A federal appeals court temporarily froze a judge`s ruling that would have soon required the National Guard to leave the streets of Washington DC. Read...

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang. Joe Rogan. A match made in heaven, right? AI proponent Huang appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience, run by AI disciple Joe Rogan, on Wednesday night, and the two got on like gangbusters, not surprisingly. Huang jumped in early to describe how well AI has improved — not the least by using his company’s GPUs. “In the last several years, I would say AI technology has increased, probably in the last two years alone, maybe 100X — let’s just give it a number,” Huang said on the podcast. “Okay, it’s like a car two years ago was 100 times slower, so AI is 100 times more capable today.” “Now, how did we channel that technology? How do we channel all of that power?” Huang asked. “We directed it to causing the AI to be able to think, meaning that it can take a problem that we give it, break it down, step by step. It does research before it answers.” Nvidia has previously shown off technologies in which AI powers NPCs in video games, implying that the tensor cores in Nvidia’s GPUs will be used for more than just rendering ray-traced photons and pixels, but will be used as a fundamental part of creative interaction. Huang also recounted statements made by the Trump administration that Nvidia is a “national treasure,” and recent statements made by tech executives that energy, not computer power, will be the bottleneck to the AI expansion. “Every nation will have the benefit of AI,” Huang said. “It might not be tomorrow’s AI. It might be yesterday’s AI. But it will be very good AI. It will be freaking amazing.” Rogan, a self-described “Quake junky,” even called up a photo of the meeting that eventually produced OpenAI, with Huang, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk. “Look at that, bro,” Rogan said. “Same jacket.” The full video is included below. Read...

The bosses of Te Mangai Paho did something unusual at Parliament this week - and it just might have paid off. Read...

The remains, which Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad say were found in northern Gaza, will be taken to Tel Aviv for forensic tests. Read...

It takes the national total to 28. Read...

In recent months, Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon have been at odds over whether falling house prices are a good thing. Read...

The National Federation of Women`s Institutes said it made the decision with “sincere regret”. Read...

CIVICUS is calling on these countries `to establish national human rights institutions as soon as possible`. Read...

One of the largest sunspot formations of the past several years is currently visible on the sun. The group, catalogued as AR 4294-4298, is so large that several of the dark regions exceed the Earth’s diameter. According to Newsweek, these are the largest sunspots in a decade. With binoculars or a telescope and an appropriate solar filter, the spots on the western side of the sun can be clearly identified. NASA’s solar probe Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recently documented a solar flare in this region. Possible effects on Earth The sunspots are currently pointing towards Earth. The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that coronal mass ejections (CME) from the active regions have not yet hit Earth. Nevertheless, experts predict that they could turn to more favorable positions over the next week, such that activities like solar flares could also be felt on Earth. For those of us on Earth, this could mean a special visual spectacle: auroras are possible when the plasma hurled into space by the sun hits the Earth’s magnetic field. The sunspot AR 4274 already caused spectacular northern lights some time ago. After rotating around the sun’s axis, the sunspot is now back under the new designation AR 4294-4298 and it’s significantly larger than before. Historical comparison and risks SpaceWeather.com draws a comparison with the sunspot region of 1859, which triggered the so-called “Carrington Event,” which was the strongest documented solar storm to date. The current formation is around 90 percent the size of that historical one. Although the exact impact on Earth and technology is still unclear, strong solar storms can jeopardize satellites, including systems like Starlink as well as GPS-based navigation systems. According to some studies, underwater internet repeaters could be particularly vulnerable, leading to regional or even global outages. Land-based fiber optic connections are less affected, so the US is somewhat less at risk. Experts are monitoring the sunspot activity closely so that they can react in good time in the event of an emergency. Read...

It’s been a while since the new version of Outlook overtook the old classic version, but users are still unhappy with it. The latest issue? Certain Excel attachments aren’t opening in Outlook anymore, and the problem has been kicking around for about two weeks already. Microsoft has confirmed the issue with a new service alert with ID EX1189359 (spotted by BleepingComputer), with the earliest reference to this particular problem dating back to November 23rd, 2025. Outlook users will see the following message when trying to open an affected Excel attachment: “Try opening the file again later.” The cause appears to be the use of non-ASCII characters in file names. Microsoft describes it like so: “Any user may be unable to open Excel files attached to email messages in the new Outlook client if the attachment contains non-ASCII characters.” In a recent update to the service alert, Microsoft continues: “We’ve developed a fix to address the missing encoding in the requests used to open files. We’re validating this deployment while we work to understand why this encoding error is occurring.” In other words, Microsoft is already working on a patch to address it, but no release date has been given for the fix. Some major international organizations, such as the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, have previously reported this issue: “Users may be unable to open Excel files attached to email messages in new Outlook and receive an error.” Further reading: Key tips for the new Outlook app Read...