The Big Tech Show Irish Independent

Have you ever been tempted to get into meme stocks? Have you heard of friends making or losing money on Gamestop stocks? Or is the whole thing just a giant ponzi scheme? Adrian is joined on The Big Tech Show this week by chief investment officer and senior portfolio manager at Gresham House Ireland, Derek Heffernan. A meme stock is a stock that gains popularity among retail investors through social media. The popularity of meme stocks is generally based on internet memes shared among traders, on platforms such as Reddit. Investors in such stocks are often young and inexperienced investors. Examples of some memestocks are Gamestop, AMC, Nokia and Bed Bath and Beyond. Derek says that memestocks became popular in 2021 because people were sitting at home, furloughed, with more disposable income and they began betting on those stocks. You can listen to the full episode here on the Irish Independent website or wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Where have all the late-night cafes gone? What's the alternative for a non-drinker? And what impact is it having on newly minted tech startups? On The Big Tech Show this week, Adrian is joined by assistant producer, JJ Clarke. In Adrian’s most recent article, he laments the disappearing cafe culture in Dublin and how they were a useful place to go or meet people, early or late if you didn’t want to go to a pub. There are very few cafes today, that open later than 11pm or do business before 6am. When asked what effect this may have on the budding tech entrepreneurs of today. Adrian pointed to Foursquare cofounders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. They divided much of their early coding time between a handful of Manhattan cafes, which was partly connected to them creating a ‘mayor’ feature for the social check-in platform. He made the point that tech founders who want to meet or collaborate in 2024 have nowhere to do so. You can listen to the full episode here on the Irish Independent website or wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Irish tech industry grabbed its popcorn when Intercom co-founder and CEO, Eoghan McCabe, posted a thumbs-up photo with Donald Trump, endorsing the recently-convicted ex-president. McCabe isn’t alone. Across Silicon Valley, there’s a clear drift of senior figures toward Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How can we deal with no-shows in healthcare? Does it impact patient wait times? And can AI receptionists improve attendance? On The Big Tech Show this week, Adrian is joined by Spryt, chief operations officer and co-founder, Neill Dunwoody. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What’s the latest from Apple’s WWDC conference? Is user data still a priority? And why did they go big on AI? On The Big Tech Show this week, Adrian joins the show from Cupertino, California at Apple's WWDC conference. Joining him on the episode are tech industry analysts from CCS Insight, Leo Gebbie and Ben Wood.  The big news from the conference is that the tech giant has done a deal with Open AI. It’s essentially acknowledged that its own research and training models are limited. Contingent on user permission, Open AI will be able to reach into apple products and support the user in some core functions. Adrian was particularly impressed by Siri. Now it's more of a device assistant than a voice assistant. It can access your messages, emails, photos. Apple calls this a semantic index which isn’t used singularly but can help with everyday tasks.  Great pains were taken to underscore how private the new cloud setup used for its AI purposes. It uses what was described as an almost blockchain-like process. When the user asks AI a question or inputs some information, the data is anonymised, your IP address is masked and not tracked.  You can listen to the full episode here on the Irish Independent website or wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What are the telltale signs of a Revolut scam? How can we avoid them? And is the app a safe place for your money? On The Big Tech Show this week, Adrian is joined by security expert and chief information security officer at Waystone, Conor Flynn. The problem of financial scams has become an issue for Irish banking customers recently, with an upsurge in fraud cases for Revolut users. The Banking and Payments Federation says that fraudsters stole about 100 million euro through frauds and scams last year. However that was from customers of AIB, Bank of Ireland and permanent TSB and didn’t include fraudulent activity on Irish Revolut accounts. Conor highlighted to Adrian that a typical Revolut scam will have certain features. They will purport to be Revolut, a family member or close friend and will create a sense of urgency to send them money. The cyber security expert warns that scammers use social engineering to get you to operate quickly and in response to an emergency trigger of some sort. You can listen to the full episode here on the Irish Independent website or wherever you get your podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.