Elcke’s Data Dive #13: data about your holiday destination
In this four-weekly newsletter, I will keep you posted about the newest developments in the field of data. No worries, I’ll keep it simple. Everyone can follow along. Now that summer vacation is in full swing, we dive into some data on popular holiday destinations in Europe. Let’s go!
Mosquito radar Europe: your guide to a bite-free vacation
Tomorrow’s the day: I’m heading off on vacation to Albania — something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. A few of the things we’ve got planned: trying Albanian specialties like flija (a traditional layered pancake dish), climbing the country’s highest mountain, and, as we often do abroad, snorkeling.
Of course, we're well prepared for the local wildlife — the mosquito spray is ready to be packed. It's always a good idea to carry mosquito spray with you — after all, mosquitoes can be found almost everywhere in Europe. Well… almost everywhere. Iceland is one of the few places where you're completely safe. No mosquitoes there!
Curious about how many common mosquitoes you’ll encounter at your holiday destination?And wondering if there are any other types — the ones that can spread things like dengue? We made a Mosquito Radar Europe just for you — so you can travel well-prepared. Honestly… what would we do without data? 😄
Where are Europe’s cleanest waters to swim?
When going on vacation, it’s also useful to know where to find the cleanest swimming waters — because who doesn’t love a refreshing dip? So we dove into the swim water data too.
Dutch news publishers contribute to developing GPT-NL
Okay, putting vacation vibes aside for a moment — here’s something completely different that caught my attention this week: GPT-NL is well underway. It’s a kind of Dutch version of ChatGPT that uses only legally obtained data. Right now, they’re busy training the model, and of course, that requires an enormous amount of data.
Well, the model is now being fed a huge volume of data from news media — because NDP Nieuwsmedia and ANP have joined the GPT-NL project.
Hooray! Cheers to a language model made to comply with our laws!
I think that’s it for now. I’ll keep you posted for sure.
Elcke Vels - Editor IO+