web Quality workshop, to be held on May 13th, 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The workshop is co-located with the World Wide Web conference.
This year's theme is the question: Signal or Noise?. The Web and social media keep on growing and playing an ever increasing role in our lives. In this context, finding relevant, timely and trustworthy content in a sea of seemingly irrelevant chatter remains a challenging research issue.
The workshop will bring together practitioner and researchers working on key problem areas such as modelling trust and author reputation, detecting abuse and spam, finding high-quality content, uncovering plagiarism, among other topics.
Slate.com writes about our upcoming study on Internet Research extending our findings presented in "Information Credibility on Twitter" [pdf].
Social media hoaxes: Could machine-learning algorithms help debunk Twitter rumors before they spread?
...
In a new paper, to be published in the journal Internet Research next month, the authors of the Chile earthquake study—Carlos Castillo, Marcelo Mendoza, and Barbara Poblete—test out their algorithm on fresh data sets and find that it works pretty well. According to Meier, their machine-learning classifier had an AUC, or “area under the curve,” of 0.86. That means that, when presented with a random false tweet and a random true tweet, it would assess the true tweet as more credible 86 percent of the time. (An AUC of 1 is perfect; an AUC of 0.5 is no better than random chance.)
My guess is that a knowledgeable and experienced human Twitter user could do better than that under most circumstances. And of course, if a given algorithm became widespread, committed trolls like the Hurricane Sandy villain @ComfortablySmug could find ways to game it. Still, an algorithm has the potential to work much faster than a human, and as it improves, it could evolve into an invaluable "first opinion" for flagging news items on Twitter that might not be true.
Somebody told us you can find fresh vegetables and plants in Qatar directly from a producer that has lots of greenhouses. It is possible.
The place is worth a visit for a chance of seeing so much vegetation in such a dry place. Plants here are much cheaper than the price of the ones you find in the shopping malls. There is also a small selection of vegetables (the minimum you have to buy is one kilogram) that varies with the season.
We went on a Saturday morning and they closed around 12:30. I don't know what are the opening times in other days. You can only pay in cash.
How to get there:
The place is named "Arab Qatari Agricultural Co." the entrance is at these coordinates: 25.36681, 51.24544.
Take Al Rayyan road towards the west. Continue on the highway to Dukhan past Education City on your left. Then you will pass a palace on your left, the Amiri guard on your left, then a large roundabout with a stadium (Al Rayyan Sports Club) on your right.
The next roundabout (a few kilometers ahead) is marked with signs for the Camel Racing tracks. Exit on that roundabout and immediately turn right, entering a road that goes back to Doha parallel to the highway and very close to it. Pass a Woqod petrol station on your left. Then you will find on your left the Arab Qatari place. There is a barrier there.
Ask them if they sell plants, they will say yes and open the barrier. Go inside, buy your plants and veggies, keep the receipts (they will ask for them on the way back), and enjoy!
Shortly before it caught fire, I visited the Villagio mall, one of the three largest in Doha. As far as I understand, it is a copy of a place in Las Vegas that intends to give the visitor the impression that you are in an "Italian village", including Gucci stores, a Venetian channel with gondoliers, etc.
I also had the opportunity to meet the (admirable) crazy cat ladies from "Cats in Qatar". Doha is full of abandoned cats. One of them is in this picture; we found her in the -3 parking of Tornado Tower, the maintenance people from the building took care of her for a few days and for now I am taking care of her.
Fortunately my immigration paperwork is done. This is a record. In Italy my resident permit took 7 months. In Spain it took 3 months, without considering the time when they expelled me from the country. Here it was only 5 weeks.
It is evident that the Qatar Foundation as an employer has a lot of influence. They put us in front of the queues at every step, and that saves entire days of paperwork. Queues are never well arranged, and often, you can not trust they will be respected.. In my medical checkup my queue was reversible. You could be at the beginning or at the end, depending on the decision of the security guard.
Through all the city you can hear the speakers of the mosques calling to prayer. SpeakerS, mosqueS, plural. From here I can hear at least three. To me it sounds like a cacophony of Gregorian singing..
Being without Fabiola is weird, I have had some critical days in which I don't even want to eat, specially on weekends. My work mates are practically all foreigners, many from Egypt and India. We hang out together a lot. I have gone a couple of times to the movies ... in sex scenes, they blank the screen and you can hear only the audio.
A little problem derived from the local customs is that in shopping malls and restaurants there are areas for "families". The meaning of this is that men alone can not enter these areas. This discriminates obviously against the poorer immigrants, because to bring your family here you have to have a well-paid job.
* * *
I met my neighbors, a British couple absolutely lovely, who believing I was not at home took my garden furniture. But they gave it back ;-) They are very nice, we went for a brunch to the Ritz-Carlton, where there is a free buffet and a free bar of sparkling white wine if you want -- meaning, the perfect place for getting drunk on a Friday noon (!) Here people work from Sunday to Thursday and Friday, specially Friday morning, is the most relaxed time of the week.
* * *
To get my driver license I have to do a mini-course of 12 sessions. I did not like the idea much at the beginning, I had hoped to just exchange my Chilean license for a Qatari one and maybe if I had insisted enough I would have done that. But the course has not been bad. The first two classes are in a simulator, which is fun because in the simulator everybody is very imprudent, they don't respect traffic lights, etc. I killed a guy in the simulator, who practically waited for me to get closer to throw himself to the street. But I saved a camel in the "country" scenario.
Then there are the practical lessons where you get ready for the exam (traffic signs and practical exam with L-parking, parking in a tight spot, and on-the-road test). I think I will get a PhD in L-parking. I am also practicing a lot defensive driving.
It is worth doing it. People are very aggressive when driving and they do stuff I haven't seen elsewhere. For instance, back from work a colleague who was giving me a ride cut in front of a Land Cruiser, unwillingly. Later the Land Cruiser came in front of his car and stopped suddenly, to make us crash against him. Fortunately, the other people in the car warned my colleague that this would happen, because Qataris know that in a trial between them and a foreigner, the foreigner always looses.
The instructors in the driving school work 10 hours a day and I think mine is always about to throw himself out of the car window out of boredom. When instructors are not giving lessons, they wait in a room with air conditioning and watch wrestling matches.
* * *
Last week one of my colleagues was speaking with the son of someone from the office, who was complaining about bullies in school. My colleague told the kid that he had to do like Napoleon, who studied a lot in school to be better than the bullies. His answer:
-- I am sorry sir, that is a bad example. I don't want to be like Napoleon.
-- Why?
-- Because I am Egyptian.
... A big problem with theories floated on social media is that information can go viral simply because it is popular, whether or not it is true. Patrick Meier of the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) in Doha is building Verily, a system that allows users to submit verification requests for information they are interested in. Each request prompts a crowd of online workers to set off into their networks to figure it out. The system gathers evidence for and against the claim, though it won't pass judgement.
Slate.com writes about our upcoming study on Internet Research extending our findings presented in "
The next roundabout (a few kilometers ahead) is marked with signs for the Camel Racing tracks. Exit on that roundabout and immediately turn right, entering a road that goes back to Doha parallel to the highway and very close to it. Pass a Woqod petrol station on your left. Then you will find on your left the Arab Qatari place. There is a barrier there.
I also had the opportunity to meet the (admirable) crazy cat ladies from "
It is evident that the Qatar Foundation as an employer has a lot of influence. They put us in front of the queues at every step, and that saves entire days of paperwork. Queues are never well arranged, and often, you can not trust they will be respected.. In my medical checkup my queue was reversible. You could be at the beginning or at the end, depending on the decision of the security guard.
To get my driver license I have to do a mini-course of 12 sessions. I did not like the idea much at the beginning, I had hoped to just exchange my Chilean license for a Qatari one and maybe if I had insisted enough I would have done that. But the course has not been bad. The first two classes are in a simulator, which is fun because in the simulator everybody is very imprudent, they don't respect traffic lights, etc. I killed a guy in the simulator, who practically waited for me to get closer to throw himself to the street. But I saved a camel in the "country" scenario.
The instructors in the driving school work 10 hours a day and I think mine is always about to throw himself out of the car window out of boredom. When instructors are not giving lessons, they wait in a room with air conditioning and watch wrestling matches.
