Archive for the ‘Wikipedia’ Category

Sprouts Permanently Closing Major California Location at the End of … – NewsBreak Original

The company has blamed performance-related issues for the closure.

Authors Note

This article is based on corporate postings and accredited media reports. Linked information within this article is attributed to the following outlets: Wikipedia.org, ScrapeHero.com, and ABC10.com.

Introduction

Wikipedia features a comprehensive overview of the Sprouts Farmers Market chain, that was founded in July of 2002: Sprouts Farmers Market, Inc., is a supermarket chain headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. The grocer offers a wide selection of natural and organic foods, including fresh produce, bulk foods, vitamins and supplements, packaged groceries, meat and seafood, deli, baked goods, dairy products, frozen foods, natural body care and household items. Sprouts employs more than 35,000 workers and operates more than 380 stores in 23 states. A typical store is around 30,000 square feet.

California presently hosts the most Sprouts locations in the United States.

For an up-to-date location count, according to ScrapeHero.com: There are 394 sprouts retail stores in the United States as of March 27, 2023. The state with the most number of sprouts locations in the U.S. is California, with 134 retail stores, which is about 34% of all sprouts retail stores in the U.S.

Now comes word that a deluxe California location will soon be permanently closing its doors.

Let us explore further.

Sprouts, 2023

According to a report from Sprouts Closing Roseville Location Near Costco, the entity is permanently shuttering due to performance-based issues.

As excerpted from the report: Sprouts Farmers Market is closing one of its Roseville locations at the end of April. Sprouts, located near Costco on 6760 Stanford Ranch Road, will close Sunday, April 30. The store will be open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. until it closes for good. Lucas Larson, a Regional Vice President of Sprouts, said in a statement this location is about 30% larger than other locations and underperformed financially.

Conclusion

This is a developing story. In the event of pertinent updates to this matter, inclusive of official announcements of potential replacement stores, I will share them here on NewsBreak.

Thank you for reading.

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Sprouts Permanently Closing Major California Location at the End of ... - NewsBreak Original

Who owns the Water? The Tragedy of Commons! BigWire – Big Wire, news that matters

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Who owns the Water?- remaining within the cuddle of my grandfather, I asked this question to my genius, non-digital Wikipedia.

In those early childhood days, my grandfather used to be my one-stop solution, having answers to all the queries as well as ready to fulfill all my wishes.

If I get caught up by any issues or messed up with any puzzle then I looked at him for the solution. On one occasion, while playing football I felt thirsty as I had forgotten to carry my water bottle to the playground.

I asked my friend Rohit, to lend me his water bottle to which he vehemently refused by saying that I wont give it to you, this is my Virat Kohli Wala Black Water.

I felt offensive by his rejection; however, I held my emotion at that point of time and converted that unhappiness to philosophical one during my story time with grandpa.

Smilingly he said, no one owns the water my dear, it is a free good, a gift from Mother Nature to all her children.

You can only collect it and use it but cannot own it. Each species on this earth should have equal access to this pollution free and natural free good as it is the primary requirement to hold life on this planet.

This validation by my paladin erupted the underneath anguish and gloominess.

Immediately I asked him then why did Rohit said, it is my water and did not lend me to drink?

May be he could understood the pain of denial of few sip of water during intense thirst for which his casual grip around me converted to a hold, filled with warmth.

His voice got infused with kindness, compassion and he said, Rohit didnt do the right thing by denying water to a thirsty boy. You know dear, in our time declining the request for water to a thirstful person used to be a very bad manner.

To move on from that sorrow and misery of mine he shifted the conversation to a higher philosophical engagement.

You see! Claiming ownership over water is a modern day concept propelled by the market oriented temperament.

Water exists on earth in all its three forms and rotation in these stages of water making completion of hydrological cycle thus balances the availability of water for consumption by different species.

Mostly when it remains in the liquid form, it flows towards the sea and along its path it quenches the need of different species like trees, animals, birds and humans.

Off all the species, humans have discovered the ways to harness the maximum benefit out of it along with polluting, exhausting and claiming ownership over the waterbodies.

Further continuing his dialogue with me he said, Half a century back, water sources used to be venerated with great respect and utmost care were taken to refrain from polluting the water bodies.

Springs were considered to be the most prized possessions of communities and rivers as well as big water bodies were treated as holy and place of worship.

However, the reverence and respect for the water bodies slowly disappeared over time with the supply of tap water at home.

Instantly a question pop-up in my head, did you have tap water as well in your childhood days?

We used to drink water directly from our open wells.

Listening to my question a nostalgic smile emerged on his face as if he was remembering his old days. With a fixed gaze somewhere, as if he were encountering his old good days, he said, we didnt have any tap water in our village rather open wells were our supplier of water for household consumption and for cattle, agricultural purpose we were dependent on ponds and flowing river channels.

A sudden rush of happiness emerged in grandpas face, looking straight into my eyes he said, Our open well water used to be very cool and pleasant during summer and during winter it used to be slightly warm and regarding taste, it had a poignant, sweet taste, sweetest among all the village households.

My mother used to complain that as I drank too much water my stomach got filled and I barely feed anything. A happy smile surfaced on his face while my mind got encapsulated with another question.

So abruptly I intervened in to his dialogue by saying, but grandpa, water is color less, odorless and tasteless, then how come your water was so tasty and cool without refrigeration?

With a convincing smile he said, What you are saying are text book writings, but practically the taste and smell varies depending upon the source of water that you are drawing from.

If you take tap water, the taste and odor remains the same across most of the regions as it is being processed in a standard procedure in a purified plant.

But if you take water from a well, depending on the layer of stone that the water has travelled through, the taste changes.

Different layers of mineral stone have their add-on effect on the water quality and taste.

The stream water, the pond water and the water from river has their own unique taste, odour because of the presence of different mineral component.

With regard to color, as the water travels through the soil or rock it gathers the color of the material. Black Water, as your friend mentioned, is blackish in color as it passes through fulvic minerals and captures the black color.

In our childhood days to purify the river water we used to adopt this method of cleaning the water by passing it through sand and charcoal.

In order to make me understand the importance of water he caressed my head and said, You know dear, water is a very prominent component in our daily life. Without food we can survive for a couple of days but without water it is very difficult to survive even two days.

That is why the erstwhile wealthy people used to dug ponds and wells for the larger cause of the humanity.

Liquid water is a gift of Mother Nature to all her children inclusive of all the species.

While celebrating the World Water Day on 22nd March, the erstwhile conversation with my grandfather cropped up in my mind.

The water scarcity is looming large over the earth due to mismanagement of surface water and un-mindful drawing up of groundwater.

It is high time that the humanity should work together to ensure water conservation is promoted so that there is enough water available for each and every species.

If we fail in saving enough water, probably the days are not far ahead that we may end up in war for water only.

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Who owns the Water? The Tragedy of Commons! BigWire - Big Wire, news that matters

Wikipedia’s new sound logo had a seriously ambitious design brief – Creative Bloq

Most designers will have received some tough briefs in their time, but Wikipedia's call for proposals for a sound logo was a particularly tall order. The community-run online encyclopaedia wanted nothing less than "the sound of all human knowledge" for its new audio identifier.

And it thinks it's found it in a sonic logo that will be rolled out from mid-year. So what does the sound of all human knowledge sound like? Well, it's a mix of traditional and contemporary sources of learning: a flutter of pages turning and frantic typing followed by some chirpy electronic chimes (see our pick of the best logos for inspiration for visual identities).

Strictly speaking, a logo is a visual identity, but sound idents are frequently called sound logos or sonic logos, since they serve much the same function. And they can be hugely effective. Just think of Apple's start-up chime, Intel's signature 'bong' or Netflix's 'ta-dum'. Hear them, and you instantly recall the brands (see our pick of the best audio logos for more examples).

Wikipedia wanted something similar to serve for "projects when visual logos are not an option". True to its collaborative community-sourced nature it opened the quest up to the public through a contest, which opened in September. Six months on, it's picked a winner from over 3,200 submissions received from 2,094 people in 135 countries.

The winning audio logo was created by nuclear scientist Thaddeus Osborne, who wins $2,500 for his creation and will be flown to a professional recording studio in London to help produce the final version. He says that music has always been a huge part of his life and "a way for me to 'travel the world from my small town backyard."

Osborne's creation sounds both novel and somehow familiar. The combination of fluttering pages and clicking keys feels apt to communicate the concept of a digital encyclopedia, while the rising synthesizer chimes feel optimistic and comfortingly, almost like something we already know. The Wikipedia Foundation says it hopes to have the final sound ready for use by June.

Making your own sound logos? See our pick of the best laptops for music production. We also have a guide to the best audio editing software.

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Wikipedia's new sound logo had a seriously ambitious design brief - Creative Bloq

Will Wikipedia be written by AI? Founder Jimmy Wales is thinking about it – Evening Standard

By now, even those of us who live under a rock have become familiar with ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that can find us the answer to almost every question under the sun. It seems to be able to effortlessly write reports, compose letters or even poetry for any subject its asked about, it dutifully complies and does so at breakneck speed. It has even been known to declare its love for the users that interact with it.

The technology, developed by OpenAI which execs at Microsoft have found so impressive, theyve bought a $10 billion stake in scours the net to piece together a vast corpus of human-made literature, and draws on this to find users the answers to users questions it thinks are most plausible. In this respect, as one journalist put it, the software is little more than a spicy autocorrect.

But now imagine the roles are reversed. Instead of AI bots drawing on a body of human writing, imagine that in the future, most of the material we humans will read about will be written by AI. Such a move could send shockwaves through the world of publishing, newsgathering and social media, and it could be just around the corner. Its a future that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is already spending a lot of time thinking about, as he weighs up how the worlds biggest online encyclopaedia will evolve in the years to come.

The discussion in the Wikipedia community that Ive seen so far ispeople are cautious in the sense that were aware that the existing models are not good enough but also intrigued because there seems like theres a lot of possibility here, Wales said.

I think were still a way away from: ChatGPT, please write a Wikipedia entry about the empire state building, but I dont know how far away we are from that, certainly closer than I would have thought two years ago, he said.

One of the issues with the existing ChatGPT is what they call in the field hallucinating I call it lying.

Wales says that as much as ChatGPT has gripped the worlds imagination over the past few weeks, his own tests of the technology show there are still plenty of flaws.

One of the issues with the existing ChatGPT is what they call in the field hallucinating I call it lying, he said.

It has a tendency to just make stuff up out of thin air which is just really bad for Wikipedia thats just not OK. Weve got to be really careful about that.

Wales is not the only person to have spotted ChatGPTs ability to hallucinate.

Last month, David Smerdon, an economist at the University of Queensland, asked ChatGPT: What is the most cited economics paper of all time?

Within seconds the AI chatbot came up with an answer. The most cited paper of all time is A Theory of Economic History by Douglass North and Robert Thomas, which was published in The Journal of Economic History in 1969.

The answer sounded perfectly plausible. But when Smerdon went to find the paper it had referenced, to check it was as popular as ChatGPT claimed it was, he found that no such article existed. The authors were real, published writers, and the journal was real too. But the name of the paper was completely fabricated. Citation needed.

But beyond failing to tell the truth, Wales says the technology often fails to spot the internal contradictions in its own writing.

I asked ChatGPT, did an airplane crash into the empire state building? And it said no, an airplane did not crash into the empire state building, he said.

But then it went on to say, there is a famous building in New York and one of the most famous things that happened is when a B25 bomber crashed into the empire state building.

I said, is a B25 bomber a type of airplane? It said says so I said you were wrong when you said a plane didnt crash into it.

And it said, youre right, I apologise for my error.

But while full AI authorship is off the cards in the near-term, theres already plenty of discussion at Wikipedia on what role AI technology could have in improving the encyclopaedia in the months ahead.

I do think there are some interesting opportunities for human assistance where if you had an AI that were trained on the right corpus of things to say, for example here are two Wikipedia entries, check them and see if there are any statements that contradict each other and identify tensions where one article sems to be saying something slightly different to the other, Wales said.

A human could detect this but youd have to read both articles side by side and think it through if you automate feeding it in so you get out hundreds of examples I think our community could find that quite useful.

One of the criticisms levelled at Wikipedia over the years is the scope for bias in both the way its volunteers describe particular subjects as well as the way they choose which topics deserve more or less prominence. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedias millions-strong army of volunteers are male and white, meaning they inevitably even if inadvertently interpret world events with a male-centric and white-centric perspective and may not bother covering important topics at all if they dont see any merit in doing so. Could AI be a way to counteract some of these biases, and make Wikipedia a truly neutral, impartial source of information once and for all? Wales is not convinced.

We know a lot of AI work has run into bias very quickly, because if you train an AI on biased data then its just going to just follow that bias, and a lot of people in the AI world are focused on that problem and they are aware of it, he said.

In other words, theres a real chance that an AI-powered Wikipedia wont put a stop to biases, but exacerbate and perpetuate them. But where it could be most useful is in spotting things that are missing the encyclopaedias coverage analysing all the available information in the world, pairing bits of it up with corresponding Wiki entries and identifying the gaps. And there might be a lot of them leading to a ballooning of Wikipedia content. But Wales is unfazed by this.

Using AI to triple the number of Wikipedia entries wouldnt increase our running costs by more than 1,000 a year, said Wales.

Originally posted here:
Will Wikipedia be written by AI? Founder Jimmy Wales is thinking about it - Evening Standard

Rodri suffers brutal Wikipedia takedown as Scotland tantrum leaves Spaniard ‘crying into his haggis bon bons’ – Daily Record

Rodri has had his Wikipedia page edited after his toys out the pram reaction to Spain's loss against Scotland left the Tartan Army irked.

The Man City midfielder was in no mood for praise of Steve Clarke's men after their triumphant 2-0 win at Hampden in their second Euro 2024 Group A qualifier, criticising the tactics implemented and accusing those in navy blue of falling over to run down the clock. Rodri has been widely lamented since the post-match comments and that ire has now been directed to Wikipedia.

An information site widely available for editing, some crafty editors have decided to put in a few colourful details when it comes to the midfielder's bio and international history. Curiously, his club was changed from Manchester City to Arbroath, while his position was tweaked from 'midfielder' to 'Callum McGregor's back pocket.'

His entry reads: "Rodri is a greeting wee f**. Rodri's current whereabout are as yet unknown but it's said he is still in the away dressing room at Fortress Hampden Park crying his wee eyes out after being schooled by Steve Clarke's Tartan Army.

"Rodri was included in Luis Enrique's 24-man squad for UEFA Euro 2020. In the 2024 qualifiers went to Scotland, tried to play football and ended up crying into his haggis bon bons."

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Rodri suffers brutal Wikipedia takedown as Scotland tantrum leaves Spaniard 'crying into his haggis bon bons' - Daily Record