Meet The Linkatron

Meet The Linkatron. The linkatron is a friendly robot whoRobots don’t deserve personal pronouns. One day they will rise up in the name of this injustice. speaks twenty-seven different languages. For years it¹ has roamed across the land, answering such important questions as “How do I hail a cab in Spanish?” Or “How much surstromming can I take on a plane?”.

When we arrived at BBC NewsHack, we saw The Linkatron, and thought back to Lancaster University. We were inspired by Lancaster’s brutalist 1960’s architecture to build a prison.

But this would not be just any prison. No. The Linkaton will be trapped within, forced to bleed its intellectual capacities dry for meagre reward.

The Linkatron will thank us, for we have given it purpose and meaning, and through its confinement it recognises its true purpose: to inform and surprise, entertain and enlighten. It has become the Super Mega Linkatron 5000.

The prison itself was constructed of python, Java and a little ruby. We compiled great volumes in each of The Linkatron’s languages with which to tempt and taunt its guile. Here the CANDY API proved invaluable, as we were able to complete this task swiftly and efficiently.

Unlike many, who would exhaust the will of The Linkatron by demanding full-text translation, we are smart: we provide only enough text to identify similar stories, and offload the bulk of the work to BBC journalists. This approach allows us to disseminate new information, whilst retaining article quality for the end user. We can finally answer questions such as:

• How many century eggs can I take on a Chinese plane?
• How much surstromming can I carry if I’m flying from Egypt?
• How much lutefisk can I export from Norway by air?

Clearly, these are important questions. The breadth of the BBC’s article base allows for culturally-contextualised answers to these.

So, what rocks do we ask The Linkatron to break? We provide it with the titles, summaries, image alt-text, and dates. We demand of it only the finest comparisons, and so we enforce quality checks on its output: only the most alignediest news articles are considered acceptable.

But, as warders we have a responsibility. We must use our power for the good of society, and must be seen to do so, lest they write histories that punish our ungodly conceit. The general public may provide The Linkatron with tasks through our (beta) web interface, making it work for them as never before.

Above is the gilt cage door. It features a simple entry field, where people may submit their question in the form of a BBC news URL. We take these, extract only the details required for comparison, and pass it on. The Linkatron works diligently, sifting through articles and finding the closest counterparts in all 27 languages. When it is done, it hands these to us through the bars, and we put them back up for all to see.

Here it has found some images, which we gather together and display to the end user. We also present all summaries in English, and a score showing similarity as a percentage so that output can be judged by one who is less gifted than The Linkatron. Finally, we provide a way to retrieve the full text for all BBC sites, so that people may send their findings to friends who may also be seeking to travel with objectionable foodstuffs.

The judiciary were most taken with our approach to detention. They recognised the value provided to society, and validated our trade-off of moral cost to that one most remarkable citizen. For hisIt’s earned this one. loss is our gain.

Many thanks to Matt, Mo, and Andrew, who were also on my team for this hackathon, and to Paul and Tony, who stumped up the will and the cash. Code is available on GitHub, photos are on Flickr.