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
TOPICS WE WILL BE COVERING
Malware
Passwords
Sandy M
Muriel H
Peter & Sandra H
OTHER TOPICS
This is your time so are there any other areas you would like me to cover over the coming sessions ?
Trackballs
Would a trackball help?
Why a trackball can help
A trackball:
NEXT SESSION
Keeps your hand stationary Makes the cursor movement feel more direct and anchored
Reduces spatial remapping (no arm movement across the desk)
Often improves where-is-the-cursor awareness People who benefit most: Lose the pointer visually Overshoot targets
Prefer fine motor control over gross movement
For many users, the cursor feels more like it’s “attached” to the hand.
DATA FARMS STAYING SAFE ONLINE
COMMON TYPES OF COMPUTER FRAUD
• Phishing -Fraudulent emails or messages that trick users into revealing sensitive information.
• Hacking -Unauthorized access to computer systems to steal, alter, or destroy data.
• Spoofing –Where your email is used to send out malicious emails from another device
• Malware & Spyware -Malicious software used to monitor, steal, or damage data and systems.
• IdentityTheft -Using stolen personal data (often from breaches or phishing) to impersonate someone.
STAYING SAFE WEB ADDRESSES
• Online Scams -Fake websites, auctions, or services designed to steal money or information.
• Ransomware -Malware that locks data or systems until a ransom is paid.
• Social Engineering -Manipulating people into giving up confidential information or access.
• Data Mining Fraud -Illegally collecting and using data via spyware or deceptive apps
• Hoax Emails -False messages that spread misinformation or trick users into harmful actions.
• Denial-of-Service (DoS) -Overloading systems to disrupt services, sometimes used as a smokescreen for theft.
These are just some of the modern-day equivalents of the highwayman robbing the stagecoach Criminality is nothing new only the methods
Parking Penalty Charge Notice: Please Pay a parking penalty charge notice (PCN) issued by a local council. If you do not pay a PCN within 28 days, you’ll get a ‘charge certificate’ and you’ll have 14 days to pay the original fine plus 50% more. https://gov.comsitbnmm.live/GOV
If you don’t pay you’ll be prosecuted –you may have to pay a bigger fine as well as court costs.
https://gov.comsitbnmm.live/GOV
https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/etc/etc
IMPROVING LIVES PLYMOUTH
DATA FARMSTHIS MONTHS NEWS ROUNDUP
ChatGTP-Advertising
Adverts will soon appear at the top of the AI tool
ChatGPT for some users, the company OpenAI has announced.
CHATGTP
Traditional advertising is suffering as more users are using AI as opposed to traditional Google searches
Google denies reports that it had approached advertisers about bringing ads to its Gemini AI tool in 2026.
Advert free subscriptions will become the norm soon e.g. the new Go subscription tier, it already has Plus and Pro tiers, which cost $20 and $200 respectively per month in the US.
DROP –A sign of the times
California residents now have a centralized way to request deletion of personal data held by data brokers. The new Delete Requests and Opt-Out Platform (DROP), created under the 2023 Delete Act, allows verified residents to submit a single request that applies to more than 500 registered data brokers, instead of contacting each company individually. Brokers will begin processing requests in August 2026 and have 90 days to comply.
DROP
School Phone Bans
YONDR Bags
Schools –Concerts –Work –Weddings !!
YONDR BAGS
Social media's 'third phase'
Phase One: Content was from friends, family, and accounts that you followed directly.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Phase Two: When we added all of the creator content.
Phase Three: AI generated content (“AI slop”)
"Soon we'll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI," Zuckerberg said.
“Open Claw”Virtual Assistants –Ai that does it all in one command e.gMessage Jim to say I will meet him at the cinema at 2.00 on Thursday
Tesla to make robots
Musk announces that Tesla will be stopping the manufacture of two car models in favour of producing robots -one of the most significant pivots the company has made.
X NEWS
Space X and xAIto merge into a single company
Elon Musk's SpaceX has applied to launch one million low orbital data centres (satellites) into Earth's orbit to power artificial intelligence (AI). Being solar powered they would be self sufficient using solar panels reducing the need to expensive to run terrestrial data centres
Paving the way for the Earth to become a Kardashev II-level civilisation -one that can harness the Sun's full power
YouTube's $60bn revenue revealed
Google has revealed YouTube brought in more than $60bn in revenue in 2025 as the firm targets more subscribers. (Netflix $45b)
£43,962,968,520
"YouTube is one of –if not the –most-used of all digital offerings, with over 70% of international consumers using it weekly, and over 50% using it daily," she told the BBC, citing Midia consumer survey data.
At the same time, Shorts,YouTube's TikTok-style short videos, was also said to be averaging more than 200 billion daily views.
Ofcom reveals thatYouTube is used by 94% of UK adult internet population, with time spent on it growing to reach an average of 51 minutes a day per person.
Individual plan: £12–£12.99 per month -Student plan: £7 per monthFamily plan (multiple users): £20 per month
YOUTUBE
Good News -Brave Browser
Blocks most YouTube and web page adverts
Available for PC’s Macs Tablets & Phones
Import & Sync your Settings
Settings> Shields> Aggressive
https://brave.com/download/
DATA FARMSTHIS MONTH DATA FARMS
DOUGLAS ADAMS FAMOUSLY SAID
“Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.
I
mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Douglas Adams captured the absurd vastness of the cosmos with this gem fromThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
DATA FARMS ARE BIG
ON THE OUTSIDE AND WITHIN
To send a bit of data through 30 servers takes between 30 to 150 milliseconds
Reach 85% of the world’s internet population in approximately 25 milliseconds.
AND THERE ARE LOTS OF THEM WITH MORE ON THE WAY
THE UK PUNCHES ABOVE ITS WEIGHT
TOP 10 DIDYOU KNOW FACTS ABOUT DATA CENTRES
• There are over 7 million data centres worldwide, ranging from small server rooms to sprawling hyperscale facilities.
• The largest data centre in the world, located in Langfang, China, spans a staggering 6.3 million square feet — that’s nearly the size of the Pentagon.
• Data centres consume about 3% of global electricity, with some estimates suggesting this could rise significantly as digital demand grows. (Russia or Japan or Germany)
• A single large data centre can use as much power as a small town, and cooling alone can account for up to 40% of its energy bill.
• Currently China uses 33% of all the electricity generated in the world
TOP 10 DIDYOU KNOW FACTS ABOUT DATA CENTRES
• London has the highest concentration of data centres of any city, with over 300 facilities —a testament to the UK’s digital infrastructure leadership.
• The global data centre market is projected to exceed $500 billion by 2030, up from around $190 billion in 2020 —that’s more than double in just a decade.
• Every time you stream a video, send an email, or use cloud storage, you’re tapping into a data centre —they’re the invisible backbone of modern life.
• The big tech companies have already announced that they will be spending around $650 billion on AI projects in 2026 between them. That’s x10 HS2’s !
AND THERE ARE A LOT OF COMPUTERS IN THE WORLD AS WELL
As of 2025, there are an estimated 2 to 2.5 billion computers in use globally.This includes desktops, laptops, and servers—but not smartphones or tablets
There are currently around 6.8 to 7.2 billion smartphones in use globally, which is nearly one for every person on the planet. In contrast, the total number of cars worldwide is estimated to be around 1.5 to 1.6 billion.
So, smartphones outnumber cars by more than four to one.
THE BIGGEST COMPUTERS ON THE PLANET
Traditional weather forecasts are produced on some of the biggest supercomputers on the planet; the Met Office super computing contract is worth £1.2bn.
That huge sum of money buys you a machine that can perform 60 quadrillion calculations per second, running a model containing the understood physics, with over a million lines of code and using 215 billion weather observations.
60,000,000,000,000,000 200 times the number of stars in the Milky Way
THEY ARE FAST
A petaflop (sometimes spelled "pentaflop" in error) is a unit of computing speed that equals one quadrillion—that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000—floatingpoint operations per second (FLOPS). It’s a benchmark used to measure the performance of supercomputers, especially in tasks that require massive numerical calculations like climate modelling, nuclear simulations, or AI training.
To give it some scale: if every person on Earth did one calculation per second, it would take over 240 days to match what these computers can do in just one second -Perhaps computers are SCARY after all!
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. All this in just 25 years of reaserch
How Does It Work
Imagine trying to find a tennis ball in one of a millonclosed 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 10,000 keys to open 10,000 drawers in normal computing, quantum enables you to open all 10,000, 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
QUIZ -TOP 10 MOSTVALUABLE COMPANIES
Nvidia has become the first company in the world to reach a market value of $4tn.
$4,000,000,000,000 or £2,936,000,000,000
QUIZ -TOP 10 MOSTVALUABLE COMPANIES
‘The Big Seven’ as they are called are valued at more than the gross domestic product of the whole of Europe !
THE FUTURE
AI vs Traditional Computers –In weather forecasting
EARLY COMPUTERS
• First commercial computer the UNIVAC 1 was used in the U.S. Census in June 1951 –1905
• 1905 instructions per second
• 5000 vacuum tubes
• 7.5 tons or two adult elephants
MOORE’S LAW
Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years, while the cost of computers is halved.This trend was first noted by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, in 1965. It’s not a physical law, but rather a prediction that’s held remarkably true for decades, driving exponential growth in computing power.
This doubling effect is why your phone today is more powerful than a room-sized computer from the 1960s. It’s also why we’ve seen such rapid advances in everything from AI to gaming to space exploration.
THE FUTURE
While the law held strong for much of the late 20th century, experts now say it’s slowing down or even ending. Transistors are approaching atomic scales—some are just 2–3 nanometerswide, barely larger than strands of DNA. Shrinking them further is becoming exponentially more difficult and expensive, and the performance gains are no longer doubling every two years as they once did.
Sowhat is likely to happen in the future?
NEW BRANCHES OF COMPUTING
• New architectures: Instead of just making chips smaller, engineers are exploring 3D chip stacking, chiplets, and neuromorphic computing—designs inspired by the human brain.
• Quantum computing: Though still in its early days, it promises exponential speedups for specific problems.
• Software optimization: Smarter algorithms and better code can squeeze more performance from existing hardware.
• Specialized processors: GPUs,TPUs, and AI accelerators are taking over tasks that CPUs used to handle alone.
THE FUTURE
Everyone in this room has benefited from these technological advances in their lifetime both in quality of life and in many cases length of life
There is no reason to believe that future technological advances will not prove to be as beneficial in the future
The concern should be centred around the pace of that change and the role of Social Media rather than change itself. (againmy personal view)
THE FUTURE
Maybe we will get that promised flying car in our lifetime !
