Toby Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff, a Forbes senior contributor and a columnist for the Financial Mail and Daily Maverick. He has been writing about technology and the internet for 28 years and his TED Global talk on innovation in Africa has over 1,5-million views. He has written about Africa's tech and start-up ecosystem for Forbes, CNN and The Guardian in London. He was named in GQ's top 30 men in media and the Mail & Guardian newspaper's influential young South Africans. He has been featured in the New York Times. GQ said he "has become the most high-profile technology journalist in the country" while the M&G wrote: "Toby Shapshak is all things tech... he reigns supreme as the major talking head for everything and anything tech."
I am deliberately writing this on my new iPad Pro, which is balanced on my knees. I am on a mission to see if a pro tablet can replace my laptop. It’s partly experimental, to see if the technology is truly as ready for this as all the people I know who use their iPads as their primary computer. At least one of them runs a bank. Going (iPad) Pro Two years ago, I bought my wife an iPad Pro 12.9-inch, with an Apple Pencil, to see how it would work for her as a lawyer. Some of her colleagues…
Having successfully launched in South Africa, and with an imminent launch in the Philippines, TymeBank is looking for further international expansion. Current SA CEO Tauriq Keeran tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about his transition into group executive for growth projects. Also available on Apple podcasts | Spotify | Google podcasts
Using free public WiFi has its risks, not least other users snooping on your data. It may seem like a convenience, especially while travelling overseas, but you should never use it without a VPN. These virtual private networks create a secure tunnel, as it were, that other users on the same network can’t peer into or access your data. It’s one of the things I use whenever I use any free public WiFi – anywhere. It’s part of the utterly essential cybersecurity checklist we should all follow. We must “prepare our laziness in advance” NordVPN’s Karolis Pabijanskas told Stuff –…
Mark Zuckerberg should be held personally responsible for the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016 that effectively helped elect Donald Trump as US president, says Washington DC’s attorney general Karl Racine. “At all times relevant to the lawsuit, evidence showed Mr Zuckerberg was responsible for and had the clear ability to control Facebook’s day-to-day operations,” Racine said. “This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary, and sends a message that corporate leaders, including chief executives, will be held accountable for their actions.” Racine wants Zuckerberg to pay, and has previously tried to sue the Facebook founder. In May, he charged Zuckerberg with…
A poop emoji. That is what Elon Musk tweeted after CEO Parag Agrawal wrote a thread about “spam” clearly in response to Musk’s contention that Twitter has more than the 5% of fake accounts or bots it claimed in regulatory filings. This follows Musk’s apparent revealing of confidential information (that Twitter randomly selects 100 accounts to survey for bots) and putting his controversial $44 billion takeover “temporarily on hold” over whether the 5% fake accounts is accurate. He has since tweeted he thinks it is more like 20%. Agrawal’s response, he tweeted, would be done “with the benefit of data,…
Co-founder and CEO Katlego Maphai launched Yoco with three friends in October 2015. From a year-long beta with 500 merchants, they are now adding 10,000 new merchants a month. He tells Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about the phenomenal rise of this remarkable mobile payments business, that has now evolved into a payments platform. Read more on Stuff Studios. Also available on Apple podcasts | Spotify | Google podcasts
And then Elon Musk wasn’t buying Twitter. As tech stocks had a torrid week and their share prices slid, Musk tweeted last Friday that the deal was “temporarily on hold”. His reason was “pending details supporting calculation that spam/accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” and tweeted a Reuters article. About two hours later, he tweeted: “Still committed to acquisition.” Clear as mud? Yes. Normal Musk contradictory behaviour? Yes. Likelihood of many turns and/or about-turns? Definitely. Will I still be writing columns about whether Pretoria’s most famous former resident in several months’ time? So what is the reasoning or…
Good cybersecurity is one of the things that everybody should know about and practise. These are the techniques you should adopt immediately, please. Stay safe, over Install security software on your computer and Android smartphone. Right now. I use Kaspersky, which offers a single or multiple-device licence. Make sure you run daily scans and always keep it updated. Update Windows, Android, iOS, or any apps as soon as software updates (often called patches) are available. Hackers use known exploits to crack people’s security, often with ransomware, which would not be possible if the patches were installed to close the vulnerability.…
The Sonos Ray has just been released. We talk about everything Sonos and audio. There are a few secrets we even didn’t know. Have a listen.
Perhaps the biggest talking point at the Oscars — apart from that slap — was the triumph of the streaming platforms. The biggest award of the night, best picture, went to Apple’s Coda, reportedly narrowly beating Netflix’s The Power of the Dog, directed by Jane Campion (who nevertheless won the best-director Oscar). What is noteworthy is how the centre of power has shifted in the movie business, from the traditional studio powerhouses and the cinema complexes that screened them to an alliance between those studios and the streaming platforms that now distribute them. In the TV space, it is as noteworthy a…