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19 Aug 2025

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Why even switching to the basics won't avoid food price rises
The combined cost of a loaf of sliced white bread and bottle of standard milk have risen from $4.35 in 2006 to $6.58 today.

Auckland Council's draft consent rules restrict homes in flood-prone areas
The proposed new consent rules at Auckland Council also double down on high density living.

Air Canada Warns Rebooking Some Cancelled Flights May Be Impossible

Two and a half years after Cyclone Gabrielle, here's how the road to Piha was repaired
Explainer - More than two years after Cyclone Gabrielle, the popular main road to Auckland's Piha is about to open up again. But what exactly does it take to rebuild, and why does it take so long?

Woman jailed for tax fraud attempts, and Covid relief claims worth over $200,000
Caitlin Briar Ashby had set up three bank accounts using false identities, and filed 64 false income tax returns for 14 different taxpayers.

Homeowners could be left with costs under building consents changes - lawyer
But Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says the government will explore mechanisms to protect homeowners.

Watch: Zelensky complimented on 'fabulous' suit by reporter who previously criticised him
The Ukrainian president was complimented on his smart black jacket, after being criticised by right-wing media over his choice of dress in February.

Fire in commercial building on Auckland's Dominion Road
More than 30 firefighters tackled the blaze in the two-storey property

Trade Me seeks gaming chief to shape E Blacks’ global success
Trade Me Jobs and NZ Esports Federation seek a Chief Gaming Officer to lead New Zealand's E Blacks esports team's global competition strategy.

Stainless steel, cast iron, or non-stick? Choosing the best cookware surface
Whether you're starting from scratch or looking to upgrade or replace cookware, you might be wondering what surface is best.

Star midfielder returns to All Whites after six-year hiatus
Ryan Thomas has been named in Darren Bazeley’s 23-man squad for next month’s Soccer Ashes friendlies against Australia’s Socceroos.

Wellington Hospital birthing suite short-staffed 70% of time
But Health NZ says 'there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel' and next year should be different.

Over 350 Dead in Less Than a Week as Monsoon Flooding Continues to Ravage Communities: 'Everybody Is Scared'

Israeli attacks, forced starvation have killed 62,000 Palestinians in Gaza

Porsche Enthusiasts United: Megaphonics Draws Big Crowds

Gore mayoralty: Rates, debt hot topics as Ben Bell, Nicky Davis square off
It's a two horse race with a former councillor and current mayor Ben Bell facing off for the mayoralty.

Auckland FC close to announcing signing of English striker
Sam Cosgrove is set to lead the line for the defending A-League Men premiers in the coming season.

‘I thought it was me’: Gareth Morgan stunned by deepfake scam using his face
Deepfakes of the former economist are circulating on Facebook and Instagram in yet another scam exploiting recognisable New Zealanders to lure investors

Organisers cancel book prize over trans controversy
Several authors withdrew from the Polari Prize longlist following comments made by writer John Boyne.

Weather damage causes power outages in Auckland's Mangere
Crews are working to find the cause of the outage and restoration may take some hours.

Couple get married on stage - in the middle of their Fringe show
Linus Karp and Joseph Martin have been together for 11 years and decided to tie the knot in a very special way - during a Fringe performance.

Transport agency disputes 'systemic failure' led to Johnathon Walters' death
It says it was an individual's actions that caused the death.

Tongan language is at the heart of its people's identity - academic
Tongan Language Week is being celebrated in Aotearoa this week under the theme, 'Our language is a vital strand of our Tongan culture'.

Nvidia’s GeForce Now adds killer upgrades: RTX 5080, DIY game installs
Nvidia’s GeForce Now service is offering its Ultimate tier subscribers an enormous upgrade today: GeForce RTX 5080 servers, cinematic visual upgrades, and a new “install to play” service that will “download” new games directly to the cloud, making them instantly ready to play. Nvidia is leaving the price of the GeForce Now Ultimate tier unchanged at $19.99 per month, and $99.99 for six months, Nvidia said at the Gamescom show. Nvidia is also adding an annual GeForce Now Ultimate subscription for $199.99. A GeForce Now Ultimate daily membership will be available at launch, Nvidia said, presumably for the current price of $7.99. Session lengths will remain at eight hours for Ultimate subscribers. The point of Nvidia’s GeForce Now service has always been to deliver a cloud gaming experience that’s as close as possible to what a gamer would experience on a PC. The price of graphics cards, of course, has climbed to astronomical heights, making GeForce Now a way of partially offsetting the hundreds of dollars a gamer would need to shell out for the latest RTX 4000 or 5000 series cards. Of course, playing a game in the cloud has traditionally meant forcing certain restrictions upon the subscriber: a limited resolution and image quality to minimize the amount of data sent back and forth over a broadband connection, and some level of latency or delay between a user’s input and a corresponding response from the game running on the server. Nvidia’s GeForce Now upgrades attack all of those angles to improve the experience. Nvidia’s new GeForce Now upgrade offers an RTX 5080 performance upgrade, but only on some games. Naturally, the most high-profile upgrade is the jump from the current RTX 4080 servers to the new RTX 5080 servers powered by Nvidia’s “Blackwell” architecture. Those come with all the bells and whistles you might expect from an RTX 5080 card, including DLSS 4 multi-frame generation that enables 5K resolution at 120 fps, and Nvidia Reflex technology with support for 360 fps at 1080p resolutions. Nvidia’s saying that if you’re in a GeForce Now-supported region, the “majority” of gamers will experience sub-30-millisecond latency. There’s a catch, however. Nvidia isn’t saying that all of its games will be playable on its Nvidia 5080 “Blackwell” servers, just that “you’ll be able to play select games with RTX 5080 performance.” Additional 5080-supported games will roll out weekly, Nvidia said. Nvidia isn’t saying exactly which CPUs will be used to power its new GeForce Now servers, but did say that they’ll be driven by AMD’s “Zen 5 CPUs” and Nvidia’s own ConnectX-7 SmartNICs. Currently, the Ultimate tier offers 16 virtual CPUs, and presumably that will remain the same. All told, there are 62 teraflops of gaming performance and 48GB of frame buffer available, with up to 100Mbps of data streamed down to your PC. That will boost performance on the Steam Deck from 60 to 90 fps, Nvidia said, and to 120 fps on the Lenovo Legion Go S. LG TVs will be able to game at 5120×2880 when connected to Windows or a macOS device — yes, macOS. The GeForce Now client on macOS will receive the same upgrades as the Windows app, finally turning Cupertino’s hardware into a gaming machine. Nvidia is also thinking about how games will actually look on your screen, too. If you game on a laptop, Nvidia will auto-detect what resolution it can game at, and will deliver you the best visual quality it thinks you can stand. GeForce Now will use YUV color with 4:4:4 chroma sampling to make games look great, tapping into AI where necessary to smooth graphical overlays. You’re going to like Nvidia’s new “install to play” One of the most exciting upgrades, however, is a not-so-obvious one: install-to-play. The legacy GeForce Now service required you to own a game, then “load” it onto one of Nvidia’s cloud servers. After you finished playing, however, those server resources would be reassigned to other users, instead of maintaining a persistent server dedicated to your gameplay alone. That meant a small delay while your game once again “loaded” onto a GeForce Now server. Now, that’s changed. Nvidia is assigning 100GB of dedicated cloud storage to each GeForce Now Ultimate subscriber, meaning that one or a few games will always be instantly available to play, including saved data. You’ll also be able to buy additional storage for 200GB for $2.99 per month, 500GB for $4.99 per month, and 1TB for $7.99 per month. Users who subscribe to the cheaper performance tier will also receive the install-to-play storage options, too. All told, the upgrade adds about 2,200 install-to-play games to the existing GeForce Now streaming library, for a total of about 4,500 or slightly more. They will include games like Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds 2, the Paradox sequel Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2, or Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 from Activision. Nvidia believes that you’ll get better performance streaming its games than with a PlayStation 5 Pro. Finally, Nvidia is offering more click-to-play options to try out GeForce Now. For example, if your buddy wants you to drop in and play Fortnite, they’ll be able to drop a “link” right in Discord. As long as you have an Epic gamertag set up, you’ll be able to jump right in — even if you’re on your ancient office desktop without a GPU installed. Nvidia also said that it’s “lightening” its Project G-Assist AI app, allowing it to be played on all RTX-equipped PCs with more than 6GB of VRAM.