Technology News

According to an expert, the weight limit of a child’s backpack depends on the weight of the child.

Doctor Guillaume Corbin, president of the Association of Chiropractors of Quebec (ACQ), gave an interview on the subject to presenter Jean-François Baril on Qub radio.

“For a primary school child, ideally it should not exceed 10% of the child’s body weight. If the child weighs 60 pounds, he said, he should weigh no more than 6 pounds. […] In secondary school you can achieve up to 15% of your body weight.”

If a child must carry a backpack that exceeds the recommended weight limit, the doctor recommends placing the backpack on the ground when not moving to avoid injury.

Carrying a bag also makes a difference. It must be stable and fit snugly against the wearer’s body.

“We often see that the backpack is much too low,” emphasizes Guillaume Corbin. It must be close to the body. You can put one hand between your back and the backpack.”

“We see it in clinics, a poorly worn backpack leads to back problems,” he added. […] We repeatedly see neck, back and shoulder pain. There is always tension in the neck and shoulders.

SAINTE PERPETUE. In 1995, Raynald Roy and his wife Nancy Therrien decided to convert the family business from traditional dairy cow breeding into an elk and red deer breeding farm. A twist that turned out to be a win. 28 years later, Ferme Le Roy du Cerf is one of the few companies that controls every stage of production, from breeding to the sale of the processed products.

Raynald Roy grew up on his parents’ farm in Sainte-Perpétue and took over from them. He says that in 1995 it would have been necessary to invest heavily to build a new barn and increase the number of cows. Financial institutions were unwilling to finance this expansion. Instead, Mr. Roy decides to sell the cows and start an unusual breeding business, namely breeding red deer and elk.

“It started in the ’90s. Several producers have started breeding. Many have given up because they have to market. »

200 animals live on the Le Roy du Cerf farm. Despite its name, there are only moose today, as Mr. Roy explains. “We started with red deer and have always bred to a bull moose. We crossed animals, we ended up with females and males that are 95% or more elk blood. The animal is very similar to the moose. »

The mating season extends from September to November and births take place from May to July. Each female can only have one baby.

Elk meat, like many game meats, has less fat compared to beef. Nancy Therrien describes his taste: “Meat is tastier and more gourmet. The taste is finer. Some say it comes close to caribou. Elk meat is rich in iron and protein.

From the farm to the table

The Le Roy du Cerf farm produces approximately 15,000 pounds of meat per year. The producer believes that the key to the success of his company is that the company markets and processes its products itself.

“We started marketing ourselves. We have no choice but to drive like this. We absolutely need to raise and sell our meat. You can’t have one without the other: the shop doesn’t work if the farm isn’t there and vice versa. »

Nancy is responsible for the boutique, which has been based in Drummondville since 2010. Since she and her daughter Karolane suffer from gluten intolerance, all of the boutique’s products are gluten- and allergen-free. “We specialize in food allergies. Moose do not contain beef protein. Most menus are prepared with elk. »

In the store you will of course find pieces of elk meat, but also sausages, cold cuts, pies, homemade dishes and desserts. The elk sausages prepared by Ms. Therrien contain fewer preservatives. “I use less nitrites. The shelf life is shorter, but I prefer to make it often and have a fresh product. It is less harmful to the stomach because it contains fewer nitrites. »

The store moved to a more commercial area of ​​Drummondville almost five years ago. The presence of a SAQ nearby ensures an influx of customers who are open to discovery and increasingly loyal, according to Ms. Therrien. “There are more and more customers who want to eat better. The products aren’t really more expensive than what you’d find with beef. »

The store also offers non-traditional meats from other Centre-du-Québec producers, including wild boar, ostrich, alpaca, bison, horse, duck, rabbit, guinea fowl, quail and lamb.

Some supermarkets sell Roy du Cerf products in Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke and Quebec. “Grocery stores will not have all the cuts that we have in store,” specifies Mr. Roy.

Le Roy du Cerf also has a number of restaurants among its customers, including the resto-bistro l’Entracte in Drummondville and the gourmet restaurant Au pasture in Sainte-Perpétue. Ms Therrien says the number of restaurants they supply is limited. “We don’t take many because we won’t be able to meet the demand if we want to sell some in the store. »

Another market the farm is tapping into is elk antlers, called velvet antlers because of the down that covers them. The wood harvested before calcification is sold to processors who grind it into capsules without any additives. Previously, some production was carried out in Quebec, but the number of buyers of this raw material is decreasing.

“It’s all going to Alberta. They turn them into powder. We still have something to sell in the store, but we buy it from another producer,” explains the couple, who produce around 500 pounds of wood per year. According to Mr. Roy, this material has positive health properties. “It’s good for blood circulation, arthritis and osteoarthritis. »

And the next generation?

The couple’s three children are involved in life on the farm, but it is too early to conclude that their son or one of their daughters will take over as the two owners approach retirement. As Ms. Therrien mentions, each child has their own area of ​​expertise.

“Our son (Anthony) is an electrician, one of our daughters (Rachèle) is studying animal production and she is a mechanic at Nicolet in New Holland. Karolane is in the final year of her design studies at Cégep de Trois-Rivières. She takes care of the management and the train, she is the one who knows the animals with Raynald, she also takes care of the births. The three are still a little involved. At some point they want to take over. But they are still young. »

The Le Roy du Cerf farm in Sainte-Perpétue operates its store at 349 rue Janelle in Drummondville.

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  Some animals from the Le Roy du Cerf farm. (Photo: Stephane Laroche)

Leave the Ciné Campus and make way for Ciné Trois-Rivières | Noovo info Skip to main content

Start of main content.

Ciné-Campus changes its name.

The cultural institution, which has existed for 55 years, is now called Ciné Trois-Rivières.

This new image is intended to update the brand and reach a new audience that may not yet know the film club.

“When we founded Ciné-Campus, it was for students, by students. […] The gap between the two names is not great, and this testifies to a reality that is different from that of 55 years ago.

Stella Montreuil, general director of the Ciné Trois-Rivières

MONTREAL – Conversing with an artificial intelligence creature to understand it better: that is the challenge of the installation CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY, presented from September 6th at the Espace ONF in Montreal.

For 25 to 30 minutes, participants in the experience wear a virtual reality headset and immerse themselves in an immersive, futuristic-looking world. You can ask questions and chat with CHOM5KY, an artificial intelligence unit created in part from the digital traces of American linguist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Noam Chomsky.

“We can talk to this Chomsky, exchange ideas with Chomsky, ask questions and see how he answers. So far, so good. But this entity also invites us to go through different phases, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, sometimes in collaborative games, to better understand what distinguishes our human intelligence from machine intelligence,” explains Sandra in an interview. Rodriguez, creator of the CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY experiment, who herself taught at MIT for several years.

His new project aims to demystify how artificial intelligence works, at a time when this technology is taking up more and more space and at the same time raising fears.

“It is still very easy to see how (artificial intelligence) works and then understand that it is not magic. There’s no intention behind it, there’s no intelligence behind it, it’s actually just a gifted way of phrasing sentences that seems to fill a need, explains Ms. Rodriguez. If we understand how it works, we won’t be fooled or imitate anyone’s intelligence.

The virtual reality experience therefore allows us to look “under the hood” of artificial intelligence to understand how it creates reactions. CHOM5KY shows people who interact with it what other wording it could have used to answer a question or what synonyms it could have used, for example.

After the virtual reality portion of the experience, visitors are invited to learn more about artificial intelligence in a physical environment.

“During the process, CHOM5KY invites us to discover how the machines work. But the little subtle message is that it also makes us understand ourselves better,” says Ms. Rodriguez, who has been working on this project since 2016.

“One of the most digital intellectuals in the world”

Why did you choose Noam Chomsky to do this project? The idea came about when Ms. Rodriguez was a professor at MIT and a young researcher told her about his research project.

“He told me: There are so many digital traces on Noam Chomsky, I’m sure that if I can understand and imitate the way he speaks, I can understand how his brain works,” she says.

At that time, the “paradox of this proposal” hit her “hard”. “The great irony is that Chomsky’s theories say exactly the opposite,” she continues. According to Mr. Chomksy, it is impossible to imitate human intelligence because we don’t know enough about it yet and therefore we can’t imitate what we don’t know.

It was therefore optimal for the professor to use the numerous traces of “one of the most digitalized intellectuals in the world”, including conferences, interviews and some of his courses, to create an artificial intelligence that would reveal its own shortcomings.

“These traces contain his legacy, namely his belief that human creativity is what defines our freedom. Suddenly it becomes a perfect medium to create a unit of artificial intelligence, reminding us that it is limited, reminding us of its potential pitfalls, reminding us of Chomsky’s message about our capacity for wonder, what limits us as human beings what makes it unique is creativity, (and) we can’t lose it,” explains Ms. Rodriguez.

Noam Chomsky’s digital tracks are available online royalty-free. Nevertheless, Ms. Rodriguez informed Mr. Chomsky, now 94, about her project, in which he decided not to participate.

More transparency needed

During a conference on Wednesday as part of the upcoming launch of CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY, Sasha Luccioni, ethical and sustainable artificial intelligence researcher at the company HuggingFace, emphasized the importance of companies developing artificial intelligence being more transparent.

“Companies are saying less and less about how their data was collected, how many people trained their algorithm and (how much) they were paid.” (…) Unfortunately, instead of advocating for transparency, I think this ultimately leads to regulation would (that’s a secret),” says Ms. Luccioni.

It reminds us that artificial intelligence does not arise “by magic” but, on the contrary, contains a lot of human intelligence. Software like ChatGPT relies on data people post online (e.g. news websites), and multiple people are hired to perfect the software, she points out.

Ms. Luccioni emphasized that the dissemination of artificial intelligence models would be useful for researchers, but also for understanding how this technology works in the population.

The CHOM5KY vs. CHOMSKY experience will be presented until October 15th.

Conversing with an artificial intelligence unit to understand it better: this is the challenge of the installation CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY, presented from September 6th at the Espace ONF in Montreal.

For 25 to 30 minutes, participants in the experience wear a virtual reality headset and immerse themselves in an immersive, futuristic-looking world. You can ask questions and chat with CHOM5KY, an artificial intelligence unit created in part from the digital traces of American linguist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Noam Chomsky.

“We can talk to this Chomsky, exchange ideas with Chomsky, ask questions and see how he answers. So far, so good. But this entity also invites us to go through different phases, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, sometimes in collaborative games, to better understand what distinguishes our human intelligence from machine intelligence,” explains Sandra in an interview. Rodriguez, creator of the CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY experiment, who herself taught at MIT for several years.

His new project aims to demystify how artificial intelligence works, at a time when this technology is taking up more and more space and at the same time raising fears.

“It is still very easy to see how it works [de l’intelligence artificielle], then understanding that it’s not magic. There’s no intention behind it, there’s no intelligence behind it, it’s actually just a gifted way of phrasing sentences that seems to fill a need, explains Ms. Rodriguez. If we understand how it works, we won’t be fooled or imitate anyone’s intelligence. »

The virtual reality experience therefore allows us to look “under the hood” of artificial intelligence to understand how it creates reactions. CHOM5KY shows people who interact with it what other wording it could have used to answer a question or what synonyms it could have used, for example.

After the virtual reality portion of the experience, visitors are invited to learn more about artificial intelligence in a physical environment.

“CHOM5KY, during the process, we [invite] to discover how the machines work. But the little subtle message is that it also makes us understand ourselves better,” says Ms. Rodriguez, who has been working on this project since 2016.

“One of the most digital intellectuals in the world”

Why did you choose Noam Chomsky to do this project? The idea came about when Ms. Rodriguez was a professor at MIT and a young researcher told her about his research project.

“He told me: There are so many digital traces on Noam Chomsky, I’m sure if I can understand and imitate how he speaks, I can also understand how his brain works,” she says.

At that time, the “paradox of this proposal” hit her “hard”. “The great irony is that Chomsky’s theories say exactly the opposite,” she continues. According to Mr. Chomksy, it is impossible to imitate human intelligence because we don’t know enough about it yet and therefore we can’t imitate what we don’t know.

It was therefore optimal for the professor to use the numerous traces of “one of the most digitalized intellectuals in the world”, including conferences, interviews and some of his courses, to create an artificial intelligence that would reveal its own shortcomings.

“These traces contain his legacy, namely his belief that human creativity is what defines our freedom. Suddenly it becomes a perfect medium to create a unit of artificial intelligence, reminding us that it is limited, reminding us of its potential pitfalls, reminding us of Chomsky’s message about our capacity for wonder, what limits us as human beings unique, creativity, [et] Above all, we must not lose it,” explains Ms. Rodriguez.

Noam Chomsky’s digital tracks are available online royalty-free. Nevertheless, Ms. Rodriguez informed Mr. Chomsky, now 94, about her project, in which he decided not to participate.

More transparency needed

During a conference on Wednesday as part of the upcoming launch of CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY, Sasha Luccioni, ethical and sustainable artificial intelligence researcher at the company HuggingFace, emphasized the importance of companies developing artificial intelligence being more transparent.

“Companies are saying less and less about how their data was collected, how many people trained their algorithms, etc [combien] were they paid? […] Unfortunately, I think that instead of advocating for transparency, this would ultimately lead to regulation [c’est un secret] ” says Ms. Luccioni.

It reminds us that artificial intelligence does not arise “by magic” but, on the contrary, contains a lot of human intelligence. Software like ChatGPT relies on data people post online (e.g. news websites), and multiple people are hired to perfect the software, she points out.

Ms. Luccioni emphasized that the dissemination of artificial intelligence models would be useful for researchers, but also for understanding how this technology works in the population.

The CHOM5KY vs. CHOMSKY experience will be presented until October 15th.

To see in the video

PlayStation fans will have to pay more to get the benefits of their PlayStation Plus subscription: Sony has actually announced a pretty significant price increase for all 12-month deals, up to 26%.

Everything costs more, and that includes PlayStation Plus subscriptions! Discreet, Sony has actually announced a price increase for the three formulas within 12 months. The Essential subscription therefore increases from €59.99 to €71.99 (+20%). The Ultra offer is billed at €125.99 instead of €99.99 (+26%). Finally, the Premium plan costs €151.99 instead of the current €119.99 (+26%).

New prices from September 6th

This increase does not affect monthly subscription prices (from €8.99 to €16.99), but Sony says that even after the increase, 12-month plans remain more advantageous than paying monthly (or every three months) . The price change will affect existing subscribers at the time of their renewal. It comes into force for new customers on September 6th: This means you still have a few days to benefit from the current special prices.

The three PlayStation Plus plans.

Sony explains that this price adjustment will allow it to continue offering high-quality games and add value to its subscriptions.

When PlayStation launched this subscription offering last year with these three plans, it didn’t take the easy route. All have online multiplayer and “games of the month”, but if you don’t have enough, you can access a catalog of PS4/PS5 games, Ubisoft+ classics, trials and streaming in the cloud, depending on your subscription.

Source: PlayStation

The exclusion of Canadian media content from social networks inevitably led to a change in the habits of digital media readers. What about the Chamblyens?

The web giants have made good on their threat. These large companies were required by Bill C-18 to compensate Canadian media outlets that shared content on their social networks, preferring to deny any visibility to newspapers, television channels or radio stations that had opened a window to the Internet. The pages are now abandoned.

“I consult the Journal de Chambly in print every week to follow industry news. » – Claude Pontbriand

Bad news for Ariane, a young Chamblyenne woman waiting for her bus with her cell phone in hand. “I downloaded the apps onto my device,” she smiles. So it doesn’t bother me that much. But it is certain that the sources of information are less diverse, and that is a real shame. »

Applications on the phone are also a reflex for Johanne Lepage. “I read La Presse regularly. And when I see a local topic that interests me, I go to the Journal de Chambly website. But every week I read the paper version of it. »

interest in paper

The Journal de Chambly in the advertising bag, an event that Éric Morel also didn’t miss. “I’m not on social media at all. It’s true that I always read the Journal de Chambly on paper, otherwise I consult the Radio Canada app on my phone or watch TV. » A habit that André Mondou also shares. “I receive the news automatically on my phone. I also browse newsfeeds. For the locals, I read the printed version of the Chambly newspaper. »

Claude Pontbriand supports this local fiber. “I mainly buy locally. I always work like this. I consult the Journal de Chambly in print every week to follow industry news and regularly watch documentaries on television. »

According to a recent survey commissioned by the Journal de Chambly, 97.1% of the 403 respondents said they received the newspaper in Publi-sac. More than 80% of the newspaper’s regular readers confirm that they read it once a week. Of the people surveyed who know the newspaper, 27.2% visit the website journaldechambly.com, of which 13% visit at least once a day. This new situation allows the Journal de Chambly to offer a newsletter and soon other tools for practical access to information.

The day after Apple announced that the iPhone 15 keynote will take place (it will be September 12th), Google is once again jumping into the fray. The presentation of the search engine’s new Pixel smartphones will take place on October 4th.

Like every year, there will be a lot going on for smartphones in autumn! Apple will unveil its iPhone 15 series on September 12th Google will launch the Pixel 8 on October 4th. The event will take place from 10 a.m. local time in New York and 4 p.m. in Paris.

Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2 in the menu

It goes without saying that today Google will unveil the Pixel 8 Pro, which the search engine leaked – probably by accident. Of course, we also expect the unveiling of the Pixel 8, which could be smaller than its predecessor (6.1 inches instead of 6.3 inches).

During the presentation, Google could also lift the veil on the 2nd generation Pixel Watch, which is unlikely to shake up the fundamentals introduced last year. There may also be announcements of new Nest or Fitbit products. For the rest, it will certainly be an opportunity for the company to take stock of its initiatives related to generative AI, the theme of the year.

Read Pixel Watch 2: What we know about Google’s next connected watch