Load shedding Stage 5 is back, back again
Thursday, 07 September 2023
Due to improved generation capacity and emergency reserves, Stage 5 loadshedding will be implemented tomorrow from 05:00 until 16:00. Eskom will publish another update on Friday afternoon. We plead with members of the public to…
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) September 7, 2023
Stage 6? Remember that? How could you not? The country has suffered through it since Tuesday. Fortunately, Eskom has announced that load shedding has been reduced to Stage 5 since 05:00 this morning. Don’t get your hopes up just yet. Stage 5 is only sticking around until 16:00 on Friday, 8 September.
“Eskom will publish another update on Friday afternoon,” the state-owned power utility said. That’s when the country’s fate for the weekend will be determined.
You can thank Eskom’s “improved generation capacity and emergency reserves” for the sudden departure – which could mean Eskom has resolved the issues affecting Lethabo and Matla power stations, the initial cause for the miserable return to stage 6.
Eskom signed off its update with the usual plea for residents to reduce their power consumption between 17:00 and 21:00. If anything, it’ll slow down Eskom’s steadily increasing stats – with the utility currently sitting on 5,349 hours (or 223 days) of load shedding so far in 2023, according to EskomSePush (ESP).
YouTube’s making some changes to ads (for the worse)
For those paupers that haven’t yet caved and subscribed to YouTube Premium, you’re about to feel the wrath of Google’s ads – especially if you usually resign your content to the YouTube app on TVs. It’s not all bad though – Google has said it’s experimenting with a new way of showing ads – one that’ll result in users seeing fewer, but longer ads.
This appears to be reserved for users watching long-form content, to better mimic a regular ad-break. You know, the thing streaming was meant to save us from.
Google is also updating the timer that sits at the bottom of the screen during an ad, to more accurately reflect the time remaining in the ad. Rather than showing a placeholder with “Ad 1 of 2”, we’ll get a more accurate depiction of the ad breaks total length. Today’s kids can finally learn the pain of trying to finish up in the bathroom before a round of ads finishes.
Ads on YouTube’s TV apps aren’t the only thing Google is fiddling with. It recently announced that, come November, it’ll be removing most of the platform’s ad controls for creators. That means the choice of pre-roll, post-roll, skippable or non-skippable ads won’t be left in the creator’s hands, but will be up to its own system. Don’t be surprised if that results in a whole lot more unskippable ads.
Switch 2.0
After years of speculation and rumours surrounding a follow-up to Nintendo’s wildly successful Switch console, all that waiting seems to have finally paid off. We think. According to a new report from Eurogamer, Nintendo has a Switch 2 up its sleeve. And it spent the entirety of Gamescom showing off the rumoured console’s prowess to developers behind closed doors.
That’s the story, anyway. It’s worth taking the news with a grain of salt since Nintendo has yet to even confirm the existence of such a console. Still, a Switch 2 demo taking place now would line up with the console’s expected 2024 release date. Nintendo’s still got a few games left to release in 2023, with not much focus being placed on 2024’s queue. (You can check out a few of those here.)
No details were shared on the console’s actual specs, though it’s believed that Nintendo showed off a beefed-up version of Breath of the Wild to the invited few. Soon after the report, VGC released a similar report, confirming Eurogamer’s information, noting a “higher framerate and resolution than the original game…”. There was apparently no indication that the game would get the re-release treatment, with Tears of the Kingdom being the more likely candidate for a remaster.
Even more bad news for E3
If you had some sort of grandiose idea that E3 would be making a comeback in 2024, we’re here to put those hopes to rest. Nothing’s official yet – leaving the Electronic Software Association (ESA) free to attempt to pull off a miracle and make a physical show work. That might be difficult because the ESA has dropped ReedPop, the event’s organiser that the ESA partnered with ahead of this year’s cancelled event.
The ESA confirmed this to The Verge, after a report from GamesIndustry.biz broke the story of the two entities’ “mutual decision” to go their separate ways. The ESA and ReedPop had planned to work together earlier this year, before Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft pulled out, effectively killing off E3’s big comeback.
Still, E3 isn’t dead. Yet. Despite the reports that E3 is making a move away from its regular home, the Los Angeles Convention Center, the ESA’s CEO, Stanley Pierre-Louis, has said it is “continuing to explore” ways to evolve E3. We should be hearing more news about E3 in the coming months. Whether the 2024 show happens… is another matter altogether.