Steve Jobs, as Remembered by His First Girlfriend [Steve Jobs]

By Casey Chan Oct 16, 2011 1:00 PM 49,847 62

Rolling Stone has a great cover story on Steve Jobs that included an essay from Chrisann Brennan, Jobs' first girlfriend and the mother of Lisa. It reveals a side of Jobs before Apple—the Bob Dylan-loving romantic poet madly in love.

Most of the stuff Brennan writes, we've already known. How he loved Dylan, and re-enacted Alice in Wonderland for money, and how they were in love. But it's that rawness of Jobs that she captures, his early spirit that was motivated by something else other than typical limitations like worrying or expectations. Brennan writes:

We had very little money and no foreseeable prospects. One evening after we had splurged on dinner and a movie, we walked back to our car to discover a $25 parking ticket. I just turned inside out with despair, but Steve did not seem to care. He had a deep well of patience when it came to discouragements. We drove to the ocean near Crissy Field in San Francisco and walked out onto the beach to see the sunset, where I began talking about money worries. He gave me a long, exasperated look, reached into his pockets and took the few last coins and dollars we had and threw them into the ocean. All of them.

It's funny how he could not care about the big stuff but could comb through all the details on the small stuff. The entire Rolling Stone article is worth a read. [Rolling Stone]

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The World's First Solar Plant to Generate Electricity Even at Night [Video]

By Andrew Tarantola Oct 11, 2011 11:30 AM 22,738 93

The most obvious criticism of solar energy is that it doesn't work very well when the sun is down. The new Gemasolar heliostatic plant doesn't have that problem, on account of a vat of molten salt that keeps it running through 15 hours of dark.

More than 2,600 concentrically-arranged mirrors at the Gemasolar installation just outside of Seville, Spain concentrate solar energy towards a centrally located molten nitrate salt tank. As the rays converge, they super-heat the salt to over 900 degrees Celsius, causing water around the tank to boil and drive steam turbines. In addition, any superfluous heat generated during the day is stored within the liquefied salt. It acts like a giant thermal battery for driving the turbines at night and during overcast days—up to 15 hours at a time with no sunlight. Seville, Spain, however, is one of the sunniest areas in Europe, so that doesn't happen very often.

The $410 million (230,000,000 Euro) Gemasolar plant just opened and has a potential output of 20 megawatts, though it is currently operating below that capacity (officials expect it could reach 70 percent capacity by 2012). It's the largest solar power station of its type in Europe, and it has an annual production total or roughly 110 GWh/year—enough to power 25,000 homes and reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions by more than 30,000 tons a year.

The combination of thermal energy storage and sunny weather guarantees that the Gemasolar plant can operate for at least 6,500 hours a year, up to three times longer than other renewable sources.

[Euronews - Geekosystem - Geeksailor - The Energy Collective]

Monster Machines is all about the most exceptional machines in the world, from massive gadgets of destruction to tiny machines of precision, and everything in between.

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The Air Force Special Ops Receives Its First C-130J Combat Shadow II [Military]

The C-130 is an old reliable. It's been hauling soldiers, dropping supplies and refueling planes for 60 years. And with the arrival of the new MC-130J Combat Shadow II, this model will be around for another 30.

The Combat Shadow II is lighter and more powerful than earlier C-130s. It has five turboprops and, at 91,000 pounds, is the lightest MC-130 ever produced. As a result, the plane has 25 percent more takeoff power and 20 percent more cruise power than previous models. It's a monster plane, but it'll run lean and mean.

The first MC-130J Combat Shadow II rolled off the Lockheed Martin production line and landed at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico this week. It's the first of 20 planes on order for the Air Force Special Ops and the first of 10 expected to arrive at Cannon Air Force Base this year. [PNT Online]

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First Images of the Oslo Killer In Action [Terrorism]

These are the first images of the mass murderer Anders Breivik in action, placing the van with explosive materials in Oslo, Norway.

Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian ultra-right wing terrorist, placed his 2,100-pound bomb on Oslo's government district on July 22. He then went to the island of Utoya, were he started to shot people in a summer camp. In total, he killed 77 people that day.

The deranged bastard is wearing what looks like a paramilitary or police uniform and a helmet. The images were captured by CCTV cameras around the building. Apparently, nobody thought that a guy dressed in such a way parking a white van and walking away was worth a bit of investigation. But then again, I doubt anyone watches these cameras until something bad happens. [ABC Nyheter]

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The First Free iPhone Is a F*cking Rip Off [IPhone]

Even though Apple just announced the brand new old iPhone 4S, Apple will still be selling the iPhone 4 for $99 (expected) and the iPhone 3GS for...FREE. Cool! That's the first time an iPhone has ever been free. Too bad it's a complete rip off.

Please don't buy the iPhone 3GS. Please, please, please, please don't. Seriously, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. First, the price difference, which is 200 bucks, doesn't matter much in the long run. Look, you're very likely going to be paying ~100 bucks a month for 2-years if you buy an iPhone (voice plan, data plan, taxes, etc), that's already around $2400 for the lifetime of the contract. Why would you skimp out on 200 more dollars spread over two years? Think long term here, it's only $8.33 a month/$2 a week/$0.27 a day for the iPhone 4S ($200/24-months). A quarter a day! If you're already spending 2 grand on an iPhone plan, you can afford a quarter a day.

Second, the iPhone 3GS was released in June 19, 2009. That's over two years ago, people! That puppy is fat and old. The world was so different back then. How different? Well, the iPad didn't exist, iOS 3.0 finally brought copy and paste to iPhone users (no multitasking yet!), Giz was still invited to Apple events and Android wasn't even good yet (for reference, the original Motorola Droid was released on October 17, 2009). 2009 is ancient, you're talking about a phone that's multiple generations behind what was released today. The 3GS is a bloated plastic brick with a screen that pales in comparison to the iPhone 4S' Retina Display. Seriously, you'll go blind if you look at an iPhone 3GS after seeing the beauty of an iPhone 4 or 4S display.

It's not worth it. Look, if you have already have an iPhone 3GS, that's fine. It probably works pretty good! But don't go out and BUY one. Trust me here, I've never been more sure of anything in my life. Do not buy this free phone, it's a complete waste of money. [Gizmodo Liveblog]

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Motorola's Latest Phone Has the First Ever qHD Super AMOLED Screen (Update: It's the Droid RAZR) [Leaks]

This Is My Next just got a look at Motorola's latest LTE handset, the Motorola Spyder, and it has the unique pedigree of being the first 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED screen. That combination is a promise of crisp, high-res visuals.

Rounding things out is an unnamed 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of memory, and an 8MP rear-camera. It's already pretty similar to the Droid Bionic, but the new screen should help solve that graininess issue. More details are sure to come. [This Is My Next]

Update: One of TIMN's tipsters has learned the name this new phone will go by: the Droid RAZR. They're reviving the RAZR name? I'm suddenly getting mid-aughts flashbacks.

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Deadly Progression of ALS Reversed in an Amazing Stem Cell First [Science]

Last May, 39-year-old Ted Herada was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It's one of the worst diagnoses anyone could get.

He and his doctors expected his health to have severely declined by now. But thanks to an experimental stem cell treatment, he has tossed his cane and is once again playing in the pool with his three kids.

"Every day is a good day for me right now," Herada told me. "I've made some quantum leaps after the surgery and... I'm maintaining the drastic improvements I've made."

The prognosis for ALS is likely death in fewer than three years after gradually losing your ability to move, speak and breathe. Herada got exactly that horrible news after losing strength in his left leg and feeling short of breath after just a few stairs or walking to the mailbox. His hands became too weak to open a Ziploc bag.

Then his neurologist told him about an experiment at Emory University that was recruiting ALS patients to test a stem cell treatment.

The surgeons told Herada that injecting the stem cells into his spine likely would not help him personally, and might even cause harm. But the study would hopefully help scientists find an effective treatment in the future. Herada had nothing to lose and expected nothing - he became study subject number 11 and underwent surgery on March 9.

It's incredibly moving to hear Herada talk about his recovery, which he knows might be temporary.

"I've always been the kind of dad to wrestle on the floor with my kids and tickle them and make them giggle, and that was going away before," Herada told me. "Now when we get in the pool and they want to play Marco Polo, I can do that."

The Emory surgeons injected 1 million neural stem cells into 10 locations in Herada's and 11 other patients' spines. All of the cells came from a single voluntarily aborted and donated two-month-old fetus. Using technology developed by Neuralstem, scientists multiplied the cells and created enough of them to treat all of the patients in this trial and beyond.

"We took one small part of the spinal cord and isolated one million stem cells which are now going to, we hope, treat millions of people around the world," Dr. Carl Johe, chief scientific officer at Neuralstem told me.

Going into the study, expectations were low. As a safety precaution, the FDA forced the researchers to inject only one-quarter the number of stem cells they originally planned to use. The investigators hoped to show the cells were safe to use, but anticipated little more.

Two of the 12 patients died during the trial, one after a heart attack and another because of progress of his ALS. The other eight patients' conditions have remain unchanged.

The researchers hope the Food and Drug Administration will approve the second phase of clinical trials with five more patients and with the goal of proving the treatment works. Neuralstem is also awaiting approval to begin the first phase of a fetal stem cell trial in chronic spinal cord patients.

Unregulated stem cell outlets, such as the one promoted by Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, claim success treating ALS and just about every other disease you can imagine. But they haven't gone through the painstaking methodology required to run an FDA-approved human clinical trial, which demands reams of data with the goal of assuring safety and eventually proving efficacy. Such trials can also help convince insurance agencies to cover the treatments. Otherwise, rogue outlets will continue charge up to 10s of thousands of dollars for treatments.

"We go through the FDA process, which is excruciatingly slow, but we do that because it's what the law says we have to do," Johe said.

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A 29-Year-Old Woman Hears Herself for the First Time Thanks to Hearing Implants [Video]

Sloan Churman, deaf for 29 years, will get to see life in a completely different light now because of Cochlear Implants. Technology is such a wonderful thing. [Youtube via Boing Boing]

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HP's Board Hired Its Failed CEO Without Even Meeting Him First [Hp]

Yesterday I argued that HP's board would be rash to fire embattled CEO Léo Apotheker at this point in the game, since surely they knew what they were getting when they hired him. Oops! Joke's on me. Most of them had never even met him.

As James Stewart reveals in this morning's New York Times, just four members of the HP board bothered interviewing Apotheker before bringing him on board, and most of the remaining eight never met him in person. Here's the part where you laugh to keep from crying:

Before a final vote on Mr. Apotheker, H.P. search committee members again urged other directors to meet him. No one took them up. At least one director, Ms. Salhany, tried to slow the process, worrying aloud that "no one has ever met him. Are we sure?" But her concerns were brushed aside. "Among the finalists, he was the best of a very unattractive group," one director said.

Board members also had limited recall of Apotheker's tenure at SAP—and the copyright infringement allegations leveled at that company.

Okay, so let me revise what I was saying yesterday. Fire Apotheker, sure. But not before you fire the board that hired a CEO without so much due diligence as a handshake. [NY Times]

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BGR: Best Buy Expects iPhone to Come On the First Week of October [Iphone 5]

The folks at BGR have stumbled upon some documents that allegedly detail basic first steps and prep work for a Best Buy iPhone 5 launch in the first week of October. We'll add this evidence to the growing pile.

While it's unclear at this time, the docs suggest a preorder period. Also mentioned is the ballyhooed Sprint iPhone 5, which Best Buy is prepping to have at launch as well. Good news for Sprint customers!

Further muddying the issue is an update to the BGR site that suggests preorders could begin this week, even though the initial report said the first week in October. All of this information was provided to BGR by a source inside of Best Buy.

Lastly, to its credit, Best Buy is also letting employees know that these plans are tentative and could change at any time. I guess we'll know how well-placed this source is later this week. [BGR]

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10-Foot-Tall Lego Trump Tower Is the First Trump Building I Actually Want to Visit [Lego]

Using a transparent Lego brick technique I can only describe as amazing, builder Sean Kenney has recreated a reflected skyline in the "glass" on this 10-foot, 65,000-brick Trump International Hotel and Tower monstrosity.

Apparently Kenny achieved this effect by building the reflected skyline image behind the transparent Lego bricks he used for the windows. It's quite the illusion and this is quite the build. [MOCPages via Brothers Brick]

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The First Digital 3D Rendered Film Was Made by Pixar [Video]

I support everything Pixar—well, everything other than Cars that is. So this early, early footage of a 3D hand from 1972, which was made by Pixar founder Ed Catmull and Fred Parker, is just so, so awesome.

As much as we hate 3D around these parts, you can't deny that this is so wicked cool. NINETEEN SEVENTY TWO, people. Plus, we love Pixar more than we hate 3D. Here's a bit of background on the video:

The best part of this film is not even the 3D rendering itself, but the outtakes and "making of" footage that has been interwoven throughout, including footage of a plaster replica of Ed's hand onto which he is meticulously mapping the polygon vertices that make up the three dimensional model (around 1:30). That's really remarkable. The math that we take for granted for rendering 3D was being invented, real time, to create this video.

Read the full account at nerdplusart. [nerdplusart]

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Awesome Sandcrawler Building Is George Lucas' First Good Idea in 28 Years [Video]

Yes, this eight-story building looks like a Jawa sandcrawler made of glass and steel because it is a sandcrawler made of glass and steel. Lucasfilm is now building it in Singapore. It will be their first overseas production facility.

The sandcrawler-inspired complex was designed by architectural firm Aedas. It's actually quite beautiful, especially its Endor-ish interior patio. The complex will house production offices for Lucasfilm, LucasArts, TV and feature animation teams, as well as a 100-seat movie theatre.

After the dumbest changes ever in the Blu-ray edition of Star Wars, it's nice to know that George Lucas and his cronies can approve something as cool as this—unless this means that they would change the sandcrawler from rusty metal to shiny glass in a future special edition of Star Wars. That will actually make me go to California and tear down the Skywalker Ranch with a M1 Abrams tank.

In fact, this may very well be the first cool idea to come out of Lucas and Co. since Return of the Jedi in 1983. Not that Return of the Jedi was that cool. Only half of it is cool. You know, the half in which there are no fucking Ewoks.

The complex is now being built in Fusionopolis and it will be completed by late 2012. [Aedas and Lucasfilm via Inhabitat]

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First Quantum Computer Simulator Operates the Speed of Light [Science]

Celebrated physicist Richard Feynman first proposed it in 1982, and now it exists: the first universal, digital quantum simulator.

Austrian scientists, who published how they created the mind-blowing simulator in the September 1 issue of journal Science, haven't yet returned my emails (they're probably popping champers), but they've got to be pretty stoked.

"We show in our experiment that our method works and that we can virtually recreate and investigate many systems," said Benjamin Lanyon from the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in a press release. "When we want to study another phenomenon, we only need to reprogram our simulator."

Basically, they found a way to process a crapload of information - an amount that would require a supercomputer today - using just a few bits of memory, at close to the speed of light.

The memory is in the form of a handful of trapped ions controlled by laser pulses that can be used to process giant mathematical descriptions of whatever phenomenon a scientist would like to study, such as protein folding, semiconductors, or any other mysterious behavior of super tiny things.

"This is one of those computations that can be done on quantum computers that always takes second fiddle to discussions about cryptography," Slowe said. "Honestly, being able to factor huge numbers is pretty amazing, but being able to efficiently simulate other quantum systems is even more amazing."

Since Feynman's proposal in the '80s, others have made incremental progress on creating a simulator. In 1996, Seth Lloyd showed a standard quantum computer could be programmed to simulate any local quantum system efficiently. Two years ago, some of the same scientists who performed the current work showed an analog simulator was possible. In that experiment, they simulated Zitterbewegung (which means quivering motion, but that sounds way boring compared to Zitterbewegung) of relativistic particles, a phenomenon that had never been observed directly in nature before. In February that same group showed that a quantum computer was possible.

The fully realized simulator opens the door for incredible amounts of information processing.

"Think of it this way," Slowe said. "They did a calculation on a handful of qubits that would probably make your fans kick in on your gigaflop with gigabytes laptop."

[Science]

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Sony Tablet P First Impressions: Is the Taco Tablet Tasty? [Android]

I really love Sony for trying something different. Between this foldable Tablet P and the company's indescribably-shaped (but very palmable) Tablet S they are genuinely trying to leave the hardware pack mentality behind. But enough congratulations. How good is it?

I only had a very short time to play with the Sony Tablet P, and I was warned that it was a prototype and that the software was very much unfinished. Fair enough. The basics: it's a small tablet, with two 5.5-inch clamshell screens, that folds in half to get even smaller. Like, fits-in-your-pocket small. It'll be launching later this year as an AT&T exclusive, running Android 3.2 and and packing Wi-Fi and 4G connectivity. There's no Wi-Fi only model planned as of now.

The best thing about the Sony Tablet P? Portability. If you hate carrying a bag around (like me), being able to slip the tablet in your jacket pocket is a big plus. The hinge that splits the clamshell is sturdy. I mean it feels like it could stop a bullet, which is great. It weighs only 13 ounces, which is featherweight for a tablet.

Sony has pre-loaded a fair amount of exclusive apps to utilize the dual-screen design. Some of these implementations are very good (and just, you know, logical) like text messaging with the keyboard taking up the bottom screen and the text on top. The PlayStation app* takes advantage of the dual-screens, too, putting controls on the lower screen while the upper screen becomes your "TV". The email app and a few others are good, too.

Unfortunately, most of my praise ends there. Opening the tablet up you're met with a strange, square-shaped screen with a very thick, black line in the middle (the bezel where the hinge is). It's not something you can ignore. The size and shape really isn't optimal for anything. Holding the Tablet P vertically should feel a bit like reading a book, but the ebook app makes the text just a hair too small when you have a page on each screen. In other apps, things simply get lost in the chasm between the screens. The worst implementation of all was the app for watching movies, where it put the movie on the top screen and the player controls on the bottom. Seriously? Do you really think I need the entire bottom screen for Play/Fast Forward/Rewind? I do not. But I'm relegated to watching a tiny movie nonetheless. Which, on the other hand, might still be preferable to watching The Thin Red Line with a thick black line bifurcating the action.

What stings even more is that the apps that will actually leverage this dual-screen setup are going to be extremely limited. There are the ones Sony made in-house and... well, right now that's about it. Sony plans to release APIs to the world, but traditionally endeavors like that have failed miserably. It's been hard enough to get developers to adapt their apps for Honeycomb because they just aren't seeing the demand yet. Does Sony really think that this odd, niche tablet within the Honeycomb ecosystem is going to somehow incentivize developers more than Honeycomb as a whole? Does not compute. It also uses the same cheap, soft glass as the the Sony Tablet S, which, as we mentioned in that review is waaaay not good enough.

Anyway, like I said, my time with this thing was limited and the software wasn't finished (nor will it be until later this year), so don't let this be a final judgement. I really wanted to like this device, and as I say, I salute Sony for thinking out of the box. That said, I think they need to go back to the drawing board. This form-factor, ultimately, doesn't have much more of a prayer than the ill-fated Kyocera Echo or Toshiba Libretto did. The giant gap in the middle needs to go away, and it needs to be a more landscape form-factor (4:3 at the very least). Let this one incubate a bit longer, Sony. You're close, but you're not nearly close enough.

*This tablet and the Sony Tablet P are the first two tablets to be PlayStation Certified.

Specs
Two 5.5 inch screens
1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor
1GB RAM
5MP rear-facing camera, 0.3MP front-facing
4GB internal memory
Full-size SD Card slot (for media exchange only)
Wi-Fi + 4G
AT&T Exclusive
Weight: 13 ounces
Open - 6.22l x 7.08w x 0.53h (inches)
Closed - 3.11l x 7.08w x 1.02h (inches
Price/Release Date: Unknown
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Video of the World's First Realistic Simulation of the Creation of Our Galaxy [Video]

Astrophysicists from the University of Zurich working with UCSC's astronomers have created the world's first realistic simulation of the formation of the Milky Way. It's amazing that all this clockwork perfection came out of such a galactic Charlie Foxtrot.

The video—which follows the original announcement of the study—starts less than a million years after the Big Bang. Previous simulations resulted in shapes that weren't exactly like our home galaxy. This one, created with two supercomputers from NASA and the Swiss National Supercomputing Center, resulted in good match of the real thing.

The results of the calculation has been published in the Astrophysical Journal and support the theory that dark matter's gravitational forces were key in the formation of the universe. This theory says that the matter that forms stars and planetary systems came into place because of the influence of dark matter's gravitational wells.

University of Zurich's scientist Lucio Meyer has a good explanation of how they created it and the implications of their research. [YouTube via La Información via Fogonazos]

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The HTC Jetstream Tablet Is AT&T's First Tablet with 4G LTE [Tablets]

The HTC Jetstream, formerly known as the Puccini, is headed to AT&T on September 4th. It's running Android 3.1 on a 10.1-inch screen (nice!) and will be AT&T's first tablet with real 4G LTE (really nice!). For some reason though, it's going to cost $700 (ugh).

Not only that, the HTC Jetstream is "discounted" to $700 only after you sign up for a 2-year contract that requires a new $35/monthly plan that gives you 3GB worth of data to play around with. AT&T hasn't mentioned how much it'll cost without that $35/month plan.

Other specs of the Jetstream include a Snapdragon 1.5GHz dual core processor, front-facing camera, 8-megapixel rear camera, HTC scribe stylus pen (included for free for a limited time) and HTC Sense running on top of Android 3.1. Everything sounds so good but the price hurts so bad. [AT&T]

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The First Hi-Res Simulation of the Milky Way's Formation [Space]

It took nine months and 1.4 million processor-hours of work from NASA's Pleiades supercomputer but a group of researchers from UC Santa Cruz have discovered how, exactly, our galaxy was born.

The Cold Dark Matter theory posits that right after the Big Bang, gravitational forces influenced the minute variations in density of dark matter, slowly clumping them together into large and larger forms. These clumps eventually became gravity wells that, in turn, pulled together the remaining visible matter into the galaxies we see around us.

As Piero Madau, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC and coauthor of the study states:

Star formation in real galaxies occurs in a clustered fashion, and to reproduce that out of a cosmological simulation is hard. This is the first simulation that is able to resolve the high-density clouds of gas where star formation occurs, and the result is a Milky Way type of galaxy with a small bulge and a big disk. It shows that the cold dark matter scenario, where dark matter provides the scaffolding for galaxy formation, is able to generate realistic disk-dominated galaxies.

Until now, numerous lower-resolution computer simulations had failed to generate a spiral galaxy similar to our own—slight bulge in the middle with a large, well-formed disk surrounding it—instead creating one with an impossibly large bulge-to-disk ratio. Turns out that this was caused because the low resolution of the models averaged gas densities over too large an area which resulted in low-density stars. In the high resolution study by US Santa Cruz, dubbed Eris, gas densities were more locally concentrated which resulted in a more realistic distribution of stars that only form in the highest density areas.

[UCSC via Popular Science]

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The HTC Holiday Will Be First to AT&T's 4G LTE Table [Htc]

Engadget has shots of the upcoming HTC Holiday, which is ready to be one of the first to run on AT&T's 4G LTE network. It's got a 4.5-inch qD touchscreen, 8MP camera, and 1.2GHz processor, and will ship with the latest Gingerbread update.

Only thing is it might get renamed the Waikiki. ...Why? [Engadget]

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NYC Orders First Mandatory Evacuation In History, 250,000 People Affected [Hurricane Irene]

We're all laughing nervously in the office but Irene is no joke. Obama already has said the hurricane will be of historic proportions, and the City of New York has ordered the first mandatory evacuation in history.

250,000 people are affected by the order. [Evacuation Zones via CNN]

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