Tech Archives

The HP ZBook Ultra G3a 16 is going to be awesome for local AI workflows

On September 15, 2026 By Adam Z. Lein In News, Tech

HP Inc. has unveiled the HP ZBook Ultra G3a 16, a new mobile workstation designed to serve as a “personal AI factory” for professionals. Co-engineered with AMD and enhanced by Perplexity, this thin-and-light 16-inch device is built to bridge the gap between AI experimentation and production. By combining workstation-class performance with local AI capabilities, HP aims to help professionals apply agentic AI to their most demanding workloads without the friction of fragmented tools or cloud …

Screenshot of VS Code with Mastodon being upgraded via SSH by Claude AI.

Upgrading my Mastodon server was rough, but AI helped a lot.

On September 7, 2026 By Adam Z. Lein In Tech

I made my own social media network federated via ActivityPub on the Fediverse running Mastodon 4.1 a few years ago. I did it with a script that installed everything on an Oracle Cloud VPS. I did not use the Docker method because I thought that might be extra RAM that could be used elsewhere. Then I became lazy about learning how to upgrade Mastodon on an installation built from source. Reading the release notes and …

Lenovo’s new tech products announced at IFA 2026

On September 3, 2026 By Adam Z. Lein In News, Tech

Lenovo used its IFA 2026 Innovation World event to unveil a sweeping lineup of new hardware and software spanning consumer, creator, and commercial lines. Announcements ranged from Snapdragon- and AMD-powered IdeaPad Vibe laptops in Pantone-developed colors and a redesigned, “middle-box-free” IdeaCentre all-in-one, to a reimagined Yoga family built around NVIDIA RTX Spark for on-device AI and creative workflows, alongside new ThinkCentre, ThinkBook, and ThinkVision commercial products tied together by Lenovo’s Qira AI assistant. The showcase …

Acer at IFA Berlin 2026: A Full Rundown of Everything Announced

On September 2, 2026 By Adam Z. Lein In News, Tech

Acer used its next@Acer global press conference on September 2 to unload a genuinely enormous lineup at IFA 2026 in Berlin, everything from a petaflop-class NVIDIA RTX Spark desktop to a naked-eye 3D gaming laptop, a repairable Vero notebook, a pair of new Predator handhelds, an entire wall of monitors, and even an ePaper display and a Gemini-powered projector. It’s the kind of announcement day where Acer is clearly trying to cover every corner of …

Dell and Alienware at IFA Berlin 2026: A Laptop That Lasts All Day and Two OLEDs Built for Opposite Extremes

On September 2, 2026 By Adam Z. Lein In News, Tech

Dell’s IFA 2026 lineup is a study in giving people what they actually use their screens for. On the laptop side, the new Dell 14S takes the things that usually cost extra (an aluminum chassis, a 16:10 panel, a battery that genuinely lasts a full day) and puts them in a thin, colorful machine aimed squarely at students and young adults. On the gaming side, Alienware isn’t chasing one “best” monitor; it’s shipping two, deliberately …

Xiaomi POCO F9 Ultra Review: Bose sound and a much improved camera

On September 1, 2026 By Adam Z. Lein In Features, Tech

POCO is relatively new to the “ultra” high end smartphone market. It was only last year when they released their first, the POCO F7 Ultra (POCO F7 Ultra Review: The first ultra POCO phone). It was one of the first phones to have the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which was the first time in a long time when smartphone processor speeds had a seriously noticeable speed boost. Today’s POCO F9 Ultra uses the …