Reassuring Pace: The format is very friendly, and you will be encouraged to progress at your own speed, throughout this journey.
Supportive Learning Environment: We meet here in a warm nonintimidating space where questions are welcomed, and mistakes are part of learning.
Building Confidence: I especially want to boost your confidence in navigating IT, making it accessible and enjoyable for you.To foster a can, do attitude towards technology.
Jargon Free: Getting the most from your devices in plain English
SESSION FORMAT
Welcome New Users
This Months News
This Month’s Topic One
Short Break
This Month’s Topic Two
Next Months Topic
ABOUTYOU
Who has a PC / MAC?
Smartphone or Brick?
Tablet ?
Who checks their email daily?
Who checks their Social Media daily?
Have you ever used Zoom?
Anything Else
OTHER TOPICS
This is your time so are there any other areas you would like me to cover over the coming sessions ?
Google Willow Quantum Computer
In operation it is lowered into a liquid helium bath to within one thousandth of a degree above absolute zero
Willow solved a benchmark problem in 5 minutes that would have taken the best computer in the world 10 septillion years, so more than a trillion trillion, or one with 25 zeros on the end, more than the age of the universe.
The Willow chip has 105 qubits. Microsoft's quantum effort has just 8 qubits but uses a different approach.
COMPUTER NEWS
How Does It Work
Imagine trying to find a tennis ball in one of a thousand closed drawers.A classical computer opens each one in order. A quantum computer opens all of them at the same time. Or similarly, instead of having to need a hundred keys to open a hundred doors in normal computing, quantum enables you to open all one hundred, with one key, instantly. At around $15bn (£11bn), the total resource committed to quantum technology in China is possibly of the order of all the rest of the world's government programmes put together
COMPUTER NEWS
Deep Fakes
Which is the real image ?
Honey, I shrunk the data centres
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has announced this week that recent advances in the chips used in smartphones will mean that in a few years time that rather than using data centres for the bulk of the AI processing this will be done on the device itself.
COMPUTER NEWS
As the processing is done on the device private data will be kept more secure.
This may not lead to a reduction of data centres, but it should reduce the growth
Apple turns to Google to power AI upgrade for Siri
Apple known to be late getting on the AI bandwagon have announced that they will be (forced) partnering with Googles Gemeni AI to fill the gap over the next few years whilst they play catchup
COMPUTER NEWS
It may be that joining later will enable Apple to leapfrog their competitors in the future
This year's BBC Radio 4 Reith lecturer is historian and best-selling author Rutger Bregman.
Titled Moral Revolution, the lectures will delve into the current 'age of immorality', explore a growing trend for unseriousness among elites, and ask how we can follow history’s example and assemble small, committed groups to spark positive change.
Rutger Bregman's four lectures:
• A Time of Monsters
• How To Start a Moral Revolution
• A Conspiracy of Decency
• Fighting for Humanity in the Age of the Machine
REITH LECTURES 2025 BBC SOUNDS
QUESTION TIME
WHERE OUR STORY BEGINS
The worlds first IOT device
• Location: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, USAYear:
• Early 1980s (around 1982)
• The Coke machine was connected to the internet (ARPANET).
• Students could remotely check whether drinks were available
• Whether the bottles were cold enough
• Sensors detected inventory levels (how many bottles were inside).
• Temperature data showed if a bottle had been in the machine long enough to be cold.
• Developed by CMU computer science students, primarily from the Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Remember the early days !
EARLY PHONES
• SaaS –Software as a Service –Word / Excel
• PaaS –Platform as a Service –Amazon AWS
• IaaS –ABC Company’s stuff –shopping etc
All made possible by the cloud
WHAT IS THE CLOUD
http(s)://www.bbc.co.uk/news/storyone
http = Hypertext Transfer Protocol
https = Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
www = World Wide Web (URL Uniform Resource Locator)
The company name should immediately follow the www.
STAYING SAFE WEB ADDRESSES
• Your house has a postcode, so the Postie knows where to deliver the letter
• But you may not be home? So you don’t get it until you arrive home
• Email addresses the person not the place wherever you happen to be at the time.
• Your email address should not be shared with others one per person
• yourname@emailprovidor.co.uk
• johnsmith@blueyonder.co.uk
• Emails can be read on multiple devices at the same time
• IMAP -Internet Message Access Protocol
• POP -Post Office Protocol
• Sender > Cloud > Directs to your email provider > to you
• Tip –your email provider should not be the same as your TV provider
EMAIL ADDRESSES
QUESTION TIME
PASSWORD BOOKS
Date: 20/06/25
URL: Link: bbc.co.uk
Email: myemailaddress@gmail.com
Username: CDHTBS
Password / Hint: BbcPL46xv#
Three Words –Farm2 / City / Peach#
Notes: Login for iPlayer and BBC Sounds Amazon link to buy (£7.99 Prime Day Price)
https://tinyurl.com/3wb59vcc
2FA –TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION
2FA stands for Two-Factor Authentication—a security method that requires you to verify your identity using two different types of credentials before granting access to an account or system. Typically, it combines: -Something you know –like a password or PIN -Something you have –like a phone, security token, or authentication app (And sometimes even a third: something you are, like a fingerprint or facial scan)
2FA –TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION
For example, after entering your password, you might get a code sent to your phone or be asked to approve a login via an app like Microsoft Authenticator or Google Authenticator.
It’s like locking your front door with a key and a fingerprint scanner—much harder for intruders to break in.
