Author: Toby Shapshak

It will be cold comfort to Virgin Active – and all it’s customers – that last week’s ransomware attack is part of a global phenomenon that is scarily gaining momentum. City Power in Joburg was locked out in 2019 while cities all over the world have experienced this form of malicious software (malware) attack. Security firm Kaspersky found that nearly half of the South African ransomware victims (42%) paid the fee hoping to get their data back. Whether they paid or not, only 24% of victims were able to restore all their files. Of all the attacks, 11% lost almost…

For the last few years, my favourite tech companies have been Apple and Microsoft. It’s not just that I use a MacBook (the delightful new M1 Pro) and an iPhone, nor that I use Microsoft Word for all my writing. I like them because they sell me a service which I pay for with my credit card – not from them data-mining everything about me and my online habits so that they can sell me to their real customers, the advertisers. Yeah Google and Facebook, I’m glaring at you. There is no wonder that the greatest outcry from an impending…

“The problem is the batteries are stupid,” a close friend told me 12 years ago about his then highly rare adoption of living off the grid through using solar. He would later write up his experience for the Mail & Guardian in what became the most quoted article on going solar for nearly a decade, and has what must go down as one of the greatest intros. “The salesman at the solar power shop told me: ‘You have no idea how stupid batteries are.’ That comment made me wonder about his intelligence, so it took me some time to realise the canny…

It’s strange to imagine that this once obscure company that specialised in once nascent voice recognition software, has grown into such a prized acquisition that Microsoft this month paid $19bn. You may think you’ve never used Nuance’s technology, but if you’ve ever said “Hey Siri” you’re using Nuance’s voice-recognition technology that Siri is built on. It’s Dragon Naturally Speaking products are much better known, and were pioneers in helping people speak to their computers instead of typing. Nuance has found a fertile niche in healthcare – half of US physicians and 77% of US hospitals use it – which Microsoft…

The first time I opened a bank account it was in a grand branch of Barclays Bank in an era when the bank manager was a kind of demigod. I remember the upheaval and drama when Barclays, quite rightly, left our then pariah country. Back then “going to the bank“ was one of the things that you did like going to the post office or going shopping. The bank had an extraordinarily central part in society by virtue of the fact that everybody got money from the bank. If you had a loan or you wanted to deposit or withdraw money, the only…

Another week, another Facebook scandal. Feels just like 2020, and every year before it since The Great Social Media Awakening after the breath-taking manipulation of democracy in the United Kingdom and United States by Cambridge Analytica in 2016. The economic train-wreck-in-slow-motion of Brexit has been playing out for five absurd years, caused by Facebook manipulation that broke innumerable British voting laws, and will continue to devastate the UK’s economy for another decade before the naysayers realise that the European Union was as bad as they thought. Donald Trump took not only social media, but also the last remaining superpower, into…

What is the most galling thing about the latest Facebook data hack of 533m users’ personal data? Is it that Facebook was warned as far back as 2012 about the data scraping vulnerability? Or that Facebook intimated that it was the users own fault? First, the facts, as best we know them. As usual, Facebook wasn’t even aware they had been breached. A dataset of 533m Facebook user details appeared on a hacker forum last week with their phone numbers and other details. Business Insider reported about the data breach on 3 April and since then Facebook hasn’t answered many…

If you recently bought a new bakkie, you might have found its manufacturer keeps telling you they can’t deliver it because of a global shortage of a key component. You’d be surprised to discover that crucial part is actually a microprocessor, not that different from the chips in your smartphone. Technology has reached its tentacles into so much of our lives that the shortage caused by the pandemic has this strange knock-on effect in such vastly different industries as automation and telecoms. Ardent gamers desperate for their new Xbox or PlayStation consoles are similarly affected – and arguably the most…

It has to be the world’s most famous shark picture. Apart from maybe Jaws, no other shark has its own meme. It is in fact a photograph of a real shark sticking its head out of the water. But it was the addition of this priceless caption – “Rare image of a shark stepping on a Lego” – that’s made it an immortal piece of satire. Ask any parent whose child has discovered the joys of Lego, and they will be able to relate a story involving a bare foot, a Lego brick and excruciating pain. You could add day…

At least CEO Jack Dorsey was honest enough to admit that Twitter had played a role in the January 6 US capital riot. The other two tech giant CEOs being grilled by US lawmakers last year – Google’s Sundar Pichai and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg – didn’t directly reply to the simple yes or no question put to them. Research has already shown that Facebook played by far the biggest role in armed militia organising to storm the US capital building to stop the final certification of President Joe Biden’s win. Spurred on by former President Donald Trump, this mob ransacked…