Graduation surprise: Entire 8th-grade class promised free college tuition in Michigan - The Hill

MUSKEGON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Leaders from a Michigan state university made a surprise announcement Thursday night at an eighth-grade graduation ceremony.     

All the graduates of the Timberland Charter Academy will receive free tuition to Grand Valley State University as long as they graduate high school with at least a 2.8 GPA.

The announcement was made to approximately 40 students at the end of the graduation ceremony. 

The academy is the first school selected for the program in West Michigan.

The Timberland Charter Academy on June 2, 2022. (WOOD)

Students knew a major announcement would be made, but they didn’t know what it might be.

“I kind of had a feeling it was something about college,” said student Aniyah Thomas.

Her mother, Gloria Hammond, said the news came as a relief for parents.

“It’s exciting for our children to have an opportunity to go to college if they want to go and not have to pay for it and that barrier has been broken for them,” Hammond said.

Valedictorian Jemarion Brown, who won many awards at the ceremony, was not expecting such a big announcement. His mother, Candace Cook, said the opportunity will help so many young lives. 

“This is a great school for him, and I’m extremely happy that they choose Timberland to do this. It’s a blessing,” Brown said.

California man, 78, gets high school diploma 6 decades later

Stephen Evans, the school director, said the announcement includes additional funding to help with other college expenses.

“The program offers free tuition, tutoring, also a variety of support programs. You name it. Everything that a student will need to be successful at the college level and the system that we’re going to put in at the high school level, at Timberland, to support them through high school,” Evans said.

GVSU leaders say it may take a little time for the impact of the announcement to set in for the students.

Barry Hall, the assistant director of charter through college at GVSU, was the keynote speaker and announced the surprise.

“Once they have sophomores and juniors and they have colleges talking to them, say how much it costs to go here, that whole process of getting in, they’re going to say, ‘Wow, I’ve already been accepted into a school already, and I know what this process is all about,’” Hall said.

The money for the tuition comes through the Grand Valley Pledge program.

Parents are also eligible to apply for scholarships to help them with their degrees.

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Graduation surprise: Entire 8th-grade class promised free college tuition in Michigan - The Hill
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How to get free donuts from Dunkin' on National Donut Day - Time Out

In the roster of internationally-recognized food holidays, National Donut Day, which is happening Friday, ranks pretty high. It is, after all, an excuse to indulge in the sweet treat without feeling guilty about it.

Bonus points: This year, Dunkin' is offering free donuts all day long to those who ask for them.

To take advantage of the promotion, head to your local Dunkin' store on June 3 (once again, that's tomorrow!), buy any drink on the menu and ask for a free classic donut of your choice to go with it (you probably won't even have to ask—as long as supplies are still available). 

And because two donuts are better than one, we'd also like to let you know about Krispy Kreme's enticing National Donut Day offering. When visiting one of the chain's shop, you will be able to grab an original glazed donut without having to buy anything else off the menu. Correct: No purchase is necessary at this articular donut store.

Alas, if it's a more iconic New York doughnut that you'd rather "waste" your calories on during such a special food holiday, we suggest you browse through our list of best donut in NYC to get some local inspiration. Spoiler alert: A Brooklyn doughnut tops our ranking.

We'd be remiss not to also mention a new spot in Koreatown that serves bubble-shaped donuts—just in case you're a celebrant with a flair for the culinary modern.

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Mozilla brings free, offline translation to Firefox - TechCrunch

Mozilla has added an official translation tool to Firefox that doesn’t rely on cloud processing to do its work, instead performing the machine learning–based process right on your own computer. It’s a huge step forward for a popular service tied strongly to giants like Google and Microsoft.

The translation tool, called Firefox Translations, can be added to your browser here. It will need to download some resources the first time it translates a language, and presumably it may download improved models if needed, but the actual translation work is done by your computer, not in a data center a couple hundred miles away.

This is important not because many people need to translate in their browsers while offline — like a screen door for a submarine, it’s not really a use case that makes sense — but because the goal is to reduce end reliance on cloud providers with ulterior motives for a task that no longer requires their resources.

It’s the result of the E.U.-funded Project Bergamot, which saw Mozilla collaborating with several universities on a set of machine learning tools that would make offline translation possible. Normally this kind of work is done by GPU clusters in data centers, where large language models (gigabytes in size and with billions of parameters) would be deployed to translate a user’s query.

But while the cloud-based tools of Google and Microsoft (not to mention DeepL and other upstart competitors) are accurate and (due to having near-unlimited computing power) quick, there’s a fundamental privacy and security risk to sending your data to a third party to be analyzed and sent back. For some this risk is acceptable, while others would prefer not to involve internet ad giants if they don’t have to.

If I Google Translate the menu at the tapas place, will I start being targeted for sausage promotions? More importantly, if someone is translating immigration or medical papers with known device ID and location, will ICE come knocking? Doing it all offline makes sense for anyone at all worried about the privacy implications of using a cloud provider for translation, whatever the situation.

I quickly tested out the translation quality and found it more than adequate. Here’s a piece of the front page of the Spanish language news outlet El País:

Image Credits: El País

Pretty good! Of course, it translated El País as “The Paris” in the tab title, and there were plenty of other questionable phrasings (though it did translate every | as “Oh, it’s a good thing” — rather hilarious). But very little of that got in the way of understanding the gist.

And ultimately that’s what most machine translation is meant to do: report basic meaning. For any kind of nuance or subtlety, even a large language model may not be able to replicate idiom, so an actual bilingual person is your best bet.

The main limitation is probably a lack of languages. Google Translate supports over a hundred — Firefox Translations does an even dozen: Spanish, Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian Bokmal and Nynorsk, Persian, Portuguese and Russian. That leaves out quite a bit, but remember this is just the first release of a project by a nonprofit and a group of academics — not a marquee product from a multi-billion-dollar globe-spanning internet empire.

In fact, the creators are actively soliciting help by exposing a training pipeline to let “enthusiasts” train new models. And they are also soliciting feedback to improve the existing models. This is a usable product, but not a finished one by a long shot!

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Wolfenstein: The New Order is free on the Epic Games Store - Polygon

Wolfenstein: The New Order is currently free on the Epic Games Store, and can be added to users’ accounts until June 9.

The freebie is part of the Epic Games Mega Sale, which includes steep discounts on a whole host of titles and weekly free PC games. Previous offerings have included Borderlands 3 and the BioShock franchise, and Wolfenstein: The New Order is a solid game that’s worth the download.

Back in 2014, Polygon rated Wolfenstein: The New Order No. 2 on our game of the year list. It’s a first-person shooter starring BJ Blazkowicz as he tears his way through a horde full of Nazis. Add in a heavy helping of sci-fi pulp, visceral violence, and a surprisingly thoughtful narrative, and you have all you need for a classic shooter that still holds up today.

Other titles on sale at the Epic Games Store include Red Dead Redemption 2 for 50% off, Tina Tina’s Wonderlands at 20% off, Far Cry 6 at 50% off, Cyberpunk 2077 at 50% off, Ghostwire: Tokyo at 34% off, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at 60% off. It’s a great chance to fill your library up with titles you might have missed at launch, but there are few prices better than free. If you haven’t had the chance to check out the new Wolfenstein games, this is a great place to jump on board without an investment.

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Turkish Firm Gives Lithuania Crowdfunders Free Drone for Ukraine - Bloomberg

The Turkish company that makes the unmanned aerial combat drones used by Ukraine to fight Russian forces gave a Lithuanian crowdfunding group one for free after the campaign raised 5.9 million euros ($6.32 million) in just three days. 

Baykar Tech, the maker of the Bayraktar drone, said it would waive the fee for purchasing the TB2 drone and requested that the funds be used for humanitarian or reconstruction aid in Ukraine. Lithuania said it would transfer 1.5 million euros to buy ammunition for the drone, according to Andrius Tapinas, who organized the fund-raising.

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Robinson Canó released by Padres after struggling in San Diego, becomes free agent - CBS Sports

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Robinson Canó's time with the San Diego Padres has ended, according to the team's sideline reporter Annie Heilbrunn. The Padres were expected to request Canó's permission to option him to the minors on Thursday, but Canó had enough service time to reject any optional assignment and elect free agency instead.

Canó, 39, signed with the Padres in mid-May after being released by the New York Mets. He entered Wednesday's game having taken 33 plate appearances with San Diego, in which he'd hit .094/.121/.094 with 10 strikeouts and one walk. Canó had previously batted .195/.233/.268 in 12 games with the Mets.

It's unclear how Canó will be received on the open market. Reports from when he signed with the Padres indicated that other teams were interested in adding him to their rosters. His seasonal numbers still represent a small-sample size, but the combination of his age; him missing the entire 2021 season because of a suspension over a failed drug test; and his underlying data thus far suggest that his days as a productive big-league hitter are in the past.

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Indeed, Canó's average exit velocity this season is more than three miles per hour slower than it was in 2020. His maximum exit velocity is down nearly five ticks. His whiff rate is up, and so is his groundball rate. Statistically, he doesn't appear to be a hitter in decline so much as a hitter who has already declined.

Should this prove to be the end of the road for Canó, he'll head into retirement having amassed a .301/.351/.489 (125 OPS+) slash line with 335 home runs and 68.6 Wins Above Replacement over parts of 17 big-league seasons. He's an eight-time All-Star, a five-time Silver Slugger Award recipient, and a two-time Gold Glove Award winner. He also finished in the top five of Most Valuable Player Award voting on five separate occasions.

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Tell Me Why is free on Xbox and Steam for Pride Month - Polygon

Tell Me Why, a narrative adventure from Dontnod Entertainment and Xbox Publishing, will be free on Steam, the Microsoft Store, and Xbox consoles throughout June to celebrate Pride. Tell Me Why stars a pair of twin siblings, Tyler and Alyson Ronan, who are dealing with the death of their mother — and a unique telepathic link. Tyler is also a trans protagonist, which is still a rarity in gaming.

Dontnod made several efforts to make Tell Me Why inclusive while avoiding problematic tropes that often surround trans characters. The developer even released a FAQ before the game’s launch that allowed fans to see whether certain tropes for trans characters would pop up, such as a disapproving parent. The game also features interesting questions about reality and perception, showing the twins’ different takes on memories from their past.

The official Xbox site shared the news, along with a brief statement as to the publisher’s support of the trans community.

Tell Me Why, the award-winning narrative adventure from Dontnod Entertainment and Xbox Publishing, will be available for free on Xbox consoles, the Microsoft Store, and Steam for the entire month of June 2022. To acknowledge that this year has seen a sharp rise in anti-trans sentiment in the United States, Xbox Publishing is accompanying the free period with donations of $25,000 each to Transgender Law Center and Trans Lifeline, two non-profit organizations offering resources and support to trans, non-binary, and genderqueer people.

Xbox Publishing will also raise funds for Trans Lifeline on Thursday, June 23 with a stream of Tell Me Why. If you haven’t had the time to check this game out, or if you’re a fan of narrative adventures, it’s worth going to either the Xbox or Steam platforms to grab a free copy.

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