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8 Aug 2025

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Traditional Maori sports featured for the first time at Cook Islands Constitution celebrations
Competitors from different islands faced off in rock lifting, coconut husking, fruit racing and wrestling, with most coming from Pukapuka, an atoll in the Northern Group.

Canterbury lock’s long road back to the All Blacks
Count Sam Darry among those not in the least bit surprised his name didn’t feature in the All Blacks’ Rugby Championship squad.

Security guard bitten, another punched, in two random incidents
One security guard was punched trying to apprehend a suspected pie and sausage roll thief, while the other was bitten on the arm at a pharmacy.

Electorate boundary changes for Bay of Plenty, Christchurch, and Lower North Island
The Lower North Island will lose one electorate, while Auckland, Bay of Plenty, and Christchurch face significant boundary shake-ups, for the 2026 general election.

Cohesity launches Aspire Partner Programme to boost data security
Cohesity launches its Aspire Partner Programme to support global partners in delivering secure, flexible data management and cyber resilience solutions.

Weekend weather: Temperatures to plummet as South Island skiers hold out for snow
MetService said a series of cold fronts would see temperatures drop on Friday, heralding the return of widespread frosts.

Anchora unveils new leadership to drive APAC tech expansion
Anchora appoints Sambhav Jain as CTO and Max Barrass as Chief Innovation Officer to boost APAC growth amid 30% surge in marketing tech demand.

Air New Zealand's return to London is a 'high priority', but which route to take?
The national carrier is weighing up re-starting services to the UK.

Climate activists close down Dunedin ANZ bank branch amid nationwide protest
Activists linked arms outside ANZ to protest its ties with coal mining company Bathurst

Drawing from memory: Auckland-based Tongan artist brings Pacific nostalgia to life
Luca Tu'avao Walton is an emerging voice in the Pacific creative landscape with a distinctive style rooted in memory, identity, and the 'nostalgia' of island life.

Trump calls for Intel boss to resign immediately, alleging China ties
The unusual demand adds to challenges facing the firm, which has been seen as falling behind in the chip race.

Person suffers moderate injuries in Bay of Plenty incident
A person has been taken to hospital after an incident in Matata in Bay of Plenty this morning.

Identity of man accused of killing police officer Lyn Fleming revealed
Fleming was killed in the early hours of New Year's Day after being struck by a vehicle while she was on foot patrol in central Nelson.

Degree or trade? Here’s what you’re saying: ‘School isn’t for everyone’ ... Go get a degree’... ‘Not a good time to be a tradie’
Stuff asked for reader feedback on an article about the cost and utility of degrees versus trade apprenticeships.

Lindsay Zwart steps in to lead APAC for Pax8 amid leadership shift
Lindsay Zwart, former Vodafone and Microsoft exec, has been named EVP and GM for APAC at Pax8, driving cloud commerce growth across the region.

Samoa keeps clean sheet in Pool A with win over Tahiti at OFC U16 women's tourney
The OFC 2025 Under-16 Women's Championship hosts are on fire after defeating Tahiti 1-0 in on Thursday afternoon to record their third straight win in the tournament.

‘Fair cop’: Chris Bishop publicly called out Tory Whanau. When she texted him privately, he took it back
Bishop had posted that Tory Whanau said nothing about anti-Semitic graffiti in Wellington.

Trump opens door for crypto in retirement accounts
The president signs an order aimed at expanding the kinds of investments allowed in retirement accounts.

Microsoft Copilot is now powered by GPT-5 too, mostly
Microsoft has added GPT-5 to Copilot, a day after adding OpenAI’s open-source GPT model to its local services. GPT-5, which also powers ChatGPT, is now live within Copilot, at copilot.microsoft.com, Microsoft said Thursday. Presumably the same model will eventually power the Copilot application running on top of Windows PCs, but the Windows app appears to use just the older GPT-4 model for now, at least on my PC. OpenAI launched GPT-5 on Thursday, promising leaps in general intelligence as well as specialized improvements in creative writing, coding, and health purposes. In coding, OpenAI claimed that it could create a website in just a single prompt. GPT-5 includes what OpenAI called a router, assigning queries to specific tasks based upon the complexity of the assignment. On Microsoft’s Copilot site, you’ll need to manually enable it via the drop-down menu. Based upon the description — “Thinks deeply or quickly based upon the task” — it too seems to have the router functionality active. You’ll need to manually enable GPT-5 on Microsoft’s Copilot site. A dumb but otherwise telling prompt, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood” quickly produced an answer: 700 pounds of wood. But when asked to “show your work,” Copilot delivered a lengthier explanation. It still wasn’t as detailed as the GPT-5 explanation available on ChatGPT, though the two AI engines arrived at the same answer. Expect to see GPT-5 within Microsoft 365 Copilot as well as GitHub Copilot, Visual Studio Code, and Azure Foundry, Microsoft said. Microsoft said GPT-5 on Azure AI Foundry will be available today, but its presence on GitHub Copilot was couched in future terms. On Wednesday, Microsoft said that it was bringing gpt-oss-120B and gpt-oss-20B to Azure AI Foundry, and GPU-optimized versions of the gpt-oss-20B model to Windows devices through Foundry Local. These open-source GPT-4 models require a discrete GPU with more than 16GB of VRAM. I ran the gpt-oss model on the Framework Desktop, with its Ryzen AI Max+ 395 CPU and integrated GPU, which can be configured to assign 96GB of its available memory as VRAM for a significant performance boost. It actually produced better answers than a substantially more complex Meta Llama Scout 109B model that ran on the same hardware. Meanwhile, Microsoft said it believes the GPT-5 model is safer than its predecessors. “The results show that the reasoning model exhibited one of the strongest AI safety profiles among prior OpenAI models against several modes of attack, including malware generation, fraud/scam automation and other harms,” it said.