Weekend takeaway: 10 essential tech reads to take with you

12 Aug 2016

Don't miss: Apple data centre approved for Athenry; innovative bright young things; Ireland at heart of IoT revolution

Ten nuggets of knowledge to take away for the weekend, including: Apple data centre approved for Athenry; innovative bright young things; Ireland at heart of IoT revolution.

1. Apple’s €850m Athenry data centre finally gets green light

Irish planning body An Bord Pleanála has given the green light to Apple’s €850m data centre in Galway, originally announced in February 2015 but delayed by a series of objections.

2. 5 inspiring young people shining bright on the road to 2030

As UNESCO celebrates International Youth Day 2016, we look back on the Future Leaders from Inspirefest and ask these bright young stars to shine a light on the road ahead.

3. EntAnon to give start-ups extra €5k if they get CSF funding grant

Irish start-ups who are members of Entrepreneurs Anonymous (EntAnon) and who successfully apply for Competitive Start-up Fund finance from Enterprise Ireland will receive a €5,000 investment from the group.

4. Irish start-up Davra is winning the Battle of the IoT Platforms in US

If you think about the iconic US yellow school bus, well picture entire fleets of such buses in New York, Oklahoma and Texas connected to the internet of things to monitor safety and security all thanks to a feisty young Irish start-up called Davra Networks.

5. Mary Moloney on how CoderDojo became a worldwide phenomenon

Mary Moloney is moving on from her role as CEO of CoderDojo following a period of impressive growth for the social enterprise. Claire O’Connell caught up with her.

6. 8 young researchers on course to change the future

Eight researchers took to the ResearchFest stage at this year’s Inspirefest, and if their research ideas prove fruitful, they could drastically change our futures for the better.

7. Wireless hack can unlock and start 100m Volkswagen vehicles

A team of researchers at the University of Birmingham has revealed a vulnerability that allows hackers to unlock and start the ignition of potentially hundreds of millions of Volkswagen vehicles using cheap radio equipment.

8. Trinity College Dublin connects into LoRa global internet of things alliance

Trinity College Dublin is the first Irish university to join the LoRa Alliance, an international organisation encouraging the rapid deployment of the internet of things.

9. Hubble finds two dwarf galaxies heading for the ‘big city’

NASA’s most consistently entertaining space mission, the Hubble Space Telescope, has just discovered two isolated tiny dwarf galaxies heading for a ‘big city’ cluster of galaxies.

10. Twitter: where Donald Trump and Zapp Brannigan collide

Billy West, the voice actor behind Futurama star Zapp Brannigan, has been trawling through the various infamous Donald Trump quotes of recent years. The results are fun.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com