'So Elon Musk is to become a trillionaire, the richest person ever to have lived? Well, no'

Hard to see how Elon Musk becomes a trillionaire, given the targets he’s supposed to hit. eg Tesla sales are going backwards, not forwards. And little sign of realistic robotaxi fleet anytime soon, let along an Optimus humanoid robot www.independent.ie/business/tec...

New podcast mini-series by me on the Masters of the Tech Universe. First one out today: Jensen Huang. His origin story, upbringing, breakthrough moment with Nvidia, what he’s like as a boss and person. Told expertly by FT-shortlisted biographer, @StephenWitt Usual platforms.

Looks like Aer Lingus is getting Starlink next year. Parent firm IAG announced a group-wide deal. BA (sister IAG airline) has already come out to say it will be free for all customers. But no statement from Aer Lingus yet — it makes up to €20 per passenger for wifi access on transatlantic flights

AWS global boss says the tech giant remains “concerned” about future energy source in Ireland. AWS has overlooked/shelved big investment projects in Ireland because of infrastructure. m.independent.ie/business/tec...

Amazon now owns so much of downtown Seattle — around 46 buildings. Almost everything I see around me. (Microsoft is way out of the city, in Redmond.)

One Apple feature that’s hit-and-miss is AirDrop Would love it to just work every time

Was in Pennsylvania when Trump won last year — it was the cost of living. An orange cost $1. His party is being electorally hammered now because of… the cost of living. Oranges still cost (at least) $1

Would AWS ever say ‘no’ to US govt if asked for user data from EU (as per FISA)? “I don't think that AWS can't say no,” senior AWS exec just told me. Not sure that would be the position of the US administration. (Microsoft recently said it wouldn’t be able to resist request.)

AWS CEO Matt Garman just told me he + tech giant are “excited” about landing the cable in Cork. Not sure he means Cork, really, or whether he’s aware of the culture war he’s entering here.

Apple says ‘Live Translation’ will now launch in EU next month. English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean with AirPods Pro 3 (or 2) or AirPods 4 ANC. (Paired with Apple Intelligence-using iPhone.) Delay down to EU’s DMA regs, Apple says

Black Friday sales already? In Ireland? ‘Black Friday’ (Friday after US Thanksgiving) is November 28th. Main stores stopped questionable ‘sales’ practices of pretending a cheaper price on an ancient TV = “discount”. We reported extensively on that — took CCPC years to enforce

3 interesting nuggets from AWS’s new cable (from Cork, prob Roscarbery) 1. No mention of cable-cutting by [insert country] but has to be in thoughts 2. Outage resilient option? Probably 3. AWS is creating a “community fund” to help tackle homelessness and hunger in West Cork (?)

Major new transatlantic data cable to be built from Cork to US. 320 terabits per sec would make it one of the highest capacity across the ocean, bar none. AWS says Cork route (unusual, often Mayo/Dublin) is to help deal with “issues” cabling faces www.independent.ie/business/tec...

ChatGPT dominating AI use in Ireland and Europe — used for almost 5 in every 6 AI web queries Perplexity, Gemini, Claude very far behind — Grok barely registers at all m.independent.ie/business/tec...

Last of the Autumn colour in Dublin

Looking across Dublin. Been like this non-stop the last hour — never seen so many fireworks

Incredible stats here about decline in appeal of US and, especially, UK for high-skilled top talent — the very sort those countries say they specialise in attracting

“I’m looking forward to Twitter going out of business...” Interview with Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales about his (thoughtful) new book, Elon Musk’s toxic legacy, the EU’s “disastrous” new speech rules and missing out on tech billions himself. www.independent.ie/business/tec...

Manna has been refused planning (retention) permission for its drone delivery hub at J6 Blanch/Cknock. Fingal Co Council gave 3 reasons: 1. Noise pollution 2. “Visual clutter” 3. Isn’t “high technology” in the way Council envisages More: www.independent.ie/business/tec...

Social media usage continues to grow, Meta’s latest results suggest. The Facebook and Instagram company now has over 3.5bn daily users

The other week, saw a bunch of teenagers snapping each other with compact cameras rather than their phones. Gen Z appears sick of ‘too perfect’ AI-like phone photos and is going old-school. Imperfect authenticity over Insta-utopia fantasy. They prob have it right?

Price of stolen Irish credit cards has surged 53pc on the dark web Now costs around €8, based on analysis of over 50k stolen cards www.independent.ie/business/tec...

Nvidia hovering around $5tn valuation. Jaysus.

Morning colour on Dublin’s Griffith Avenue

Dermot Desmond, chairman of Glasgow Celtic, in heated personal attack on departing manager Brendan Rodgers www.celticfc.com/news/2025/oc...

Looks like FF and FG fielding unserious candidates for this presidency has its logical outcome. Connolly’s landslide

Up to 400,000 Irish dodgy box home users may soon face direct fines for the first time. Broadcasters here looking to copy Italy, which has a new fine system of €154-€5,000 per user, imposed when subscriber data in seized in police raids on sellers. m.independent.ie/irish-news/d...

Autumn colour from a trip to Michigan last week

Ireland disinformation update: Reddit locked down one of the most-used parts of its platform in Ireland (r/ireland, claiming 1.2m members) due to what moderators called a “wave of new and inactive accounts spreading disinformation and hate speech connected to recent events.”

Over 160k views and 100s of comments/shares on Facebook for series of Al deepfake videos about Irish presidential candidate Catherine Connolly m.independent.ie/business/tec...

Interesting reactions to this. 1. Lots of people here can spot it’s a deepfake 2. Lots don’t realise that a great many people can’t, as seen by large number of credulous comments/shares on FB

We knew this would happen. Note how realistic the visuals and voices are. This AI deepfake video of Catherine Connolly ‘withdrawing’ from presidential contest and that Friday’s poll is ‘cancelled’ is live and viral on Facebook tonight. 1000s watching, commenters believing it.

Smart beds affected by AWS Internet outage — beds literally stuck out of position

Anyone here experience any actual disruption?

Lots of everyday internet services disrupted today due to big AWS outage. Snapchat, Prime, Perplexity, Duolingo, Audible, Ring doorbells etc Mostly US, though some trickling effect into Ireland/EU, too www.independent.ie/business/tec...

Another $500bn — sure why not?

ps Threads recently overtook X in daily usage. Absence of real exchanges with good-faith pol opposites = people leave X

This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky. No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

Q: Why was the person responsible for the Blackwater fish kill never found? A: it wasn’t anybody’s job. I talked to the heads of all the agencies involved in the investigation, about why the biggest pollution event in Irish history fell between the cracks. Listen: 👉 www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

MIT to Trump: ‘no thanks, keep your funding and we’ll remain elite’ MIT became the first university to reject a sweeping proposal from the Trump administration offering colleges funding advantages in exchange for far-reaching campus reforms www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

ESB’s mildly dystopian future

Yesterday, Stripe’s John Collison (gently) challenged Taoiseach Micheál Martin on housing. He used the example of an apartment block in Donnybrook being blocked because the tennis club didn’t like being “overlooked”. It was part of an interesting, frank exchange www.independent.ie/business/tec...

A frank discussion between Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Stripe’s John Collison just now. - T says Trump has “awoken” Europe on defence - T criticised planners for holding things up - T said we can’t fulfill all climate goals cos it polarises society www.independent.ie/business/tec...

Is OpenAI wrecking the tech economy or becoming the industry’s most important company? This week, Sam Altman’s AI giant announced ambitious plans to take over our daily smartphone usage. But it’s creating a trillion-dollar circular tech bubble to fuel it. m.independent.ie/business/tec...

I’ve picked out some steep discounts in Amazon’s two-day sale. Stuff you might have been buying anyway at full price. eg MacBook Air M4 (world’s most popular laptop, rarely on sale) = €270 cheaper. Also iPads, Pixel phones, Sony NC headphones. www.independent.ie/business/tec...

ChatGPT adoption vs Internet adoption (via FT) May be a $ bubble, but people are also really using AI

Bubble? Harvard economist Jason Furman says investments in data centres and software was 92% of US GDP growth in H1 2025. Without it, US GDP growth was just 0.1% fortune.com/2025/10/07/d...

“Littered with errors including three nonexistent academic references and a made-up quote from a Federal Court judgement.” Deloitte issues refund to (Aus) government for using AI in $440k report