This week, Adrian’s guest is Fianna Fail’s spokesman for science, technology and research, Kildare North TD James Lawless. In a wide-ranging discussion, Adrian challenges James over Irish politicians’ apparent disconnection from tech issues which, at times, veers into illiteracy. From demanding passports for Facebook access to dithering over broadband rollouts, Adrian goes over some of the reasons why Irish politicians are often held in low esteem by the public on tech issues. Adrian and James a...
Jun 21, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Women in Tech is a new four-part series presented by Samantha McCaughren, Business Editor of the Sunday Independent. In the series, Samantha speaks to Irish women involved in tech who are dispelling myths and breaking down barriers. On this first episode, Samantha is joined by Regina Moran, Enterprise Director with Vodafone Ireland, who, as an engineer by background, has always been involved in the STEM areas and is well-versed in breaking the mould from her early days. Regina talks about her ow...
Jun 21, 2019•30 min
Adrian spent a week in China getting a look under the hood of Huawei, the world’s most controversial tech company. He discusses his experience here with two INM acolytes, Sunday Independent deputy business editor Fearghal O’Connor and Sunday Independent business correspondent Michael Cogley. He recounts how: - He ended up singing with a band in a Chinese bar only to discover the guitarist was a senior Huawei executive (who then unexpectedly agreed to a revealing interview) - He coped with being ...
Jun 14, 2019•51 min
This week Adrian is joined by Independent News & Media (INM) head of product (and business columnist) Steve Dempsey and INM chief commercial development officer Mark Coan. The subject matter is the current and future prospects of the Irish media. 2019 has so far seen multiple Irish media companies announce layoffs. What does the future hold? Can paywall subscriptions turn traditional titles’ fortunes around? What other models are working at present? Or are there simply too many titles and pu...
Jun 07, 2019•45 min
This week, Adrian is joined by data privacy expert Daragh O’Brien and child protection campaigner Alex Cooney of CyberSafeIreland. The three discuss the reappointment of Helen Dixon as Ireland’s data protection commissioner to a second five-year term. They also look at why, a year after the digital age of consent was raised from 13 to 16, it is no harder for children to access social media services and whether the UK’s upcoming age-verified online pornography system can teach us any lessons here...
May 31, 2019•29 min
Zander Lurie is the boss of the world’s biggest online survey company. The Nasdaq-listed firm has over 17m users and is expanding all over the world. Lurie reflects on the process by which he became SurveyMonkey CEO after the tragic passing in 2015 of his friend Dave Goldberg, husband of Sheryl Sandberg and former chief executive of SurveyMonkey. “The hairs still stand on the back of my neck, thinking about Dave,” he says. He also talks about the expectations on a modern tech CEO to take positio...
May 24, 2019•35 min
This week, Adrian sits down with Richard Bruton, the government Communications minister at the centre of the state’s €5bn plan to run subsidised fibre broadband to every one of 540,000 rural homes and businesses in the country. He establishes for the first time that the value of the finished rural broadband network will only be a fraction of the €3bn the state is subsidising. Diving deep into some of the issues around the controversial rollout, Adrian asks Minister Bruton some other key question...
May 16, 2019•41 min
While attention rests on the National Broadband Plan, eir still holds the keys to many of Ireland’s biggest telecoms problems. This week, Adrian sits down with company chief executive Carolan Lennon to ask some of the key questions. On the National Broadband Plan, Adrian asks whether Lennon whether knowing that eir would collect close to €1bn from rental of its poles to the National Broadband Plan was a factor in the company withdrawing from the tender to oversee responsibility for the whole pro...
May 10, 2019•35 min
Is the National Broadband Plan a visionary thing for Ireland? Or is it a grand folly? This week, Adrian talks exclusively to Peter Hendrick, the chief executive of the sole remaining bidder for the €3bn state-subsidised contract. The two talk about rollout timetables, cost and technology. Adrian asks why the last 20pc is being done with fibre and not wireless which, in the short term, might provide a cheaper solution. He also asks whether National Broadband Ireland, the new entity which will bui...
May 08, 2019•46 min
This week, we look at war stories from one of the fastest-growing online scams around – email fraud. Whether it’s invoice redirection fraud or CEO fraud, the phenomenon of faking corporate emails to siphon off thousands from a business is rampant in Ireland. Adrian Weckler looks through some of the reported incidences of this happening, including to Dublin Zoo, Trinity College and the Louth and Meath Education and Training Board. He is joined in studio by one of Ireland’s most senior experts on ...
May 03, 2019•39 min
There’s a lot of nonsense spoken about how rural broadband can be delivered. This week, Adrian Weckler and Irish Independent business editor Donal O’Donovan go through some of the myths and tropes around the process. They ask whether wireless or 5G might be an alternative. They also look at the cost of the rollout and whether the government can be trusted or not. And then they discuss the basic questions underpinning the whole process: is rural broadband to every home important? If so, is a stat...
Apr 26, 2019•27 min
Do people really care if Facebook does unwarranted things with our personal data? Are we, in the press, simply overestimating how much it bothers people? The latest privacy breach involves the company saying it 'mistakenly' uploaded the private email contacts of 1.5m people. It has also admitted that millions, not thousands, of Instagram passwords were stored in plain language. But it's all being greeted by a big 'meh' from the public. Other than a few campaigning media outlets and privacy activ...
Apr 19, 2019•45 min
So now we know: Amazon is listening to our conversations. Some of its staff are told to listen in to what we tell the Amazon Echo to do. The company has been very secretive about this. But after a Bloomberg story delved into it, the company admitted that it listens to a small percentage of voice recordings to help its artificial intelligence figure out things like accents better. But that’s not all the workers hear. Some say that they have picked up disturbing things, like assaults. But they’re ...
Apr 12, 2019•46 min
This week, we split the podcast into two segments: an interview with GoFundMe chief executive Rob Solomon and an audience with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on his visit to Dublin. While the 34-year-old billionaire was careful in his engagement with Irish journalists during the week, he did agree to talk for a few minutes. Adrian heard what Mark Zuckerberg is thinking on the issues of using Facebook as a tool for election interference, privacy in Europe, harmful content and why Facebook wants...
Apr 05, 2019•27 min
Apple’s big screen adventure (on a little screen) Why is Apple launching a TV and movie service? And will it be any good? This week, Adrian and Daragh O’Brien of Castlebridge wonder whether Apple can make it in Hollywood against the likes of Netflix, Disney and HBO. They also ask what the future is for old-fashioned linear TV broadcasters like RTE and BBC — will they essentially become the channels of sport, news and talent shows? And the two look at another prominent issue in Ireland this week:...
Mar 29, 2019•37 min
This week’s €1.5bn EU fine against Google for shutting rivals out of its online ad system begs the question: is Google too big? Should it be broken up? And if so, what about Facebook and Amazon? In the US, this is exactly what Democratic US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is proposing. But is it feasible? And what would it mean in terms of services? To discuss the practical and legal considerations around this, Adrian is joined by Philip Andrews, the head of the EU & Competition Law ...
Mar 22, 2019•38 min
One of the roles for 5G is to connect self-driving cars. But before that happens, this generation of cars is currently being linked up to 4G networks for safety, upgrade and entertainment purposes. This week, Adrian talks to Barry Napier whose Cubic Telecom is one of Europe’s main providers of mobile connectivity to cars and other everyday things we use. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 15, 2019•27 min
So Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be a ‘privacy first’ company. Totally expected, right? This week, Adrian and Castlebridge founder Daragh O’Brien dig down into Mark Zuckerberg‘s new corporate mission to see whether it holds water. They discuss the chances — or not — of Facebook being allowed by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner to make messages from Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger ‘interoperable’, as Zuckerberg sets out. And they look at what Ireland’s new Online Safety Commi...
Mar 08, 2019•48 min
What's it like being Facebook's policeman? This week, Adrian sits down for an in-depth chat with Helen Dixon, Europe's most powerful data protection commissioner. They talk about Facebook, her approach and what exactly it takes for her office to kick off a probe. Helen has some surprising revelations, such as her office's recent look at whether Facebook is secretly recording us through our phones (and what they found). Adrian also asks Helen whether GDPR is causing endless pop-ups on websites th...
Mar 01, 2019•49 min
Adrian sits down with a German artificial intelligence expert to talk about why Europe isn’t doing AI right. In particular, Dr Stefan Heumann argues that member states and the European Union need to start taking AI seriously as a concerted effort if Europe is to compete with China and the US. Dr Heumann is a member of the management board of Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV), a non-profit think tank working at the intersection of technology and public policy in Germany. Adrian spoke to him at th...
Feb 22, 2019•35 min
After a very big week of broadband announcements in Ireland, Adrian sits down with the person promising the most radical plan. Imagine boss Sean Bolger says that his wireless broadband company will build a new national network to connect over 1m homes, including 400,000 of the 540,000 rural homes currently earmarked under the National Broadband Plan. This, he says, will be done by building hundreds of sites (such as masts) around the country, which will deliver the service to antennae on rural h...
Feb 15, 2019•24 min
You started a company. You sold it for over €60m. Now you’re going back to start something new from scratch. The question is: why? Why get back into the trenches and try to prove yourself all over again? “It's the struggle, the fight. It's pulling together the most talented people to do their respective jobs and having that team become greater than the sum of their parts.” That’s Alan Coleman, the Dubliner who sold homegrown telecoms billing company Britebill for a fortune in 2016. He’s back wit...
Feb 08, 2019•48 min
This week, a double-header: one of Ireland’s best known venture capitalists talks money, while a tutor for beginners discusses what we need to know. Adrian catches up with entrepreneur and Draper Esprit financier Brian Caulfield to talk about the state of things for funding and company-building in Ireland today. Then he meets Aisling Mackey, Ireland’s ‘computer tutor’ to talk about some of the skills that we should brush up on. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Feb 01, 2019•44 min
How relevant are colleges? This week, Adrian sits down with the president of Dublin City University, Prof Brian MacCraith, to talk what universities do well and what they struggling with. Adrian asks Prof MacCraith why Irish universities keep slipping down the international ratings. He also asks about the possible introduction of a student loan system or higher fees for richer students, two things long recommended to keep Irish universities afloat but which no political party here will accept. T...
Jan 25, 2019•45 min
Podcast host Adrian Weckler has been writing columns saying that web shopping — and Amazon in particular — is seriously altering the fortunes of offline retailers and the future of the ‘high street’. But the head of one of Ireland’s biggest retail chains, Harvey Norman’s Blaine Callard, thinks this is baloney. This week, Adrian invites Blaine on to tell him why. Blaine tells him that empty spaces in high streets and run down shopping centres are a misreading of the data and have more to do with ...
Jan 18, 2019•1 hr 4 min
In the wake of a Huawei executive arrested for spying in the EU, do western countries face a threat to their national security from Chinese telecom and tech companies? Or is the current controversy over who builds 5G networks being infused with scaremongering and paranoia by US politicians and commentators? Adrian sits down with Declan Ganley, the long-time Irish telecoms executive who claims that China has a military-industrial ethos which threatens western security. Adrian puts it to Declan th...
Jan 11, 2019•1 hr 19 min
It’s arguably the most talked-about tech question of our time – is Facebook listening to your physical conversations to serve you ads? An increasing number of people are convinced that this is the case. To take a technical and ethical dive into the issue, Adrian is joined by three people who are deeply knowledgeable about the science, marketing and cultural tech behind what it would all entail. Facebook ad expert Damien Mulley doesn’t believe it’s happening and explains why. Dr Patricia Scanlon,...
Jan 04, 2019•57 min
From the demise of Facebook among younger people to the death of DSLR cameras and Amazon’s destruction of high street retail, Adrian looks at what to expect in the year ahead. He’s joined by Patrick Walsh, founder of the coworking space, Dogpatch Labs in Dublin. Along the way, they also discuss why people are turning off traditional offices and whether alternatives, such as Ludgate and Republic Of Work in Cork, Portershed in Galway and HQ in Tralee will mop up the business of hosting growing tec...
Dec 28, 2018•43 min
Is audio a missed opportunity for newspapers? A bold young Irish startup, NOA, has struck deals with publishers such as Bloomberg, the New York Times and the FT to create a new audio news service from those publications’ daily news stories. The idea, according to NOA’s Gareth Hickey and Shane Ennis, is to create a ‘Spotify for News’. Adrian chats about the idea and wonders about what kind of audio delivery might work best. Inevitably, he slips into a few impressions of well-known radio and adver...
Dec 21, 2018•33 min
Phones, smartwatches, hifi, tablets, laptops – Adrian goes through some of the best tech to get over Christmas and recaps on what has impressed during the year. He’s joined by up-and-coming creative Jake McCabe, a hifi and video expert who dabbles in all things tech. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dec 14, 2018•57 min
