Eskom takes a break
After a weekend of Stage 6 power cuts (and 30-degree heat to go with it), Eskom is finally easing up. It can’t do much about the heat (which should be lessening on Wednesday), but it can do something about load shedding, announcing that the country would be going from Stage 6 to Stage 4. At 05:00 this morning, the country was reduced to Stage 3.
Unfortunately, it won’t stay that way for long. At 16:00 on Monday, 27 November, Eskom will be implementing Stage 4, with Stage 3 returning at 05:00 tomorrow, Tuesday 28 November. That pattern will continue for most of the week – until Thursday – or until Eskom says otherwise.
Thanks to Stage 6’s return last week, it allowed Eskom’s “replenishment of the emergency reserves at our pumped storage and Open Cycle Gas Turbine (OCGT) power stations.” Specifically, Eskom reckons that we’ll see 2,500 MW of generating capacity “return to service by Tuesday evening.”
“Unplanned outages are currently at 15,368MW of generating capacity, while the capacity out of service for planned maintenance is 5,617MW,” the state-owned power utility said.
Ubisoft’s in-game ads are probably just the beginning
After Far Cry 6, you probably didn’t think Ubisoft could get much worse. Don’t feel bad. We were right there alongside you. Oh, how wrong we were. Over the weekend, a Redditor in the r/xboxone subreddit noted that they had received an in-game advertisement (full-screen!) in the middle of an Assassin’s Creed session. Before opening the map, no less.
In the words of the top commentor: “Yeah this kind of s**t should be considered unacceptable.” We couldn’t agree more. This wasn’t an isolated case, either. Tons of gamers playing through Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Odyssey, and Origins on consoles this past weekend – already an unfortunate situation – were greeted with the same sort of full-page ads, advertising the developer and publisher’s Black Friday deals for the newcomer of the series; Mirage.
Ubisoft wasted no time responding, with a post on X.com ‘confirming’ that the in-game ad was a “technical error,” – one that has now been fixed. “Our intention was to display a promotion for Assassin’s Creed Mirage as part of the franchise news in the main menu of other Assassin’s Creed games.” Our guess? Ubisoft was “quietly” gauging the internet’s reaction – hoping to slip by unnoticed before rolling something like this out across the entire library.
Fortunately, if there’s one thing gamers hate more than Ubisoft, it’s ads.
Casetify lands itself in some hot water
Dbrand, the company that makes some of the best smartphone cases out there (and keycaps that’ll draw blood and tell you to “F*** off”) is suing its biggest rival; Casetify – a company worth over $1 billion. It’s claiming that Casetify blatantly ripped off its own line of Teardown skins, which is a range of skins that are made to look like the internals of the device they’re stuck to.
We’re firm believers in being innocent until proven guilty. And, while there has been no official ruling on this case, Casetify is certainly guilty. In a thread on X.com, Dbrand provided a surplus of evidence that proved Casetify had “Copy & Pastefied” that specific line of skins – like repeating easter eggs that are only significant to Dbrand’s own… brand.
Not long after Dbrand made its claims, Casetify pulled its “own” line of ‘Inside Out’ skins off its website, noting on X.com that it has “always been a bastion of originality.” Yeah, right.
Speaking with The Verge, Dbrand CEO Adam Ijaz said, “We are under no illusion that dbrand owns the idea of taking apart phones and scanning them. The fact of the matter is that [Casetify] repurposed our existing designs for their products, then went to great lengths to conceal their illegitimate appropriation of our work.”
With the offending line-up taken down and a court case in the works, there shouldn’t be much more to the story than a few snarky posts from the Dbrand X.com admin. But no. Dbrand later brought attention to Casetify hastily removing another skin line-up during the ensuing chaos – the X-Ray design – one that was reportedly stolen, not from Dbrand, but iFixit.
Believe it! Naruto is going live-action
After Sony’s Avi Arad and Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto announced that a Legend of Zelda live-action film was in the works, we didn’t think our year could get any worse. We spoke a little too soon apparently, as Lionsgate provided a big update to a live-action project that’s been stuck in development hell for years: Naruto finally has a screenwriter.
That’s all according to Variety’s list of screenwriters to be on the lookout for, which claims Tasha Huo has signed onto the project over at the studio. A Naruto live-action film is apparently on her hitlist – after she finishes her work on Netflix’s Tomb Raider animation series and the upcoming Red Sonja film to which she is currently tied.
There’s almost no other news to be gleaned from the announcement. Cast, release dates, and specific plot points are still under wraps – presumably until Tuo manages to actually write them down. We know Avi Arad has been attached to the project since its announcement in 2015 (no surprises there), but nothing else. It doesn’t exactly fill us with joy, either.
Mark Wahlberg as Jiraiya, anyone?