Author: Toby Shapshak

Two days after THAT Oval Office presidential meeting, South Africa has gazetted a new “policy direction” that allows Elon Musk’s Starlink to sidestep BEE ownership requirements. Communications minister Solly Malatsi gazetted this “proposed policy direction” to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) on Friday to allow it to sidestep the strict ownership requirements in the telecommunications sector. Instead, regulations will be applied like other sectors, where foreign companies meet BEE requirements through “equity equivalent investments programmes” such as training, building infrastructure, and supporting small businesses. Loopholes for Starlink Malatsi is, in effect, giving Icasa the legal groundwork it…

“I have to travel with a bag full of cables,” a friend admitted to me this week. When he explained what each of the cables were for, I felt immense and deep pity for him. To show my concern and compassion, I said to him: “You’re such a schmuck. You’re friends with me, and you still have all of those cables. I’m embarrassed for you.” After we finished laughing, I solved my friend’s problems with only R200. Let’s call him Del. In the age of USB-C, you only need one cable. Or several of one cable: the new universal standard, USB-C. Instead…

Checkers has updated its excellent Sixty60 app to make the service more user-friendly for blind and visually impaired people – after local organisation Blind SA approached the retailer with a list of improvements. The Sixty60 team listened, did their own research on accessibility, and have now implemented the first batch of enhancements. Many of these features use the phone’s own ability to read aloud, or what’s known as voice-overs. “This makes a major difference in the life of a blind person,” says Christo de Klerk, President of Blind SA, as he demonstrates how the app reads the names of items to him…

An unlikely hit show, The Penguin proves that good writing, good acting, and particularly good direction can make the sideshow even bigger than the main event. It happened with Better Call Saul, an offshoot that vies for supremacy with the masterful Breaking Bad that spawned the prequel. And now it’s happening with Colin Farrell’s sideshow performance as the iconic Penguin in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, and I’m loving it.  It says a lot that The Penguin will likely go down as one of Colin Farrell’s all-time great roles considering the exceptional career he’s had, recently earning himself an Oscar nomination for The Banshees…

In a stunning about-face over crippling trade tariffs against Chinese imports, US President Donald Trump managed to shoot his tough-guy-act in the foot as he kept iPhones from skyrocketing in cost. Such unpredictability in Trump is not unprecedented, as many have all experienced first-hand in the last maddening few months. This month’s shock tariffs wiped $5tn off US stock markets in the first two days alone, including $1tn from the so-called Magnificent Seven. After a whirlwind week of this tariff madness, Trump suddenly announced he would pause these tariffs for 90 days but added more against China. The world’s second…

Eddie Redmayne is one of the greatest actors of this generation. If his unforgettable Oscar-worthy performance while filming the utterly remarkable life story of physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything wasn‘t confirmation enough, then his performance in The Day of the Jackal should seal it. A TV series remake of the equally excellent 1973 film also titled The Day of the Jackal, which I remember seeing with my father, probably when it came to VHS, provides a 10-episode screen fest of Redmayne’s superb acting and screen presence. This is truly excellent television. The script is good, the acting…

Elon Musk has a Nazi problem. Since he bought Twitter and rebranded it X, he has allowed right-wing extremists, hate speech, antisemitism, and islamophobia to run rampant on the platform. Now Musk – after deliberately doing a Hitler salute twice after President Donald Trump’s inauguration – is the Nazi. At least in the minds of a new backlash against his various companies, especially Tesla, which have become known as “Swatsticars” or “Swastikars” in memes online. Musk now runs the Department of Government Efficiency – whose acronym Doge is pronounced “doggie” by the great tech journalist Kara Swisher – and has…

I’m embarrassed that it’s taken me quite so long to discover Admyt. This clever little app that you’ve likely never heard of is the solution to your parking problems. I have to define that these parking problems are relatively small in the wider world, I admit, but they can prove to be a source of regular frustration for anyone who parks in a shopping mall. I want to reiterate that paying for parking when I go to a shopping mall, probably once a week, if that, isn’t a huge problem in the grand scheme of things. Admyt does a very simple thing,…

Global stock markets went into a tailspin this week after US President Donald Trump used the maths behind Zuma-nomics to calculate that everyone should get a tariff. Despite him triumphantly declaring it “liberation day”, the fallout was quickly dubbed “obliteration day” after the major US tech firms saw $1 trillion wiped off their market valuations.  iPhone it in The so-called “Magnificent Seven” – including Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta/Facebook, Nvidia, and Tesla – were all hit by this. The iPhone maker lost 9% of its value, which translates to a whopping $250 billion blown away. Don’t worry, it’s still the…

Who knew the cringeworthy antics of the megarich tourists who frequent exotic holiday destinations could be so interesting? And so cringeworthy. The clever crime series-cum-travel show taps into two of television’s most popular genres to produce excellent watching. The intrigue is clever, and the ensemble cast all deliver good performances. The tempo of The White Lotus starts out slow each season as the characters and their conflicts are introduced before reaching a crescendo, as all good shows should, towards the end. The seasons always start with what happens at the end – and then unfold from the beginning. It’s a…