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21 Aug 2025

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Mt Eden prisoner reportedly sexually assaulted as intercom goes unanswered
A prison watchdog says the 'deeply concerning' incident is still under investigation.

‘Deceptive, coercive, corruptive’: The world power the SIS says carries out the most foreign interference in NZ
NZ facing its “most challenging security environment” in years from foreign interference, espionage, and more young people being radicalised online.

NZ facing toughest national security environment of recent times - report
Foreign interference, espionage, and online radicalisation threats have increased since last year, the Security Intelligence Service says.

Why did New Zealand interest rates go higher than Australia's?
Australia's cash rate peaked at 4.35 percent. New Zealand's reached 5.5 percent.

Mt Eden prisoner sexually assaulted as intercom calls for help go unanswered
A prison watchdog says the 'deeply concerning' incident is still under investigation.

Rate capping lessons and warnings from across the Tasman
As rate payers feel the pinch, plans for rate capping offer welcome relief. But councillors across the Tasman have warnings.

Retailers upbeat following OCR cut, but experts say next six months will be crucial
But experts warn it may be some time before the effects of the change start to be felt.

Officials don't know if NZ is on US priority weapons trading partners list
In April, President Donald Trump ordered a 'list of priority partners' for arms transfers be drawn up within 60 days.

How to get around forced app updates in the Microsoft Store
Until now, it was always possible to disable automatic app updates in the Microsoft Store permanently and without exception. It was convenient for users who wanted to stay on older versions of apps. However, Microsoft sees things differently and is now switching things up. In the current version of the Microsoft Store, automatic app updates can no longer be disabled, only paused. You can choose between different durations, but only up to a maximum of five weeks. After that, the app updates are automatically enabled again. Even those who had previously deactivated automatic app updates will now be forced to switch to a pause. The change affects systems running Windows 11 as well as Windows 10. Why manual app updates can be useful There are various reasons why it can make sense to disable automatic app updates. If you want to have more control over your installed apps and want to ensure compatibility with other programs, deactivating automatic updates prevents accidentally breaking those compatibilities. In addition, Microsoft itself is constantly making changes to the availability of features in apps, whether by adding new ones that you may not like or by removing existing features that you depend on. Staying on an older app version can help in these situations, too. How to get around forced app updates For the time being, there’s a small workaround you can employ to ensure that automatic app updates aren’t activated. To do this, you need to adjust a group policy in Windows. To do this, enter the command gpedit.msc in the Windows search bar, then navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Store. There you’ll see a policy titled “Turn off Automatic Download and Install of updates.” Double-click the policy, then change its option to “Disabled” and save. Once you’ve done that, restart your PC to apply the group policy. Apparently, it was once possible to make this change via the Windows registry, but that no longer seems to be possible.

Microsoft wants to soothe a big pain for PC gamers: Shaders
Microsoft said Wednesday that it’s working to remove one of the frustrating headaches for PC gamers: the need to compile shaders. Microsoft said that it will release an AgilitySDK in September to solve this problem, speeding up your time from downloading a game to playing it by as much as 85 percent. If you play games on the Xbox or other consoles, you probably have no idea what we’re talking about. That’s because shaders — the instructions for rendering pixels as they move through the processing pipeline — are optimized for your specific hardware setup. An Xbox game “knows” what your console contains. Shaders for a PC game have to be optimized for each specific configuration, including the game, the GPU, and the GPU driver. Doing so requires not just downloading the game but compiling the shaders for your hardware, which you might see occurring on the game’s loading screen. While those instructions are then stored on your PC, it’s still time that you have to wait before you can play the game. That’s one of the features Microsoft is adding to the launch of the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X — since the configurations are fixed, the shaders can be downloaded as part of the game itself. Microsoft calls this “advanced shader delivery.” Microsoft wants to take that convenience and extend it to a “number of devices,” Microsoft said Wednesday, presumably targeting the PC market as a whole. Standardizing shaders saves time What Microsoft is doing is to collect the shader data from a game in a standardized format, known as a State Object Database, or SODB. Microsoft said that it has worked with its key hardware partners to separate the shader compiler from the graphics driver and united the game data in the SODB with the compiler in the cloud to create a Precompiled Shader Database, or PSDB. This database will be downloaded along with the game, so the game will essentially be able to “look up” what shaders it needs in the database and launch them immediately. Microsoft’s diagram of how the Precompiled Shader Database (PSDB) will work. “Now, when a game runs for the first time, it will see all the shaders it needs already available in a cache in Windows and can skip doing that compilation step on the gaming device,” Microsoft said. “If a device takes a driver update, we will detect that and update the shader cache automatically.” Right now, this feature is exclusive to the Xbox gaming store, the Xbox PC app, and AMD processors — which power the two Asus ROG Ally devices. However, Microsoft said that the AgilitySDK will be provided to other storefronts as well as game developers, so they can do the necessary work on the back end. Microsoft said the feature will also be made available to games that have already shipped, but that work is in the future. For now, Microsoft added that it is going to be working with specific devices to add this functionality, and it will share more details in September. Microsoft calls this advanced shader delivery a solution to one of the more frustrating problems that a PC gamer has, and that’s true! Downloading gigabytes and gigabytes on a slow connection can be excruciating…with an additional delay for compiling the shaders itself. One of the best features of a console is how quickly you can power it on and jump into a game. It’s great that Microsoft sees the same future for the PC.