NZCity NewsLinks -

All Links

15 Aug 2025

Search

ASB joins other major banks on 4.79% mortgage interest rate
Banks jostle for the best mortgage interest rate offers ahead of the Reserve Bank announcement next week where it's expected the official cash rate will drop.

Burial 'fat tax' on wider plots at council cemetery criticised
The move at a Wolverhampton cemetery is due to high obesity rates, a council says.

How to choose the right UA financing partner: A founder’s guide
Founders face growing choices in UA financing; this guide highlights how to select partners offering transparency, scalability, and support beyond just interest rates.

Get this Ryzen 7 mini PC with 32GB RAM for a new low price: $339
If you’re strapped for cash, the best bang for your buck these days is to get a reputable mini PC instead of a budget laptop or desktop PC. Today’s mini PCs are tiny, powerful, and affordable—like this Beelink SER5 Max that’s only $339 on Amazon (was $449) with Prime. Don’t have Prime? Grab a free 30-day trial and score this price now! This thing may be so tiny that you forget it’s even hiding under (or behind) your monitor, but it’s also powerful enough to handle your daily workload without breaking a sweat. It packs an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor, 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a speedy 1TB SSD, which is more solid than anything you’ll find on a comparably priced laptop. Between its HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, and USB-C video ports, you’ll be able to run up to three 4K@60Hz monitors with this mini PC. (When used solo, the DisplayPort and USB-C can even support refresh rates up to 144Hz and 120Hz, respectively.) You also get two USB-A 3.2, two USB-A 2.0, a Gigabit LAN, and a 3.5mm audio jack, plus Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 support. It’s truly ready to power your home workstation! This is a fantastic mini PC for just $339, so hurry and get your order in quick because deals like this don’t last forever. Just remember that this exclusive discount requires an Amazon Prime subscription, so if you haven’t signed up yet, start your 30-day free trial. Save 24% on this Ryzen 7 mini PC with a chunky 32GB of RAMBuy now at Amazon

Councils warn civil defence plan upgrades will lead to higher rates
A Cabinet Paper estimated the reforms would cost councils $82.8 million each over four years.

Mayoral hopeful Kerrin Leoni attacks Wayne Brown's financial record
Debt is up by $1 billion and rates have risen by more than 20 percent during Wayne Brown's term, his main challenger says.

Another major bank cuts its one-year fixed home loan rate to 4.79 percent
ANZ and BNZ cut their one-year speical rates earlier this week.

Microsoft connects Xbox Game Pass, Windows on Arm PCs for local gaming
Nobody really expects Windows on Arm PCs to keep up with their cousins running games locally on AMD or Intel CPUs — but until now, they had trouble simply being allowed to do so. Now, Microsoft is testing a way to enable local gaming via the Xbox app on Windows on Arm PCs. You’ve always been able to game on a PC running with Windows on Arm, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor inside. But if you loaded up the Xbox app on a Windows PC, the only way to do so was via cloud gaming, not locally. That changes with Microsoft’s new test build. Microsoft now has a new update (version 2508.1001.27.0 and higher) for those who are both Windows Insiders and Xbox Insiders enrolled in the PC Gaming Preview on their Arm-based Windows 11 PCs, via the Xbox Insider Hub. (That’s probably not a lot of users.) If you and your PC meet those requirements, you should be able to download an updated version of the Xbox app allowing you to try out games via the Windows Store and Xbox Game Pass for PC. The latter is what makes this update important. Game Pass allows those who pay a monthly fee to take advantage of an ever-changing pantheon of games, both top-tier and independent offerings. To date, Windows on Arm “gamers” have had to use Valve’s Steam instead. The problem is that the Adreno GPU inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite just doesn’t have the horsepower to run top-tier titles. Qualcomm showed off games like Control running at about 40fps on Low settings, and that’s fine. Our deep dive into Snapdragon X Elite gaming, however, showed most games still chugging away at single-digit frame rates, or at levels that simply weren’t playable. Qualcomm has also been hamstrung by the lack of support for anti-cheat systems that has improved over time. It’s less of an issue with older games or those that use older or even 2D graphics, as our tests showed DOTA 2 ran at an average of 52.8 frames per second on Low settings — but would dip down as low as 9.8fps when taxed to the limit. Still, the Xbox app is now a pretty convenient way to download games via Microsoft’s Game Pass, so the addition is good news. We’ll simply have to wait for what we expect to be a next-gen Snapdragon to be launched at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Technology Summit at the end of September for even better gaming on Windows on Arm.