The Big Tech Show

This week, Adrian hosts a spirited discussion about whether Apple is right or wrong to scan photos from your iPhone to iCloud for potential child sexual abuse imagery. He is joined by UCD's director of digital policy (and former Irish Council for Civil Liberties representative) Elizabeth Farries and Alex Cooney the CEO of CyberSafeKids Ireland. The whole thing raises some big questions. What is th...

Conal Henry has had an interesting journey through the business and telecom worlds. From being commercial director of Ryanair, he built up Enet’s business around Ireland before joining the National Broadband Plan and then leaving to set up his own company, Fibrus Networks, which raised over €100m. That Belfast-based firm won a €200m contract to roll out part of Northern Ireland’s answer to the Nat...

Is the new commercial 'space race' between Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and (the relatively poor) Richard Branson anything to celebrate for humanity? Or is it just one big egomaniacal episode? This week, Adrian and TCD professor Louis Brennan chew over some of the deeper questions around this year's commercial space launches. Is there a point to paying between €250,000 and €22m to go a few dozen kilometr...

You’ve seen and heard it from every science fiction movie or TV programme. You’ve heard it from scientists and philosophers. So are we living in a multiverse? Is there a version of you that’s a billionaire? Or a mass-murderer? Or a talking frog? Or are we, like Elon Musk insists, living in a simulation created by some other intelligent species? To talk about some of these big philosophical, techni...

Should Ireland follow Norway in bringing in a law that would make it mandatory for online influencers to disclose that they have digital altered images of their faces or bodies when promoting products? And if so, should it stop there? Should digitally-enhanced derrieres or dermatological features be admitted more widely, to give impressionable teens a truer idea of what is real and what isn’t? Adr...

Will tech companies flee Ireland if it abandons its 12.5pc corporate tax rate? Will the pipeline for new ones dry up? Adrian is joined by UCD business lecturer (and former IDA executive) Emmet Oliver and Irish Independent business reporter Sarah Collins to discuss the issue. Is the 12.5pc drive an about global equity, European jealousy or both? What will Ireland have to offer tech companies over o...

Can a pub pass work in Ireland? This week, Adrian talks to Irish ex-pat Zoe Healy Jensen, now living in Denmark. She explains how QR codes have been successfully integrated into everyday life in the Scandinavian country, allowing her and other vaccinated people to enter restaurants and pubs with little fuss. Goosed.ie’s Martin Meany also joins the conversation to talk about the background and cont...

This week’s topic is Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite broadband service that some believe is the future for rural areas that have been deprived of broadband connectivity. But with the National Broadband Plan slowly being rolled out to every rural home here, does Starlink realistically have any role to play? Who would pay two to three times the price of a fibre connection for Starlink’s dish and mon...

This week, we debate whether facial recognition should be banned or curtailed. It comes after Europe’s data regulators called for a total ban on facial recognition in public places. But is that practical? What are the pros and cons? Adrian is joined by privacy expert Carey Lening and technologist and retailer, Colin Baker. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This month, $150m was raised by Peter Foley’s LetsGetChecked, giving the five year old startup a valuation of over $1bn. Last month, €100m was raised by two Irish startups — Wayfarer (€62m) and Qualio (€41m). The month before that it was a handful of others, such as Payslip. It means that well over €1bn will be raised year, significantly up on last year. What’s going on with these eye-watering sum...

Dublin looked on nervously this week as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that staff at the 6,000-strong Irish office can now work from the UK. From January next, they will also be allowed to move to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland while working for the Irish office. This is a major policy shift. Until now, ‘remote’ working at tech multinationals meant somewhere else...

Is it time to take a punt on Bitcoin? Or is it all a big Ponzi scheme waiting to collapse? Bitcoin’s value has slumped by 30pc this month. China, where so much of it is mined, is saying it might crack down. Environmentalists are against it, saying it uses up too much energy. And now even Elon Musk has nixed its use for buying Teslas.  So what does this mean for Bitcoin’s value? Is it just a normal...

Is the gig economy a dystopian modern sweatshop or a new flexible way of working that gives people more control over their lives? This week, Adrian discusses the issue with John Ryan, the founder of Gigable. Gigable connects restaurants to freelance delivery drivers — it has over 2,000 drivers on its books. John Ryan says that the gig economy has unfairly earned a bad rap; done right, he says, it...

This week, Adrian discusses the origins and the potential fixes of Ireland’s catastrophic HSE ransomware episode with experienced cyber security practitioner, Paul C Dwyer. Dwyer pulls no punches in saying that Ireland’s IT security infrastructure isn’t up to scratch. The two look at factors contributing to this, including an historical and cultural distaste in Ireland for investing significantly...

This week, Adrian looks at why some weather apps on our phones are so unreliable. He talks to meteorologist Alan O’Reilly of Carlow Weather. The two go through the best apps to use and why some are more accurate than others. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For most, it’s a breath of fresh air. The latest iOS 14.5 update will start showing you pop-ups when you open an app. It will ask you this question: “allow [app] to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites?” This will be accompanied by a short pitch from the app concerned as to why it needs you to do this. (Although it can’t link your answer to functionality — Apple’s new rule...

More than 7,000 people have signed up for a mass action lawsuit in Irish courts against Facebook. The case, organised by Digital Rights Ireland, is over a global data leak that exposed the mobile phone numbers of 530 million people. People are really upset about this, not least because Facebook doesn’t appear to be taking it seriously. There are at least 1.3m Irish numbers alone, matched perfectly...

Do you liven up your texts with a crying-laughing emoji? Do you try to make a point more forceful by using the hand-clapping symbol in between words? Do you intersperse the two-eyed ‘look’ pixel in every second or third Whatsapp message? You’re literally showing your age. According to experts, large swathes of emoji are now only used by middle-aged and older people. This week, Adrian talks to Keit...

This week, Adrian looks at whether buying digital art through NFTs (‘non-fungible tokens’) is for suckers or savvy collectors. He’s joined by Lory Kehoe, adjunct associate professor at Trinity Business School and director of digital assets at BNY Mellon. The discussion looks at the recent $69m auction sale at Christie’s for an NFT-linked digital canvas, as well as the $2.9m sale of Jack Dorsey’s f...

“10 years ago, we were sitting around drinking coffee and talking about Facebook and Twitter. Then we just decided to start doing things. Last month, one of our local startups IPO’d at $4bn.” This week, Adrian sits down to chat with Clark Dever, one of the senior ecosystem heads at Techstars, the international startup accelerator organisation. Clark tells Adrian about the experience of Buffalo, a...

This week, Adrian talks to Markham Nolan, the WWE’s VP of Media Operations. The Dubliner is responsible for managing a social media footprint of over 1bn followers as well as being influential in the WWE’s overall media strategy. The two talk about how Markham’s past in Irish journalism and Storyful. They also go through how and what the WWE prioritises in its online and media operations. See omny...

This week, Adrian looks at the best webcams, cameras, lights and microphones for video-conferencing and Zoom calls from home. He’s joined by two experts — well known YouTuber and content creator Clare Cullen (@Clisare) and a director of Conns Cameras, Bob Conn. The panel also talks about how to set up so as to look professional. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian welcomes back Paul Campbell, founder of the ticket-selling company Ti.to and the online event platform Vi.to. Fresh from raising over €1m, Paul talks politics, ethics and how to sell software. He also discusses the best camera, microphone and lighting setups for conferencing from home. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian sits down with the veteran Irish tech marketer, Kieran Hannon, who has just taken a CMO job with the clean air firm WellAir. Hannon is a 35-year survivor of Silicon Valley’s tech industry, with some big roles to show for it. He was chief marketer for Radioshack before moving on to a similar role in Belkin. A stint in Openpath preceded his appointment as marketing chief in the Bil...

This week, Adrian chats to Damien Burns, Europe’s top person with Amazon-owned Twitch, the giant live streaming platform. While it dominates online streams of video games, Damian says that it’s now aiming farther afield, to lifestyle stuff. Adrian asks about the market for watching sleeping videos and how much money you can make when sharing your Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto sessions live. The two...