General Capital Limited advises that its subsidiary General Finance Limited, a licensed Non-bank Deposit Taker, has uploaded its quarterly unaudited report for the quarter ended 31 December 2024 to the Disclose Register Read...

Nvidia is making great strides with its newest generation of graphics cards. With the Blackwell series (i.e., the exciting new RTX 50 series), Nvidia is focusing on powerful GPUs that rely ever more on AI features and AI-driven improvements. If you own an older Nvidia graphics card, though, things are getting tight. According to the release notes for CUDA 12.8 — Nvidia’s programming interface that allows its GPUs to be used for general purposes — several GPU models are now considered “feature-complete” and will be “frozen” in an upcoming release, reports Tom’s Hardware. Affected GPU models are ones that have Maxwell, Pascal and Volta architectures, which include all Nvidia graphics cards from GeForce 700 up to and including Nvidia’s 10 series. They’re all deprecated, obsolete, and waiting to be put on ice. What does this mean for you? If you own one of these affected Nvidia GPUs, your GPU will no longer receive any new features through future updates, so don’t expect any more improvements or optimizations going forward. However, basic security fixes will likely continue via driver updates. So, if you’re okay with that, you can keep using your GPU and don’t have to dispose of it straight away. No specific date has been announced for end of support, but it will likely come with the next CUDA update. Nvidia broke new standards with all three GPU series that are about to be shuttered, whether in terms of raw performance, energy efficiency, or being the first architecture for mobile GPUs (Maxwell). Though these are now in the past, the company continues to break new ground and shows no signs of slowing down or stopping any time soon. Read...

Democrats described Trump`s late-night firing of the federal agency inspectors general as an `attack on Democracy`. Read...

The Attorney-General has called for an investigation into the top District Court Judge`s behaviour at a private event in November. Read...

Hey, did you know there are new Nvidia graphics cards on the way? It’s a pretty big deal. Such a big deal, in fact, that we’re still processing what we saw at CES 2025 (along with a lot of the videos we recorded, sorry). After Nvidia’s big reveal of the RTX 5090 and other cards, PCWorld’s Adam Patrick Murray pulled his old buddy Paul of Paul’s Hardware aside to chat and get his expert impressions. There are two shocking things about the RTX 5090. First, it’s a true two-slot card — no 2.5-slot fuzziness — thanks to some remarkable new engineering that shrinks the primary circuit board. That means it’ll fit far more easily into every PC build, though its pass-through cooling fan setup might create some problems with the smallest SFF designs. Second, the RTX 5090 costs $2,000. A lot of money for a graphics card (and $400 more than the RTX 4090 from two years ago). But it’s also less than a lot of people were expecting, considering the rapid rise in secondary prices for Nvidia cards due to the crypto and AI booms. Frankly, if Nvidia had priced it at $2,500 as many expected, it would still sell every single one it could make. Paul also takes very particular exception to Jensen Huang’s claim that the less powerful RTX 5070, at a $550 price point, will give you “4090 performance.” Nvidia’s marketing rests on the new card’s more powerful DLSS 4 and AI-powered frame generation… which is undeniably cool, and also undeniably not the same thing as “performance” in the general sense. If all you want is 4K/60FPS in Spider-Man 2, it’s great. If you want 1080p/500FPS in Counter-Strike 2, not so much. Check out the full video for all the nuanced takes between Adam and Paul, including ways AMD could counter with a win for consumers. And for the latest PC news (and a lot more stuff from CES 2025), be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube. Read...

VPN services have many uses and benefits, like making sure you aren’t being overcharged based on your location, protecting your privacy while using the internet, and streaming media that’s located outside your own region (e.g., another country’s Netflix library). And for the most part, VPNs have long been considered safe to use. But one recent investigation by Top10VPN has raised questions about whether VPNs are truly as secure as they’re touted to be. In collaboration with security researcher Mathy Vanhoef, Top10VPN shared this discovery ahead of its presentation at the USENIX 2025 conference in Seattle. In short, they discovered serious vulnerabilities that affect over 4 million systems. These systems include VPN servers, home network routers, mobile servers, and CDN nodes, including those belonging to large global companies like Meta and Tencent. Specifically, it concerns the IP6IP6, GRE6, 4in6, and 6in4 tunneling protocols, which are supposed to secure data transmission. However, this is where attackers can apparently exploit vulnerabilities (relatively easily) to gain access to networks. Related: VPN terms and features everyone should know The VPN security issue, explained According to the researchers, many VPN protocols can’t reliably verify that the identity of a sender matches the authorized user profile of the VPN. Attackers can therefore use so-called one-way proxies to gain access over and over, all without being traced. According to the report, hackers just need to send data packets that implement one of the affected protocols to gain unauthorized access. Then, they can do things like launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks or infiltrate private networks to steal data. The only way to prevent this is to use additional security mechanisms, such as IPsec or WireGuard, which provide end-to-end encryption of VPN traffic data. Only the server is then able to read the encrypted data. Which VPNs are affected? Of the numerous VPN hosts that were analyzed, those classified as insecure mainly included servers and services from the US, Brazil, China, France, and Japan. In general, however, caution should always be exercised when using VPN services. When choosing a VPN, always make sure it offers one of the encryption features mentioned above. The best way to stay safe is to carry out independent tests, which we’ve done for you in our comparison of the best overall VPN services. Read...

Windows 11 laptop users can finally rejoice thanks to Microsoft’s latest improvement: a much better battery status display. Up until now, you could only see a battery level indicator in the bottom right-hand corner of the Windows 11 taskbar, and that indicator didn’t immediately show you the percentage of your battery’s charge. You had to hover your mouse cursor over the battery icon to see it, and you had to right-click to open the power and sleep settings. Now, in a preview version of Windows 11 that’s currently available to Windows 11 Insiders, there’s an improved view of the battery status display, according to this tweet spotted by BetaNews. The improved battery level indicator shows your battery charge percentage at all times, no hovering or clicking necessary. When this comes to the general version of Windows 11 for all users, you’ll be able to see your laptop battery percentage with just a glance. https://twitter.com/phantomofearth/status/1880368411261513892 Maybe this seems like a small and insignificant change. But if you’ve ever worked on your laptop for extended periods without a power connect, you know how important it is to be able to keep an eye on your current battery level without having to interrupt your work. This convenience is also nice when you’re streaming media, like YouTube or Netflix, and don’t want your laptop to die in the middle of it. Again, this improvement isn’t available to all Windows 11 users yet. To access it now, you need to become a Windows 11 Insider and you need to enable the new feature in the power menu settings. Further reading: Is it bad to leave your laptop always plugged in? Read...

Lenovo has appointed Victoria Mahan as General Manager for New Zealand, succeeding Libby MacGregor, to lead operations from Auckland. Read...

General Practitioners Aotearoa is concerned the government is funding the products without robust scientific evidence and could cause more harm than good. Read...

The Solicitor General has referred Urfan Sharif`s sentence to the Court of Appeal. Read...