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17 Jun 2024

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‘Massive future’: Chiefs rookie announces himself on big stage
A new star was born at Sky Stadium as the Chiefs stunned the Hurricanes on the back of a breakout performance from rookie No. 8 Wallace Sititi.

I went without Sky TV as a child, says Sunak
The PM says he sacrificed "lots of things" as a child as his parents prioritised their education.

Cineworld plots sale of some UK cinema operations, Sky News reports

NSW draw first blood
Keeley Davis' wasted no time securing the Sky Blues' first try of the night, as the rain continues to belt down in Newcastle.

Maroons legend reflects on narrow win
Ali Brigginshaw spoke to Nine after a dramatic victory against the Sky Blues.

2024 Women’s State of Origin Highlights: NSW v QLD - Game II
The New South Wales Sky Blues host the Queensland Maroons in Game 2 of the 2024 Women’s State of Origin series, at McDonald Jones Stadium, Newcastle.

Nvidia’s Project G-Assist is the first AI assistant I actually want
Yes, it’s true: That old AI gaming assistant April Fools’ joke that Nvidia made all the way back in 2017 is now reality. Well, kinda. And if Nvidia’s plans come to fruition, it could make your favorite PC gaming forums and wikis obsolete. During its Computex keynote, Nvidia revealed “Project G-Assist” for the creation of customizable AI assistants for PC gamers, running on GeForce graphics cards. These AI assistants can be tuned to help you in specific games, providing detailed information about your personal adventures while reacting to on-screen events. They can also analyze and tune your entire gaming PC on the fly. Ever wondered “What the hell is that??!!” when confronted by a snarling new alien menace in a game? G-Assist can tell you—and not just that, but also the optimal build for your character path if you’d like. It can then overclock your GPU to speed up performance, all without ever needing to leave your game. G-Assist is the first AI assistant I’d actually want to install on my gaming PC. Let’s dig in. Nvidia’s Project G-Assist is the ultimate gaming sidekick Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia Project G-Assist is the codename for a series of AI technologies and frameworks provided by Nvidia, with several new tools revealed for developers at the show. These capabilities monitor your gaming inputs (including on-screen information), process those inputs through a large language model (AI) with specifically trained data sets helped by other tools, then feed you the information you’re looking for in real time. Anyone can use these tools however they see fit to create their own gaming assistants. The sky is the limit here. Nvidia provided two AI assistant concepts to show off G-Assist’s potential in eye-opening ways. First, Nvidia created an Ark: Survival Ascended demo that shows how powerful these tools can be when they’re integrated by game developers and trained on a deep data set for that specific game. It’s actually remarkable. Via a floating text field, you can ask the AI assistant what the best early weapons are, skill recommendations for your particular character build, help with problems, and more. It’s like having the world’s most knowledgeable wiki author riding shotgun with you, and you never have to alt-tab out to find the crucial info you need. Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia It’s a compelling vision—and it’s aided by computer vision, remember. In the demo, the protagonist asked “What is that thing?” while looking at a dinosaur and was promptly told that it’s most likely a titansaur, “[which] can be identified by its massive size and long neck.” It’s easy to imagine enthusiast communities training their own AI assistants to provide tailored experiences for their favorite games, or developers providing help bots for new players, or an all-encompassing assistant trained on the top wikis to help in any game. We’ll have to see if that dream winds up being reality, though. This all looks fantastic in theory, but Nvidia releases a lot of impressive tech demos and not all of them wind up being embraced by the community. HAL, overclock my PC But G-Assist’s potential isn’t limited to the act of playing games alone. Nvidia also showed off another G-Assist bot designed to help PC players tune their settings on the fly while tooling around in Cyberpunk 2077. Nvidia Nvidia Nvidia It was able to change options when asked to optimize the settings for image quality. It also suggested enabling Nvidia Reflex to reduce latency due to the system’s measurements at the time. And when asked to provide a latency graph for the last 60 seconds, it popped one up immediately. That’s potentially a very helpful capability when you’re troubleshooting problems or trying to improve your responsiveness in-game. Heck, it even initiated Nvidia’s one-click overclocking feature on command, complete with information about the GPU’s old and new clock speed measurements. RAMMING SPEED RAMMING SPEEDNvidia RAMMING SPEEDNvidia Nvidia There’s a lot of promise here, and G-Assist showcases what’s possible with AI when you have a full-fat graphics card by your side. You won’t see GPU-less Copilot+ laptops pulling off capabilities like this, this fast, while actively gaming, on an NPU anytime soon. There’s a reason why Nvidia is pushing GeForce-equipped hardware as “Premium AI PCs” behind closed doors. Separately, Nvidia is also working to introduce generative AI-powered NPCs in games via its Avatar Cloud Engine technology, which looks better and better every time we see it. Nvidia’s Seth Schneider recently joined our Full Nerd podcast to show off the ACE-powered Covert Protocol demo revealed at GDC this spring. Look for new ACE demos to be out in force during Computex 2024. Gaming, Graphics Cards

Super Rugby Pacific live updates: Hurricanes v Chiefs
Follow all the semi-final action from Sky Stadium, Wellington.

Hurricanes eye biggest home crowd in 8 years for ‘game changer’ semifinal
CEO targets a minimum 25,000 against the Chiefs, but says with Phoenix-like momentum they could hit a Sky Stadium sellout.

The bone-rattling moment that rocked women’s Origin
NSW may have lost the match, but it was Sky Blues prop Caitlan Johnston’s crunching hit on Romy Teitzel in the opening minutes on Thursday that set tongues wagging.

Why being ‘flustered and frustrated’ is the perfect Women’s Origin preparation
The Sky Blues ran an opposed session against the Knights’ Jersey Flegg team, and while frustrating at times, Kylie Hilder called it the best way to prepare.