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31 Mar 2025

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Interest rates expected to plateau soon
A switch has been flipped for mortgage borrowers with the two-year 4.99% interest rate the main banks are now offering.

All Blacks first-five re-signs through 2029 despite offshore interest
Damian McKenzie will stay in New Zealand for at least another four years, despite a ‘high level of interest’ in his services from overseas clubs.

Farmers 'stuck having to use bale wrap'
Baleage preserves the quality of winter fodder on the farm, but calls to improve farm plastic recycling rates or solve the problem of silage wrap waste altogether are growing louder.

‘Hard news to hear’: Council’s increased roading costs impact rural rates
For most urban properties in Masterton, rates are projected to rise between 5 and 7%, but rural rates are projected to rise by $12.6% on average.

Bus fares to climb up to 25%, youth concessions return
Taranaki commuters will face higher bus fares from 1 July 2025, with rates set to rise 25%.

Death rates double for some patients who left ED without seeing a doctor
A Health NZ review shows a sharp spike in patients who discharged themselves dying within 30 days of presenting at an ED.

VR isn’t dead. Here’s why I’m going all-in on VR gaming this year
Sifting through the multitude of gaming hardware stories and there’s only been a handful about PC VR written for the start of this year. That’s a shame because new technologies will likely propel VR forward in 2025 — at least a little closer to that seamless high-resolution experience that all VR gamers want. I’m mainly referring to Nvidia’s RTX 50-series and AMDs Radeon RX 9000-series graphics cards and what they mean for VR gaming performance. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first a quick snapshot of PC VR performance in 2024. VR and the best graphics cards of 2024 In 2024 we saw some gamers adopt Nvidia’s RTX 40-series and AMD’s 7000-series graphics cards in PC VR gaming. Those that did largely saw an uptick in frame rates from what they had before. YouTubers posted impressive fps in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and iRacing, for example. The RTX 40 series added third-generation ray tracing for a boost to shadows and lighting while AMD’s 7000-series cards also saw an improvement in ray tracing. Despite 2024’s top-tier cards showing big performance differences over the previous year’s graphics cards they couldn’t quite hit the kind of frame rates we saw in flat screen gaming. Mid-range cards like the RTX 4070 reported playable experiences in triple-A PC VR games too, some averaging around the 70- to 78fps mark, but performance rarely averaged upwards of 100fps. In a nutshell, VR remained a tough gig for even the best video cards in 2024, which isn’t really that surprising. VR does have heftier requirements than flat screen gaming, because of its stereo rendering and wide field of view, especially at higher resolutions, like 3K. What to expect in 2025 It’s early days for performance results but there’s no doubt VR gaming will be nudged further along by Nvidia and AMD’s new offerings this year. I don’t see them bringing VR into the mainstream, but they will undoubtedly make for smoother, more seamless experiences. I for one am looking forward to dusting off my VR headset considering the extra power on offer. Some of the first VR benchmark results for the RTX 5090 versus the RTX 4090, for instance, are very enticing. One using the Meta Quest 3 demonstrates a 236 percent performance jump in Metro Awakening, a 151 percent increase in Red Matter 2, and a 47 percent increase in Skyrim VR for the RTX 5090 over the RTX 4090, for example. The small print here is that at its current $2,000 price tag and 1,000W PSU recommendation, the Nvidia RTX 5090 is placed in a price and power category that may make many gamers wince. Consequently, it’s possible a lot of buyers will choose one of the step-down RTX 50 cards when they upgrade — me included. You can expect more modest performance from the Nvidia RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 GPUs in PC VR, but it’s still likely to be quite good, and better value. I especially like the sound of the RTX 5070 Ti; its performance is only slightly shy of the RTX 4090 and at $749 (instead of the RTX 4090’s $1,599) at launch, it’s a lot cheaper too, so getting rid of the jitters in some triple-A VR titles will at least be more affordable than last year. Nvidia’s RTX 5070 Ti is well priced and powerful. It’s a good choice for VR PC enthusiasts. Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry AMD’s top card is similarly placed for a respectable performance gain in PC VR games. To use the AMD RX 9070 XT as an example, you’re looking at approximately 42 percent better performance than the previous generation RX 7900, which should go a long way to making VR gameplay smoother and more enjoyable if you opt for one. mentioned in this article GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Read our review PC VR gamers will once again see more realistic rendering of lighting and shadows in VR titles, too, thanks to further advancements in these card’s ray tracing capabilities. The 4th-generation ray tracing cores in Nvidia’s RTX 50-series cards, for example, are expected to boost RT performance by between 15 to 30 percent. Quicker load times and higher resolutions VR players using the latest-generation RTX 50-series cards can expect quicker load times at higher resolutions than was previously possible. That’s thanks to the RTX 50 cards sporting GDDR7 VRAM which has 33 percent quicker bandwidth than GDDR6X VRAM in previous generation Nvidia GPUs. It will load in and out of memory at speeds up to 32Gbps (gigabits per second), compared to 24Gbps for GDDR6X, which will be especially useful for 4K per-eye VR gaming which is very graphically demanding. AMD’s Radeon RX 9000-series graphics cards feature16GB of GDDR6X VRAM. That’s still good — we can expect it to be quick, even if it’s not quite as fast as Nvidia’s latest cards. Two other new features of the Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs look exciting for players who want to future-proof their upgraded hardware for PC VR. One is DisplayPort 1.2a, which will support 4K per-eye headsets at 120Hz or higher. The other is 4:2:2 pro-grade color encoding support for multi-view (MV-HEVC). When VR supports this kind of encoding, players will be able to experience games in more vibrant color than the 4:2:0 compression that’s currently used in VR. Nvidia DLSS 4 and AMD Fidelity FX Super Resolution 4 in VR You could say these two technologies have already had an impact in some VR games judging from gamer reactions in 2024. On the other hand, there are still only a handful of VR games that support these technologies and that’s not likely to change much in 2025. Some notable titles include games like Skyrim VR, Microsoft Flight Simulator, No Man’s Sky, and VR Kayak Mirage. Nvidia’s DLSS 4 technology is only supported in a handful of PC VR games so far. Nvidia It’s worth noting, though, that even the VR games that support them won’t utilize all the features in these technologies. DLSS 4’s Multi-Frame Generation, for example, is one feature that remains unsupported by VR PC games. In fact, it causes increased latency compared to VR frame extrapolation technologies. What else does 2025 have in store for PC VR gaming? Gamers are going to want one of the video cards I just mentioned to get the best performance out of a spate of new lightweight 3K and 4K per-eye VR headsets arriving this year. They include the 4K Pimax Dream Air and Shiftall’s MeganeX superlight 8K. From a games perspective, 2025 should bring an interesting and varied lineup of releases, from throwaway casual titles to big name blockbusters. Just a few that I’m personally looking forward to include the time travel / escape room adventure Wanderer the Fragments of Fate, the puzzle game Infinite Inside: The Lost Depths, and a demolition derby game with destructible environments called FlatOut VR. Here’s hoping they play as well as they sound. Further reading: Why I’m still using my Vive Pro for VR, six years later

Reserve Bank's deposit protection measure could cause deposit interest rate fall - research finds
New research estimates the scheme would protect around 93 percent of depositors in New Zealand, and could cause a drop in deposit interest rates.

The most watched rugby team in the world? Fijian Drua’s staggering numbers
In Fiji, that interest is particularly massive - so much so that the team is claiming that half the country is tuning in to the Drua's games.

Kiwi-American businessman revealed as Breakers' new majority owner
Having previously shown interest in setting up an A-Leagues football club in Auckland, Marc Mitchell will now take charge of the Breakers basketball club.

Man City's poor season down to me - Guardiola
Pep Guardiola rates his own performance as Manchester City manager this season as "really poor" ahead of FA Cup quarter-final with Bournemouth.

Why was Westpac slow in passing on OCR cut?
Westpac gave an apparently contradictory answer as to why it was so slow to pass on the Reserve Bank’s interest rate cut last month to parliament’s finance and expenditure committee’s banking inquiry.

PNY Pro Elite V3 review: This SSD looks like a USB drive—and it’s fast
At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Good 10Gbps performance Super svelte and convenient retractable Type-C design Affordable for the performance Cons Slow 450GB write time Our Verdict The PNY Pro Elite V3’s clever, retractable design makes it one of my favorite 10Gbps USB sticks. It’s only the third fastest I’ve tested, but the superlative form factor makes it the one I’ll throw in my pocket for light to medium workloads. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today USB sticks are no longer the slowish commodity item they once were. Utilizing the fast 10Gbps USB 3.2 protocol, Type-C connectors, and NVMe internals they’re now more akin to what we call external SSDs than those dime-a-dozen thumb drives of the past. While not the fastest (it’s still fast) such beastie I’ve tested, the PNY Pro Elite V3’s elegant retractable design and uber-small form-factor won me over. At least for everyday workloads — it’s not the best for super-large file transfers. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best external drives for comparison. What are the PNY Pro Elite V3’s features? The Pro Elite V3 is a diminutive 10Gbps USB thumb drive that’s approximately 2.5-inches long, 0.75-inches wide, and 0.4-inches thick. It’s a two-part affair. The main body marries the grippy, textured headpiece (with a lanyard attachment point) and the Type-C connector. A rather beefy, captive sleeve slides away from the headpiece to cover/protect the Type-C connector, and slides towards that headpiece to reveal it for use. Unlike many retractable designs, where a switch, lever, or some such is used to push the connector out of the main body of the device, the one-piece Pro Elite V3 isn’t finicky torture to insert. We like it. PNY Pro Elite V3 closed, with the Type-C connector protected. Also, the protective sleeve being captive means there’s nothing to lose or keep track of other than the drive itself. If it seems like I’m a bit aglow over the Pro Elite V3’s design, it’s because of the many oaths I’ve uttered over the years due to ill-conceived retractable mechanisms and lost thumb drive caps. Though I’m not privy to the actual controller/bridge chip, the internals of the Pro Elite V3 are obviously NVMe — the drive’s performance exceeds anything SATA is capable of. Also, the way the drive slowed to 280MBps during the 450GB write test reminds us of some older TLC. That said, 280MBps is a bit faster than the 75MBps to 150MBps write rates we typically see with QLC written natively, i.e. without write-as-SLC secondary caching. PNY warranties the drive for two years, but it’s a limited promise. We’re guessing the usual qualifications abrogate it: severe physical damage or too much data written. PNY declined to provide a flat-out TBW (terabytes that may be written) rating, but generally, this rating is anywhere from 250TBW per TB of capacity for QLC to 600TBW for TLC. Note that most people don’t write nearly as much data as they think they do — the Pro Elite V3 should give you have a long and productive lifespan. How much is the PNY Pro Elite V3? The PNY Pro Elite V3 is available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB (tested) capacities for $32, $53, $84, and $152, respectively. That’s 12 cents, 10 cents, 8.4 cents, and 7.6 cents per gigabyte — not a huge spread as far as these things go. Compared to the like-performing competition you’ll see listed in the charts, pricing is pretty much a wash — i.e., they’re all priced similarly. How fast is the PNY Pro Elite V3? While performance is not quite on par overall with the SK Hynix’s Tube T31 or Seagate’s Ultra Compact SSD, the PNY Pro Elite V3 is close and turned in very good numbers. Far better than its V2 predecessor. Note that the Teamgroup X1 Max actually performed far better when we limited CrystalDiskMark 8’s data set to 16GiB. However, our standard calls for the 64GiB tests so that’s what the X1 Max was stuck with — like all the other drives in the charts. Also, the PNY Pro Elite V2 was a 256GB drive, and therefore unable to participate in the 450GB. The Pro Elite V3 was very competitive in CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential tests. Longer bars are better. The PNY Pro Elite V3 was again a bit slower than its two top competitors in CrystalDiskMark 8’s random 4K tests. In CDM 8’s random tests, the Pro Elite V3 fell slightly back on the competition. Longer bars are better. Again, while the PNY Pro Elite V3 is fast, it wasn’t quite as fast as the Tube T31 or Ultra Compact SSD in our 48GB transfer tests. While this is a good 48GB transfer performance the Pro Elite V3 was bested by the top competitors. Shorter bars are better. The PNY Pro Elite V3 really fell off the pace in the 450GB write, barely edging out the Corsair Survivor Stealth which is more about weather resistance than performance. Again, the Pro Elite V2 was only 256GB and unable to store a 450GB file — hence the absence of a time. The PNY Pro Elite V3 really fell off the pace in the 450GB write, barely edging out the Corsair Survivor Stealth. Shorter bars are better. Below you can see the slowdown as the PNY Pro Elite V3 ran out of secondary cache in fairly short order during our 450GB write test. This native write speed likely means older TLC or some sort of new, faster QLC. Modern TLC NAND triple this native write rate, while all the QLC we’ve tested is around 100MBps or more slower. The Pro Elite V3’s write speed dropped first to around 500MBps at the 10 percent mark, then to 280MBps at the 20 percent mark for the remainder of the 450GB write. While not quite the fastest of the 10Gbps USB stick litter, the Pro Elite V3 is plenty fast enough for everyday tasks. Should you buy the PNY Pro Elite V3? The PNY Pro Elite V3 is third in line with the already discussed competitors offering around 10 percent more speed overall and far better large-file performance. However, the PNY Pro Elite V3’s svelte, super-convenient design makes it the one we’d most likely throw in a pocket for normal, everyday chores. When shopping, as you can tell from the charts above… Make very sure you’re buying and receiving V3, not the far slower V2. How we test Our storage tests currently utilize Windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit running on an X790 (PCIe 5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 modules (64GB of memory total). Intel integrated graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, which also contains the operating system. Each test is performed on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that as any drive fills up, performance will decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, and other factors. The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped as well as the capacity tested. SSD performance can vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to read/write across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report (systems being roughly equal), by all means—let us know.