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NASA's newest telescope can detect gravitational waves from colliding black holes
A new series of telescopes scheduled to launch in the mid-2030s will look for gravitational waves in space.
Apple Watch prototype exposes the company's 'Ultra' security testing program
A video leak appears to show a Watch prototype and reveals how Apple gets such devices to developers while still keeping them under a veil of “ultra” security.
Stephen Hawking’s last paper has been published on multiverse theory
The last paper Stephen Hawking wrote before he died has now been published in the Journal of High Energy Physics. Though some version of the paper has been available on the preprint site arXiv since last year, it was submitted to the journal for review just days before Hawking passed, and it deals with some theoretical physics about the many universes that might have been created by the Big Bang.
Apple's original graphical OS will be available for free in 2018
If you've ever wanted to try Apple's graphical interface on the Lisa, the computer that preceded the Mac, you've been relegated to either using an emulator or (if you're lucky) tracking down one of the rare, expensive machines. Thankfully, it's about to get much easier. The Computer History Museum's Al Kossow has revealed that the source code for the Lisa's operating system and programs will be published for free sometime in 2018. And this isn't some unofficial effort -- Apple is reviewing the code itself.
The ESA's hunt for gravitational waves is over, for now
On July 18th, 2017 at around 2PM Eastern time, Professor Stefano Vitale sent the LISA Pathfinder its final kill commands from the mission's control center in Germany. The lead investigator's instructions prompted the probe to reboot itself and run a corrupted version of its software. That ensures that the spacecraft will harmlessly orbit the sun without colliding into other probes. Before the ESA powered down Pathfinder, though, it was able to meet and even exceed all the agency's objectives.
NASA plans to rejoin the ESA's gravitational waves project
NASA was supposed to be the European Space Agency's partner in the quest to measure gravitational waves, but it had to drop out in 2011 due to budgetary constraints. According to Science, though, NASA officials changed their minds after a team of scientists confirmed the existence of these distortions in the fabric of space-time. At the 11th symposium to discuss the status of ESA's Laser Interferometry Space Antenna (LISA) project, NASA said it wants to patch things up with its European counterpart and rejoin the mission as a major partner.
Physicists create a 'quantum ruler' to measure the universe
A group of physicists from the Russian Quantum Center and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have come up with a new method of creating a special entangled quantum state, one that could be used as "a high-precision ruler" for measuring large distances with subatomic precision. The technique, described in a new study in the journal Nature Communications, could be used to increase the sensitivity of optical interferometers like the ones used by the LIGO project to detect gravitational waves.
Dark matter might be made of black holes
So just what is dark matter made of? Astronomer Alexander Kashlinsky of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland thinks the mysterious cosmic stuff could be made of black holes that formed soon after the Big Bang.
ICYMI: Gravitational waves and holographic Holocaust memory
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: NASA's mission to figure out where black holes are located won't actually deploy until 2034, but the science behind the sound experiment is being worked on now. University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies created a 3D video rig to capture people's memories, saving the video and sound mash-up for future generations to hear first-hand accounts of the Holocaust. The "In Good Company" shoe for turning off phone notifications automatically is here; in case you're interested in the human ancestor story, NPR has a good summary here. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Two Apple keyboards, 24 years apart
Here we have an Apple Lisa keyboard alongside one of the company's current offerings. There's something about those old, massive keyboards that still feels great. The massive key travel distance, the satisfying snap of a keystroke, and the fact that you could probably live through a zombie attack by using it as a weapon -- what a fantastic piece of hardware. [Photo credit: Blake Patterson]
Before Macintosh there was Lisa and its incredible demo video
Sitting in the shadow of the revolutionary Apple Macintosh is the Mac's lesser known sibling, the Lisa. The Pete Best of the Apple world, Lisa was released in 1983 and discontinued three years later, left behind in the dust of the Macintosh's overwhelming popularity. Its major failing was the insane $9,995 price tag, roughly $23,866 in todays dollars. Just one year later the similarly powered Macintosh 128K hit the market at just $2,495. Ultimately, the Lisa's price tag left it out of reach for most consumers. In spite of its powerful graphic capabilities, a number of odd quirks coupled with that crazy price tag kept it from ever truly picking up steam. While Lisa was eventually driven from the market by its more reasonably priced sibling, it's legacy lives on in this incredibly dated demo video. Set against a delightfully 80s John Carpenter-styled keyboard soundtrack, the Lisa demonstration video walks you through the work process of a well-manicured caricature of a business man. Just listen to him purr "you see, Lisa's screen is special." Our narrator wouldn't feel out of place in a Die Hard rip off, but the work he demonstrates shows a device already attuned to the needs of future office workers. Powerful spreadsheets that be translated into graphs? Heck, yes! Even while typing with only one finger from each hand, the Lisa allows him to do hours of work in no time flat. It's interesting to note that the video presents the idea that the increased productivity gains offered by computers would lead to more leisure time for workers. There's something adorable about that level of optimism. Even though the Lisa only lived a few short years, it's important she not be forgotten. RIP Lisa. You can watch the complete video below in two easy-to-view parts.
Happy birthday, Apple Lisa and the Apple IIe
A happy belated birthday to the Apple Lisa and the Apple IIe! As of January 19th they both turned 30 years old. The two computers pretty much launched Apple and chances are that, without either, none of us would be using our MacBook Airs, iPads or iPhones today. As someone who is barely older than Apple's two 30-somethings, I never had a chance to use either (my first computer was a Commodore 64), but Macworld has a nice history of the two. Both computers were unveiled at Apple's annual shareholder's meeting in 1983. It's crazy to think that at the time the Apple Lisa cost US$9,995, or a whopping $23,000 in today's dollars. For that price you got a lot of plastic, some floppy drives and a 5MHz processor. Compare that to the $499 you pay today for an entry-level iPad with a touchscreen and 1.4GHz A6X processor. For those of you interested in learning even more about the Lisa and Apple IIe be sure to pick up Walter Isaacson's biography on Steve Jobs. Both computers feature heavily in the opening chapters and the history behind each is fascinating.
Linux Mint 12 debuts 'Lisa' as belle of the ball
The Ubuntu variant famed for delivering a minty fresh taste to Linux has officially arrived at version 12. Code-named "Lisa," the distribution introduces a new desktop that's based on GNOME 3.2, yet offers extensive user customization courtesy of Mint Gnome Shell Extensions (MGSE). Open source fans will find the default search engine is now DuckDuckGo, which touts crowd-sourcing and a no-tracking privacy policy. Those concerned with aesthetics will certainly appreciate two new themes, Mint-Z and Mint-Z-Dark, and the distro also delivers upgrades to Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice. Linux Mint currently rides in the pole position at DistroWatch, having supplanted Ubuntu as the alternative of choice for many Tux enthusiasts. Perhaps it's time to sample the freshness for yourself.
One Shots: Bam! Star to the face!
Welcome to One Shots bug week! Our readers are sharing their favorite bugs, glitches, and bloopers in game this week, and we're kicking off with a World of Warcraft bug from Lisa: I have so many screenshots of funny bugs in World of Warcraft that it was difficult to pick just one. I think this one is my favorite though. This is from the previous expansion, shortly after Ulduar was released. Somewhere over the course of the raid, my character Ankatra's head got lopped off and replaced with a star, so I got to run around being my own little supernova. It was pretty epic. ! We've got room for more bugs, so send a screenshot of the funniest bug, glitch, or blooper you've come across to us here at oneshots@massively.com along with your name, the name of the game, and a description of what we're seeing. We'll post it out here for everyone to enjoy and then give you the thanks! %Gallery-112285%
The Unreliable LISA
I missed the earliest Apples, having bought a NEC PC-8001 in 1981 and then a Convergent Technologies/Burroughs B20 in 1985. Both were clients of my ad agency; neither were bad machines, with color monitors and some graphics capabilities. The B20 drove a Qume daisywheel printer at about 20 characters/second. I was a victim of Apple's drive toward dominance with creative types. While today's G5 is highly regarded by creative professionals, this reputation was not established in 1987. When I joined Prime Computer in mid-1987 as a speechwriter, I inherited one of the first Lisas, with one 10 Mbyte hard drive, one floppy and a black-and-white display that was bit-mapped. I also had an alphanumeric terminal for a Prime system and a PC/AT with an Intel 80286 processor, a bit-mapped color display, and a link to a color printer. Soon I had a fourth computer, a Macintosh 4/40. Apple was not that special in 1987. The Lisa was a miserable machine, prone to crashes and some rather weird results on laser printers. A single page of text or graphics could be translated into a hundred pages of gibberish. I worked many 70-hour weeks due to Lisa crashes, and nearly got fired when one crash destroyed my boss's presentation a few hours before a board meeting. Yes, I saved regularly, but a Lisa crash usually destroyed everything, including the ability to read backup copies. The only way to reboot a Lisa was to pull the plug, wait a few minutes, and try again. It was that unstable. The Lisa died when I spilled a cup of coffee onto its keyboard at 8 PM, trying to finish a speech for the next day. I was holding the keyboard vertically over a trash can, trying to drain the coffee out, when the president walked in. He asked when he would see his speech. I shook the keyboard to get the last of the coffee out, and held it out to him. "Your speech is in here somewhere." I rewrote the speech on Prime's crude text editor, finishing at 2 A.M. Prime decided to acquire Computervision during the fall of 1987. The presentation for the board of directors was authored on a Macintosh, with MacPaint. I didn't understand MacPaint, and the original author didn't understand MacPaint. I sometimes wonder if anyone really understood MacPaint. Unfortunately, a computer support guy found a new keyboard for the Lisa. My workdays went from 12 hours to 16 hours, trying to undo/redo/edit the presentation. I loved the WYSIWYG bit-mapped text, which was revolutionary. I could bring a Prime minicomputer to its knees composing a four-page newsletter for output on a laser printer. If I made the tiniest mistake, I had to do it again. That meant the game Tetris slowed to a crawl: the highest previous score was about 6500; I gave up at about 65,000 playing Tetris while my newsletter was being processed. The Mac 4/40 ended that escapade. My boss and I considered throwing the Lisa out of his third-story corner office into the parking lot, except we knew the glass was too strong. So one day it went out of my office on a cart, destination unknown. The Mac 4/40, for 4 megabytes of memory and 40 mbytes of disk, lasted for many years. In spare time, I designed my house on it, with MacPaint, which evolved into Canvas. I used Canvas to design, and illustrate, my model railroad. I'm now on an original dual-processor G5, with a newer MacBook Pro when I travel. Apple's philosophy has won my heart, but it took quite a few years before I could say it was correct.
Flickr Find: Apple homepage, 1983
Of course, we didn't have Flash, or web designers, or shiny browsers with big graphics, or the actual connections to load those graphics back in 1983 when Apple introduced the Lisa. But what if we did? That's the premise of this slick little photoshop by Dave Lawrence, imagining Apple's current homepage advertising their products of yesteryear.It's good for a chuckle -- if the blistering 1mb of RAM doesn't get you, the iPhone preorder or the "BASIC" on the menubar probably will. But wait; what's all of this about Apple Retail Locations? We've never heard of an "Apple Store," and actually won't until Steve takes a bunch of investors to the first location in 2001. We know all about Apple Authorized Resellers, though. Maybe that's what you meant?
Apple bites back at Laptop Hunter ads, 'agrees' with Microsoft that Macs are cool
Looks like Apple finally has something to say to Lauren, Giampaulo, Lisa, Jackson, and any future laptop hunters showcased in Microsoft's new commercial series. In a statement to Macworld, spokesperson Bill Evans goes through the usual list of touted Mac features -- security, stability, design -- before quipping, "a PC is no bargain when it doesn't do what you want." Ouch. He continues by "agreeing" with Microsoft that, yes, everyone does think its computers are cool. We don't expect Redmond's ready to end the ad campaign anytime, and as enjoyable as this statement is, our only hope is that the gang at Cupertino ups the ante and retaliates tit-for-tat by sending Hodgman on an filmed adventure through Best Buy.
TUAW 1986
Luxo Jr. gets Academy Award nominationEven though Steve Jobs is no longer with Apple, we're still interested in what he's doing. You'll remember that he bought a computer graphics company from director George Lucas last year (for a rumored $10 million), which he named "Pixar."We don't know how many units of the $135,000 Pixar Image Computer they've sold, but Pixar animator John Lasseter has put it to good use. The short film he produced, "Luxo, Jr." has been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Animated Short Film category. Good luck, Pixar!Lisa gets the axeAfter several revisions and price cuts, the Lisa has been officially discontinued by Apple Computer. When it was released three years ago with an astounding price tag of $9,995 (Heck, the Tandy 600 is only $1599!) we were blown away. Not only by the cost, but by the machine itself. The mouse, the icons on the screen, that awesome trash can!Sales have declined over the past 12 months, and even a re-branding as the Macintosh XL last January didn't help. The Macintosh has been selling like hotcakes since its introduction two years ago, even though it lacks many of the Lisa's features, like protected memory, expansion slots and support for an impressive 2 megabytes of RAM.Goodbye, Lisa! We'll remember you.The AppleColor RGB Monitor is totally awesome at $499There are now several monitors available from Apple, and the granddaddy of them all is the AppleColor RGB Monitor at $499. This 12" analog monitor was designed for the Apple IIgs, and supports a resolution of 640x480 (Nice!). Those of you with a Macintosh II can also use this monitor, provided that you have the Apple High Resolution Display Video Card. The Apple Monochrome Monitor was introduced earlier this year for $129. The Macintosh Plus rocksFinally, we've got to talk about the Macintosh Plus. With a 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor and 1 megabyte of RAM (expandable to 4 megabytes), we're excited about this machine. Of course, the big news is the SCSI (or "Small Computer System Interface") peripheral bus and the new 3.5 inch double-sided 800 KB floppy drive.The SCSI port will allow for a nice collection of new ad-ons, like hard disks and tape drives. Of course, the double-sided floppies have twice the storage capacity as their predecessors while the drive itself is backwards compatible with older disks. Customers will find the software programs MacPaint and MacWrite bundled with their Macintosh Plus, which is great! You can pick up your very own for $2,599.
Happy birthday, mouse!
It was 40 years ago this week that Douglas Engelbart gave the first public demonstration of what would become the modern computer mouse, affectionately called "The mother of all demos." With that in mind, we've decided to take a look at the evolution of the Apple Mouse.The current version is the Mighty Mouse, of course. With its scroll wheel and touch sensitive clicking surfaces, it's loved by some and despised by others. I'll admit that a wired Mighty Mouse is my main mouse, which will undoubtedly make some of you gasp. Still, we can't fully appreciate the Mighty Mouse without acknowledging its predecessors.When you think of old Apple mice, you probably think of the ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) variety. But even those were preceded by the DB-9 connector mice that shipped with the Apple Lisa. In fact, those were the first commercially available mice. They were clunky, square-ish affairs that featured a single button -- a design decision that Apple has refused to abandon all these years (yes, the Mighty Mouse isn't a single-button mouse, but certainly looks it from an overhead perspective).The boxy shape was kept largely intact until 1993, when Apple released the Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II. I can remember using one of these with a Performa and being amazed by it. "it's not square! It fits in my hand! This is incredible!"Also "incredible" was the amount of time I spent removing the ball and scraping the gunk off of the rollers. The design stayed pretty much the same until the "hockey puck" was released with the iMac in 1998. Apple's first USB mouse, the hockey puck divided the Mac community. Some declared it the best thing since copy and paste. Others, like me, considered it an abomination.Just two years later, Apple got the message, retired the hockey puck and introduced the Pro Mouse. The lozenge-shaped device was the immediate predecessor to the Mighty Mouse we all know and love (or despise) today.There are Apple mouse fanboys, and those who'd never touch one. In fact, even your favorite TUAW bloggers are divided. Below is a gallery of our favorite and current mice, plus a few vintage examples. Finally, we threw in a few alternate input devices as well.%Gallery-39027%
Found footage: Remembering Lisa
Alfred DiBlasi is at it again. A few months ago, he impressed us with the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh he found on ebay. What's impressive about that? It was still factory sealed. Never opened, never booted, never used. That's the kind of find that makes my beige, vintage heart flutter.This time around, he's playing with a vintage Lisa in an exhaustive demonstration video. Before booting it up, he takes it apart and discusses the innards, piece by piece.Next is the money shot as the computer boots up, and Alfred moves through the UI. It's a pretty cool demonstration of a nice piece of Apple history.Thanks for sharing, Alfred. What's next?