UK Emergency Alerts
We have mentioned the UK Emergency Alert system a few times before, Including the times when test messages were sent out.
On Thursday 8th January this year, real alerts were sent out in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly regarding storm Goretti. This was because of potentially very high winds in the area which could be a danger to life.
This report in The Sun is one of many:-
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/37853135/phones-ping-emergency-red-warning-storm-goretti-carnage/
Merriam-Webster Word of the Year 2025
At the November meeting last year, I mentioned that “vibe coding” was the Collins Dictionary word of the year. It refers to computer code (i.e. programs) written by/with AI.
In December, Merriam-Webster announced their word of the year for 2025 is “slop”, referring to “AI slop”. This is a term used to describe the vast amounts of low quality material (images, stories, code, etc) being produced by AI and flooding the Internet with junk.
As a lot of AI (and humans) learn from the information they find on the Internet, this is leading to a downward spiral. See this article from Ars Technica:-
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/merriam-webster-crowns-slop-word-of-the-year-as-ai-content-floods-internet/
A Summary of the Topics Covered Last Year
The link below will take you to a brief summary of all the topics we have discussed in 2025:-
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/438sohz0ly1bv1u736gx3/2025-12-Claude-summary-of-year.pdf?rlkey=u4tscl3zj33lncxkrpp1kvo0j&st=q3vk0bmj&dl=0
This summary was created by uploading all 12 blogs for last year to Claude AI. If you want to try using Claude AI, go to:-
https://claude.ai/
A summary of last year’s Computer Club meetings in the form of a 17-minute podcast was created by Google’s NotebookLM, again by uploading all 12 blogs from last year:-
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/o3ez9uayu7xstlc5jflyt/Podcast-summary-of-2025-blogs.m4a?rlkey=e371ux6kfzeaitscs4dmfeivx&st=zy3lo742&dl=0
If you want to experiment with NotebookLM, go to:-
https://notebooklm.google.com/
Changing Your Gmail Address – Maybe
There have been a number of reports in the tech press about a Google Support article, published in Hindi, so initially aimed at the Indian market, which indicates you will be able to change your Gmail address. If you set up your Google Account with a “something@gmail.com” address, you may no longer like the address you chose at the time. Currently, you can’t change it. You could just create a new account and have emails from the old account forwarded, but this would not give you access to things like photos, drive, etc.
This new feature is rolling out gradually this year. There are limitations. You can only change the address once in a year, and you can only change it 3 times ever.
You were (and still are) allowed to change your Google account email if it was NOT a “@gmail.com” email. This potential new feature will also allow “@gmail.com” account names to be changed.
This article in 9to5Google has more:-
https://9to5google.com/2025/12/24/google-change-gmail-addresses/
Next Gen Siri Based on Gemini
We have mentioned before that Apple are planning an improved version of Siri based on AI. While Apple was thought to be working with OpenAI on this, it now appears that the enhanced version of Siri will use Google's Gemini AI, although without any Google branding. It is expected to be released as an update to iOS 26 later this year. See this Ars Technica article from 12th January for more:-
https://arstechnica.com/apple/2026/01/apple-says-its-new-ai-powered-siri-will-use-googles-gemini-language-models/
Credit Card Automatic Update Scam
The 3 main credit card companies, Visa, Mastercard and Amex, offer an automatic update service. So, if your card is replaced for any reason, the update service can provide the new card details to any retailers where those card details are store. This is potentially very useful if, for example, you charge recurring subscriptions to you card. The card platforms have different names for this service:-
- Visa call it Visa Automatic Updater (VAU),
- Mastercard calls it Automatic Billing Updater (ABU), and
- American Express (Amex) call it Cardrefresher.
Each card issuing bank and each merchant can choose whether they wish to use the update service or not.
Things can go wrong if a scammer has already stolen your card details and used it to set up a retail account. When you realise you have been scammed, you cancel that card and are issued with a new one. However, the update service may then automatically update the account the scammer set up, so they can continue scamming you using the new card details!
So, if you find yourself in the unfortunate situation of having your card details stolen, you can ask your card issuer to stop the automatic update for the new card. See this recent Which? article for more details on this:-
https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/why-cancelling-your-card-might-not-stop-fraud-az1qL6z0080w
AutoFill
We had a brief discussion about autofill. This is a browser feature that can automatically complete details such as your name, address and credit card details by remembering them from when you used them previously. You can enable/disable autofill and view/edit the stored details in the browser Settings by going to Autofill and Passwords (or similar, depending on the browser).
If you have changed your credit card or address, you would need to edit the stored credentials.
Brian asked about converting a Paradox Database to Microsoft Access. We did not have a definitive answer to this. Googling for "converting paradox to access" suggested either using one of a number of third party programs or using the export and import functions within Paradox and Access.
The third-party tools can be very expensive and their free-trial versions are limited.
Next Session
Wed 11th February 2026 at 2pm by Zoom
