The Big Tech Show

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.

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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 sums? Is there any suspicion that we may be in a frothy boom at the moment? Is tech just benefitting from a lack of other places to put your money? Or has there been a transformation in the underlying value of Irish tech companies?
Adrian is joined by seasoned venture capitalist (CEO of Scale Ireland) Brian Caulfield and the Irish Independent’s deputy business editor, Jon Ihle.

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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 within Ireland.
Will other multinationals follow Facebook’s lead? If so, does that mean the end of the tech boom in Dublin, with talented engineers free to base themselves in coastal Spain, Tuscany or the Black Forest?
Adrian is joined by Boundless CEO Dee Coakley and Irish Independent business reporter Ellie Donnelly to discuss the pros and cons of remote working, and what we might see next.

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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 month in the ever-turbulent-yet-often-soaring life of crypto currencies? Or is there something different going on this time?

Adrian talks to Goodbody senior trader David Bergin about the topic.

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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 can be the answer to what a lot people need. Adrian puts it to him that there is a danger the gig economy is a creeping casualisation of work, stripping rights such as sick pay, parental leave and holiday pay. Ryan says that it needn’t be like that, pointing out that Gigable is introducing some benefits, such as access to online GPs.

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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 in defence-related activities.
Dwyer offers some suggestions on what steps we might take to rebuild Ireland’s cyber security infrastructure in a more robust format.

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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.

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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 rules forbid tracking to be a requirement for the app’s features to work.)

If you say no, that app can’t track you across the web for the purposes of ads. (If it’s found to be doing so, it’s booted out of the App Store.)
If you say yes, it’s business as usual.

There are already some indications that most people will opt out of being tracked.

Is it this universally a good thing or are there underreported disadvantages for small businesses trying to reach their audiences?

Adrian is joined by David Campbell, head of e-Commerce at Humm and a director of Digital Business Ireland, and Daragh O’Brien, CEO of privacy firm Castlebridge.

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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 against full names and, in many cases, occupation or location.
The least that we can expect is a new wave of scam texts or Whatsapps. But for a few thousand people, it could be a lot more serious. The names and numbers of gardai, sitting judges, prison officers and others in sensitive positions are among the numbers leaked.
As are roles such as management positions in womens’ refuges and other places that could be prone to harassing or predatory contact. All are easily searchable.
In this week’s podcast, Adrian talks to the director of Digital Rights Ireland, Antoin O’Lachtnain, about the leak and the case.
Digital Rights Ireland is taking the Irish court action under European GDPR rules and says that an award of between €300 and €12,000 in damages is “comparable” to what might occur in its Facebook case.
Former Facebook worker Carey Lening, who now works on privacy and security issues with Castlebridge, also joins the podcast to talk about her experience and where we go from here.

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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 Keith Broni, the deputy emoji officer (yes, that’s a real job) for Emojipedia about the politics and generational angst of emoji.

He’s also joined by the Irish Independent’s newest columnist, Tanya Sweeney, and Irish Independent reporter Gabija Gataveckaite, to talk about the wider cultural effects that emoji are having among different generations.

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