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3 Jul 2025

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Four dead, dozens missing after ferry sinks off Bali
The boat was carrying 53 passengers and 12 crew when it sank while on its way to Bali from Java island.

Network for Learning upgrades Wi-Fi in over 1,700 NZ schools
Network for Learning has upgraded Wi-Fi in over 1,700 New Zealand schools, enhancing internet speed and reliability for digital learning nationwide.

This superior Ryzen 7 mini PC with 32GB RAM is a steal ahead of Prime Day
Prime Day is closing in with speed and we’re already seeing impressive discounts left and right, including this one: a powerful Beelink SER8 mini PC for $499. This sale—a punchy 21% off the usual $629—is for Prime members only, but you can take advantage of it (along with all the other Prime Day deals coming next week) with a free 30-day Prime trial. The Beelink SER8 mini PC is suitable for pretty much everything, including your day-to-day work, web browsing, video streaming, and even some gaming. The Ryzen 7 8745HS processor and chunky 32GB of DDR5 RAM offer responsive performance, plus the Radeon 780M integrated graphics can push modest frame rates. (My own mini PC can run old-school WoW on it with graphics set to medium quality.) It’s rounded out by a 1TB SSD, andn you can self-upgrade to a whopping 256GB of RAM and 8TB of storage if the out-of-the-box specs aren’t enough for you. It’s especially great for multitaskers and workstation fiends because it can power triple 4K@120Hz monitors via HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and USB-C (USB4) video. Lots of mini PCs can do triple 4K now, but not many can run 4K at up to 120Hz like this one can. Other ports include two high-speed USB-A, two slower USB-A, a fast USB-C, 2.5G LAN, and double 3.5mm audio jacks (one front, one back). This mini PC blows every comparably priced laptop out of the water, so if you’re looking for an excellent home office machine, don’t pass up this opportunity. Get the Beelink SER8 for $499! (Remember, it’s a Prime deal so start a 30-day free trial if you aren’t a Prime member, then use the free trial to jump on next week’s Prime Day sales event!) Save 21% on this high-performance Ryzen 7 mini PC with 32GB RAMBuy now at Amazon

I fixed my monitor’s pixels to make the screen look like new
I recently inherited an old monitor that a friend was going to recycle as e-waste after he upgraded. It was a decent brand with a 1080p resolution and a refresh rate that I figured was passable for casual gaming. I was excited about the prospect of having a secondary display, so I was grateful for the generosity. The display’s image looked fine to me. But, being a tech guy, I thought I’d also run some diagnostics to check on its color, contrast, and resolution. One of the tests I ran was to look for dead or stuck pixels, which I’ve heard can haunt some monitors. Low and behold, I uncovered a few stuck pixels lurking to the left of center. They weren’t anything to cry home about, being just a few tiny dots — some monitors have it so bad that they’re almost unusable — but I set about fixing them anyway using a site called Piksel Test. I managed to get rid of them all too, so I’m going to use this test on all the screens I get from now on. If you’re in a similar boat with any of the screens you own, be that a monitor, cellphone, TV, or tablet (LCD or OLED screen), you can do the same thing. What to do Turn on your PC and wait for Windows to load. Connect to the internet and go to the Piksel Test website. Click on the Test Dead Pixel button. Take note of any dead or stuck pixels on your screen. The website has an explanation about how to identify each of those problem pixel types. Now scroll down the Piksel Test page and click on Dead Pixel Repair or Stuck Pixel Repair depending on what kind of pixels you discovered. Run the pixel fixer window over the pixels you want to repair for 10 minutes. Keep the pixel fixer window on the stuck or dead pixels for approximately 10 minutes. Dominic Bayley / Foundry Tip: Your screen needs to be active for the duration of the fix, so turn off your sleep settings in Windows before you begin. That’s all for this tip. If you’re looking for more tech tips like this one — that is, short, digestible tips that you can try yourself at home, head on over to PCWorld’s newsletter page and register for our Try This newsletter.

Slip causes fault impacting 111 calls, mobile, internet services in Golden Bay
Chorus hopes to have the broken fibreoptic cable repaired by late Thursday afternoon as Tasman residents brace for more rain.

I spent $36 and future-proofed my home network, forever
About a week ago, I decided I would never buy another Ethernet cable, ever. If you’re like me, you have a box or drawer with dozens of cables. And while some cables have specific connections, like USB-C, my wired network (such as it is) is just a random collection of colored Ethernet cables with tiny little markings telling me what they can or can’t do. How much data can that cable transfer? I had no idea. And that’s bad. I had never really thought about which Ethernet cables were being run between my cable modem, router, Xbox, and desktop PC. But I had performed speed tests more than once, and worried that my network was running slower than usual. And I also knew the problem: my network would run only as fast as its slowest segment. If my Ethernet cables were transferring less data than my router or gateway, I was potentially wasting money. I didn’t need to spend time researching the fastest mesh router or the best Internet gateway. If my cables were ancient, my entire network would be bogged down by my slowest cable. If my ISP quietly increased the speed of my broadband connection, I might not see any benefit. And I had already found an old Cat5 cable hooked up to my Xbox, a standard which had been basically extinct for about two decades. Ew! A Cat5 cable may be good enough for your current router, but it might not be for long.Mark Hachman / Foundry About a week before my colleague Dominic Bayley published a helpful explainer on the differences between Ethernet cables, I researched the problem myself. Ethernet comes in different categories, all the way from the ancient Category 3 to the latest Category 8. So Category 8 is the latest and greatest? OK, fine. How much does a Category 8 cable cost? Basically nothing, as it turns out. I discovered I could buy a five-pack of color-coded, nylon-braided Category 8 Ethernet cables for $35.99 on Amazon. Broadband services are always getting faster. Cable modems are, too. But even the fastest cable modems and broadband plans offer just a few gigabits per second, while this Cat8 cable offers a whopping 40Gbits/s of speed. Owning color-coded, braided Ethernet cables for about the price of a nice lunch made me happy.Mark Hachman / Foundry For me, it was a no-brainer. I bought the cables from Amazon, quickly swapped out my existing cables for the new color-coded options, and resolved never to think about what Ethernet cable I owned ever again. Get a five-pack of color-coded, nylon-braided Cat8 Ethernet cables for $35.99Buy Now at Amazon