Author: Toby Shapshak

With rolling blackouts hitting Stage 6, insurance companies have stopped insuring against some Eskom-related claims. But, if your home solar system was installed by someone without the right certification and not registered with the correct authorities, that system isn’t insured. Nor is your house as a result, warns Chris Liebenberg, Elite Energy’s technical director. Going solar needs planning and research, he tells Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak in the first podcast in a new series about getting off-grid. Elite Energy answers our solar-related questions Also available on Apple | Spotify | Google podcasts

Why is our City Power bill still so high, we asked our solar installer earlier this year. Half of the R2,000 is the connection fee that the City of Joburg’s utility charges to connect you to the grid. Switching to prepaid is a quick way to save a household about R1,000 a month. I foolishly thought I could do it myself and researched the process, before realising I would never have the time – nor patience – to fight my way through the slow-moving municipal system. We hired a queue-for-you team that a neighbour recommended, and it would take about…

“These aren’t the droids you are looking for,” Obi-Wan Kenobi famously said at the beginning of the first Star Wars movie 46 years ago. But it turns out these were precisely the droids, adventure and excitement that the world was waiting for. When it was first screened in 1977, Star Wars was a groundbreaking new form of cinema, using a risky context (set in space) but filled with captivating characters and grand themes that would make it an instant success. Star Wars was not just an epic movie itself – and part of an equally legendary trilogy — but broke…

What is now known as Moore’s law began when Intel co-founder Gordon Moore wrote a 1965 article for the 35th-anniversary issue of Electronics magazine. It was titled “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits”, and in it, Moore, then the director of research & development at Fairchild Semiconductor, stated his now famous prediction about the semiconductor industry. “The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase,” he wrote. It wasn’t until Caltech professor Carver Mead…

When the pope appeared in a sparkling white puffer jacket in internet images, it marked an important turning point in humanity’s grappling with an important new development in society. No, it wasn’t because the aged religious leader had recently discovered modern fashion sense. The consternation was because that image was generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The jacket from premium brand Balenciaga was created in AI image engine Midjourney. “I just thought it was funny to see the Pope in a funny jacket,” its creator told BuzzFeed News. Refusing to give his surname, he identified himself as Pablo Xavier, a 31-year-old…

When Yuval Noah Harari writes about something, it is as if the world’s conscience is speaking. When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the famous Israeli academic and historian’s essay on why it was so disastrous was published bearing his name in The Economist, a publication famous for not bylining its articles. Last month, the author of Sapiens wrote a stinging opinion piece published in the New York Times with the two founders of the Center for Humane Technology, warning of the dangers of AI. Referencing a 2022 survey with 700 AI academics and researchers, they wrote: “Half of those surveyed stated…

Smartphones have taken over many other functions from other devices, including, most recently, most people’s wallets. Is the end of the credit card nigh, Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak asks Nedbank CIO Fred Swanepoel. After years of rapid progress, fuelled by the Covid lockdown, how we pay has changed, as have the ways banks themselves are operating. As ever, cybersecurity remains one of the biggest trends this year. Is the credit card era over? Also available on Apple podcasts | Google podcasts | Spotify

What on earth is happening at the SABC? President Cyril Ramaphosa has failed to appoint the board of the public broadcaster for nearly six months. It is not only reprehensible but another of the worst examples of our dithering president’s, well, dithering. In the most extraordinary of events, NGO Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) launched legal action on 24 February 2023 to compel Ramaphosa to appoint the new board. They point out at length how the lack of a board, as the accounting authority, is making it impossible to keep it profitable. In an affidavit as part of the summons, former…

Frustrated Joburg motorists have spent the last month dodging council employees painting new road markings. Normally, such upkeep would be welcomed, but it hardly seems like the most pressing necessity, given the gaping potholes on most of those roads. Someone in my suburb has spray painted the word ANC in bright green next to each pothole, which they have helpfully circled in the same lurid colour. This phenomenon is happening all over Joburg. It’s an apt metaphor for the state of the country. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s much-delayed cabinet reshuffle was a bit like those new road signs, painting over the…

Discovery Insure has taken a similar behavioural-based system to Vitality in the car insurance industry. If you drive better, Vitality Drive will reduce your premiums. This incentive-based driver behaviour programme, launched in 2011, monitors how you drive and then rewards you for driving well. Those onboard monitors can tell if you are in an accident and call you. If needed, they alert emergency services, which are dispatched faster. Discovery Insure deputy CEO Francois Theron tells Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about this remarkable offering, which has been exported to the UK and Middle East. Good drivers are rewarded with Discovery Insure