Two district councils in the Lower North Island are banding together against downgraded plans for an expressway through their districts. Read...

There have been 127 crashes on Main North Rd since 2015, with five fatalities. Read...

Napier Port (NZX.NPH), the freight gateway for the central and lower North Island, today announced strong earnings growth for the six months ended 31 March 2025. The result was underpinned by a solid uplift in container cargo volumes Read...

Do you want allegedly useful “artificial intelligence” features in your face in every single service and tool you use, constantly, unceasingly, and demanding you pay more for it? No? Too freakin’ bad, it’s coming anyway. The latest perpetrator is Adobe, who’s now raising the price of its priciest Creative Cloud plans next month and justifying it by bundling in a bunch of generative AI tools. The Creative Cloud All Apps plan is being renamed Creative Cloud Pro, because apparently tools that cost hundreds of dollars a year and aren’t available as full purchases aren’t for “professionals” unless they’re paying the maximum amount. If you’re in the US, Canada, or Mexico, and if you’re currently subscribed to All Apps, you’ll be moved over to the Pro plan starting on June 17th… with a price bump from $60 per month to $70 per month for standard, yearly-subscribed users in the US. Month-to-month prices will jump from the already-sky-high $90 per month to $105 per month. You can save a small amount on this by paying for a full year of access up front—that’s a whopping $780, which is a $120 increase over the previous yearly price for access to all Adobe apps. As usual, students and teachers qualify for discounts, using Aristotle’s “get ’em hooked while young” approach. Users will have the option to continue with their existing level of access, renamed from Creative Cloud All Apps to Creative Cloud Standard, for $55 per month on a yearly contract (or $82.49 month-to-month, $600 per year prepaid). Those rates are actually slightly cheaper than the existing prices for the same level of access… but the new plan won’t be available to new users starting in June. I repeat: in order to get the Standard plan, you’ll need to be an existing subscriber. New users won’t have access to those lower prices, and you’ll need to manually change over to get the cheaper Standard plan. How can it be a “Standard” plan if Adobe doesn’t make it available to everyone? I don’t know. Third base. Adobe For the higher Pro prices, Adobe is offering “full access” to the premium online versions of Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Fresco—even at $55 a month, you’ll be stuck with the free web versions of everything except Acrobat. Pro also offers 4,000 credits a month for “up to 40 5-second [AI-generated] videos” or 14 minutes of translated video and audio, plus unlimited generative image and vector tools. Standard users get only 25 credits a month for Generative Fill, etc. As The Verge notes, initial reactions from Adobe customers are scathing. Microsoft, Google, and Canva all got similar rebukes as they’ve tried to force expensive and allegedly useful AI upgrades on their users. More than one poster on the After Effects subreddit has implied that they’ll continue using Adobe’s programs without paying for them. Ahem-hem. Adobe offers several plans below the All Apps/Pro level that don’t include access to dozens of programs, and they don’t appear to be changing at the moment. There’s also no indication that the new plans will be spreading beyond North America, at least for the time being. But speaking as someone who’s pass the two-decade mark as a Photoshop user, if you’re looking for less pricey, less exploitative options, you might want to look right here. Read...

Acer’s most interesting gaming notebook for Computex 2025 isn’t necessarily a gaming notebook at all. The Predator Triton 14 AI is a surprisingly thin, creator-class notebook that includes both Intel’s Lunar Lake notebook CPU alongside an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU cooled by something new: graphene. Acer also is announcing the Acer Predator Helios Neo 14 AI, a slightly cheaper version, plus refreshes of the Nitro lineup that go as large as an 18-inch display. Here’s what you need to know about all three gaming laptops: Acer’s 14.5-inch Predator Triton 14 AI is just 11mm thick at its thinnest point. Acer replaced the traditional liquid metal with graphene for improved cooling, and there’s a haptic touchpad (with its own stylus!) for inking while you’re on the go. Acer’s new 14.5-inch Helios Neo 14 AI combines a Core Ultra 9 285H with an RTX 5070, and should cost a bit less. Acer also is shipping several versions of its Nitro gaming laptops, both 16- and 18-inch versions which focus on the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processors. One of the questions I asked was if Acer is designing toward a price point, or to the component choices it deemed best for its users. Acer executives said they were making the latter choice, which might be one of the reasons that Acer is keeping the price and availability of the laptops mum for now. “We will announce U.S. pricing, availability, and configurations closer to market availability in the United States/North America,” Acer said in a statement. Acer did provide pricing and availability for Europe, which we’ve included here for comparison’s sake. Acer Predator Triton 14 AI Acer’s new Predator Triton 14 AI reminds me of a classical gangster: dark suit, dark tie, sunglasses, coolly confident. That’s until the per-key RGB lights up, reminding you what you’re here for. Creator-class notebooks have always interested me, since they offer some of the power of a gaming laptop without all of the weight. A few years ago, you might have to think about whether a lower-end discrete GPU could offer enough gaming horsepower; today, frame generation technologies are working to make that a moot point. As I held the Triton 14 AI (PT14-52T) at Acer’s preview, I was impressed by how compact it felt: it measures 12.6 x 8.7 x 0.43 inches at its thinnest, sloping out to 0.68 in (17.31mm) at its thickest — it still weighs 3.7 pounds, but that’s a far cry from the laptops that weigh over 5 pounds or more. (It earned Nvidia’s Studio Premium certification, which requires a thickness under 20 mm.) Acer treated the dark chassis with an anti-fingerprint coating that seemed to really work, and it’s the only one of its new gaming notebooks that included it. Acer’s Predator Triton 14 AI features per-key lighting and an Intel Core Ultra 200-series chip inside. Willis Lai / Foundry Acer built in a graphene thermal interface material into the insides of the laptop, which the company estimates will actually offer 14.5 percent better cooling, combined with the 0.5-mm-thin AeroBlade 3D metal fans that directs cooling air to the laptop’s hot spots. With the additional cooling, Acer has a choice to either push clock speeds faster or go thinner and lighter, and executives said the target market caused them to opt for the latter. While Acer didn’t reveal the key travel, the RGB keyboard does offer per-key lighting, controlled by the PredatorSense app. The touchpad joins the small but growing trend of laptops that use haptics for a uniform click experience across the whole of the trackpad. I didn’t expect Acer to include a bundled stylus, but it has done so, with support for the AES 2.0, USI 2.0, and MPP 2.5 protocols with 4,096 pressure level and tilt support. And look at the photo above. The trackpad almost disappears! Otherwise, the 14.5-inch 2,880 x 1,800 OLED display features 100% DCI-P3 color at up 120Hz — with touch support, which in OLEDs isn’t always a given. There’s just 340 nits of light output, however. Inside is an Intel Core 288V “Lunar Lake” chip, up to 32GB of DDR5-8533 memory and a PCI Express Gen 4 connection allowing customers to configure up to 2TB of SSD storage. Intel’s Killer Wi-Fi 7 and Thunderbolt 5 also appear. These are the specifications of the Acer Predator Triton 14A AI, as provided by Acer. Acer also made some last-minute changes that are reflected in the text.Acer Remember, Intel’s Lunar Lake processor and its 48-TOPS NPU makes this a Copilot+ PC, with support for all of Microsoft’s AI-powered features like Windows Recall. The Predator Triton 14 AI (PT14-52T) will be available in EMEA in July, starting at 2,999 euro Acer said. Predator Helios Neo 14 AI Acer’s Predator Helios Neo 14 AI laptop (PHN14-71), also with a 14.5-inch display, uses the Core Ultra 200H “Arrow Lake” chips, which performed surprisingly well in our laptop tests without all of the issues of their desktop cousins. They don’t offer the AI performance of the Lunar Lake family, however. Acer’s Predator Helios Neo 14 AI.Acer Acer typically uses the “Neo” branding to denote a step down, and some of the innovations on the Predator Triton 14 AI do not appear here. For example, Acer returned to the 5th-gen AeroBlade technology and the more traditional liquid metal thermal grease and a vector heat pipe. Likewise, the laptop uses a slightly older WiFi 6e technology alongside Thunderbolt 4, and the RGB keyboard is divided up into three zones. Physically, the Helios Neo 4 AI weighs 4.2 pounds, and measures 12.7 x 10.2 x 0.81 in., with the thinnest point being 11.5mm. Acer Users will have an option between a 14.5-inch OLED (2880 x 1800, 120Hz, 400 nits, 10 percent DCI-P3) or a 14.5-inch IPS (2560 x 1600, 165Hz, 400 nits, 100% sRGB) and choices of either a Core Ultra 9 285H/255H and an RTX 5060 or 5070 GPU. Users can choose from up to 32GB of DDR5-7467 memory and up to 2TB of PCI3 Gen 4 storage. The Predator Helios Neo 14 AI (PHN14-71) will be available in EMEA in July, starting at 1,699 euro. Nitro 18, 16, and 16S Finally, Acer has the Nitro lineup of gaming notebooks, which typically include almost dozens of different variants. For Computex, Acer is launching the Nitro 18 AI and the Nitro 16 AI, as well as the Nitro 16S and Nitro V 165 AI. They’re all oriented around the Ryzen AI 9 365 (Strix Point) architecture from AMD, which includes Copilot+ AI capabilities. Typically, Acer charges about $1,200 to $1,500 for these laptops. Here’s what we know about the Nitro 18: it will have an 18-inch display with 2560 x 1600 resolution at 165Hz, with 32GB of DDR5 5600 memory and 2 TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage. Acer will use copper and vector heat pipes inside to cool an Nvidia GeForce 5070 Ti. As for the Nitro 16S AI, Acer is offering users a Ryzen AI 9 365, up to an RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of DDR5-5600 memory and 2 TB of SSD storage, all hidden below a 2560 x 1600, 180Hz display. The Nitro V 16S AI will offer the same display, memory, and storage options, but an RTX 5070 instead, plus USB4. Read...

Two Sunday night crashes saw roads closed in two areas of the North Island. Read...

A long-awaited new road linking Manawatu and Tararua in the lower North Island is potentially just weeks away from opening, and locals can`t wait. Read...

Gales forecast to hit large parts of the country are causing chaos in the lower North Island while parts of Petone have flooded. Read...

Gales are forecast to hit large parts of the country, MetService says. Read...

You’ll need to make a raft of decisions before you choose which smart switches to install in your home, and your choices will be influenced by everything from the type of wiring in your walls to what flavor of smart home system you have now or plan to install later. Here’s what you need to know in roughly the order you’ll need to decide. Is there a neutral wire in the box? Many smart switches and dimmers require the presence of a neutral wire in the electrical box inside the wall, in addition to the line (power from the circuit-breaker panel), load (power to the light to be controlled), and ground (a low-resistance path for electricity to flow to the ground in the event of a malfunction) wires. Smart switches have radios that must be constantly powered, and the neutral wire is usually what supplies that juice. While all homes have neutral wires, many older homes don’t have a neutral wire in every box. If you’re not sure if there’s a neutral wire at the location you want to install a smart switch, this how-to story will help you figure it out. If you don’t have a neutral wire, Lutron’s Caséta and Diva smart dimmers and the GE Cync Dimmer (3-wire version) are among the few smart switches that do not require one. Most smart switches depend on the presence of a neutral wire to supply energy to their radios, but many homes built prior to the 1980s don’t have a neutral wire in every box. GE Cync and Lutron Caséta are among the few smart switches that don’t depend a neutral wire. GE Lighting Can the light be controlled from more than one location? If the light you wish to control is connected to just one switch, then you’ll need to replace it with a single-pole smart switch. If more than one switch controls that load—switches on opposite sides of a room, for example—then you’ll need to replace it with a multi-pole (aka 3-way) smart switch. This typically means that you’ll also need to buy a companion switch or switches for the other end(s) of the circuit. There are a few exceptions to this rule, so check the documentation accompanying whichever smart switch you decide to buy before you install it. Which control system do you want to use? You’ll undoubtedly want to control your smart lighting with your smartphone or tablet, and most people will also want to turn lights on and off with voice commands spoken to a smart speaker, such as an Amazon Echo or a Nest Hub. But to do that, the smart switch you buy must have some way of connecting to your home network (which explains why Bluetooth smart switches can’t talk to smart speakers). Some smart switches connect directly to your Wi-Fi network, while others require a bridge to your router. If you’ve invested in a smart home system—Samsung SmartThings, Hubitat Elevation, Vivint Smart Home, or any other ecosystem—you’ll want to make sure that the smart switch you buy is compatible with it. These are the most common communication protocols you’ll encounter. Bluetooth smart switches are controlled directly by an app on your smartphone or tablet. Bluetooth smart lighting is simple, because you don’t need a hub or a connection to your home network. That isolation also makes it secure, because you must be within about 30 feet of the switch to pair with it. On the other hand, authorized users also must be within 30 feet of a Bluetooth switch to control it, and you can’t control the switch when you’re away from home (although most Bluetooth switches can be controlled according to a pre-programmed schedule). The other major limitation of Bluetooth switches is that they can’t be controlled by smart speakers or smart home hubs, which generally rely on one of the other wireless protocols described here. As a result, Bluetooth-only switches have become relatively rare. Lutron Clear Connect is a proprietary wireless protocol used by Lutron Caséta Wireless smart home devices, including switches, dimmers, ceiling fan controllers, occupancy sensors, motorized blinds and shades, and battery-powered remote controls. You can also control a limited number of third-party devices with Lutron’s app—ranging from thermostats to Wi-Fi speakers—and incorporate them into smart home “scenes.” Clear Connect operates independently of your Wi-Fi network, but you must hardwire a Lutron Smart Bridge to your router to use it. You can control Lutron Caséta devices via Lutron’s app, with voice commands spoken to smart speakers, and from mobile devices anywhere you have broadband access. Some smart home systems, including Samsung SmartThings, can also incorporate Lutron’s smart home products. Matter is the most recent smart home standard. It aims to be an overarching standard incorporating several other smart home standards, including Thread, Wi-Fi, and Zigbee. Matter’s promise is that it will one day unite all the various smart home ecosystems: Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings among them. Matter could become more important over time, but we don’t consider the absence of Matter support or compatibility to be a reason to avoid any smart home product today. Thread is a low-power networking technology that’s a core element of the Matter smart home standard. It’s similar to Z-Wave and Zigbee in that Thread devices can talk directly to each other; unlike those standards, Thread doesn’t depend on a central hub. Matter devices can use either Thread or Wi-Fi, but battery-powered devices are more likely to use Thread because of its low power requirements. To access Thread devices from the internet, you’ll need to have a Thread border router, such as the Aqara Hub M3, the Aeotec Smart Home Hub; several models of Amazon Echo smart speakers and Echo Show smart displays; an Apple TV 4K (2nd-gen and up), an Apple HomePod or HomePod mini; some later-model Eero routers; a Nest Wifi or Nest Wifi Pro; or a Samsung SmartThings Station. This is not a complete list. Wi-Fi has gained a foothold in smart lighting thanks to the rise of mesh routers that blanket your home with network coverage. The attraction of Wi-Fi smart switches is that they generally don’t require a hub or a bridge to connect to your router (although Leviton does have some Wi-Fi products that communicate over a proprietary network with a plug-in bridge that connects them to Wi-Fi. While Wi-Fi is incorporated into the Matter smart home standard, that doesn’t mean every Wi-Fi device is automatically Matter compatible. Z-Wave This is a wireless mesh network technology in which each node on the network is also a repeater that can forward commands to other Z-Wave devices nearby. It operates in the unlicensed 800- to 900MHz radio spectrum (specifically, 908.42MHz in North America). Its low power requirement means it can be incorporated into battery-operated devices that cannot be plugged directly into an electrical circuit, including door/window sensors, smart locks, water leak detectors, and motion sensors in addition to smart dimmers and switches. You’ll need a smart home hub, such as a Samsung SmartThings, to act as a bridge to your Wi-Fi network. There are fewer Z-Wave products available today, compared to the standard’s heyday, and some of the Z-Wave dimmers and switches we’ve reviewed from Jasco and Leviton are no longer in production, but some other brands are still available. Note that Z-Wave Long Range (LR) family of chips that was introduced in 2020 do not operate on a mesh network. They use a star network topology in which each Z-Wave LR node communicates directly with the Z-Wave hub that’s connected to your router for internet access. Zigbee This wireless mesh network technology is very similar to Z-Wave, but it operates in the unlicensed 2.4GHz radio spectrum (same as single-band Wi-Fi). Like Z-Wave, Zigbee has a lower power requirement and can be incorporated into both battery and line-powered devices, ranging from sensors to smart switches. And as with Z-Wave, you’ll need a smart home hub or some other kind of bridge to connect Zigbee devices to your home network. This could be something as simple as an Amazon Echo Plus, which has an integrated Zigbee radio, or it could be on the order of a Samsung SmartThings hub, which has both Zigbee and Z-Wave radios onboard. Like Wi-Fi, Zigbee is part of the Matter smart home standard; also like Wi-Fi, not every Zigbee device is automatically Matter compatible. Lutron’s Aurora Smart Dimmer prevents a conventional toggle switch from shutting off the power to any Philips Hue smart bulbs that are connected to the switch. It can also wirelessly control those bulbs, including dimming them by rotating the knob. Lutron Which design aesthetic do you prefer? Since most people control smart switches and dimmers with voice commands, they soon discover that they rarely physically interact with the devices in their walls. But you’ll want to consider the type of mechanism the smart switch uses if for no other reason than to ensure its aesthetic matches the rest of your home. These are the most common types you’ll encounter. Relatively few manufacturers make smart switches that look like this type of old-fashioned toggle switch. Michael Brown/Foundry Rocker (aka paddle) This type of switch has a wide plastic panel that rocks back and forth when pressed to turn the controlled load on and off (one side of the switch raises when the other is depressed). These modern-looking switches hug the wall and are very easy to operate. Since a command issued over the air will override whatever physical state the switch is otherwise in, smart rocker switches typically don’t physically flip, so there’s no confusion when you see a lit bulb when the switch is ostensibly in the “off” position. A smart dimmer switch might have a secondary control—a vertical slider or a horizontal rocker—for adjusting brightness Toggle A toggle switch operates by moving a lever up and down (flipping the lever up turns the controlled light on, and flipping it down turns it off). These types of switches tend to look more old-fashioned than rocker switches, but you can find smart versions of them if you want something that at least resembles the other switches you have in your walls. As with smart rocker switches, they generally don’t completely change physical appearance when switched on or off. Touch High-end smart switches and dimmers feature touch-sensitive surfaces. Typically made of glass, touch-sensitive smart switches and dimmers are usually backlit by one or more LEDs that can be multiple colors. The touch sensitivity can be as simple as touch to turn the switch on and touch again to turn it off, or it can be as complex as displaying a user interface that supports finger swipes for calling up different lighting scenes or control elements. Needless to say, these types of smart switches and dimmers cost considerably more than simple plastic devices. Brilliant’s touchscreen panel lets you see and talk with a person at your door when a visitor activates your Ring Video Doorbell. Christopher Null/Foundry Which wiring connection do you prefer? Smart switches and dimmers tend to be larger than their dumb counterparts, so you should consider how the new switch will fit in your existing electrical box. This is particularly important if you’re installing multiple smart switches next to each other in a single box. Remember that there will typically be at least four wires to deal with—line, load, neutral, and ground—and that there will also be a traveler wire if you’re dealing with a multi-pole circuit. It can be challenging to stuff all those wires and the new switch back into the box. These are the most common types of electrical connections you’ll encounter in smart switches. Backstabs These are holes in the back of the switch into which you’ll push (“stab”) the appropriate solid copper wires coming out of the wall. Pigtails Some switches have short electrical wires emerging from the back of the switch that you’ll attach to the wires coming out of the wall, using wire nuts to secure them. This is generally the easiest technique, but if the switch is deep, it can be a challenge to pack the extra wires and the wire nuts tightly enough into the box so that the switch mounts flush against the wall. It can be particularly difficult if the box has other devices in it. Terminals With this type of switch, you’ll wind the wires coming out of the wall around flat screws on the sides of the switch and then tighten the screws down. This technique presents less of a challenge when it comes to pushing the wires and the switch back into the box, but the wires can be stiff and you’ll need to be careful to ensure the stripped wire doesn’t come into contact with stripped wires connected to adjacent switches in the box or the box itself, if it’s metal. Pigtails and wire nuts are one common way to connect a smart switch to your existing in-wall wiring.Christopher Null/Foundry The final step Once you’ve answered these questions, the next step is to decide which smart dimmer or switch you want to install in your walls. To help answer that question, read our picks for the best smart dimmers and switches. Read...