Author: Toby Shapshak

How do you get internet access into a war zone? Ask the billionaire South African with his own constellation of internet-providing satellites. That’s precisely what the Ukraine vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, did two days after Russian forces began a “special military operation” – or invasion. Fedorov tweeted Elon Musk on 26 February that “while you try to colonise Mars – Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space – Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations.” Within 10 hours, Musk replied that his Starlink service “is now…

Stuff’s publisher and editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak spoke to HMD Global CEO Florian Seiche while he was in the country. They touch on some of the ways HMD Global and its Nokia devices impact the lives of South Africans and some of the trends currently active in the market. They also discuss the current state of the mobile network in SA and where it’s heading. They reminisce on the history of Nokia and some of the iconic phones from the past. Also available on Apple podcasts | Google podcasts | Spotify

“Is Paul Furber really behind QAnon?” the South African tech community has been asking itself again this week. The world was shocked when the Johannesburg tech journalist was identified in September 2020 in the Replay All podcast as being integral to the origins of the QAnon conspiracy theory. On Sunday, the New York Times answered this question: “Two teams of forensic linguists say their analysis of the Q texts shows that Furber, one of the first online commentators to call attention to the earliest messages, actually played the lead role in writing them.” The newspaper concluded that Furber was one of two possible…

So much for pit latrines being an urgent necessity to get rid of. The government’s latest pie-in-the-sky idea is to give every household 10 gigabytes (GB) of free data every month. Don’t worry about consistent electricity supply or water and sanitation – the ANC has found a new unfulfillable promise to make to the electorate in the hope so staving off its inevitable decline in the 2024 elections. On the plus side, it is a more appropriate strategy for Communications and Digital Technologies minister, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, whose only focus appears to have been doing what the country agreed to have…

On a frosty February morning in Barcelona, then GSMA chairman Rob Conway made the announcement, which immediately elicited a huge cheer from the audience, that the micro-USB standard had been agreed on as the new charger for all cellphones. Just over 13 years ago, every phone manufacturer had their own adaptor – a nightmare scenario where a lost charger was an impending disaster and required a costly replacement. When Conway made this very welcome announcement, all the cellphone makers agreed to use it. BlackBerry had differentiated itself not only with easy email on its rudimentary smartphones by using the standard,…

In 2015 Disrupt Africa began publishing its annual African Tech Startups Funding Report. Since then, says Disrupt co-founder Tom Jackson, African tech startups have seen investments increase by 351% and culminating in a record $2bn in 2021. Half of that “incredible growth” was invested in fintechs, Jackson tells Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. A total of 564 startups raised a $2,148,517,500 in 2021 – more than treble (or 206%) over 2020. Read more on Stuff Studios. Also available on iTunes | Spotify | Google

Easily the most impressive thing about Samsung’s launch of its new high-end smartphones wasn’t a smartphone. The Galaxy S8 Tab Ultra is Samsung’s very clear attempt to take on Apple’s iPad Pro range. These iPads are the ultimate conclusion of the media-consuming tablet that Steve Jobs unveiled a decade ago. They are powerful computers in their own right and have created a previously unknown product category. For the first few years, tablets were a companion device. But as mobile processors have become more powerful and computing has evolved towards a touchscreen as a primary interface, they have become full-fledged computers…

Listening to President Cyril Ramaphosa State of the Nation Address I wondered if this is the year we can take his promises seriously. It was, as usual, filled with all the right pledges and a key admission: “We all know that government does not create jobs. Business creates jobs”. I’m using the quote in full to highlight his first words “we all know”. At least we know that government knows. It hasn’t seemed the case, nor have any of our recent ANC leaders seemed to understand it – not least coal-mining recidivist Gwede Mantashe. The next part is what I…

Facebook’s subscriptions dropped by 1 million,  from 1.93 billion to 1.929 billion and it lost a whopping $230 billion in one day, the biggest in history. Ouch. Just 1 million, out of a total of about 24% of the global population of 7.9 billion. And the market hammered Facebook, now trying to hide from its shame with a rebranding as Meta Platforms. Facebook – this is a column where we call a spade a vertical earth-moving technology innovation – is in big trouble, at last. This 26% plummet for what seems like a seemingly small drop in subscriber numbers, is…

If choosing the new chief justice was up to this lowly technology reporter, Dustin Mlambo would get my vote. Obviously, he has the character and moral authority to be chief justice ­– unlike the intellectual ankle-biters and ethical bottom feeders who “interviewed” him with baseless sexual accusations designed to smear him. But what he said more than anything else that piqued my attention was his comments about the necessary “modernisation” of the judiciary. Modernising the judicial system is one of the most pressing problems in this country, to my mind. The endless delays are maddening and unnecessary. The systems being…