TMZ has released a photo claimed to be Steve Jobs, and indeed the person does look like Steve Jobs, Apple’s just-resigned CEO and currently a chair person in the board. From the looks of the photo, it seemed that the contrast is extremely big compared to when Steve Jobs appeared on stage of WWDC 2011. Instead this so-called person who looks like Steve Jobs looks more like a person just pulled out of the crypt having a meat-eating virus onboard his body. Is this really Steve Jobs, and is he really that ill?
Earlier in the week, word has it that Tom Cruise spent time chatting with David Coulthard and getting comfortable with a Red Bull F1 car. Now, Red Bull has release video of Mr Cruise’s somewhat less than impossible mission at California’s Willow Springs raceway. We’d be lying if we said we weren’t impressed with the actor’s ability to push the car around the track, since we know Formula 1 cars aren’t the easiest machines to pilot. Then again, we ain’t surprise, Tom Cruise is among the fastest celebrity to lap Top Gear’s test track after all.
Want to know what’s equally impressive? When the Red Bull crew lets Tom takes the helm of their helicopter for some stunt flying. Want to see how Cruise handled either vehicle? Click past the jump for the clip.
The Russian government has given the go-ahead on an ambitious new tunnel project that could connect Siberia with Alaska via an underground rail line. If completed, the $65 billion project will be the longest underwater tunnel in the world, besting the Chunnel between England and France by twice the distance. The planned course would stretch over 65 miles and would snake beneath the Big and Little Diomede Islands. According to Inhabitat, the project will be funded by a private and public partnership. So why build it?
Aside from being a civil engineering marvel, the tunnel would also provide an efficient way to move 100 million tons of freight per year. In addition, the tunnel could provide an easy transmission route for electricity developed by tidal energy stations and wind plants in Russia to Alaska and Canada. In addition, the rail system would complete a high-speed network that could stretch from London to New York City. Unfortunately, the project doesn’t seem to be geared toward passenger travel. At least, not for now.
Apple just this year replaced all of the paper signage across its Apple Stores with iPads and now it seems another major company has decided to take a portion of its business the paperless route.
United Airlines this week announced that it will adopt a paperless flight deck and distribute 11,000 iPads to United and Continental pilots as part of a new electronic flight bag scheme. United said in a statement that the electronic flight bags (EFB) will replace paper flight manuals, and, a first for major network carriers, provide pilots with paperless aeronautical navigational charts through a special iPad app, Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck.
“The paperless flight deck represents the next generation of flying,” said Captain Fred Abbott, United’s senior vice president of flight operations. “The introduction of iPads ensures our pilots have essential and real-time information at their fingertips at all times throughout the flight.”
A conventional flight bag full of paper materials contains an average of 12,000 sheets of paper per pilot. United says that each 1.5 iPad will replace 38 pounds of paper operating manuals, navigation charts, reference handbooks, flight checklists, logbooks and weather information in a pilot’s flight bag.
“The green benefits of moving to EFBs are two-fold—it significantly reduces paper use and printing, and, in turn, reduces fuel consumption,” United said in a statement. “The airline projects EFBs will save nearly 16 million sheets of paper a year which is equivalent to more than 1,900 trees not cut down. Saving 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 3,208 metric tons.”
Distribution of the iPads began earlier this month, with all pilots expected to have them by the end of 2011.
Rather than using the virtual roads of the Internet, Anonymous is taking to the streets of New York in its next denial of service attack. Rather than blocking traffic to specific websites, Anonymous said that plans to block access to Wall Street in the streets of New York City next month, and is calling on its followers to do the same.
On September 17, Anonymous plans to join an existing campaign that is being promoted by Adbusters and Culture Jammers under the S17 banner. Followers are asked to bring tents and portable kitchens in order to create a “peaceful” barricade using the “the nonviolent Tahrir-acampadas model.” Anonymous is also asking its followers to “Bring Tent.”
“…flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months,” Anonymous states in a video uploaded to YouTube (embedded below). “Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices. We want Freedom. This is a Non Violent protest, we do not encourage violence in any way. The abuse and corruption of corporations, Banks and Governments ENDS HERE!!”
In addition to New York City, Adbusters and Culture Jammers reports that its campaign will also cover simultaneous occupations of financial districts in Madrid, Milan, London, Paris and San Francisco.
“With a bit of luck, this list of participating cities will expand,” the group states. “If we can pull together just the right mix of nonviolence, tenacity and strategic smarts, S17 could be the beginning of the global revolution we’ve all been dreaming about for so long … wouldn’t that be lovely.”
On Tuesday, Mozilla introduced WebAPI, its answer to providing a basic HTML5 platform across all devices, operating systems and browsers so that developers can create universal apps rather than separate versions for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, WP7 and other platforms. While this may sound too good to be true, Mozilla is hard at work at making it happen, and is calling on contributors to apply their input. Mozilla is even hiring several full-time engineers for working with WebAPI.
“Where we are today, there’s a clear distinction between the Open Web and native APIs and how things have to be built,” states Robert Nyman, technical evangelist for Mozilla. “As many developers are aware of, we need consistent APIs across web browsers, operating systems and devices to be able to build something for the world, not just a specific device or vendor. We need a way to take the web to the next step.”
For starters, Mozilla wants to get the following completed within the next three to six months which will essentially provide a basic HTML5 phone experience:
Dialer: Telephony & Messaging API, Contacts API
Address Book: Contacts API
SMS: Telephony & Messaging API, Contacts API
Clock
Camera: Camera API, Filesystem API
Gallery: Filesystem API (could possibly be FileReader & FileWriter in conjunction)
Calculator
Settings: Device Status API, Settings API
Games: Accelerometer API, Mouse Lock API
Maps: Geolocation API, Contacts API
“Specification drafts and implementation prototypes will be available, and it will be submitted to W3C for standardization,” Nyman said. “Security is a very important factor here, and it will be a mix of existing security measurements (e.g. asking the user for permission, like Geolocation) or coming up with new alternatives to ensure this.”
While the project seems pretty ambitious, getting Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM and other mobile OS providers to jump on board will be another issue altogether. On iOS, these HTML5 apps will likely be accessed in Apple’s Safari browser much like Facebook’s Project Spartan will whenever it launches. Google may be just as stubborn, but that could change over the next six months.
According to the MozillaWiki, the Accelerometer and Geolocation APIs are already present in Firefox. All other APIs mentioned above are listed as “work in progress” save for the Filesystem API. “Mozilla will most likely not implement the FileSystem API. For local file access, we have implemented FileReader and plan to implement FileWriter,” Nyman said. “A file system abstraction can additionally be built on top of IndexedDB.”
As for security, Mozilla clearly doesn’t want any random webpage to be able to read the user’s contact list, or able to issue arbitrary commands to any USB device which is hooked up to the user’s computer. “This is an area where we’re still doing a lot of research,” Nyman said. “I really want to emphasize that we don’t have all the answers yet, but that we plan on having them before we roll out these APIs to millions of users.”
U.S. residents on the East Coast are currently preparing themselves for the arrival of Hurricane Irene. TV networks and radio stations are broadcasting regularly the areas in the most danger, but you can also track the hurricane online by yourself. Google Crisis Relief has thrown together a pretty simple tool using data procured from the National Hurricane Center.
The dashboard shows you the forecast track of Irene as well where the hurricane has already been, and options for viewing evacuation routes, storm surge possibilities, cloud imagery, Red Cross shelters, all of the current watch/warnings for Irene, active 2011 tropical storms and more.
Check it out for yourself at crisislanding.appspot.com. Alternatively, you can keep up with Hurricane Irene on the New York Times’ tracker, which details wind speeds, the current location of the storm and its path, or, as always, the National Hurricane Center. Also, we pray that our readers in the east coast are safe and sound.
Later this year, Intel will launch the Romley-EP dual-socket platform, comprised of 17 different E5-2600 models. The E5-2600 line-up will consist of 2, 4, 6 and 8 cores, operating at frequencies up to 3.3 GHz, and featuring up to 20 MB of L3 cache. They will be supported on the LGA 2011 socket.
Xeon E5-2600 series is going to have eight 8 cores (16 threads) with 20 MB of L3 cache. In this processor family are the Xeon E5-2650, E5-2650L, E5-2660, E5-2665, E5-2670, E5-2680, E5-2687W and E5-2690. The fastest 8-core Xeon, the E5-2687W, is clocked at 3.1 GHz with a 150 W TDP.
There will be five 6-core (12 threads) chips with 15 MB of L3 cache: the Xeon E5-2620, E5-2630, E5-2630L, E5-2640 and E5-2667. These chips will run at frequencies ranging from 2 GHz to 2.9 GHz.
There will be three 4-core chips with 10 MB of L3 cache. The processors are Xeon E5-2643, E5-2603 and E5-2609. The E5-2643 has the highest core frequency of 3.3 GHz in the whole line-up and will have Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost.
The two entry-level Xeons, E5-2603 and E5-2609, on the other hand, do not support Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies. The 2603 and 2609 chips are clocked at 1.8 GHz and 2.4 GHz, have a TDP of 80 Watt and have a maximum supported DDR3 memory data rate of 1066 MHz.
Xeon E5-2637 is a dual-core CPU with 3 GHz clock speed, 5 MB L3 cache, and 80 Watt TDP.
Specifications of all upcoming E5-2600 processors are provided in the table below:
Apple just this year replaced all of the paper signage across its Apple Stores with iPads and now it seems another major company has decided to take a portion of its business the paperless route.
On Tuesday, 
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