Parents Are Naming Their Babies After Instagram Filters

Millennial parents are looking to Instagram filters to help name their children, according to one parenting site. The most popular name derived from the photo-sharing app was Lux, which rose 75% on the list of baby boy names compared to last year, new statistics from BabyCenter.comshow.

Ludwig, Amaro, Reyes, Hudson and Kelvin also increased in popularity for boy names, while baby girls were named Juno, Valencia and Willow.

The parenting site gathered data from more than 340,000 parents in the world, it said, though the findings are unofficial.

The U.S. Social Security Administration is set to release the official list of top baby names from this year in 2016.

Noah topped the list of boys’ names and Emma dominated the list of girls’ names in 2014. Those names were bumped this year by Jackson and Sophia, according to BabyCenter.com.

The pregnancy and parenting site also said names of planets and characters on the hit TV show Empire were trending this year. The name Royalty also jumped 88% in popularity for girls.

Here’s BabyCenter’s compilation of the top 10 names for both genders:

10 most popular girl names of 2015
1. Sophia
2. Emma
3. Olivia
4. Ava
5. Mia
6. Isabella
7. Zoe
8. Lily
9. Emily
10. Madison

10 most popular boy names of 2015
1. Jackson
2. Aiden
3. Liam
4. Lucas
5. Noah
6. Mason
7. Ethan
8. Caden
9. Logan
10. Jacob

Digital Rights Group Alleges Google Invades Student Privacy

(SAN FRANCISCO) — Google is being accused of invading the privacy of students using laptop computers powered by the Internet company’s Chrome operating system.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, depicts Google as a two-faced opportunist in a complaint filed Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission.

Google disputes the unflattering portrait and says it isn’t doing anything wrong.

The complaint alleges that Google rigged the “Chromebook” computers in a way that enables the company to collect information about students’ Internet search requests and online video habits. The foundation says Google is dissecting the activities of students in kindergarten through 12th grade so it can improve its digital services.

The complaint contends Google’s storage and analysis of the student profile violates a “Student Privacy Pledge” that the company signed last year. The pledge, which covers more than 200 companies, contains a provision guaranteeing that students’ personal information won’t be exploited for “non-educational” purposes.

The foundation is calling on the FTC to investigate Google, stop it from using information on students’ activities for its own purposes and order it to destroy any information it has collected that’s not related to education.

Google applauded the Electronic Frontier Foundation for caring about student privacy, but said it believes it is following the laws enforced by the FTC.

“Our services enable students everywhere to learn and keep their information private and secure,” Google said in a statement.

Chromebooks have become particularly popular in schools because some models sell for less than $300 and can be easily maintained by Google over the Internet.

But the way Google has managed some of its other products have previously gotten the Mountain View, California, company into trouble for violating its users’ privacy.

In 2012, Google paid a $22.5 million fine after the FTC concluded the company had created a technological loophole that enabled its digital advertising network to shadow the online activities of people using Apple’s Safari browser without their consent.

The agency determined Google’s Safari surveillance violated an earlier promise not to mislead consumers about privacy issues. That pledge came after Google set up a social networking service called Buzz in 2010 and exposed people’s email contacts. Google agreed to period privacy audits as part of that settlement with the FTC.

Marching Band Masterfully Covers Adele’s Hello

There’s nothing like Adele’s “Hello” to get a bunch of college kids in the mood for the game, right?

This weekend, the Southern University Marching Band — one of the top marching bands in the country and a self-proclaimed human jukebox — went where so many people (Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato included) have already gone by covering the lead single off Adele’s massive 25. And just because the British singer’s heartbreaking lyrics of lost love aren’t there, doesn’t mean this version is any less emotional.

25, Adele’s third studio album, sold a record-breaking 3.38 million copies in the U.S. in its first week, surpassing previous record-holder *NSYNC (for 2000’s No Strings Attached).

Assad: Coalition Airstrikes Made IS Stronger

As MPs prepare to vote on whether Britain should join its allies launching airstrikes in Syria, the country's president accused them of "supporting terrorists".

But he praised military action by his ally Russia, which has been accused of targeting moderate rebels as well as jihadists.

Mr Assad said: "Since the beginning of that (US-led) coalition, if you want to talk about facts, not opinion, since the beginning of that coalition, ISIS (Islamic State group) has expanded and the recruiting from around the world has increased.

"While since the participation of Russia in the same fight, so-called against terrorism, ISIS has been shrinking. And al-Nusra (Nusra Front) of course and the other terrorist groups. So this is reality. The facts are telling."

Asked what it would take to end Syria's four-year civil war, which has killed more than 200,000 people, Mr Assad said: "When those countries that I mentioned - France, UK, US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some other - stop supporting those terrorists.

"(the next) day the situation will be better and in a few months we will have full peace in Syria, definitely. If they stop."

The US, UK, and other Western powers fighting Islamic State have demanded that Mr Assad steps down and have backed rebel groups fighting his forces.

Meanwhile the Syrian president has referred to all his opponents as "terrorists" and accused world leaders pushing for his departure of "supporting terrorists".

The Syrian leader is backed by Russia and Iran and he praised Vladimir Putin for launching a bombing campaign backing Assad's forces in September.

In a wide-ranging interview with Czech TV, Mr Assad also said: 

"The feeling is very sad. Especially if you think about every person of those Syrians who left Syria has sad story behind him.

"It reflects the hardship of the Syrians during the crisis. From this (rational) way of looking at the situation, it's a loss.

"Every one of those is a human resources that left Syria. So that will undermine. Undermine your society and your country. Definitely. But at the end we have to deal with the reasons."

:: On Turkey Downing A Russian Jet:

"I think it has shown the real intention of Erodgan (Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan) who, let's say, lost his nerve because the Russian intervention has changed the balance on the ground.

"So the failure of Erdogan in Syria, the failure of his terrorist groups means his political demise."

:: On Relations With The West:

"If you look at the relation with the West, in 2005 I was the killer. In 2008 and after I was a peacemaker.

"Then in 2011 I became the vulture. Now, there's some positive change - of course shy kind of change, not the explicit one."

:: On Stepping Down:

"Now in the middle of the war, I'm not going to say I'm leaving for any reason," he said.

"When there's election, the Syrian people will decide if they want me, I'll be happy to be president, if they don't want me, I'll be happy to leave it, I don't have any problem."

:: On France's Effort To Broaden The Anti-IS Coalition:

"If they wanted to learn from what happened in Paris recently, why didn't they learn from Charlie Hebdo (attack)? The same principle, the same concept.

"And we said at that time that this is only the tip of the iceberg. What's under the water is much bigger. They didn't learn."

Mark Zuckerberg Will Donate Almost All Their Facebook Shares

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, plan to give away 99% of their Facebook shares to charity, Zuckerberg said Tuesday in a Facebook post. The news comes as the couple also announced the birth of their first child, a daughter named Max.

That portion of Facebook shares is currently valued at $45 billion, according to Zuckerberg. The donations won’t happen right away: a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission says the Facebook CEO plans to “sell or gift” no more than $1 billion worth of Facebook stock every year over the next three years.

That SEC filing also indicates Zuckerberg plans to contribute the funds to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. He will continue to control the voting rights of any shares held by that organization.

How Every Generation of the Last Century Got Its Nickname

Coining a nickname for an entire generation has become something of a pastime for academics, journalists and marketers. This week, the cable network MTV joined the generational name game when it announced it had its own moniker for the millions of kids coming after millennials: the Founders.

The idea that the people who make up a generation share certain characteristics—and thus should share a name—dates back to the mid-19th century, and most cohorts from even before that time have been given retroactive nicknames. But it wasn’t until the early 20th century that those groupings gained mainstream popularity in the United States.

The woman who should perhaps be given credit for starting the trend was the novelist Gertrude Stein, who reportedly first coined the term the Lost Generation to describe the people who were born roughly between 1880 and 1900 and who had lived through World War I. That phrasing was popularized by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises, the epigraph for which quotes Stein saying, “You are all a lost generation.”

As for the first generation of the 20th century, those born between 1901 and 1924, generational theorists Neil Howe and William Strauss have dubbed it the G.I. Generation. “The initials ‘G.I.’ can stand for two things—‘general issue’ and ‘government issue’—and this generation’s lifecycle has stood squarely for both,” the two wrote in their 1991 book Generations.

In 1998, however, journalist Tom Brokaw largely supplanted that moniker when he wrote The Greatest Generation, which profiled individuals who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II. The name stuck.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMTV's logo circa 1982.

On the heels of the Greatest Generation came the Silent Generation, a group born between 1925-1942 who were children during World War II but too young to fight. The name’s first recorded appearance was in an essay in TIME in November 1951, though the unnamed essayist does not take credit for the idea. “By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today’s younger generation is a still, small flame,” declared the magazine. “It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches or carry posters. It has been called the ‘Silent Generation.’ But what does the silence mean? What, if anything, does it hide?”

This relatively small generation found itself sandwiched between the war hero G.I.s and the large and influential Baby Boomer generation, a term that first appeared in the Washington Postin 1977 and pushed aside other names like Rock and Roll Generation and Generation Jones. That moniker came about from the “boom” in the number of children born once soldiers returned home following World War II.

The next cohort — Generation X — gained the perception of being a slacker generation and more realist than their predecessors, and the moniker first came about from a Robert Capa photo essay from the 1950s. But it was popularized as a name for this group thanks to a 1965 book called Generation X as well as 1991 Douglas Coupland book called Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.

The naming of Gen X began a rather lazy era of alphabetic generational names. Gen Y was soon used for those born between 1980 and 2000. In 1991, however, the term “millennials” was used in the book Generations, and the name eventually became widely accepted, helping Neil Howe become a preeminent expert on generations—and leading to half a dozen books written by Howe on millennials alone.

For this latest generation, Gen Z and Founders are just two of many names in the running for this post-millennial group, including iGen, Homelanders, Plurals, Posts, ReGen, and now, Founders. All of them attempt to reflect some aspect of what defines those roughly 14 years and younger today, whether it’s their diversity, their reliance on social media, or their desire to fix what they see as a society disrupted. It just might take a generation to know which name will win out.

German Holiday Ad Is the Definition of an Emotional Rollercoaster

A German supermarket released a tearjerker ad that shows an elderly man faking his own death so all of his kids will come home for the holidays. The spot starts off with his daughter and grandchildren calling to say they won’t be able to visit him this year and then proceeds to show each of his other kids’ reactions to hearing that he has passed away. When they all go to his house, he appears, saying “How else could I have brought you all together? Mmh?” It’s an ad that’s guaranteed to make you feel all the feelings—confusion, anger, sadness and more.