Web Summit case amasses millions of documents, a Mastodon stampede and the smart kitchen

Fourteen million documents have been collected in preparation for the hearing of a bitter dispute concerning the affairs of the Web Summit technology events company, the High Court has heard. The documents will now have to be reviewed, to ascertain their relevancy or otherwise, after which discovery will be exchanged between the sides with the effect the proceedings have been put back to next April. Mary Carolan has the details.

Two weeks ago, the only people who had heard of Mastodon were those interested in online technology (or confused heavy metal fans or palaeontologists). Then Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter, widely seen as the most important online public square. Karlin Lillington looks at the rise of an alternative social media platform.

The value of personal loans drawn down from Irish banks surged 11.2 per cent in value on the year in the third quarter this year, driven by consumers splashing out on holidays, special occasions such as weddings and education, as the economy continued to recover from the worst of the pandemic. Joe Brennan reports.

Resident sage Cantillon comes down on the side of Facebook et al staying in Dublin for the long haul and ponders the return to profitability of Ryanair and Aer Lingus.

C&C’s problems don’t go away with McMahon’s departure

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Don’t put off planning for retirement

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Datalex report must pave way for company to deal with 18% Desmond loans

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Housing Commission’s analysis of the crisis paints a mammoth challenge but falls down on one glaring contradiction

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Class Medical has won the Innovation of the Year award at the annual Irish Times Innovation Awards, which were held in Dublin on Wednesday. The company, which was spun out of the University of Limerick, has designed and implemented a quality safety tool for urinary catheterisation to prevent injury. Kevin O’Shiel, Class Medical’s chief executive officer said: “This award may help attract the interest of the top decision makers in the industry and community. It elevates things for us to a whole new level in terms of rolling the product out for the future.”

For Irish company Fresco, the heart of the smart home is the smart kitchen. The company started life in 2012 as Drop with a mission to make perfect cooking simple. Its Drop scale, released in 2014, was an initial foray into this world, guiding aspiring chefs through the cooking process step by step via the scale and the accompanying app, coaxing even the most inept cook into creating a meal or two. Ciara O’Brien reports.

“Preventative health is not just about wearable devices or tracking calories or steps. It’s about delivering scientific wellness that gives people a baseline from which to improve their health and wellbeing naturally,” says Jonathan Amm founder of Cork-based Wild Atlantic Health, which has developed a series of home test kits and supplements to address the problem of nutritional deficiencies. Olive Keogh reports.

The job losses announced by Meta and Stripe may provide an indication of lay-offs across the tech sector. Our Inside Business podcast analyses the impact of the redundancies, announced over the past week, across the wider Irish economy. After enjoying bumper profits and a surge in recruitment during the pandemic, interest rate rises and the cost of living crisis have finally caught up with the tech giants. But is the crunch merely a recalibration of the sector or a more foreboding warning of global recession?

Vitalik Buterin is famed in the cryptocurrency community as a co-founder of ethereum, now a foundational technology for the blockchains which irreproachably record audit logs of digital transactions. He is now proposing a new application of blockchain technology in which achievements could be unambiguously and irrefutably recognised. Chris Horn has a look.

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