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Clackers might’ve been your parents' worst nightmare, but K-Tel’s Super Slider Sno-skates were up there too. Sure, the ad made them look super fun, but if you had a pair, then surely you remember the pain they inflicted on your ankles 🤣

Despite their flaws, the Sno-skates still gave you some joy—and that can be hard to find in harsh winters. That’s why Canadian researchers will be hard at work with the Noticing Nature Intervention project to help boost moods during the winter! 

You know, when the sky is grey ;)

(Love nostalgia? Play today’s trivia below! )

According to fintech company Visible Alpha, Microsoft is expected to spend over $84 billion in the United States alone this year investing in artificial intelligence as the global race for AI supremacy intensifies.

This chapter of the proverbial digital arms race was kicked into overdrive in 2022 when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a launch assisted considerably by investments from Microsoft.

As OpenAI’s primary benefactor, Microsoft intends to unleash its capital in the form of data center investments in 2025. AI requires almost indescribably large sums of computing power to operate at the scale the industry is building toward, and such power is derived from the massive data warehouses being developed by players such Microsoft.

“Today, the United States leads the global AI race thanks to the investment of private capital and innovations by American companies of all sizes, from dynamic start-ups to well-established enterprises,” said Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith.

The company’s investment in Q1 of fiscal year 2025 alone is expected to total $20 billion, up 5% from previous projections.

Stomach bugs are reportedly reaching levels on cruise ships not seen in at least a decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When a bug is going around, it’s considered an outbreak on a cruise ship when 3% or more of its passengers start showing symptoms. In the case of 2024, passengers on ships sailing the for the Cunard Line, Holland America and Princess Cruises came down with gastrointestinal illnesses associated with the norovirus. Five ships in December alone experienced outbreaks on board.

Norovirus is quite common on cruise ships, particularly given how contagious it is.

“This is a virus that can infect you with very few viral particles. In other words, the infectious dose is very small,” said infectious disease expert Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “It can persist for days or even a week on environmental surfaces, which means that if you put your fingers on a contaminated surface, you can pick up a few viral particles, touch your mouth and then initiate an infection.”

It’s going around at higher rates than usual these days both on land and at sea. Experts recommend standard hygiene and sanitation practices to be kept up with in order to best protect against coming down with the bug.

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said in December that SpaceX’s Starship was scheduled to conduct its next test flight on Jan. 10. Without any announcements to the contrary since, it appears test flight number seven is on track for launch this Friday.

This particular test is expected to raise the bar in terms of what Starship is capable of.

“A block of planned upgrades to the Starship upper stage will debut on this flight test, bringing major improvements to reliability and performance,” SpaceX wrote in a statement.

Those upgrades include an enhanced propulsion system that will allow the vehicle to carry 25% more fuel and be deployed for longer missions. Other performance enhancements—such as improved avionics—will assist Starship in carrying out longer missions for what SpaceX calls a “new generation ship with significant upgrades.”

Ten Starlink simulators will reportedly be deployed directly by Starship in what will be a first-of-its-kind payload deployment test. These modules will ultimately reenter and return to Earth’s surface before a future test ultimately launches them into actual orbit.

A $95 million settlement was submitted to a federal judge the other day for a class-action lawsuit filed in Oakland in response to a 2019 Guardian story regarding Apple’s voice assistant Siri. The company was accused of violating its own privacy policy by allowing Siri to be activated without the user’s knowledge or consent to record and share confidential conversations with third parties.

According to the filing, consumers reported advertisements for Air Jordan sneakers and Olive Garden surfacing after they’d mentioned those words. One was even shown an ad for a surgical treatment after discussing it in a room with his doctor.

Apple maintains it did nothing wrong, and it responded to the initial Guardian story by saying these incidents were isolated and only designed to help improve Siri. An Apple whistleblower said the incidents were more common than Apple was admitting, however, and said Siri could be activated by “sounds as mundane as a zipper.”

If approved, American consumers who bought a Siri-enabled Apple device between Sept. 17, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2024 could be eligible to claim $20 out of the settlement pool.

Another term of the settlement would require Apple to delete any conversations recorded by Siri collected up until October of 2019 and make its terms of use much clearer when it comes to the voice assistant.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, John Lennon’s firstborn son Julian revealed some heartbreaking details about his relationship with the Beatles—or lack thereof—despite being the inspiration for two of the band’s biggest hits.

“I’m not part of the inner circle—I never have been,” Lennon told the Guardian. “[W]hen Dad left…it was just Mum and me, and we had nothing to do with the Beatles or Dad. I visited him on the odd occasion but we were very much on the outside.”

He spoke of how “extraordinarily strange” the situation is, often comparing himself to any other fan when it comes to knowledge of future projects in the works having to do with the band.

“I’m not upset about it. I’d rather be excited and impressed by what they did and continue to do. As a fan, I’m just as curious as anybody else; although I do find myself going, ‘How is it possible that there’s another Beatles film?’”

In terms of his own aspirations as an artist in the realms of photography and filmmaking, he admitted one of the things that’s consistently motivated him throughout his career has been attempting to overcome simply being known as the son of John Lennon.

The Beatles were at the forefront of the British Invasion in the ’60s, but that wasn’t the only time a flurry of English music made its way across the pond.

Do you know your ’80s British Invasion tunes? Find out with today’s trivia ;)

Have a great day ahead Staker!

Trivia courtesy of funtrivia.com. Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.