All posts tagged: generation

Things Millennials Learned From Boomers That They Secretly Appreciate

Things Millennials Learned From Boomers That They Secretly Appreciate

Published by skeptic

Every generation is influenced by the one that came before them. We establish perspectives and values that draw on what we’ve learned from the past, deciding what we want to release and what we want to hold onto. While younger generations tend to drag boomers for being out of touch, there are several things millennials learned from boomers that they secretly appreciate.   The cultural conversation focuses more on the distance between millennials and the boomers they were raised by than on what they have in common. While millennials have paved their way in the world by doing things differently than their parents, they owe pivotal parts of their identity to what boomers taught them. Here are 12 things millennials learned from boomers that they secretly appreciate: 1.Embracing a strong work ethic. Prostock-studio | Shutterstock One thing millennials learned from boomers that they secretly appreciate is their dedicated work ethic. Millennials entered the workforce as the Great Recession took hold from 2007 to 2009, the most prolonged recession since World War II. During that era of …

Silent wounds of a generation: The toll of gun violence on youth mental health and a call for change

Silent wounds of a generation: The toll of gun violence on youth mental health and a call for change

Published by Sam

After every school shooting, a painful and familiar cycle repeats itself. Just last month, it was Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. The month before, Irondequoit, New York. In the aftermath, students and staff go back to school and try to reestablish some semblance of normalcy — attending classes, focusing on their studies, and hanging out with their friends. But beneath the surface, the reality is that life will never be “normal” again. Grief, survivor’s guilt, PTSD, anxiety and depression will follow them from their classrooms to their homes and everywhere in between. Gun violence significantly affects the mental health of survivors, while also affecting the nation as a whole. We grieve with the devastated neighbors and people of our community whenever we learn of another gun-related tragedy, but too often, we fail to acknowledge the trauma that comes with it. In ways we do not yet fully comprehend, this public health crisis is affecting a whole generation of students who are growing up in the wake of lockdown drills and school shootings. Since Columbine, over 383,000 students have experienced …

This AI-generated Minecraft may represent the future of real-time video generation

This AI-generated Minecraft may represent the future of real-time video generation

Published by skeptic

“What if you could say ‘Hey, add a flying unicorn here’? Literally, talk to the model. Or ‘Turn everything here into medieval ages,’ and then, boom, it’s all medieval ages. Or ‘Turn this into Star Wars,’ and it’s all Star Wars,” says Leitersdorf. A major limitation right now is hardware. They relied on Nvidia cards for their current demo, but in the future, they plan to use Sohu, a new card that Etched has in development, which the firm claims will improve performance by a factor of 10. This gain would significantly cut down on the cost and energy needed to produce real-time interactive video. It would allow Decart and Etched to make a better version of their current demo, allowing the game to run longer, with fewer hallucinations, and at higher resolution. They say the new chip would also make it possible for more players to use the model at once. “Custom chips for AI hold the potential to unlock significant performance gains and energy efficiency gains,” says Siddharth Garg, a professor of electrical …

Cultivating the next generation of AI innovators in a global tech hub

Cultivating the next generation of AI innovators in a global tech hub

Published by skeptic

The world in all its complexity Today, the rewards of AI are mostly enjoyed by a few countries in what the Oxford Internet Institute dubs the “Compute North.” These countries, such as the US, the U.K., France, Canada, and China, have dominated research and development, and built state of the art AI infrastructure capable of training foundational models. This should come as no surprise, as these countries are home to many of the world’s top universities and large tech corporations. But this concentration of innovation comes at a cost for the billions of people who live outside these dominant countries and have different cultural backgrounds. Large language models (LLMs) are illustrative of this disparity. Researchers have shown that many of the most popular multilingual LLMs perform poorly with languages other than English, Chinese, and a handful of other (mostly) European languages. Yet, there are approximately 6,000 languages spoken today, many of them in communities in Africa, Asia, and South America. Arabic alone is spoken by almost 400 million people and Hindi has 575 million speakers …

Critical Thinking in the Classroom: How CFI’s Generation Skeptics Can Help

Critical Thinking in the Classroom: How CFI’s Generation Skeptics Can Help

Published by skeptic

I have missed working with my former colleagues since retiring from the classroom in June 2023. Fellow science teachers Ana and Eli and I often planned our lessons together and made it a point to teach environmental science as comprehensively as possible. Climate change was taught thoroughly with positive results. Over time, however, I noticed an important flaw in our instruction. We were not successful in changing the minds of the students, parents, and colleagues who denied that climate change was real. Thanks to a conversation with Melanie Trecek-King (developer of the Thinking Is Power resources), I now understand why. My colleagues and I followed what is known as the information deficit model, which assumes that people refuse to acknowledge the truth due to their lack of knowledge. Our strategy involved providing factual information about climate change to those who do not accept it (Reincke et al. 2020). Trecek-King introduced me to a new way of thinking. She asked me: What if facts aren’t the problem? According to Adrian Furnham and Charlotte Robinson (2022), a …

The elderly are becoming a generation delinquents – and it’s our fault

The elderly are becoming a generation delinquents – and it’s our fault

Published by Sam

What is happening to our elderly? Recently, four British pensioners deliberately went missing in Italy after hiring a holiday home belonging to a friend of mine. They decided they didn’t like it and left without telling the owner, who is owed £5,000 in damages. The police are still trying to track them down. Meanwhile, a geriatric did an eat-and-hobble from my local bistro last week. The 83-year-old miscreant told the waiter, who followed him onto the street, that he had forgotten his glasses and had been unable to see the bill. According to a source at the Met, geriatric crime is on the rise, including shoplifting. People complain about the declining standards in the young, but what of the declining standards in the behaviour of the old? The rheumy-eyed are increasingly uncontrollable and offensive. Not so long ago, a nonagenarian swore at me on a train for rustling my newspapers. A standard lecture ensued. The rules of the lecture are as follows: people your age never had to live through a war. Therefore you are …

Can Labour’s GB Energy plan future-proof UK’s power generation sector? | Labour

Can Labour’s GB Energy plan future-proof UK’s power generation sector? | Labour

Published by skeptic

Labour is to put a government-owned power company at the heart of the UK’s energy system for the first time since the privatisation of the industry in 1990, in one of Keir Starmer’s boldest pledges so far. Great British Energy, with £8bn of investment, forms the centrepiece of Labour’s promise to decarbonise the electricity supply by 2030. This would stop well short of any form of renationalisation: GB Energy would be a state-owned investment vehicle and company working alongside and often in partnership with the existing private sector suppliers. The plan is for it to be largely invisible to households, not offering electricity directly to consumers but financing and helping to build low-carbon infrastructure, from windfarms to – potentially – nuclear reactors. Earlier this week Starmer said: “It’s time for change. Labour will create a publicly owned clean energy company to power Britain’s future energy security – taking control of our energy supply to bring down bills.” But could GB Energy, to be based in Scotland, really bring a step-change to Britain’s energy future? Here …

World will miss target of tripling renewable electricity generation by 2030 – IEA | Renewable energy

World will miss target of tripling renewable electricity generation by 2030 – IEA | Renewable energy

Published by skeptic

The world is off track to meet the goal of tripling renewable electricity generation by 2030, a target viewed as vital to enable a swift global transition away from fossil fuels, but there are promising signs that the pace of progress may be picking up. Countries agreed last December on a tripling of renewable power by the end of this decade. But few have yet taken concrete steps to meet this requirement and on current policies and trends global renewable generation capacity would only roughly double in developed countries, and slightly more than double globally by 2030, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said: “The tripling target is ambitious but achievable – though only if governments quickly turn promises into plans of action. Countries worldwide have a major opportunity to accelerate progress towards a more secure, affordable and sustainable energy system.” Governments should include targets and policies on renewables in their national action plans for the climate (called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs), which …

Invoke AI rolls out refined control features for image generation

Invoke AI rolls out refined control features for image generation

Published by skeptic

Join gaming leaders live this May 20-21 in Los Angeles to examine the strategies needed to adapt and excel in an ever evolving landscape, featuring insights from leading voices and thought leaders in the industry. Register here. Invoke AI released two new features to its AI-based image creation platform. According to the company, these new features — the Model Trainer and Control Layers — offer some of the most refined controls in image generation. Both tools allow users granular control how AI creates and modifies their images. Invoke also announced that it has achieved SOC 2 compliance, which indicates that the company has passed several tests indicating a high level of data security. Invoke CEO Kent Keirsey spoke with GamesBeat about the platform’s new features and how they offer more control and refinement over an image. The bespoke Model Trainer allows a company to train custom image generation models with as few as twelve pieces of their own content. According to Keirsey, this offers more consistent images that are in-line with a developer’s IP, meaning …

A new generation of Vietnamese migrants is protesting against their home government

A new generation of Vietnamese migrants is protesting against their home government

Published by skeptic

More than 200 mostly young people gathered outside the Vietnamese embassy in London to protest against Vietnam’s ruling communist party, demanding the release of all prisoners of conscience and to call for democratic reforms. What was interesting about this protest, that I attended in December 2023, was the age of the protesters. They were mostly young people who grew up in Vietnam, and this was the first protest many had ever participated in, having only left the country a few years ago. Back in Vietnam, there is almost no space to challenge communist rule and values. These citizens grew up in a nation where TV, radio and education were heavily censored by the authorities, and there was limited access to international media. Critical voices were stifled, so most people understandably don’t get involved in politics. This changes when younger people move abroad, as I have learned during my ongoing research with recent immigrants to the UK. With access to independent, more critical news sources, wider discussions and alternative opinions, migrants tell me that they feel …