Author: Toby Shapshak

They did it. They finally made a Lego Tintin rocket. Fans the world over are rejoicing. I’m one of those fans, and I am thrilled that two of my childhood joys have been smushed together (with much care and planning, I imagine). I will gladly pay the R3,200 for the Lego Tintin Moon Rocket when it turns up locally next month. It’s currently up for pre-order and already listed as ‘Hard to Find’. It’s frankly astounding that there hasn’t been a tie-up sooner between such iconic brands, both so beloved by children (and adults). Some of my happiest memories involve reading Tintin (and Asterix)…

Followers of science fiction movies – or just Arnold Schwazeneggar fans – know that the dominant theme for devastation is when the humans give the machines control of the weapons of mass destruction. In the Terminator movies, it’s Skynet, which “saw all humans as a threat; not just the ones on the other side” and “decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination”. In The Matrix, after the humans “blacken the sky” so the machines can’t get solar power, they turn to using humans as literal batteries. Whenever humanity gives artificial intelligence (AI) enough intelligence (or their hand on the big red…

Now and then, algorithms have a way of making life better, not worse. As the most high-profile court case against social media unfolds in the USA, showing how disastrous the algorithms that run social media can be, I found myself applauding when it works. Algorithms run our lives – if we let them. But occasionally I find that they can work for us too. I know it’s a highfalutin way to explain it, but I had such an epiphany this week when I got Spotify to play all of the similar songs to my current favourite track, Ride On / Right On by Phosphorescent. Hours of similar music later, and I’m again a fan of…

The first thing that strikes you about the glossy Oura Ring is just how many sensors are packed into it. To miniaturise such technology is impressive. To do it in a device as small as a (slightly) chunky ring is doubly impressive. That it has up to eight days of battery life is trebly so. We’ve been testing the Oura Ring 4 at Stuff for the past month, tracking sleep and exercise every step of the way. Not only does it work, but arguably it is also better than the Apple Watch 10, with eight times more battery life, albeit with no…

Elon Musk has a new vision. No, not that one. A new-new vision. Instead of Mars, he’s now setting his sights on building a base on the moon. He needs this “self-sustaining” base to launch satellites. The same satellites were the data centres in space that were his (old) new vision. It wasn’t that long ago when he also merged SpaceX with the loss-making xAI, which itself “acquired” the loss-making X (formerly known as Twitter). It came in the same week the European Commission raided the offices of #WhatWasOnceTwitter over its lack of content moderation. The latest blatant disregard of privacy came…

Threats against households to register their solar installations by Eskom and some municipalities are “impractical, irrational and unfair”, says the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA). Don’t rush to register your systems, OUTA adds, because of “uncertainty and ambiguity” outlined in the “significant amendments to earlier supposed requirements and deadlines by the authorities”. In other words, don’t panic. Being a homeowner with a career-saving solar system that let my family and me work (and live) through the dark days of #loadshitting, I have been watching this ongoing cluster-flunk with interest for years. There has been a surge in queries to OUTA over “threatening communications from Eskom and certain municipalities, including the City of Johannesburg, demanding registration…

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says This is the text of the Stanford Commencement address by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios. It was delivered on June 12, 2005. I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.…

This has been a triumphant year for the Springboks and coach Rassie Erasmus, who has reinvented the dour kompestamp Bokke into the world’s most exciting attack team, Andy Capostagno tells Toby Shapshak. Would you like Stuff Rugby to do weekly updates on the URC? Please let us know. Andy Capostagno has been talking and writing about South African rugby for more than three decades. He’s been my emotional support person for rugby since I was lucky enough to meet him when I was unexpectedly made the sports editor of the Mail & Guardian newspaper many moons ago. Welcome to Stuff Rugby. Stuff Rugby…

Software is one of the great enablers of this vast information economy we now live in. I use Microsoft Word to write a column, Excel to run my small business, and a host of other now-essential services for email hosting (Gmail), security (Kaspersky), and presentations (Keynote). Not to mention the new growth area of cloud storage (Google wants to upgrade me from 200GB a year to 2TB a month if I want it), proving just how much of our work lives are now thoroughly online. There are some jobs, even industries, that would not exist without the enabling software – especially…

At the glittering launch of a major bank’s new features a couple of years back, the CEO asked me excitedly afterwards: What do you think? I really thought about my answer and replied: “I don’t know who you thought you were talking to, but it wasn’t me (the customer). You were talking to yourself.” I realised he was talking to his own staff in the language they understand, using the catch phrases the bank had recently adopted. I understood what all the big words meant, and the presentation was great, but none of the things being so excitedly talked about…