Getting ready for a new school year can be stressful and expensive, but 3D printing offers a clever way to cut costs while also creating supplies tailored to your needs. From practical organizers to fun classroom accessories, there are plenty of models available that you can print at home. Here are five valuable back-to-school items you can make on your 3D printer that are not only affordable but also genuinely helpful.

We've seen all types of mini PCs, but the more power you can get for the price the better. Plus, it's not a bad option to be able to upgrade the device as well. That's where this Bosgame mini PC comes in, featuring a powerful Ryzen 7 chip and OCuLink port, making it a compact gaming machine that can handle pretty much anything you can throw at it. And while its usual retail price of $640 is quite steep, its new price drop to $480 makes it just right.

Project Pivo lets you swivel the laptop screen to view things in portrait mode. | Image: Evan Blass Lenovo is gearing up to show off its latest products at Europe’s IFA tech tradeshow next week, but leaks may have just given us a first look at what’s being announced. The most notable gadget shared by reputable leaker Evan Blass shows an image of a concept laptop design with a display that rotates between landscape and portrait orientations, which Lenovo has reportedly dubbed “Project Pivo.”Lenovo has a history of making funky laptop concepts — such as the see-through ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop and the rollable display on the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 — but these R&D projects aren’t guaranteed to be released as consumer products. The portrait mode for Project Pivo could be a useful feature for coding and viewing the mobile versions of websites and apps, so we’ll have to see if it turns into something that you can actually buy.According to Blass, Lenovo will also be showing off the Legion Go 2, the second-gen gaming handheld announced during CES that’s expected to launch sometime this year, and a selection of tablets and Motorola phones. I’ll be checking out what Lenovo has to offer during the IFA event, so more information about these products should be available next week if they make an appearance.

There’s already been a number of leaks of upcoming Philips Hue products that are expected to be announced next week ahead of IFA. But one thing that hasn’t been mentioned was support for Matter-over-Thread. While there’s no confirmation that support is coming, there’s compelling evidence to suggest it might be. First off, packaging for two unannounced bulbs appeared on Amazon, with a Matter logo prominently displayed on the box. While Hue devices have been capable of connecting via Matter using the Hue Bridge as a middleman, they’ve never supported the protocol directly. That’s in part because Matter only works via Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Thread; Hue has been a Zigbee and Bluetooth-only ecosystem for years.Then there’s the since-removed FCC filing discovered by HueBlog. A supposed screenshot of the document shows a label for a new Hue White lightbulb with a Matter setup code under the familiar Bluetooth and Zigbee logos. This almost certainly means the lightbulb will connect directly via Matter. Wired Ethernet would obviously be an odd choice. Wi-Fi is a possibility, but the more logical option would be Thread, which is low-power and can create self-healing mesh networks.The one issue is, there’s no mention of Thread or Wi-Fi in the FCC filing anywhere, only Bluetooth and Zigbee. According to HueBlog, however, one document read (before it was removed), “This product only supports BLE 125k/500k/1M/2Mbps:2402-2480MHz, Zigbee:2405-2480MHz. The other functions, bands and modes was [sic] disabled to use by manufacturer [sic] in the software.” What are those other functions, bands, and modes? It’s not specified in any document I could find, but it’s reasonable to assume the list might include Thread which, like Zigbee, uses the 2.4GHz band.Philips isn’t about to abandon Zigbee for Thread overnight, but this would give users direct access to Hue bulbs from any Matter controller, with the Bridge only needed for some advanced features, like dynamic lighting effects. Plus there’s a growing momentum behind Matter-over-Thread, with Ikea recently announcing over 20 products supporting it.

So I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, Windows 11 25H2 is almost here, as Microsoft has just pushed it to the Release Preview channel, which acts as the final round of testing before it deploys worldwide. The bad news is...it's not very exciting.

In June, Mark Zuckerberg went for the ultimate Hail Mary in the ever-intensifying AI race: He spun up a brand-new Meta AI lab after making a $14.3 billion acquisition of Scale AI - and then spending billions more hiring some of the industry's preeminent researchers and engineers. Fast-forward a couple of months, and Zuckerberg may have recruited the talent, but now the question is whether he'll be able to keep it from slipping through his fingers. For that, we'll have to wait and see. After all, Meta rebranded its entire AI division as "Meta Superintelligence Labs," a division of thousands of people. One team within that division - the t …Read the full story at The Verge.

My workspace is probably a bit different from most tech bloggers. You won’t find a fancy ultrawide gaming monitor here. My daily driver is a standard laptop, and I use a huge 4K TV as my main display. It's not for gaming; it's just my ultrawide screen for work.

There are a few franchises that are immediately associated with the Xbox brand, mostly due to their exclusivity to Xbox consoles over the years. One of those franchises is Gears of War, a series that began on the Xbox 360 and continued to have more games come out in the years that followed. To many Xbox console owners, Gears of War was a game that was emblematic of everything Xbox in the early 2000s. But so many things have changed since the first Gears of War game came out in 2006, with the biggest one being that more people outside the Xbox ecosystem can now experience the gritty gameplay and story of the first game, including PlayStation console owners.

A couple of weeks ago, I was scrolling through Reddit when I stumbled across a developer who had built a Chrome extension for my absolute favorite personalized research assistant, NotebookLM. Naturally, I had to give it a try right away. Ever since, I’ve gone all in on exploring how Chrome extensions can improve my NotebookLM workflow, especially the ones built specifically with NotebookLM in mind.

Apple is just days away from revealing its newest iPhones during its "Awe dropping" event on September 9th. It seems like this year's launch will offer more than just a simple spec bump, as rumors point to an ultra-thin iPhone arriving alongside the rest of Apple's upgraded smartphone lineup.Though the iPhone 17 will undoubtedly be the focal point of the event, the company might throw a couple of other devices our way. Here's what Apple might reveal during its next big launch event.The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max may get even better camerasOne of the first things you'll probably notice about the supposed renderings and dummy models of th …Read the full story at The Verge.

The schedule of annual updates for Windows 11 that arrive in the second half of the year will hold steady for 2025, and today, Microsoft announced that the 25H2 package is available now for testing in the Release Preview Channel. So, will you see new UI features or more AI tweaks included on your desktop with this update? Microsoft didn’t mention many specific features or changes in the update, other than confirming it shares the same new features and enhancements as the previous version, 24H2, which flips on new features throughout the year, along with some notes for IT: Windows 11, version 25H2 also includes some feature removals such as PowerShell 2.0 and Windows Management Instrumentation command-line (WMIC). And for our commercial customers, Windows 11, version 25H2 includes the ability for IT admins to remove select pre-installed Microsoft Store apps via Group Policy/MDM CSP on Enterprise/EDU devices.As Microsoft detailed in June, using its shared servicing branch means updating from the current 24H2 version to 25H2 takes a single restart, as new features are added in earlier updates but left disabled until the enablement package activates them.To get the update, you can join the Release Preview channel and get Windows 11, version 25H2 (Build 26200.5074) now by going to the Windows Update section of settings and choosing to install it.

Of all the tech gadgets I've bought over the years, from programmable keyboards to obscure adapters, none has delivered quite as much utility for such a low price and tiny footprint as a humble HDMI dummy plug. It's a tiny, unassuming dongle that you could easily mistake for a flash drive or a dust cover that your GPU comes with. Tiny as it is, this gadget has helped me solve a very specific set of problems, and it now lives in my USB drawer because it gets about as much use as a flash drive. On countless occasions, it has helped me remote into my PC without hiccups or typical low-resolution display output.