The Big Tech Show

2021 saw a number of winners and losers in the world of technology. From NFTs, a venture capital boom and 5G expansion to cybersecurity woes and folding phones, it was an eventful year both here in Ireland and internationally. But what soared and what stank? Adrian and Vizlegal CEO Gavin Sheridan pick the winners and losers in the tech year that was.

You walk up to a shop counter and put your milk, bread and paper on the counter. How do you pay? With cash? A card? Your phone? Or even your watch? Is it easy to do these things? Should it be easier? What's coming down the line? And how can Ireland establish itself as somewhere that leads in this area rather than follows years after everyone else? To find out more, Adrian is joined by Elaine Deehan, Ireland Country Manager at Starling Bank and Paul Sweetman, director of Financial Services Ireland, which is part of Ibec.

How hard is it to make a living out of becoming a YouTuber or an Instagram influencer? Is there a minimum number of followers you need? Do you have to pick a good niche? How many people actually make it? Last week, YouTube revealed that there are now over 70 Irish YouTubers with more than 1m subscribers and over 450 Irish people with more than 100,000 subscribers. In this week's podcast, Adrian is joined by two full time Irish professional social media personalities to talk about the nuts and bolts of how to make a living out of it. Brian MacManus is the creator of the Real Engineering and Real Science YouTube channels, with almost 4m subscribers. Clare Cullen is a former YouTube Ambassador to Ireland and host of the video podcast 'Storytime With Clisare'. She has 120,000 YouTube subscribers and over 30,000 Instagram followers.

Stuck for a Christmas tech gift idea? Thinking about something fitness-related? Or headphones? Or just a stocking filler? We've got you covered. From gifts for high rollers to penny-pinchers, Adrian is joined by Mark Kavanagh, tech writer for Irish Daily Star and IrishMirror.ie

Last week, Star Trek fans were given the bad news that its Star Trek Discovery series is being removed from Netflix, with all past and future episodes only available on yet another streaming platform -- Paramount Plus. Will we just accept this and subscribe to yet another platform? Or are we reaching overload? This week, Adrian calculates that his monthly TV streaming outlay is now €62, rising to €142 when Sky and Sky Go are included. But are Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV Plus and all the rest just the beginning? And what are the streaming platforms doing to television and movies? To discuss it, Adrian is joined by Steve McCormack, Reflektor Media CEO and a producer on TV shows such as Fade Street, Screen Producers Ireland's Anthony Muldoon and journalist Jennifer Gannon.

How old do you need to be to start a tech company that investors will take seriously? 25? 23? 20? Today we talk to a couple of young Irish tech founders who are making waves at a very young age. Greg Tarr is 18 and the CEO and founder of an artificial intelligence firm called Inferex. Having won this year's BT Young Scientist competition, Tarr received six-figure job offers and dropped out of secondary school. He is now skipping college (because it's “a waste of time”) to focus on his firm, which has already raised €1.25m. Adrian also speaks to Sean Finnegan, who is 20 and is currently raising money for his e-receipt software company, Receipt Relay.

It's 20 years into the future. Robots are cleaning our beaches and rivers.Advanced technology lets us mine asteroids and collect materials on the moon. And while tech trillionaires enjoy the greatest concentration of wealth in human history, advanced countries now give a universal basic income to all citizens, eliminating poverty and allowing people to focus more on jobs they'd much prefer to do. Sound like a fantasy? Not to our guest this week, the futurist Brett King. Together with Dr Richard Petty, he has written a new book called The Rise Of Techno Socialism — How Inequality, AI and Climate will usher in a new world. He tells Adrian about what he thinks will happen in the coming years, and why.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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, technical and scientific questions, Adrian is joined this week by Dr Mark Mitchison, recently appointed as assistant professor in quantum science at Trinity College Dublin.

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? Adrian is joined by three experts in their field — Instagram makeup influencer Niamh Martin (‘Nima Brush'), YouTuber Clare Cullen (‘Clisare') and Irish Independent columnist Tanya Sweeney.

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 other countries if the 12.5pc rate is uniformly introduced? How important is it relative to other infrastructural issues here?

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 context of QR codes.

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 monthly fees when it only delivers a fraction of fibre's speed? Adrian is joined in discussion by Rory Fitzpatrick, CEO of the National Space Centre and Brian Flanagan, a retired business consultant who has been testing Starlink's service from his home in Blackrock, County Dublin.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 first tweet via NFT and the growing prominence of Ireland's own Kevin Abosch, who has sold over €1m in NFT digital art in the last month. What exactly do you own when you buy a piece of art via NFT? What's to stop someone simply copying it at the click of a button? And where does it all fit in to the growth of crypto-currencies and blockchain? The two also look at the IPO of Coinbase and ask whether it's worth the extraordinary valuation.

“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 rust-belt city in a high-tax state (New York). The two discuss everything from incentives to tax rates and what startups should really do to get some funding and connections in place.

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.

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.

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.

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 Bill McCabe-backed WellAir. The two talk about survivability, tech marketing, retail, identities and a host of other topics. The Big Tech Show is in association with Sky Broadband.

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 also talk about player bans, competing with TV stations and why US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) sometimes uses the platform to communicate. For more visit the Big Tech Show page: www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-big-tech-show/ The Big Tech Show is in association with Sky Broadband.

This week's guest is Helen Dixon, Europe's most powerful tech regulator. She and Adrian talk about Facebook, Whatsapp, fines, Brexit, data rights and a whole host of other things. Among the revelations are that Whatsapp will not be sharing more data with Facebook in the EU anytime soon. Helen Dixon says that there has “been no progress” between Facebook and the Irish regulator on seeking allowance for Facebook to integrate Whatsapp with Facebook in a closer way, as it is poised to do in the US. The tech giant has been trying for years to find a way to make more money out of its subsidiary, which has tighter privacy controls than the tech giant's main social platform. But Ms Dixon's office has steadfastly refused to allow cross-sharing of data across the EU, citing a lack of satisfactory explanation from Facebook around the legal basis of the data sharing. “I don't doubt that Facebook hasn't given up on the idea of the data sharing,” she said. “But nonetheless, there has been no progress in terms of WhatsApp convincing the DPC that as the controller of the data of users of WhatsApp, it should share it with Facebook. And they've made no substantive approach to us. So it really hasn't progressed. There's no sharing of EU user data between the controllers.” Last month, Whatsapp saw 20m users leave for rival messaging apps when it informed users outside the EU that they needed to agree to Whatsapp sharing more account information with Facebook for the ultimate purpose of cross-service advertising. Helen Dixon is talking to Adrian on the same day that her office published its annual report, outlining several investigations and data breach statistics. For more visit the Big Tech Show page: https://www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-big-tech-show/ The Big Tech Show is in association with Sky Broadband.

This week, Adrian sits down with Carolan Lennon to talk through some of the major issues failing Eir. It's been a tricky few months for the company, which has attracted white hot criticism over its customer service levels during the pandemic. It's also been a successful period in other ways, with its GoMo budget service hoovering up an unusual number of customers (250,000) in just a year, forcing the hand of rivals Three (48) and Vodafone (Clear Mobile). Adrian goes through the topics, including a personal hobby horse: why operators here persist with the term “unlimited data” when fair use limits still apply.

Escooter rental firms are lining up to launch here: at least five firms have declared their intention to do so. This week, Adrian sits down with Lawrence Leuschner, the founder and CEO of Europe's biggest firm — Tier. It operates in 90 European cities and wants to launch here. Adrian asks the questions that many will have: where will they be parked? How much will they cost to hire? And will we see ads urging us to ‘ride'? Tier joins others in looking at a launch in Ireland after Communications Minister Ryan said he plans to remove the requirement for tax, insurance and a driver's licence. Instead of motorbikes, escooters are to be reclassified as ‘powered personal transporters'.

This week, Adrian chats with LetsGetChecked founder and CEO, Peter Foley. The €100m Dun Laoghaire startup tests for dozens of different conditions and illnesses, from cancer to sexual health issues. Adrian and Peter discuss testing airline passengers, a new lab in Dublin and being snubbed by the Irish government. But they also talk about Peter's plan to test DNA profiles as its next service. The company is considering a saliva swab test that would contribute to a ‘Book Of You' concept. The aim would be to get a better idea about what kind of illnesses you might be more susceptible to. The company could then set up a schedule of screening tests that you'd receive automatically, almost like service notifications.

Bitcoin's price has been rallying in recent weeks, but can it stay at this level? Or will it crash as it has so many times before? Adrian talks to cryptocurrency veteran Lory Kehoe, now in a new position as director of digital assets and blockchain with BNY Mellon, the huge international bank. Kehoe explains what's behind Bitcoin's current rise and makes an argument that it is institutional movement on cryptocurrency — rather than a mob on Reddit — that is driving crypto's long term rise in value. For these reasons, he believes that it will continue to rise in value. The two also discuss the mentality of ‘hodlers', who hold on to their cryptocurrency no matter what.

This month, a small group of employees in Google's US headquarters joined a union. Even though it was a relatively tiny number - just 400 out of 125,000 employed worldwide - it caused a stir. A union in a high-tech company? Weren't unions supposed to be on the decline? Aren't tech firms supposed to be enlightened, high-paying workplaces where there isn't any need for unions? In Ireland, unions are rare in tech companies. But they're not unknown.Apple, for example, has a number of Siptu members in Cork, linked to its original industrial activity of manufacturing computers there. HP, Ericsson and IBM have historically had some union membership. This week, Adrian talks to the assistant secretary general of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Owen Reidy, about whether unions are a realistic prospect for big tech firms in Ireland.

holds Adrian's guest this week is Conor Pierce, Samsung's Irish-born corporate vice president for the UK and Ireland. The two discuss the launch of the Galaxy S21 as well as what we might see in the coming years. Samsung has its own ideas about this, having just released a new 110-inch television and a home help robot.