Who is going to protect Ireland’s subsea cables?

Valentia island, off the coast of Kerry, has a long association with transatlantic cables, including the weather reports which determined D-Day in June 1944. In October, it will host will be a timely symposium on subsea cable security. This piece was published on March 28th, 2024.

Built in 1702, the Bridge Tavern in Wicklow still stands beside the bridge connecting the town to the harbour, over the Vartry river. By the early 1800s, Wicklow was an important port and the tavern was run by James and Anne Halpin.

The Halpins had 13 children, three of whom became ships’ masters. James’s older brother George modernised much of Dublin Port and is considered the “father” of our lighthouse service, renovating 15 lighthouses and constructing a further 53 around our coasts.

Robert Halpin, James and Anne’s youngest, left home in March 1847 at the height of the Great Famine and, at just 11, joined the crew of a Canadian lumber cargo ship. His father died the following October. By 22, Robert was a captain on shipping routes from Liverpool to India and South America. In June 1865, he was appointed first officer of the Great Eastern.

The end of Science Foundation Ireland

I served on the Board of SFI in its early years at the start of the millennium. Minister Simon Harris, now our “TikTok Taoiseach”, has ruled that it should no longer continue in its present form.

This piece was published on March 7th 2024.

As a young PhD student at Virginia Tech. in 2008, Georgette Yackman was told by her professor: “You’re one person. One person can’t change the world”. She, however, proceeded to build her doctorate by proposing extending the multidisciplinary and integrated teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), to also include arts (STEAM). Today, many educational professionals and strategists worldwide have adopted Yackman’s advocacy.

Meta: announces dividend BUT…..

IMHO Meta has very significant challenges ahead, despite an apparent stronger fiscal control. This was published in the Irish Times on 22nd February last.

Meta’s stock price has now risen by 420 per cent since its seven-year low in November 2022, including a 20 per cent rise alone since the start of this month, after its most recent earnings results. Some 96 per cent of Meta’s revenue is advertising.

L4S – improving latency across the internet

This was published by the Irish Times on February 8th last.

An unfortunate truth of road improvement schemes is the resulting increased efficiency merely accelerates traffic into the next bottleneck.

Many roads alternate clot and flow, shaped just like the proverbial string of sausages. Frequent traffic lights and roundabouts do slow road traffic and improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. But the staccato of relentless start and stop increases driving stress and literally wastes energy in accelerating and then slowing each multitonne vehicle.

The internet is rather similar. You might have a very nice 25 Mbps broadband service to your home, or a healthy 5G connection to your smart device. However, there are usually numerous bottlenecks on the journey data undertakes between you and the far side of the internet for whatever the remote website, streaming service or other cloud software you are using. Sure, you might be able to upgrade perhaps to a 100 Mbps service from your favourite internet provider, but that will only accelerate your traffic into the first bottleneck on its odyssey. The Stillorgan dual carriageway does a similar fine job in efficiently delivering traffic to the back of the endless queue into the narrow conduit through Donnybrook.

Huawei’s recovery and Ren Zhengfei

Huawei has made a remarkable recovery since the US clampdown. The founder, Ren Zhengfei, is an an extraordinary entrepreneur. This was published by the Irish Times on January 24th.

Starting in 1972, UNIDO (a United Nations agency) hosted a series of training courses in Shannon on national strategies for export processing zones. In 1980 eight Chinese led by Jiang Zemin, a senior vice-minister, attended as part of a six-nation global tour of special economic zones.

Returning to China, Jiang persuaded the Premier, Deng Xiaoping, to commence a special zone in Shenzhen, at the time a small regional city of about 300,000. By the millennium Shenzhen had grown to more than 4 million, of which 70 per cent were workers.

In 1987 a 43-year-old engineering manager, Ren Zhengfei, was attracted by the incentives available and so decided to found his start-up in Shenzhen. As a student Ren had survived a famine in his home province of Guizhou, and subsequently the challenges of the Cultural Revolution.

Avaticians – the rise of the political avatars

This was my first piece of 2024, published in the Irish Times on January 11th.

Since I published it, avaticians are becoming a “thing” in India’s elections, see this Al-Jazeera article from February 20th.

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Politicians and leaders have frequently used body doubles throughout history. One of the most celebrated Irish cases was that of George Brendan Nolan of Ballinasloe.

As a child, he emigrated to New York with his mother, but returned to Dublin in 1921 at the age of 17 and joined the Abbey Theatre. He also became a courier and then doppelgänger for the revolutionary leader Michael Collins, before fleeing back to the US via Canada with a British bounty on his head.

Nolan adopted the new name George Brent. He proceeded to conquer Broadway and Hollywood, appearing in 88 films, 11 of which teamed him up with Betty Davis with whom he had a steamy two-year affair amid his five marriages. A licensed pilot, he largely avoided using a double for his screen stunts.

Nevertheless, stand-in doubles have been routine in Hollywood. Digitisation and computer-generated imagery are not only making stunts even more spectacular but completely replacing the need for human actors with fully animated avatars in scenes from, for example, the Marvel superhero movies, Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.

Nvidia – and its Irish foundations :-)

This was published by the Irish Times on December 28th last. It was interesting to find the Irish links back to the Californian gold rush of the 1850s..

In a frothy market, the shrewd opportunist will sell soap and wands to blow bubbles. Turkish flower exporters capitalised on the 17th-century Dutch tulipmania; Lehman Brothers and other banks created “collateralised debt obligations” to fuel the housing boom in the mid-2000s, while simultaneously Cisco drove computer networking equipment to accelerate the internet bubble before the dotcom crash.

Then there was the first Californian millionaire Sam Brannan, whose Waterford-born father Thomas had emigrated to Portland Maine in 1775. Learning of the discovery of gold at Sutters Mill in 1848, Sam Brannan bought up as much prospecting equipment as he could find.

Then, opening the only specialist store for gold diggers, he reportedly catalysed the Californian gold rush by striding the San Francisco streets shouting “gold, gold, gold from the American river!”

Today, US chip maker Nvidia is successfully leveraging a market frenzy.

Drones and the Ukraine war

This was published by the Irish Times on December 14th last.

As winter has set in across Ukraine, and after an extreme storm battered the Black Sea region, social media clips and commentators are drawing parallels to the nightmarish trench warfare of the western front during the first World War. Deep slush and snow has made moving heavy battlefield equipment nearly impossible, and so confrontations are reduced to soldiers making forays on foot.

Both Russian and Ukrainian military bloggers describe the trenches infested with mice and rats – “some as big as an AK-47″ – spreading disease and damaging equipment cables, attracted by the relative warmth from the freezing conditions, food scraps and all the human detritus from an appalling war.

Airloom Energy – a novel wind turbine technology

I wrote this after the announcement by Airloom of their investment by Bill Gates. The piece was published in The Irish Times on 30th November.

The wind energy market is a very strange paradox. On the one hand, wind energy is almost universally accepted as a critical pillar to decarbonise the planet. It enjoys the stability of long-term policies and commitment by governments worldwide.

On the other hand, the entire wind energy industry seems to be in a deep crisis, with cancelled projects, financial losses and diminishing investor support. Industry observers note rising interest rates, materials costs and challenging issues across the industry’s supply chains.

Kitchen Robots

Being The Irish Times “Food Month”, I wrote this article for their edition of 16th November last..

Juanelo Turriano, an Italian clockmaker and inventor, served as the Court Clock Master and later as Matemático Mayor to the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V. When the emperor retired to the San Yuste monastery in 1555, about 200km west of Madrid, Turriano accompanied him.