I have an unfortunate habit of trying new paid services and then not using them as much as I should.... mostly because (a) there are too many other free and paid services that are constantly catching my attention, (b) I only need to process and use a limited amount of information for my own academic purposes.

Being focused and producing our own new work, while being open to new ideas and information is a difficult balancing act in the present age of media over-abundance.

Nevertheless, I quite often down the pdf packages that academica.edu offers when I come across a paper in their online archive.

As am information management technique, I try to delete bundled papers that are off-topic immediately, so that I can dig into the interesting papers more efficiently at a later date.

The Academia Premium subscription package includes many more benefits thant its regular account. These are described below (Internet , 21st May 2023: https://support.academia.edu/hc/en-us/articles/360043383853-What-is-Academia-Premium?):

Mentions: Learn who cites you. 

Readers: See who interacts with your work. 

Enhanced Analytics: Slice and dice how, when, and where your Academia profile is discovered and viewed. 

Advanced Search: Explore the full text of millions of uploaded papers.

Profile Visitors: Find out types of people who check out your profile. 

Personal Website: A clean, beautiful way to show your presence to the world.

Grants: Search our database of over one thousand grant and fellowship opportunities. 

PDF Packs: download whole groups of related papers to jumpstart your research.  Search Alerts: Stay updated on your research with automatic reports of saved search queries.  Summaries: Get super-summarized versions of papers & save time on research.   

We definitely need to fact-check everything we are told by AI systems like ChatGPT. These machines seem to be designed to generate uncertain information, without any internal fact-checking system. Although humans are unreliable, at least we can attempt to fact check ourselves by consulting memories that we consider to be factual. Of course, our memories are not always factual, but we are always training and retraining our own memories with new information. And also, for many different reasons, we may be attracted to misleading or wrong information and full our heads with nonsense. My impression so far (as of March 2023) is that ChatGPT can produce unlimited amounts of nonsense, mixed with real and useful information, and we should not absorb any of it uncritically.

My prompt to ChatGPT4:

Please outline the most effective strategy for using online tools to fact-check statements made by ChatGPT. Are there any specific tools designed for fact-checking ChatGPT?

The reply:

Using online tools to fact-check statements made by ChatGPT is essential to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information provided. While there aren't any specific tools designed exclusively for fact-checking ChatGPT, you can use a combination of general fact-checking tools and strategies to verify the information:

1. Search engines: Use search engines like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo to verify facts, statistics, and historical events. Search for keywords, phrases, or questions that relate to the statement you want to verify.

2. Fact-checking websites: Websites like Snopes, FactCheck.org, and PolitiFact specialize in verifying claims, debunking myths, and providing accurate information. Visit these websites and search for the topic or statement in question.

3. Primary sources: Whenever possible, refer to primary sources like government publications, official reports, research papers, or interviews with experts. This will help you validate the authenticity of the information provided by ChatGPT.

4. Cross-referencing: Cross-check the statement with multiple sources to ensure consistency and reliability. If multiple credible sources confirm the information, it's more likely to be accurate.

5. Media monitoring tools: Use tools like Google News or media monitoring services like Meltwater or Mention to search for news articles, press releases, or other media coverage related to the statement.

6. Expert opinions: If you're uncertain about a statement's accuracy, consult experts or authorities in the relevant field. This can be done through social media, professional networks, or by contacting them directly.

7. Social media verification: Verify claims on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook by checking the accounts of official organizations, journalists, or experts in the field.

8. Statistical databases: Use statistical databases like the World Bank, UNdata, or Statista to verify data and statistics provided by ChatGPT.

9. Reverse image search: If ChatGPT provides an image or visual representation, use reverse image search tools like Google Images or TinEye to verify the image's authenticity and origin.

10. Online communities: Engage with online communities like Reddit or Quora to seek clarification or additional information about the statement in question. Be cautious, however, as information from online communities can be both helpful and misleading.

Remember that ChatGPT is an AI language model, and it can sometimes provide outdated, incorrect, or ambiguous information. Always cross-reference and verify information provided by ChatGPT using the strategies mentioned above.

A large and curated collection of AI tools for many purposes:

"FutureTools collects & organizes all the best AI tools so YOU too can become superhuman!"

https://www.futuretools.io/

The AI tools are enthusiastically introduced using YouTube tutorials.

Many resources are available, I will group them here into "free" and "paid". Of course, many free services also have paid options with more tools, help and information. Please feel free to recommend a site for this toolkit.

Free

Google Earth   by Google

Paid

Flowingdata.com with Peter Lau (USA)

A great host of measures can be found in the "Engineering Toolbox":, here:

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/

e.g. Calibration curves for water specific gravity (SG) at different temperatures:

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-temperature-specific-gravity-d_1179.html

Various terms refer to similar things: broadband speed, internet speed, internet connection speed, and so on.

How to check your internet speed (article):

https://au.pcmag.com/how-to/28954/how-to-check-your-internet-speed

Ookla Speed Test (International) for download speed, upload speed, jitter, and ping response time:

https://www.speedtest.net/

Recently, a small academic society I belong to lost the person who had been looking after member contact details. There was backup copy of the full member list but we now have to rebuild the mailing list based on this. We did not use a properly managed mailing list system: Here I will report systems that other academic groups use:

This might be one of the best open source and free systems:

"GNU Mailman -- the world's most popular mailing-list manager -- has been in constant revision for two decades and supports more than 20 languages.

MailmanLists hosts group mailing-lists -- using GNU Mailman -- on servers around the world, and provides customer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week." (Mailman website, 2nd Sept. 2022)

https://www.mailmanlists.net/

The University College London (UCL) uses Mailman and gives advice on how set up a list and manage it:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/how-to/how-to-use-mailman

Physiology calculators at Physiology Web include many lab-friendly tools.

For example, the Percent (%) Solutions Calculator includes not just a calculator that covers different measurement scales,it also has a nice text explaining the three different ways of calculating percentages for solutes in solutions (w/v, w/w, and v/v).