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16 Jun 2025

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Snowflake, Acxiom launch AI platform for marketing data
Snowflake and Acxiom have joined forces to launch a secure, AI-driven marketing data platform, revolutionising brand data access and privacy management globally.

Haas responds to fiery Maroons
State of Origin news 2025, Payne Haas game two press conference, NSW Blues, video.

Huge cash Buddy would pay 'generational' Darcy
Lance Franklin gives his thoughts on on what Sam Darcy is worth, and Kozzie Pickett's new deal.

Ugle-Hagan returns from absence to Dogs training
A remorseful Jamarra Ugle-Hagan has returned to Whitten Oval ready to reignite his chequered footy career.

Blues keep To’o in cotton wool after hamstring scare
NSW medicos have revealed that Brian To’o suffered a fresh hamstring injury playing for Panthers.

Trbojevic shift, players dropped: Manly coach has two games to prove he can turn club around
Anthony Seibold held a series of individual seven-minute interviews with all of his players on Monday as pressure mounts on the under-fire coach to turn the struggling club’s fortunes around.

Grant's selection reply draws laughs
Harry Grant is asked whether Queensland will be 1-17 with his response resulting in laughter from Cameron Smith and Paul Gallen.

Seibold under the pump after player meetings
Michael Chammas reveals Anthony Seibold held one-on-one meetings with players amid a form slump.

Simon Goodwin is officially on the coaching hot seat
Matthew Lloyd wonders whether Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin will still be in charge come 2026.

Roald Dahl's original sketches to be auctioned
In Roald Dahl's five-decade long career, these were the only sketches he ever created for his books.

7 apps that helped me conquer my crippling procrastination
With a brain that’s swimming in a cocktail of neurodivergence, one of my most persistent enemies has always been procrastination. I was once told that my attention span is, on a scale of 1 to 10, either 15 or random. But as hard as it is to overcome—a condition that feels more nature than nurture—it’s something I’m learning to manage. Weeks ago, I decided I couldn’t get arbitrary brain chemistry get in the way of productivity, and so I took matters into my own hands. I needed to stop being so distracted and to change some habits, but I wasn’t going to do it alone. I was going to use technology to help me. Now, a couple of weeks on from implementing these tweaks, I feel like it’s been moderately successful. Here’s what I did. Stop procrastination dead in its tracks The first and most impactful change I knew I could make was to cut out a bunch of social media usage. I’m no voracious user, but I’m a sucker for scrolling through subreddits and diving into deep discussions on the minutiae of my various hobbies and interests. As much as I’ve learned doing that over the years, I’ve also developed unhealthy habits of following politics far too closely—and the news cycle is nothing but a doomscroll hole waiting to happen in 2025. So, I took drastic measures. I installed the BlockSite extension on every web browser (except one, in case I need to check Reddit or Twitter for work) and completely blocked the most distracting sites. I did the same on my phone too, as it’s that little black mirror that’s probably to blame for most of my procrastination. I also installed NoScroll on my phone to block shorts and reels. That stuff is crack to an ADHD brain. I use the BlockSite extension to block distracting sites. The block screen is mildly mocking, but I don’t mind it. I probably deserve it.Jon Martindale / Foundry If you’d rather take a less puritanical approach to managing the sites and services that tempt you to procrastinate, extensions like StayFocusd can make it easier to limit your time rather than block entire sites permanently. If you’re like me, though, excising the whole habit cold turkey is an easier change to make than having a lesser drip feed of it. Whatever the case, cutting out distractions leaves me with little to do but focus on the task at hand—and it works to encourage greater focus. The carrot alongside the stick The first time I sat on the toilet after blocking everything, I had a bizarre moment where I was staring at my phone with my mind telling me there’s something interesting there to do. But I’d blocked everything I usually do. What was I even looking at this thing for? That was a prime opportunity to not just hinder my bad habits but to reward the good ones. How am I going to improve my attention span? By doing things that require greater attention. Mozilla So I stocked my bathroom with a cheap e-reader with a few novels I’ve been neglecting. I also installed Pocket on my phone. While Firefox recently announced that it’s discontinuing Pocket, there are similar alternatives and the premise is all the same: save articles and web content to read or watch later when you have time. Now when I have time to kill, it’s with something more mentally nourishing than Reddit or TikTok. At the very least, I come out of it with less brain rot; at best, I’m developing better attention. Boring and silent are friends of focus Modern electronics and software are designed to grab and hold our attention with colors, lights, quick hits of compelling content, snazzy animations, etc. For me, it wasn’t enough to avoid social media and other distracting sites. A part of me was still drawn to the pretty icons and animations on my phone—so I decided to make it boring, too. Enter Minimalist Phone, a paid app (with a free trial) that turns your phone into a boring brick of black, overhauling the entire OS to look as dull and uninteresting as possible. That means no more icons, only text for everything, and it’s all black and white, yet you can still manage apps and services with ease thanks to its intuitive navigation. Check out my minimalist phone. It isn’t pretty, but that’s the point.Jon Martindale / Foundry But Minimalist Phone goes further than that. It also has an app blocker that lets you restrict certain apps to a schedule, or set mindfulness pauses before running certain apps, or even create an entirely separate work profile with different behavior when you’re “in focus mode.” It can also filter unimportant notifications so you aren’t distracted by alerts. I personally made a point of disabling all unnecessary notifications on Teams, Slack, and other work communication tools. For the ones I kept, I made the notifications monochrome and silent. That means I only know if someone sent me a message when I choose to check in—not when the app wants me to know—and that makes it easier for me to stay on task. Speaking of staying on task, I also have ChatGPT send me occasional reminders using its scheduled tasks feature. It’s just little things like a notice in the morning to start my day or a prompt to make sure I get done a certain task by a deadline. Could I use a traditional reminder app? Sure, but ChatGPT’s organic variations make me less likely to skip them. Plus, I’m already paying $20 per month for ChatGPT Plus. Might as well use it! A better way to procrastinate Breaking old habits isn’t easy. Even with blocks in place, I still feel the urge to procrastinate—and even when I’m reminded not to, I still want to find workarounds. For me, it isn’t plausible to never procrastinate. That’s why I allow myself to procrastinate in better ways. Maybe when I complete a task, I fire up my Chess.com account for a quick game. In between writing projects, I might give myself a few minutes with my preferred idle game: Ropuka’s Idle Island. Yes, it’s still a game, but at least it’s designed for drip entertainment. It doesn’t hook me for hours and hours, and the chill lo-fi soundtrack keeps it mellow. Jon Martindale / Foundry On dog walks, I’m making myself listen to audiobooks rather than shorter-form brain-rot content. And don’t underestimate the power of analog activities! I took up a new hobby in knitting. I won’t pretend it doesn’t feel like a whim for now, but I’m giving it a go as a way to detox from tech and procrastinate in a more productive way. Every second away from my phone helps to train away my urges to procrastinate. Jon Martindale / Foundry Overcoming procrastination is a long-term project, one that will probably remain a struggle for the rest of my life. But I already feel some of the positive benefits of these mitigating techniques. I’m less hooked on scrolling and more content overall. I’m a little more focused and a little more effective. We’ll see how long it lasts.

'Nightmare scenario' with scary IndyCar crash
Josef Newgarden and Louis Foster crash into each other at St. Louis.

Hird's AFL conspiracy theory after strange fixture choice
James Hird has an intriguing conspiracy theory regarding Tasmania and the AFL fixture.

Tips and race-by-race guide to Hawkesbury on Tuesday
Your comprehensive guide to backing a winner at the eight-race meeting.

Form stable chases winning treble at Hawkesbury
John O’Shea and Tom Charlton are poised to continue their successful run when they head to Hawkesbury on Tuesday.

Breaking down the Maroons’ next era, and the boy from Monto at its heart
A Queensland loss may force the changing of the guard, one which has already begun with Daly Cherry-Evans’ axing. We break down the Maroons’ future prospects.

De Koning calls meeting to decide if incoming chief’s blueprint is right for him
While the lucrative offer from St Kilda remains highly appealing, De Koning’s decision to call the meeting with incoming Blues CEO Graham Wright has lifted hopes of him staying at Carlton.

Gus calls out 'ordinary' DCE axing
Phil Gould expresses his sympathy for Daly Cherry-Evans after Queensland axed him for Origin II.

Blues growing in confidence star free agent will stay
Sam McClure reports exclusive details about De Koning's meeting with the incoming Blues CEO.

Microsoft is still ignoring the AI PCs that actually matter
Should Microsoft and the PC industry have paid more attention to the GPU during the development of AI and Copilot+ PCs? After a year’s time waiting for Copilot+ PCs (and their newfangled “Neural Processing Units” to take off, I can’t help but wonder. Microsoft launched the Copilot+ PC initiative on May 20, 2024, and began shipping them on June 18. Since then, Microsoft has supported Copilot+ PCs with a handful of features, rolling them out first for PCs with the Qualcomm Snapdragon chips inside and then later for PCs powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chips and the AMD Ryzen AI 300 processor. It’s been a sputtery, stuttery start. Qualcomm is essentially blameless, delivering a potent PC processor with most AI capabilities and long battery life. But AMD and Intel shipped processors without NPUs wielding the requisite AI TOPS to qualify as Copilot+ PCs, leaving PC makers to sell the concept of an “AI PC” without much behind it. Microsoft had a more cohesive plan in place, delivering several Copilot+ features: Live Captions, which can generate closed captions and even translations of pre-recorded video; Paint’s Cocreator AI functionality, Photos’ Super Resolution; semantic Search; Windows Studio Effects and some Click-to-Do features that “know” what you want to do when you right-click a file. Windows Recall, of course, was supposed to be the flagship, then became mired in controversy. Paint’s Cocreator tool uses your doodles as the basis for AI-generated art.Mark Hachman / IDG None of those features, with the exception of Recall and Live Captions, require excessive compute power. Windows Studio Effects runs on the NPU, but the features are essentially clones of existing effects like background blurring that can be run on a CPU. Paint’s Cocreator is quite fast, and probably benefits from running on the NPU. But the app is kind of a gimmick, and not all that accurate. The most powerful AI silicon isn’t the NPU Yet we’ve known for months that the most powerful AI engine — not the most efficient, but the most powerful — is the GPU…which is why they’re being snapped up in droves. Yes, gamers love them. But it’s clear that a PC or laptop graphics card can outperform an NPU in most AI tasks, at least right now. I love creator-class notebooks. A laptop like Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 might lack the long battery life of a Snapdragon PC — something I certainly missed while on the road! — but it contains a robust Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU that often sits idle. If I need to edit a photo, I could certainly load up Adobe Photoshop. Otherwise, it sits unused. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition: basically the fastest consumer AI engine available.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry Let’s face it: many of the Copilot+ features feel like small potatoes. Nothing that runs on the PC feels aspirational. There’s no AI equivalent to Crysis that runs on the local PC. What if Microsoft had simply said, you know, we believe the future is this thing known as an AI PC, which will eventually include NPUs with increasing power. But to give you a taste of what could be, we’re going to allow these AI functions to take advantage of these powerful GPUs already in your laptops and desktop PCs. Yes, it’s going to spin up your GPU, and your PC’s fans; however, future AI PCs will be much more efficient and less power-hungry. Heck, I could have done the marketing: think of a GPU and an NPU as a gas-guzzling ICE engine, and an NPU as a slick, efficient electric vehicle. It’s easy for me to suggest that Microsoft should have split its developer resources, coding Copilot+ features for NPUs as well as GPUs. It’s also easy for me to accuse Microsoft of gobbling up that opportunity for itself, routing billions to its own cloud services. Meanwhile, products like AMD’s Ryzen AI Max are being specifically designed for a new breed of gaming/inferencing PC workstations. Gigabyte describes its AI TOP 500 TRX50 as “purpose-built for local AI development, multimodal fine-tuning, and high-performance gaming,” with an AMD Threadripper Pro and up to 768GB of DRAM. It runs Windows 11. It does not have an NPU. Can Microsoft save itself from itself? Like so many others, Microsoft appears to have been caught flat-footed by AI, tip-toeing ahead with incremental improvements while the giants stride by. It may be that Microsoft’s Foundry Local, launched at Build 2025, may be the answer. But it’s absolutely true that if you want to work with AI on a PC or workstation, you choose a third-party solution — not Microsoft. Microsoft doesn’t have to do everything, of course. Yet while it still myopically focuses in on optimizing for PCs with a few TOPS of AI power, millions more are sitting around waiting for an opportunity to do more.