The Big Tech Show

This week, Adrian is joined by technology journalist Andy O'Donoghue to discuss Facebook's new smart glasses, called Ray-ban Stories. Adrian realtyes his experience using the glasses, which can record 30-second video clips and take photos without people clearly being aware that they are doing so. Andy likes the idea of smart glasses in general and thinks they're here to stay.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian is joined by Senator Gerard Craughwell and IT security expert Paul C Dwyer to look at whether Ireland's cyber security is up to scratch. Both men say that it is not. Senator Craughwell goes further, describing it as "an absolute joke". Both are also criticial of government ministers who dismissed as 'overblown' the Irish Independent's recent revelation that the HSE is still using almost 30,000 computers with Windows 7, an obsolete operating system.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian has a plain English review of the iPhone 13, 13 mini, 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max.Adrian ranks them in order of which is best and what type of person should or shouldn’t upgrade.He’s joined by tech journalist Mark Kavanagh to talk about the iPhones and the iPad mini, which also also launched this week. Both journalists discuss why the mini is a better choice that Samsung’s Frankensteinish Galaxy Z Fold3.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian talks to Fidelma McGuirk, founder and CEO of Payslip. Ms McGuirk decided to move to Westport from Dublin in 2015, after which she founded her payroll tech company. Despite attracting over €8m in funding earlier this year, attracting talented engineers and staff to a tech company outside a city has its own challenges.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It has nothing to do with Katherine Zappone. This week, Adrian goes into depth about the problems around Minister Simon Coveney’s hacked phone.Together with freedom-of-information expert Gavin Sheridan and privacy expert Daragh O’Brien, the minutae of what we know, and what the law is, around Simon Coveney’s hacked phone are parsed in detail.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, it’s a panel show to discuss some of the big issues of the week: the iPhone 13’s potential satellite capability, Google Ireland’s delayed return-to-the-office mandate, the latest VC figures and whether you should use video on or off during Zoom calls. The topic of whether billionaires serve any purpose is also debated. Adrian is joined by the Irish Independent’s Jon Ihle and Reach’s Mark Kavanagh.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Adrian talks to Mike Fisher, the CTO of the giant online retailer Etsy, in the wake of that company's €1.3bn acquisition of Depop.Fisher is one of the most experienced CTO's around, having been a previous engineering VP of Paypal, among other roles.The two talk through a number of issues, spending a lot of time on what makes a good or a bad engineering culture and whether or not tech staff are likely to come back to offices any time soon.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 the moral difference between scanning a phone and a private online account for child abuse imagery?Why wouldn't Apple do the same for other types of illegal content in future? And why wouldn't countries now put more pressure on them to do so?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 National Broadband Plan. Now he’s targeting rural broadband in England.Adrian and Conal discuss a range of topics, from the return of mobile roaming in the UK to why satellite will never match fibre in terms of broadband quality.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 kilometres up in the sky? What is the endgame for this activity and what use might it be? Are any of the principals really interested in saving our species through space exploration? Might they not spend a few quid to help stop the destruction of Earth instead?Adrian and Louis also differ on whether they would take a seat on one of the spaceflights, if the opportunity arose.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.