Many IEEE members who collect historical engineering artifacts often offer them to the IEEE History and Heritage group, which includes the IEEE History Center, to display. To bring these artifacts to the public, the group created the IEEE Global Museum, which curates traveling exhibits for display at conferences and in libraries, universities, and other venues.
The program educates people about how technological progress has unfolded over generations, and how engineers and researchers build on past achievements to benefit humanity.
Curating the exhibits has been rewarding, says Daniel Jon Mitchell, director of the group’s heritage programs.
“People tell me that they are genuinely moved by having history and artifacts explained to them in an accessible, intelligible way,” Mitchell says. “When people are moved and emotionally affected by what you’re doing, they’re going to remember that. And I think that’s part of the power of what we’re doing.”
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The most recent traveling exhibit was on display in April in New York City during the IEEE Honors Ceremony, which celebrates engineering pioneers who have developed technologies that changed how people connect with the world. Attendees explored the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit, which drew inspiration from IEEE Spectrum’s Chip Hall of Fame. The exhibit conveys the roles integrated circuits play in fields such as signal processing, audio engineering, and telecommunications. The Commodore 64, one of the artifacts on display, stirred up treasured childhood memories for guests who had used the home computer.
Other exhibits have focused on early radio inventions and power and communications technologies.
The Global Museum works with IEEE societies to mark their anniversaries by interpreting and displaying pertinent items.
A tribute to radio pioneer Edwin Howard Armstrong
The idea of a traveling museum came to fruition in 2024 after Alexander Magoun, IEEE’s outreach historian, connected with Mike Molnar. The IEEE associate member owns one of six superheterodyne radio prototypes developed by Edwin Howard Armstrong, who probably is best known for inventing the FM radio system. Armstrong received the first IEEE Medal of Honor in 1917.
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The radio converts incoming frequencies into a fixed, lower intermediate one using a local oscillator and a frequency mixer. The technology paved the way for modern electronic communications devices. The prototype became the focal point of the Global Museum’s flagship Unseen Signals: E. Howard Armstrong’s Radio Revolution exhibit, which celebrates the inventor’s life and his impact on the broadcasting industry and wireless communications.
“The radio prototype is one of the most incredible pieces that we could put on display,” Mitchell says. He and Magoun sourced other artifacts including an Audion used in Armstrong’s experiments on wireless signal amplification; a selection of consumer products that attempted to cash in on radio’s popularity, including a flour sifter and laxatives; and a Motorola Walkie-Talkie from the Korean War. They were from museums or private collectors along the East Coast of the United States.
“Aside from [Guglielmo] Marconi, Armstrong is the most significant contributor to the history of radio,” Mitchell says. “The exhibit is not only a biography but also a story of the cultural and political implications his work had.”
Visitors can play 15 short clips of past radio broadcasts covering politics, religion, sports, or another topic.
The 93-square-meter exhibit is still traveling around the United States. It is on display until 15 August at the Pavek Museum, in St. Louis Park, Minn.
From 21 November until 9 May 2027, it is scheduled to be at the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady, N.Y. Entry to the museum is free for IEEE members with a digital membership card.
Collaborating with IEEE societies
The IEEE History and Heritage group collaborates with IEEE societies to create exhibits for special events. In 2024 Mitchell curated an exhibit to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and its 100th Vehicular Technology Conference. The Our Mobile World exhibit was launched at the conference, held in October in Washington, D.C.
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“The society’s leadership helped me focus attention on key developments that meant a lot to its members,” Mitchell says.
“The IEEE Global Museum wants to present exhibits that connect with its audiences, whether these are IEEE members or the public,” he says. “Just knowing what was important historically doesn’t mean that this will resonate, so I really appreciated the insight.”
The exhibit’s artifacts included a Motorola DynaTac “brick” cellphone, a CB radio from the 1980s, and one of the earliest handheld GPS receivers. Visitors played an interactive game to test their knowledge spanning a century of wireless technology, motor vehicles, and mobile communication inventions.
Mitchell worked this year with the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society to launch a virtual exhibit, Powering Up, which is available on the Global Museum website. It provides an overview of high-voltage power engineering, and it highlights the roles that manufacturers General Electric and Westinghouse played in making long-distance, high-voltage transmission of electrical power possible. Videos and photos of impulse generators and tests are featured in the exhibit.
One photo shows lightning arcing between high-voltage generators. Others show the impulse generators used at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, demonstrations of artificial lightning, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan visiting GE’s high-voltage laboratory in Pittsfield, Mass.
The history of microchips
The Unseen Signals exhibit was created for large venues, but the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit was designed to be displayed in different spaces, Mitchell says. Artifacts are premounted to ensure easy setup, and they’re encased in glass because many are rare.
Microchips are crucial for signal processing, audio engineering, and telecommunications, making them a point of interest despite their small size, Mitchell says. One rare artifact on display is the Kodak KAF-1300image sensor. Invented in 1986, it was used in one of the earliest digital cameras made for photojournalists.
The KAF-1300’s image sensor chip “is credited with bringing digital cameras out of the laboratory,” Mitchell says. “Only around 500 were produced.”
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Visitors can understand how transistors work, he says, by pressing buttons to turn them on and off.
“There are billions of transistors in modern microchips,” he notes, “and you can combine them in a way that performs logical functions.”
Unseen Signals, one of two identical exhibits, was curated by Mitchell and Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum’s special projects editor, with help from several Spectrum colleagues. Together, they served as on-site docents for guests at the IEEE Honors Ceremony.
The display also featured a preview of IEEE’s immersive “Inside the Microchip” video project, which delves beneath the silicon surface of Nvidia’s NV20 chip, using forensic photography and computer-generated renderings. The video, to be released this year, aims to teach middle school students about the microchips that are inside their gaming devices.
This week marked the beginning of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a massive effort to observe the sky that comes more than two decades in the making. It could help us to better understand our own solar system and the mysteries of the cosmos, from dark energy and dark matter to the expansion of the universe. Read on to learn more about that, plus other science news that grabbed our attention this week.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory gets to work
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which contains the largest digital camera in the world at 3,200 megapixels, has begun its 10-year survey of the universe. Its campaign kicked off on June 30, and for the next decade it will capture a new image roughly every 40 seconds, observing the entire southern sky every few nights. A press release announcing its commencement said its observations will “create an ultrawide, ultrahigh-definition time-lapse record of the universe.”
“Today, we begin filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made,” Brian Stone of the National Science Foundation said in the announcement. The observatory captured its first images last summer in a test run of its capabilities, producing a remarkable look at millions of galaxies and stars, along with thousands of previously unseen asteroids. Over the course of its decade-long survey, called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), it will revisit each point in the sky roughly 800 times, allowing it to record changes and cosmic events. Rubin will take about a thousand images per night, amounting to about ten terabytes of data daily.
RubinObs/NSF/DOE/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/T. Lange
“It is embarking on a mission that will redefine modern cosmology and astrophysics,” said Darío Gil, Under Secretary for Science at the US Department of Energy. Gil added, “By seeking to understand the enigmatic phenomena of dark energy and dark matter, we are not just observing the stars; we are striving to grasp the fundamental laws that govern our existence.”
Diving suits for swimming cyborg cockroaches
This week in Research That Makes My Skin Crawl, scientists from Nanyang Technological University Singapore and Waseda University announced that they’ve developed a tiny diving suit that allows cyborg cockroaches to survive swimming underwater for hours at a time. If you’re wondering why, exactly, roaches need to be borg-ified and forced to swim underwater at all, I’m right there with you.
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According to the team, cyborg insects have potential for use in search and rescue operations, as they can access spaces that would be inaccessible to humans, animals and larger robots. Cyborg roaches were recently deployed in the field for the first time to assist with search and rescue efforts after a devastating earthquake in Myanmar this spring.
NTU Singapore/Waseda University
A flooded environment would normally prove a no-go for the cyborg roaches, which are living Madagascar hissing cockroaches fitted with electronic controllers. The flexible diving suit consists of an oxygen-generation tank, a flexible shell and four silicone supply tubes that are attached to the roaches’ spiracles, or the openings that they breathe through. The team says these tubes can be removed painlessly afterward without harming the roach. In a paper published this week in Nature Communications, the researchers report that the cyborg robots were able to swim underwater for up to 3 hours with this setup in tests.
NASA picks three companies for 2028 Moon Base deliveries
Earlier this year, NASA overhauled its plans for lunar exploration, announcing that it was hitting pause on building an orbiting Lunar Gateway space station and would instead build a $20 billion Moon Base. The first three missions to deliver payloads to the lunar surface for the eventual Moon Base are scheduled to happen before the end of 2026. This week, NASA announced four more missions heading to the moon, these ones scheduled for late 2028. The space agency says it’s awarded contracts totaling nearly $600 million to Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines to deliver science payloads for the Moon Base.
Astrobotic will make two trips to the moon, while the other two companies will each make one. All of these deliveries will rely on updated versions of each company’s lander designs, building on insights from previous missions under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The payloads will be the same for each delivery: a Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS) to collect landing data, a Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) for precision in determining the location of spacecraft in lunar orbit or landing on the surface, and a Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS) for measuring the energy of incoming space radiation. If it seems redundant, well, that’s the point.
NASA/Astrobotic/Intuitive Machines/Firefly
“By flying the same science instruments on multiple landers, we will better understand potential hazards during landing and build out a global network of environmental data and location markers on the Moon,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters. “It’s akin to having weather stations in different locations on Earth. These three payloads are flight-proven and their data is critical to supporting safe human exploration of the lunar surface.”
Before you go, be sure to check out these stories too:
Optical media is great — it’s pretty high density, relatively durable, and decently long-lasting if
“That’ll buff out” is very often true when it comes to disks.
well cared for. If not well cared for, well, it’s only relatively durable, and we’ve probably all picked up a second-hand disk that’s too scratched to use. The X-Box 360 is notorious for causing circular damage, and while decent disk cleaners were easy to get in the 90s, we’re not sure how far we trust what’s on offer at retailers today. Hence [Dennis], aka [RetroGameRevival]’s RGR ezBuff polishing machine, which does exactly what it says on the tin: buffs disks to a polish, easily.
We’d say the whole thing is 3D printed, but of course you still need a motor and controller — if you had to turn a crank, that would just be a Buff polishing machine, no ez — and we’ve yet to see a printer poop out polishing compound. If you build it, keep in mind that you’re taking the top layer of material off the disk to polish scratches away, so don’t overdo it. It’s entirely possible to ruin a disk beyond repair with too-aggressive buffing; it’s also possible for disks to be scratched too deeply to save. Polishing can’t save genuine disk rot, though in our experience you’re more likely to find scratched disks than rotten ones. Still, [Dennis]’s birthday gift to the community — it was apparently released on his birthday — should keep more than a few disks out of the trash.
With Sony getting out of the disk game, physical media is becoming more precious than ever, so it’s good to see what looks like a quality polishing option for those of us who either never had a polisher or didn’t save theirs. If you really want your disks to last, maybe we should bring back CD caddies.
For many years now, I’ve been a growing fan of legendary New York percussionist, composer, and bandleader Ray Barretto, one of the arguable architects of modern Latin-infused music. After Barretto scored his first big hit with the pachanga-styled “El Watusi” in 1962, he found his next groove in the emerging boogaloo movement. His first album for Fania Records, 1968’s Acid, is widely considered a classic of the form.
Finding early editions of Barretto albums on vinyl can be a challenge, as original pressings are scarce. Like vintage soul and jazz records, these dance records were often played hard back in the day, frequently and on low quality stacking automatic record players. Surviving “OG” copies are therefore usually pretty well trashed when you do find them, while clean examples typically command hefty collector prices. At the time of this writing, Discogs had just two 1968 editions of Acid listed at $300 in only VG/VG+ condition, while a poor copy on eBay was asking $150.
In that light, obtaining a lovingly produced, all analog AAA 180-gram vinyl reissue cut from the original master tapes for about $30 is super appealing. This new edition comes from Craft Recordings, the respected boutique arm of Concord Music, which owns the Fania catalog.
I am especially pleased that Craft uses the original mono mix, which is likely what most people were hearing back in the day, replete with all of its effectively indie produced imperfections. The quiet, well-centered vinyl was manufactured at Well Made Music in Virginia, and Craft has even recreated the highly sought after first Fania Records gold label design. The high quality tip on style cover features the trippy original art.
Playing Acid, I did not even look at the song titles initially, but immediately recognized the boogaloo sound in full flower. This album rocks from start to finish, and along the way you will hear influences both past and future. The title track boasts a super slinky groove, while the funky, improvisational “Espiritu Libre” feels as though Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis were sitting in.
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But it was the end of side one that made my head spin, when I realized that 1990 rock-rap one hit wonders Urban Dance Squad had lifted its title and sampled the hook directly from Barretto’s “A Deeper Shade of Soul.” Fortunately, they gave him writer credit, which was something of a miracle in those early sampling days.
While I do not own one of the rare original pressings, this new edition of Acid sounds wonderful in all of its groovy monophonic glory. I recommend it without reservation. You can get it at Amazon for just $31 which is a steal when you consider what rare originals cost.
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Our Ratings
★★★★★★★★★★ Album
★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality
★★★★★★★★★★ Press Quality
Where to buy
Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc. You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.
For students who need an affordable tablet that includes a stylus and offers great side-by-side multitasking for productivity on the go, the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus is an easy option to recommend.
Stylus included
A great screen and software for multitasking
256GB as standard
Limited software updates
MediaTek chipset has its limits
Not the best stylus experience from Lenovo
Squirrel Widget
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Key Features
Review Price:
£299.99
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PC Mode:
Resize and minimise apps like on your desktop
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12.1-inch 2.5K 90Hz display:
ideal for multitasking and entertainment
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Lenovo Tab Pen included:
Indulge in digital drawing and note-taking
Introduction
Need an inexpensive yet work-capable tablet for your time at college or university? The Lenovo Idea Tab Plus might be exactly what you’re after.
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As an iPad obsessive for the better part of two decades and as someone who got through the majority of their studies using an iPad Mini as opposed to a dedicated laptop, I’ve always preferred the simplicity of tablet computers, not to mention the portability they bring to the table.
Although I’m fairly knee-deep in the iPadOS ecosystem at this point, I am constantly amazed by the value that Apple’s more affordable Android competitors provide.
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The OnePlus Pad Go 2 was easily my favourite budget tablet of last year, and I’ve been continually impressed by others including the even cheaper OnePlus Pad Lite, not to mention more expensive but brilliantly compact Lenovo Yoga Tab.
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At £299.99/$259.99, the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus slots itself snugly at the higher end of the budget range, but that’s crucially a lower price than the entry-level iPad A16. The question is, does the Idea Tab Plus do enough to tempt potential buyers away from team Apple (and competing Android tablets)? After testing the tablet myself, here’s what I have to say on the matter.
Design
Sleek aluminium build
Slim at just 6.29mm
No magnetic housing for the stylus
One of the first things I noticed about the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus is that, when picked up, it’s a great example of just how far the market surrounding the best cheap tablets has come. With a smooth aluminium backing and frame, particularly when paired with the Luna Grey colourway of my review unit, Lenovo has done all that it can here to convince you that the Idea Tab Plus is anything but cheap.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
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It just feels wonderfully smooth in the hand (or both hands as it’s too large for one-handed use), and the fact that it’s just 6.29mm thick makes it easy enough to fling in a backpack or messenger bag and never feel that it’s taking up more space than it should.
The total weight of 530g is also just at the right level where you can hold the tablet for quite some time without any sense of fatigue, although Lenovo does expect you to bring a keyboard case into the mix to have the tablet propped up on a table, owing to the three-point connector at the base of the device.
The only area where the Idea Tab Plus does lose out to the entry-level iPad A16 is in the variety of colourways available. For Lenovo’s tablet, you can choose between the Luna Grey model featured here, and a slightly more eye-catching Sand Rose alternative, but that’s it. Compared to the four vibrant colours that Apple’s contender offers, there isn’t quite as much freedom for expression here, but you can always mitigate that with a case.
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Arguably more detrimental is the complete lack of any housing for the included Lenovo Tab Pen. On the Lenovo Yoga Tab, there’s a magnetic strip along the top of the device so the included Pen Pro can sit there securely when it’s not in use, but there’s no equivalent here, meaning that the stylus sits around awkwardly on your desk.
Even though the Tab Pen doesn’t operate via wireless charging and instead uses a AAA battery, it would still have been nice to have a dedicated spot to keep it out of the way when you don’t need it.
Screen
12.1-inch 2.5K IPS LCD
90Hz refresh rate for smooth scrolling
Plenty of space for multitasking
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Even though the Idea Tab Plus is aimed at the budget market, I think Lenovo understands very well that if you have a great screen to go with your tablet, much of the user experience naturally falls into place. That’s certainly the case here.
You’re getting a large 12.1-inch 2.5K IPS LCD panel that gets fairly bright, with a peak of 800 nits, along with a smooth 90Hz refresh rate that immediately gives the device an edge over the now-ancient-feeling 60Hz cap of the standard iPad.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
What I like about the display is its wide 16:10 ratio, which makes it feel brilliantly suited not just to streaming (films feel wonderfully cinematic here), but also multitasking, as there’s plenty of space to have multiple apps take up the screen and never feel as if you’re squinting at any of them. This is handy too, as the tablet has fairly robust multitasking software built in, so it all works in tandem to make this a solid buy for light productivity tasks.
When streaming a bit of Disney Plus and my go-to film of Avengers: Infinity War for testing tablet displays, the climactic battle in Wakanda did wow me with the colours on display. I’ve been a bit spoiled as of late, having moved over to using the uber premium Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra in between reviews, but even with that knowledge of how good the high-end can be, I still had a very enjoyable experience watching the film on the Idea Tab Plus.
While I do appreciate the 90Hz refresh rate, especially as it makes simple things like web browsing or scrolling through social media feel nice and smooth, it is worth mentioning that the OnePlus Pad Go 2 does have it beat with a 120Hz refresh rate for not that much more at the checkout. That tablet uses an alternative 7:5 aspect ratio, which I do prefer for work, although it isn’t quite as well-suited for entertainment.
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Cameras
13MP rear-facing camera
8MP 1080P selfie camera
Gets the job done for scanning and Zoom calls
For the cameras on the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus, you’re looking at a single 13MP rear-facing sensor, along with an 8MP 1080p front camera for work calls and chatting with friends or family. It’s the standard setup you’d expect for a tablet at this price, which is to say it’s functional but should never be used instead of your phone if you can help it.
The back camera can pick up a decent bit of colour with the right amount of light involved, but if you get too close then the colour reproduction can look a bit off, as I soon discovered when taking pictures of my Matcha Green Kindle. It’s best used for scanning documents that can then be interacted with via the Lenovo Tab Pen.
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It’s a similar situation with the front-facing camera – other people on a call will be able to see your face well enough, but don’t expect them to pick up on the finer details of your complexion.
Performance
MediaTek Dimensity 6400 chipset
Works well with everyday activities
Struggles with high-end games
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Much like the design of the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus, the other aspect that showed me just how far the budget market has come was the tablet’s performance.
Unlike super-cheap tablets such as the OnePlus Pad Lite or the Oppo Pad SE, which are best designed for light entertainment and web browsing only, the Idea Tab Plus can work as a genuine productivity device, so long as your workload includes less intensive apps like Chrome, Google Docs and Canva.
Powering the show is the MediaTek Dimensity 6400 chipset, and in everyday use, it’s a fine CPU that delivers the right level of performance for most people, especially students. Moving through the app tray is smooth, as is jumping from one app to another, and you can delve into a bit of side-by-side multitasking without issue.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
I had Lenovo’s Notepad app open on one side, letting me doodle away, whilst watching YouTube on the other to catch up on the recent glut of trailers for the latest video games. For when you’re studying in the library and need to have Google Docs open alongside a browser for research, the Idea Tab Plus works exactly as you’d hope.
You can have three apps open at one time, wherein two of them are split into quarter blockers on one side of the screen, but this is where I did notice a bit of slowdown, as the tablet didn’t register my drawings at quite the same speed as before, so I don’t recommend it.
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An area that left me feeling disappointed was the stylus itself. I’ve been spoiled by years of using Remarkable tablets to know how good the digital writing experience can be, and although I’m not usually a fan of using a stylus on a glass display, the Lenovo Yoga Tab won me over with the Lenovo Pen Pro’s haptic feedback, which recreated the feeling of moving a pencil across a piece of paper.
It’s a great bit of tech, but one that’s unfortunately missing on the standard Lenovo Tab Pen, so although the tablet can respond quickly to your inputs, the whole experience just doesn’t feel as fun or as intuitive as what you’ll find elsewhere.
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When diving into a bit of gaming, a quick round of Call of Duty: Mobile was a fun and engaging experience with no visible lag and a fast pace, bolstered by the 90Hz refresh rate.
Much like with multitasking, however, if you push the Dimensity 6400 chipset even further with a game like Honkai: Star Rail, that’s where you’ll see the limits pretty quickly. By default, Star Rail sets its graphical quality to Low, where the title runs well enough, but change the settings to anything higher than that, and you’ll see the whole thing turn into a slideshow.
Regardless of whether you’re gaming or simply streaming a bit of Netflix, the tablet’s quad-speaker setup does a great job of enveloping you in its soundscape. When cranking the volume up on Avengers: Infinity War, I was able to pick up on a few layers of the overall track that I’d forgotten were there as they can get lost in the overall mix.
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The fact that you’re getting 256GB storage as standard, plus the ability to expand that with a Micro SD card slot, means that you won’t have to worry when it comes to downloading tons of films and TV shows for a long journey.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
For those who prefer to be untethered from a Wi-Fi signal when they work, there is a 5G-compatible model of the Idea Tab Plus available to buy.
Software
Lenovo ZUI overlay
PC Mode is great for productivity
A bit of bloatware to contend with
Just like other tablets from the brand, the Idea Tab Plus runs the Lenovo ZUI Android overlay. It’s easily one of the least offensive of its kind, but equally, it’s not enough to stand out as a selling point in itself.
The aforementioned multitasking software feels very much like it’s taken a leaf from OnePlus’ Open Canvas feature, which is exactly why this tablet is such a good fit for students who want to have more than one app open at a time during lectures or while studying at the library.
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If you want to take the productivity experience even further, you can delve into the surprisingly efficient PC mode, which replicates the look of a typical desktop and lets you resize apps at your leisure and minimise them for quick access later.
It all works with a higher level of performance than my ageing iPad 10th Gen, and the fact that this is a tablet with a £299.99/$299.99 RRP but can often be found for less, just makes this a bit of a bargain compared to Windows laptops. If you throw in a wireless keyboard like the Logitech Keys-to-Go 2 into the mix then the whole experience feels even more intuitive.
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There is a fair bit of bloatware to deal with once you boot up the Idea Tab Plus for the first time. Not only are there Lenovo’s own-brand apps, but there are third-party apps like Opera, WPS Office and Candy Crush Saga. It’s not quite as abrasive or in your face as what I’ve seen with MagicOS on Honor brand tablets, but it doesn’t surpass the relatively bloat-free look of OxygenOS on OnePlus devices.
The Idea Tab Plus’ biggest hang-up is that Lenovo is only promising a total of two OS upgrades from launch. That is bolstered somewhat by four years of security patches, but it’s a long way from the support provided by the likes of Apple and Samsung.
With that in mind, it’s just enough of an update cycle to get you through your studies, but I’d hesitate to recommend the Idea Tab Plus to an adult who might be looking for a tablet they can use long-term.
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Battery life
10,200mAh capacity
45W charging speed
Plenty of juice for all-day working
One of the more eye-catching specs of the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus is that it carries a massive 10,200mAh battery, which is quite a rarity even amongst the more premium crowd. The only other tablets I’m aware of that come close at this end of the market are the OnePlus Pad Go 2 (10,050mAh) and the Honor Pad 10 (10,100mAh).
What you get with that cell, according to Lenovo, is the ability to stream up to 13 hours of YouTube, which I think is more than enough to keep most people satisfied over the course of a day. This means that if you have a long-haul flight ahead of you and you’d rather tune into your own curated library of entertainment, then you’ll have more than enough juice to see you through to your destination.
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Seen another way, if you decide to venture away from the library for a few hours and study with friends at a cafe, then you won’t have to worry about making sure that you’re seated next to a charging outlet.
When it comes time to top up the battery, however, you can rely on 45W speeds over a wired connection, which is faster than the 33W cap of the OnePlus Pad Go 2, so you won’t have to wait long before the battery is full once more.
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Squirrel Widget
Should you buy it?
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You’re a student in need of a solid productivity tablet on a budget
With a price that undercuts the entry-level iPad, not to mention having a larger display and slick multitasking software, the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus is great for all-day studying.
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You want a long-term Android tablet
With a fairly limited cycle of support, the Idea Tab Plus is immediately bettered by the likes of Apple and Samsung for anyone who wants a long-term upgrade.
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Final Thoughts
If I were just about to head into university and had about £300/$300 to spend on a new tablet to see me through my studies, then the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus is exactly the option that I’d want to buy. The fact that you’re getting a larger (and faster) 12.1-inch 90Hz display over the iPad A16, and a stylus included, is just too good a package to overlook from a pure value standpoint.
For those who do want a slightly more compact tablet, the Lenovo Yoga Tab is available. Although I also love that tablet for its superior processor and writing experience, when it comes to side-by-side multitasking, I do prefer the Idea Tab Plus because you have more room for apps to spread out.
I do think that you get a better screen and software experience with the OnePlus Pad Go 2, but the Idea Tab Plus still comes out on top for battery life and charging speed.
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If Lenovo were to support the Idea Tab Plus beyond the promised two-year OS update cycle, I would just as easily recommend it to adults as well, but for now, it’s just a great buy for students on a budget.
How We Test
We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry-standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Used as a main tablet for over a week
Tested and benchmarked using respected industry tests and real-world data
FAQs
Does the Lenovo Idea Tab Plus come with a stylus?
Yes, the Lenovo Tab Pen is included with the tablet.
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Does the Lenovo Tab Pen have wireless charging?
No, unlike the Tab Pen Pro, the standard Lenovo Tab Pen requires a AAA battery to run.
Miles Davis’ 1956 Prestige sessions are 70 years old, which feels mildly absurd considering how alive this music still sounds. Craft Recordings is marking the anniversary with Miles ’56: The Prestige Recordings, a new 4-LP box set that gathers the material behind Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’, and Steamin’, along with an earlier session from the same year featuring Sonny Rollins and Tommy Flanagan.
This is not unexplored territory. These recordings have been reissued on vinyl, CD, SACD, and digital more times than most jazz catalogs can claim. Nobody needs to be convinced that the music matters. The question for collectors is more practical: does this version bring something meaningful to a shelf already crowded with Miles Davis reissues?
Craft is certainly treating it like a major archival release. The audio was transferred from the original analog tapes, restored by Plangent Processes, remastered by Paul Blakemore, and cut for vinyl by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. The 180-gram 4-LP edition is joined by 3-CD and hi-res digital versions, while both physical formats include a new essay by Ashley Kahn and track notes by the late Dan Morgenstern.
Craft’s previous Miles ’55 box set created a high bar for both presentation and sound. Miles ’56 has a tougher assignment. These are arguably the most familiar recordings in the Davis catalog outside of Kind of Blue, and there are already excellent versions of much of this material in circulation.
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The Sessions That Made the First Great Quintet Permanent
1956 was not the year Miles Davis suddenly became Miles Davis. That work had already been done. What changed was the level of execution.
By then, the working quintet of John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones had become a real band rather than a promising collection of young musicians. They had recorded Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet in late 1955, spent months on the road, and built a repertoire around standards, blues, bebop burners, and Davis originals.
The material was not especially exotic. “My Funny Valentine,” “Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” “Salt Peanuts,” “Well, You Needn’t,” “Oleo,” “Four,” and “Half Nelson” were all part of the book. What made the group different was how naturally everyone fit together. Garland’s elegant, blues-informed piano gave the band space. Chambers kept the floor moving. Philly Joe Jones pushed from underneath without ever turning the rhythm section into a demolition project. Coltrane was still developing, but his intensity and restless lines gave Davis a productive counterweight.
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Davis had signed with Columbia while still contractually tied to Prestige. With Bob Weinstock’s blessing, he returned to Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio on May 11 and October 26, 1956, to fulfill his obligations to the label. The plan was bluntly efficient: record the music the band already knew, move quickly, and let Prestige spread the results across multiple albums.
That is exactly what happened.
The two marathon dates were closer to live sets than traditional studio productions. Most of the performances were first takes, with the band relying on familiarity, instinct, and the kind of communication that comes from actually playing night after night. There was no elaborate production concept and very little polishing. They walked in, played the tunes, and got out of the way.
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Nobody appears to have documented whether the band stopped at Hiram’s in Fort Lee after those long Hackensack sessions, but it would have been geographically sensible. Anyone who did not appreciate the local hot dog situation could have continued on to Rutt’s Hutt in Clifton. New Jersey has always taken its priorities seriously.
The resulting music was eventually divided among Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’, and Steamin’. The albums were released separately over several years, but they were never conceived as isolated studio statements. They are chapters from the same extended performance, captured while one of jazz’s most important groups was operating at full strength.
The Earlier Session Matters More Than You Might Expect
Miles ’56 also includes a March 16 session that sits slightly outside the core First Great Quintet narrative. Sonny Rollins joins Davis on tenor saxophone, with Tommy Flanagan on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Art Taylor on drums.
It was Davis’ final studio date with Rollins and his only recorded session with Flanagan, which gives the material real historical value beyond its inclusion as bonus content. “Vierd Blues,” “No Line,” and the earlier version of Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way” provide a different view of Davis in 1956: less settled, perhaps, but no less compelling.
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That session also helps make Miles ’56 feel like a true document of the year rather than a repackaging of four albums everyone already owns in some form. The May and October recordings remain the main event, but the March material broadens the story.
And that story is the reason this box deserves attention.
These recordings are not buried treasure. They have been revisited endlessly because they are foundational: the sound of Miles Davis building a path toward Columbia, John Coltrane beginning to separate himself from the pack, and a rhythm section establishing a vocabulary that still defines small-group jazz.
For newcomers, Miles ’56 offers a remarkably complete entry point into the Prestige era. For collectors with several versions already on the shelf, the question is tougher. This is not a purchase driven by rarity. It comes down to the mastering, the pressing quality, the presentation, and whether Craft has found more life in music that has already been given the audiophile treatment repeatedly.
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That is where this box set will earn its keep, or become another handsome reminder that Miles Davis collectors are an easily tempted bunch.
Worth the Money?
I own the original OJC versions of all four albums, which remain very good and considerably more attainable than clean Prestige originals. But they predate the Plangent Process used for Miles ’56, so they were never subject to the same tape-speed correction and restoration work. I cannot compare this box to the 1996 Analogue Productions set, but against my OJCs, Miles ’56 sounds cleaner, fuller, and more relaxed up top. There is better instrumental decay, more tonal weight through piano, bass, and trumpet, and a deeper, more convincing soundstage.
The presentation is not bright or aggressively detailed; it is simply very clean, with more space around the players and a greater sense of the room. The 180-gram pressings are flat, perfectly centered, and impressively quiet after a cleaning.
For the money, Craft has delivered a handsome and serious physical package. The four LPs come in black paper, plastic-lined audiophile inner sleeves, while the sturdy outer shell uses a modern silver design that looks far more stylish than another stack of generic reproductions. The box set was manufactured in Germany, likely at Optimal, though Craft does not appear to name the plant directly.
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This is not the box for collectors who insist on the original jackets or want to hear the albums in their original running order. But for listeners who want these landmark 1956 sessions presented as one cohesive archival project, with excellent pressing quality and meaningful sonic improvements over more affordable older editions, Miles ’56 is a very worthwhile package.
Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Today’s NYT Connections puzzle includes some difficult categories. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.
The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Other residential proxy brands may rely on the same network
Tech companies working with US law enforcement “significantly degraded” the NetNut residential proxy network as part of an ongoing effort to disrupt the tools cybercriminals use to conceal their activity, say researchers.
The work was carried out by Google, Lumen, Shadowserver, the FBI, and others, and marks a continuation of the IPIDEA proxy network disruption from January.
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According to Google Cloud, those working on the operation believe NetNut was among the most popular residential proxy network providers and had at least 2 million devices enrolled in its botnet, comprising mainly small TV-streaming hardware. Crims often use residential proxy networks to make it look like their traffic is actually coming from legit homes and businesses.
In the same way that other residential proxy networks expand their pool of enrolled devices, NetNut distributed its own SDK via these devices.
Proxy providers often approach users under the guise of monetizing their spare bandwidth, paying them a fee in exchange for letting their SDK run on their devices.
The official advice is, of course, to refuse any offers of this kind. Not only does it help feed the cybercrime ecosystem, but it can also lead to vulnerabilities elsewhere in home networks.
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NetNut offered its own standalone proxy networks, as well as mobile and datacenter proxies, and a slew of scrapers and datasets.
However, it also offered a reseller program, and experts believe many other residential proxy networks are powered by NetNut’s own, which means the disruption may have further downstream effects.
“While we expect this disruption to have a larger ripple effect across the residential proxy ecosystem, observations after the disruption of IPIDEA proved that individual networks can appear resilient,” Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said.
“What we have observed is that when faced with the degradation of their own botnet, proxy operators begin buying capacity from their competitors, effectively becoming a reseller.
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“We recognize that creating a lasting disruption in this fluid ecosystem means we must scale our efforts to target the infrastructure of several interconnected providers. We will continue to observe the composition of the NetNut network and map out how its peers adapt to this action.”
Residential proxy networks are not illegal, although they are often abused for cybercrime.
These networks are ostensibly pitched as a means to shore up online privacy, and promote ideals such as freedom of expression without risk of being traced.
However, the same privacy-preserving features of these networks are used by cybercriminals to mask their malicious activity.
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They enroll ordinary devices, which are connected to innocent residential networks, at scale and offer them to customers as exit nodes.
Cybercriminals can make use of these networks to channel their traffic through these nodes, making the traffic appear to originate from an IP address they do not control.
“In a single week during June 2026, GTIG observed 316 distinct threat clusters using suspected NetNut exit nodes, including cybercriminal and espionage groups,” said Google.
“These bad actors can use NetNut to mask their origin IP address when accessing victim environments, accessing their own infrastructure, and conducting password spray attacks.”
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Reports also suggest that NetNut has a role to play in other botnet families. GTIG said it found plugin components for large-scale botnets such as Badbox 2.0, while other public reports have noted signs of NetNut being used to infect devices with Mirai variants.
The Register asked GTIG why NetNut’s second domain (netnut.io) remains online, while netnut.com returns a “This website has been seized” splash page, but it did not immediately reply.
Google’s announcement hinted at similar takedowns to take place in the future, as the residential proxy network market continues to grow.
However, it said these ad hoc disruptions are only effective for so long, and that a long-term approach would require support from ISPs, mobile platforms, and other technology companies. ®
Apple is asking a federal court to dismiss the YouTuber AI training lawsuit, on the grounds that publicly available YouTube videos are lawfully accessible under both the DMCA and YouTube’s Terms of Service.
In April 2026, a collection of YouTube channels sued Apple, claiming the company had scraped videos from YouTube to train internal AI models.
The class-action lawsuit was headed up by Ted Entertainment, owners of the h3h3Productions channels and podcast. Two golf channels, MrShortGameGolf and Golfholics, were also involved.
Apple has responded three months later to the suit. According to the court document spotted byMacRumors, Apple argued that the plaintiffs made the videos publicly available on YouTube, and that both the DMCA and YouTube’s Terms of Service permitted the company to access them.
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“Plaintiffs allege that they posted audiovisual works to YouTube, and that any member of the public can see them there,” reads Apple’s response. “No password. No payment. No lock. No key. Allegedly, YouTube employs technological measures to prevent unauthorized downloading. But because YouTube provides public access to the videos, the alleged technological measures do not control access to the works, as section 1201(a) requires.”
Apple is requesting the court throw out the lawsuit as the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim.
A clock is by its very nature a device for measuring time, and thus it moves forward at a constant rate. But how about in a theatrical setting, where time runs at the whim of the director? For the stage, a clock with more flexibility is required. To this endeavor [Playful Technology] has you covered, with a larger than life stage clock whose hands are independently controllable by DMX.
Behind the clock is a very unusual part, not the modified clock mechanism one might expect, but a dual stepper motor with a concentric shaft. This is driven by an Arduino with a stepper driver shield more familiar from the world of 3D printers, and an RS485 interface for DMX interfacing. The hands are built in OpenSCAD, and 3D printed to be an interference fit on the shafts. The DMX controller software has a handy rotating knob style interface, allowing easy hand manipulation.
You can see the results in the video below, complete with an exhaustive dissection of the Arduino code. Meanwhile DMX is itself a fascinating subject, and in the past we’ve taken a deep dive into RS485.
Neuralink has taken a clear step toward simpler brain implant surgery. In May a team at University Health Network’s Toronto Western Hospital carried out the company’s first transdural procedure on a clinical trial participant. Within an hour of the operation the person began moving a computer cursor using only thoughts. Recovery followed the expected path with no surprises.
The dura mater is a thick, protective membrane that wraps around the brain like a shield. It is thicker than a good piece of leather and serves to protect the delicate tissue inside from regular knocks and bumps. In the early days of Neuralink surgeries, as with most traditional brain operations, surgeons had to clip or peel aside a section of this membrane to reach the cortex. The extra procedure, a durectomy, adds a lot of time to the operation and required extremely cautious hands because the membrane is quite thick, the brain is sloshing around inside, and the blood arteries are hidden from view.
This time, the team was able to leave the dura intact, which was quite a change, since the surgical robot just drove its hair-thin electrical threads directly through the membrane and into the cortex underneath without ever touching it with a knife or pulling it back. This minor adjustment removes one of the most sensitive aspects of manual dexterity from the operating room. Getting to this stage was no easy task, as the team had to undertake a lot of new engineering on the initial needle to make it powerful enough to pierce the dura consistently. They ended up enlarging it somewhat and then spending hundreds of hours testing synthetic membranes that matched the genuine thing in terms of thickness and puncture resistance. They also developed new imaging capabilities that enabled the robot to work while the membrane was still in place.
One tool uses a dye injected into the bloodstream and then infrared light illuminates all of the blood vessels through the dura, allowing the robot to delicately thread its way around them. Another approach employs a laser to bounce back a measurement of the distance from the top of the dura to the surface of the moving cortex, all while allowing for the brain’s natural squishing. The robot uses these live maps to place the threads precisely without damaging any blood vessels. The opening in the skull remains small, roughly the size of a quarter. Once all of the threads are in place, the implant is secured and the skin closes. The entire process feels more tighter and more simplified than previous versions, where the dura was trimmed.
This person took part in Neuralink’s current clinical trials, which are aimed at patients suffering from paralysis caused by spinal cord injuries or ALS. The speedy restoration to cursor control indicated that the threads were sending signals immediately, and doctors watched recovery and found nothing strange, since the new strategy appeared to operate perfectly. Neuralink put it quite simply: the best step is no step at all. Removing the dura cut makes the entire process much safer and more repeatable, pointing toward surgeries that stay safer and repeat more easily when more patients come forward. [Source]
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