The Big Tech Show

Are you struggling to find a Playstation 5? Or dismayed at month-long waiting lists for an iPhone 13 Pro? Or may your car dealer says you can’t change to a new model until next year because they can’t get any?
All of these shortages have one thing in common: a supply chain crisis in computer chips.
But in this high-tech world, how can this be happening? What’s behind it? And will it get better any time soon?
To discuss answers to these questions, Adrian is joined by consumer journalist Siobhan Maguire and motoring journalist Geraldine Herbert.

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Imagine you’re peckish. There’s nothing in the fridge but it’s
lashing outside — you don’t want to go the supermarket, and ordering your regular takeout will take ages.

Now imagine a different scenario: you order a takeout and it
arrives in 10 minutes. Why? Because it skipped the roads and came instead by drone.

That’s an option that the residents of Oranmore in Galway, Moneygall
in Offaly and, from next week, Balbriggan in County, will have had. Because Irish company Manna Aero has been delivering coffee, fast food, medicine and other things with drones in under 10 minutes to those communities.

The company says it wants to expand to dozens of towns by the
end of next year.

Is this the future? Is it safe? Will it be allowed to go national
and maybe international?

Joining Adrian this week from the Web Summit in Lisbon to discuss
this is Manna Aero founder and CEO Bobby Healy.

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As warnings of energy blackouts this winter emerge, there are questions being asked about the value of data centres to Ireland. Are they energy hogs? Do they hold their own as worthwhile businesses? And what should our policy be going forward?
With over 70 major data centres located in Ireland, some political parties are calling for a moratorium on new data centres. But is this a weak admission that we can’t set up our own modern electricity grid correctly?
Joining Adrian to discuss this issue this week is Social Democrats TD and spokesperson on climate, Jennifer Whitmore, the founder of Host In Ireland, Garry Connolly, and the Irish Independent’s environment editor, Caroline O’Doherty.

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Will we all switch over to a new, more integrated virtual reality to socialise, play, work and shop?

That's what Mark Zuckerberg thinks is going to happen. He and Facebook are now about to start building this 'metaverse', partly in Ireland.
How will it benefit our lives?
How might it hurt our lives?
To dig deeper into what the metaverse will and won't be, Adrian is joined by Bloomberg's technology editor Nate Lanxton and TCD professor Eoin O'Dell. The panel take a look at how the metaverse will work and what the privacy and regulatory implications might be.

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This week, Adrian looks at whether China's ban on cryptocurrency will scupper the prospects of Bitcoin, which has been soaring in value in recent years. He is joined by James Nagle, CEO of the Irish cryptocurrency-trading firm, Bitcove. James doesn't think a reciprocal ban is likely in the US or the EU, but says that there are some concerns over the energy consumption that Bitcoin-mining takes.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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