The Play Station 5 Pro could be the big launch of 2024

It seems like it was yesterday and the PlayStation 5 has already been with us for three years, although that is still saying a lot, given how much it cost to get one during the first year due to the chip shortage of the post-covid era.

The hare has jumped from the North American media The Verge, which claims that Sony has asked the developers that the next titles to be launched be compatible with this future console and this is where the rumors have exploded. More specifically, that they be launched with the “PS5 Pro Enhanced” label, which we will begin to see from August.

One of the most notable new features of the new version of the console will be its improved ability to render games with ray tracing and even reach higher resolutions and frame rates per second. Let me explain: at the hardware level, the console will arrive with a GPU that, compared to the current one, will give a performance jump of approximately 45% more. Of course, the CPU will be identical to the one included in the current PS5.

In short: for the most ambitious games, players who appreciate speed and details and have a good smart TV and high-speed internet connection.

As for price and availability, there is no official information, but rumors suggest that the manufacturer hopes the product will be available on the market this Christmas, something that makes a lot of sense because it is an interesting sales season. As for its RRP, it can be expected to exceed 500 euros for the standard model but without skyrocketing, since there are no longer any stock problems and the idea is to sell as much or more than the previous generation, the PS4, which was a huge success.

Twitter wipes out reference accounts in the state in one fell swoop. What’s going on

Elon Musk does not win for disappointment. Since he took control of this platform, his decisions have caused all kinds of changes in the operation of the service in order to make the app as profitable as possible on the one hand and to “show the truth without censorship” on the other. If you visit Twitter frequently, you will have discovered something: there has been a night of long knives in the form of suspension of legitimate accounts. The evidence points to an organized attack to close these accounts.

The social network has suspended the accounts of dozens of Spanish users who were dedicated to dissemination and who have reputable and well-known profiles, including media such as the Aragonese newspaper AraInfo or the Balearic Islands edition of elDiario.es, those of the Health Institute of the Balearic Islands, the newspaper Ara Balears, among others.

The owners of the suspended accounts have not received any notice or information about what caused the problem, and only a message appears on the suspended accounts indicating that those accounts affected by the suspension have violated the service’s usage rules.

One of the accounts, the technology popularizer and feminist Diana Aceves, explained in her emergency account that it was probably a service error resulting from a potential organized attack to get those accounts suspended for supposedly violating Twitter rules. Between the fact that the social network is under minimum staff and that with a massive report it is highly probable that it will act in an automated way, well white and in a bottle.

In fact, the investigations point to the ultra group Unga Reaction, which would have orchestrated everything in a Telegram channel to make massive reports of accounts that they target. However, an account with a similar name has already ended up in court for this very reason. Blocked forever? Aceves explained in EPE that she had had problems with a tweet in the past but they always informed her how to recover the account, but now when they responded they indicated that “the case has already been reviewed and that my account is blocked forever.” It remains to be seen if Twitter ends up restoring the accounts, which is what logically should happen if, as it seems, everything has been part of an organized attack.

Turnaround in the smartphone market and Apple’s setback

The smartphone segment is a segment that has been stagnant for some time, although the sadness spreads by neighborhood. It seemed that Apple weathered the storm and in fact ended 2023 with fantastic news: it was the manufacturer that sold the most mobile phones throughout the year, even surpassing Samsung. Three months later, things go wrong for those from Cupertino. And a lot.

According to data from the consulting firm IDC, mobile sales increased by 7.8% globally in the first quarter of 2024. There is optimism in the recovery of the market, since as its analysts point out, it is the third consecutive quarter in the that sales grow.

The news is good for the market overall, but there are clear winners and losers on the ground. Samsung is one of them: the firm regained first place in the number of terminals sold, 60.1 million. One in every five mobile phones sold in the world in the first three months of the year was from Samsung. Even so, the figure is slightly lower than what it achieved just a year ago, 60.5 million.

The negative surprise comes from Apple, which has fallen no less than 9.6% in sales compared to the same period last year. This places it once again in second place in terms of number of mobile phones sold, but also causes it to lose market share. The precipitous drop in sales in China has been the determining reason for these poor results.

However, the most spectacular results in growth are for two companies. The first of them is Xiaomi, which manages to grow 33.8% in units sold, but curiously its success is found outside of China: there its terminals were sold 7% less than in the first quarter of 2024.

But the big surprise is another Chinese brand unknown to most: Transsion, keep the name because when it arrives in Europe it promises a revolution. It is conquering the African continent and little by little it is expanding to other regions. According to IDC, its sales almost doubled, making it surpass OPPO and become the fourth manufacturer worldwide.

The new solution to self-consumption: solar panels on balconies in Germany

Solar panels were inaccessible for many years, but the Chinese industry’s firm commitment to the photovoltaic industry has caused them to drop significantly. In fact, it has left North American and European manufacturers out of the game due to rock-bottom prices and exports that are difficult to compete against.

This is allowing many people to consider investing in solar energy for their homes. And the Germans are crazy about installing photovoltaic panels.

Although the price has fallen, it is still a significant investment to invest in solar energy. Not only do you have to change some components if they are not up to date, but filling the ceiling of a home with panels is still expensive. For this reason, there are those who are looking for alternatives to cover part of their consumption with less investment, for example by installing them as garden fences. And if the budget allows, you can always put more panels on both the roof and the wall, turning something that serves to delimit the property and protect it into a source of energy.

Let’s talk about specific cases and numbers: if you Google Peter Helm, you will discover that he has assembled a fence 16 meters long and 1.8 meters high made of panels. And he explains the numbers: a segment of fence measuring 1 x 1.8 meters costs 77 euros, while a solar panel of similar dimensions can be had for 55 euros.

It is clear that, with these dimensions, Helm’s case is not one that can be applied to the majority of the population, but what is abundant are homes with balconies. And if you don’t have space to build a wall of solar panels, there are surely a few meters of terrace that you can cover. So much so that the Bundesnetzagentur (the German authority responsible for electricity, gas, telecommunications and postal services) would have received more than 50,000 requests for new solar systems of this type. It is estimated that there would be 400,000 currently when last summer there were 230,000.

If we also take into account that there are subsidies for its installation, then even better. There are still some limitations, such as only installations with a power of up to 600 watts are allowed, you have to ask for permits and have a bidirectional meter that can measure both the electricity you consume from the network and the electricity injected into it.

Germany has been a pioneer, but in the state the German idea is already beginning to be copied because there is no shortage of flats or sun. Let’s go ahead and have to deal with fronts such as municipal regulations such as those that exist for the treatment of building facades, or regulations in communities of owners or buildings with a horizontal property regime, so if we have a single-family house it is usually much more agile, but everything will work out.