NZCity NewsLinks -

All Links

21 Jun 2025

Search

British and Irish Lions v Argentina live updates: Lions prepare for Australia tour against Pumas
The Lions warm-up for the Australia tour by taking on the Pumas.

Live: British and Irish Lions v Argentina
Follow live coverage of the British and Irish Lions’ game against Argentina in Dublin.

Christopher Luxon concludes China trip: 'No evidence' of collaboration with Russia, Iran or North Korea
The prime minister has wrapped up his trip to China, dismissing suggestions the superpower is working with Russia, Iran or North Korea - as alleged by NATO's top official.

Intel teases huge leaps for 18A, the tech behind its next-gen ‘Panther Lake’ CPUs
Intel is almost literally betting its future on its upcoming “Panther Lake” CPU architecture, as well as the 18A manufacturing process it will be built upon. While we don’t have any concrete details of how Panther Lake will perform, Intel has publicly revealed some impressive numbers about the process technology itself. German publication Hardwareluxx reported on Intel’s 18A presentation at a VLSI symposium in Japan, where Intel unveiled the first performance numbers for the 18A process. Intel didn’t use one of its own architectures for the paper; rather, it used part of an Arm core to share its process improvements, which seems to be standard practice for these types of disclosures. Intel showed off a slide claiming that its 18A process will deliver 25 percent more performance while running at the same power, or else cut power by 38 percent while running at the same performance. There’s an additional wrinkle, though: Intel’s comparisons are being made between its Intel 3 technology and Intel 18A. Intel has never manufactured a consumer processor on an Intel 3 process; Intel’s Core Ultra 200 (Meteor Lake) was manufactured in the Intel 4 process, and Lunar Lake was manufactured on TSMC’s N3B and N6 processes. So while Intel is making some aggressive claims, we don’t quite know what it’s comparing them to. Nevertheless, Intel has been talking up Panther Lake and the 18A process for more than a year. Panther Lake represents the culmination of Intel’s “five nodes in four years” plan to get Intel’s manufacturing back on track, backed by technologies like gate-all-around transistors and backside power routing. Expect Intel to talk about these terms more, as well as what they mean for Panther Lake’s performance, this fall. Panther Lake is a critical product for Intel, so expect to hear a lot more before the chip is expected to ship early in 2026.

Wave of house fires overnight
Three are in hospital and another was treated at the scene following blazes in Dunedin, Hastings and Levin.

Light trail to celebrate Matariki goes on display
Auckland Council said the trail is guided by light and sound effects created by Maori artists.

Microsoft’s Family Safety app is blocking Chrome on Windows PCs
If your PC won’t open Google Chrome, there may be a culprit: Microsoft. Google determined that Microsoft’s Family Safety app is blocking Chrome, though the company hasn’t discovered how or why. “For some users, Chrome is unable to run when Microsoft Family Safety is enabled,” Google support engineers posted on the company’s support blog. The issues have apparently been occurring for weeks. The glitch (?) was reported on by The Verge, who also reported that the problem can be resolved by temporarily renaming the Chrome executable to something else. (There’s nothing wrong with using the Google Chrome browser, of course.) Google also published the following workaround: Go to https://familysafety.microsoft.com or open the Family Safety mobile app. Select the child. To allow other browsers, Disable “Filter inappropriate websites” under the Edge tab, or Go to Windows tab ? Apps & Games ? unblock Chrome” Microsoft’s Family Safety allows a parent to manage screen time and apps used by their kids, and can either be accessed via the web or a dedicated app. Let’s hope that it’s just being a little aggressive, and Microsoft fixes it soon.