Author: Toby Shapshak

On the day the diesel price jumped nearly R3, the government finally announced that it would help South Africa’s motor industry transition to building electric vehicles. The diesel increase isn’t hard to view as a cynical move by a government that makes a sweet profit margin on selling this fuel. Diesel, too, is the main source of juice for generators when load shedding happens. This… ‘alternative’ power has become the only way major retailers can keep their fridges cold.  Each litre of diesel carries with it a surcharge for the Road Accident Fund (RAF) – which would only be required if…

Since its launch late last year, ChatGPT has enthralled the world and made generative AI the hottest technology. The excitement is turning into an unexpected revenue boon for its maker OpenAI, which expects to hit $1 billion in annual revenue in the next year. This unicorn number translates into about $80 million a month, reports The Information. Before that 30 November 2022 release, OpenAI pulled in a not-embarrassing $28 million. Now, with users paying $20 (R380) a month for it, ChatGPT is flourishing at bringing home the bacon. There were between 1 million and 2 million paying customers by March,…

When The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow asked a Pentagon official for an interview, his spokesperson replied: “We’ll talk to you if Elon wants us to”. The New Yorker’s blockbuster feature has set tongues wagging around the world as it exposes just how dependent the United States has become on just one man. Call it state capture, Elon Musk style. Iron Man’s Shadow rule Musk has “become inescapable” in the works of NASA, the Department of Defense and Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Current and former officials say they “now treat him like a…

Although Vodacom’s network has the fastest 5G download speeds, MTN still offers the fastest overall speeds in South Africa. This is according to the latest South Africa Mobile Network Experience report from researchers Opensignal for the 90 days from May to July 2023. The latest findings closely resemble those of the firm’s report from earlier this year, although since then it seems the gap has narrowed between MTN and Vodacom with the two sharing more wins across the tested metrics. A mixed bag from South Africa’s networks Vodacom’s network offers the fastest 5G download speed (as it did for the…

Many of us know that awful brain trick called an earworm – when you just can’t get a song (usually a bad one) out of your head. Often, you can’t quite remember what the name of the song is, or who sang it. But now researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to examine someone’s brain waves, as it were, and tell you what it is. Well, create a similar song from the same genre that has the same rhythm and mood and which instruments were used. Yes, really. Don’t rack your brain, make AI do it The researchers created software…

It arrived via WhatsApp. I ignored it at first. Another forwarded video meme from a serial forwarder, I suspected. But when I watched it, despite my initial misgivings, I grew increasingly fond of it. There he was, the indomitable Derek Watts, the fearsome interviewer from Carte Blanche. When he gets out of his car, the car guards run away… He strikes fear into the hearts of the dastardly, he is retribution incarnate, with a TV camera in tow…. Perhaps because I knew Derek Watts and had spoken enough to him when being interviewed by him, or at industry functions, I…

The work from home phenomenon is officially over. Zoom, the video app we all used throughout Covid, has told its workers that they have to work from the office for at least two days a week. The rest of the world has been doing that for at least a year now. Long forgotten are our masks and social distancing, although the habits (and fears) of the pandemic linger on. “We believe that a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams – is most…

The European Union’s wide-ranging Digital Services Act came into effect on 25 August to provide much-needed oversight for “very large online platforms” which the EU defines as having over 45 million users. They now “must apply the new law,” tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We’re bringing our European values into the digital world. With strict rules on transparency and accountability, our Digital Services Act (DSA) aims to protect our children, societies and democracies.” The new DSA laws have far-reaching consequences for the 40 Big Tech firms if they fail to stop abuse, misinformation, propaganda, child porn, vaccine…

The iPad Pro is getting a much-needed update – but only next year. This will coincide with the 10th anniversary of Apple’s market-dominating tablet, writes Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, one of the best commenters on the fruit company. As he points out the iPad Pro is getting its “first major overhaul in half a decade, and it can’t come soon enough”. Not only is the whole tablet in the doldrums, but the iPad lineup is a confusing mess. I spent a few hours earlier this year trying to make sense of the convoluted options. I always buy Apple gear from Incredible,…

Anticompetitive oversight has been ramping up around the world. Lawmakers in the US and the EU have tried to counter the dominance of big tech firms, and in South Africa, too, the matter has received attention — the Competition Commission released its “Online Intermediation Platforms Market Inquiry” report on 31 July after two years of investigation of the companies’ competition behaviour on the internet. Tech giant Google “distorts platform competition”, while e-commerce site Takealot’s marketplace for other sellers is a “conflict of interest”, the report finds. Other findings include: Booking.com “creates a dependency that is used to extract higher commission…