Author: Toby Shapshak

That certainly wasn’t the reception Ferrari was expecting for its new Luce electric vehicle, but then again, that wasn’t what any Ferrari lover was hoping for either.  Instead of the usually low-slung, sleek supercars the Italian brand is known for, it’s produced a soccer-mom family car. With a whopping pricetag of $640,000 (R10,5-million).  There is outrage about the new design, which is a four-door sedan and not something you’d see Magnum driving around in. Maybe an older, settled-down, had-kids Magnum.  I’m always amazed when people have such strong emotions about things that I don’t care about – including cars, football, the firing and hiring of soccer coaches, anything…

Cheslin Kolbe is the latest high-profile Springbok to be lured back home, beefing up the Stormers, who are South Africa’s best prospects for the URC quarter-finals. So too are the Bulls, but Lions v Leinster is the game everyone will be watching. Meanwhile, legendary Bok Naas Botha has a coaching gig in the States. Andy Capostagno tells Toby Shapshak a heart-warming story about Naas in America. 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…

When you type John Ternus into Safari, it automatically capitalises the surname of the new Apple CEO. I found this out by chance this month, as arguably the most prestigious CEO mantle was passed to the 50-year-old head of engineering at the company that pioneered both the personal computer and the smartphone. Known for its beautiful design, it ushered in both of these revolutions, first the PC through the early Macintosh and then the iPhone. Now we have an annual iPhone upgrade cycle. This landmark device – which was not just the first smartphone but the first that used touchscreens…

Elon Musk has spectacularly lost his lawsuit against OpenAI in what was described as “the worst defeat possible,” a “crushing defeat”, and a “major blow to Musk’s credibility.” Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for $150 billion, claiming it had illegally morphed from being a not-for-profit to a highly lucrative start-up expected to list sometime this year for an expected $1 trillion. He made a claim in court that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman were guilty of “stealing a charity”. In the end, the nine-person jury only took two hours to come back with a verdict that Musk had let too much time…

With 18-year-old Zekhethelo Siyaya invited to the Springbok camps, coach Rassie Erasmus shows how far and wide he casts his eye, Andy Capostagno tells Toby Shapshak. The alignment camp announced five weeks before the first Bok game is filled with talented youngsters. 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 on Spotify Stuff Rugby on Apple…

On Tuesday, tickets go on sale for the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia. I plan to purchase two tickets for my son and me next year, the culmination of years of fantasising about it. The idea unsurprisingly germinated when we watched Chasing the Sun on repeat for eight weeks straight during my son’s (slightly) obsessive discovery of the World Cup. He has watched the rugby with me since he was literally a newborn baby. Dreaming of Australia The Springbok games we’ve attended at Loftus and Ellis Park have become an annual tradition. Going to the World Cup has been a…

For 27 years, there was a security bug in OpenBSD, an operating system considered so secure that it’s used widely across the world, that went entirely unnoticed. This open-source software has been scanned millions of times in that time, but this flaw still wasn’t found. Until April of this year. Think of it as the third major breakthrough for artificial intelligence (AI) since the first, the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT on the last day of November 2022. The birth of generative AI, so named because it generates something, has had the world in thrall since. The generated copy reads and sounds…

The best-known and most-loved computer company turned fifty this week. If you can still call Apple a computer company, given how much of its revenue and profit comes from just one device, a little game-changing smartphone called the iPhone. Apple has sold some 3 billion iPhones since it launched in 2007, according to Counterpoint Research, bringing in an estimated $2.3 trillion in revenue. More than anything, this large touchscreen device enabled the mobile world we find ourselves in. Perhaps “super-charged it” is more apt. Android’s rise to be the dominant mobile operating system was built on the early successes of Steve Jobs’ vision to have something so easy to use that…

 At last, the Tintin Lego Rocket has gone on sale in South Africa. An avid Tintin and Lego fan excitedly reported that he had just bought three of the much-anticipated tie-up between these two iconic brands.  No, the fan was not me – but rather a friend whooping that he got there first. I know he has four children, so I assume they are for him and his adult friends.  You can read about my excitement for the set here.  The Lego Tintin Moon Rocket has 1,283 pieces inside and will set you back R3,200. Standing about 30cm high, the top cone…

Nearly 20 years after first renting the auditorium at 56 Main Street in Marshalltown for his then brand-new inner-city education project, Dr Taddy Blecher bought the building. From a fledgling initiative with the lofty aim of educating 100,000 underprivileged children, Blecher and his utterly remarkable Maharishi Invincibility Institute are 25% of the way there. Scaling education to transform Johannesburg “We’ve educated 25,595 young people, 70% of them are women, so we’re now one quarter of the way to our goal,” Blecher said at the launch of a new initiative a few weeks back. “But the most important part is that we…