It will go down as one of the biggest days in Silicon Valley geekdom: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and some of the company’s earliest engineers in a room with five prehistoric Apple-1 computers — at least three of which actually worked.

And it was a great day not just because of the rare artifacts, but because Woz was holding court. There was a time when Wozniak, who designed the Apple-1, was almost too timid to talk to strangers about his brilliant ideas.

He’s over that. And that’s the good news.

Everybody knows the story of the Apple-1: assembled in Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage; the rush order from the Byte Shop, which first sold them; the $666 price tag; how they’ve become insanely valuable on the auction circuit.

But at the Apple-1-fest this week at History San Jose, a museum with a stunning collection of vintage electronics, Woz added to the legend. He allowed as to how what has grown into one of the world’s most valuable companies almost went into the parts business instead.

For those who prefer text, here’s what Woz said:

“You know we didn’t start Apple to be a computer company,” he said. “Here is something that’s rarely said: Steve Jobs said let’s start a company to sell these green boards with no parts in them, PC boards. We should sell them to people at the Home Brew Computer Club for $40. It would cost us $20 to make. If we each put in a few hundred bucks and we sold 50 of them, then we’d break even.

“But the idea was not to be a computer company, to just be a parts company, selling the board.

“The store had a different idea. It wanted a completely built board with all the parts in it to really sell them as a computer and that changed us. That changed everything. Then we were computers.”

At the informal history museum gathering — which included Allen Baum, Woz’s high school buddy and contributor to the Apple II; Daniel Kottke, who trekked  through India with Jobs and later became his housemate; and Wendell Sander, the father of the Apple III — Woz was the quipster-in-chief.

He led off with the revelation that he knew where the very first Apple-1 was. He donated it way back to Liza Loop, who ran a non-profit that was bringing computers into schools. Jobs wouldn’t give it to him to give away, he said.

“Yeah, I had to buy it for 300 bucks.”

At least he got a discount.

Later, taking a look at the spaghetti of wires connecting boards to monitors and keyboards, Woz said: “All these wires, it’s kind of what my apartment looked like in those days.”

When someone mentioned that an Apple-1 had recently sold at auction for $671,400, Woz joked about his own fondness for repeating numbers ($666, remember?)

“It should be $666,666.”

(Photo and Tout Video by Mercury News Photographer Dai Sugano.)

Redwood City tech giant Oracle has issued yet another series of cyber security fixes for its much criticized Java software.

In an advisory Tuesday, the company said it “strongly recommends” that Java users apply the fixes to their computers “as soon as possible.” It said the patch “contains 40 new security fixes across Java SE products of which 4 are applicable to server deployments of Java.”

In recent months, security researchers have cited numerous vulnerabilities in Java, some of which were being exploited by hackers to extort money and steal data. Oracle has responded by repeatedly updating the software with security patches.

But because vulnerabilities keep getting found in the product, some experts advise people to disable Java in their browsers unless they absolutely need it for web applications.

Four times a year, my e-mail alerts me that the MoneyTree report is about to land. The roundup, compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, tracks venture capital investment trends and forms the basis for the Mercury News’ VC Quarterly.

Those seasonal data downloads have given me frequent occasion to speak with Tracy Lefteroff, head of PwC’s global private equity and VC practice. This morning, I was shocked to see his photo in the Merc’s obituary pages. He died earlier this month in his Portola Valley home at age 59.

In my dealings with him, I found Tracy to be knowledgeable, unfailingly prompt and ready with an opinion. His obit told me he’d lettered in three sports as a high schooler in Tucson before enlisting in the Air Force; his three sons are athletes in their own right. Tracy earned an accounting degree from Boise State and met his wife while both worked Coopers & Lybrand, which later became PwC.

All told, he spent 25 years at the firm, developing an expertise in the life sciences industry. He served on the boards of the Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Stanford Venture Laboratory, among others.

I last saw Tracy a few weeks before his death, when I spotted him at the National Venture Capital Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco. I waved as I passed by, deep in conversation with an entrepreneur; I later emailed to say it had been nice to briefly see him. “Sorry we weren’t able to chat,” he responded. I certainly am too.

Ironically, I saw Tracy’s obit the same day the NVCA named its new president, which means the next MoneyTree report will be full of new names and faces. The venture association’s spokeswoman told me, “We were deeply saddened to hear of his passing.”

For a brief moment last fall, Kim Taylor was one of the tech industry’s most high-profile entrepreneurs — and one of its most pilloried.

As a cast member of the Bravo reality show “Start-Ups: Silicon Valley,” Taylor put her life on public display with the help of producer Randi (Mark’s Sister) Zuckerberg. Viewers followed along as Taylor worked to build her fashion startup, Shonova, and many noted with derision that the cast seemed to spend more time partying and looking pretty than actually building their companies. (Taylor, nothing if not a good sport, disputed that characterization in a December interview with me, saying: “I assure you that I don’t sleep.”)

Now Taylor has embraced another tried-and-true startup maneuver: The pivot. In an email Tuesday, she announced that she was shelving Shonova to tackle a meatier subject, online education.

“We’re calling it Ranku (Japanese for rank),” she wrote. “We’ve been a company for 2 weeks.” But that hasn’t stopped respected accelerator TechStars from enrolling the four-person startup in its latest class, an education-focused cohort in New York City sponsored with testing giant Kaplan.

I could get all “Conspiracy Theory” here and note that Kaplan is majority owned by the Washington Post and that Post CEO Donald Graham is a pal of Mark Zuckerberg’s. But let’s give Taylor the benefit of the doubt. She said she’s been noodling on the idea for Ranku since 2009, and her co-founder (and childhood friend) Cecilia Retelle is the former head of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Their new company, the pair said, aims to help ”non-profit universities with full online degree programs compete with the University of Phoenix.” Taylor touts her prior experience at an ad-tech startup that worked with Kaplan and the University of Phoenix, along with competitors like 2U and Deltak. While she promises more details about Ranku in the future, there’s no doubt online education is an increasingly hot space.

San Jose-based Adobe Systems said its second-quarter sales and profit declined compared with the same period a year ago, but its earnings were in line with Wall Street’s forecast.

The software company said it made a $76.5 million profit on sales of about $1.1 billion for the three month period that ended on May 31. That worked out to earnings of 15 cents per share, which was what analysts surveyed by Thomson-Reuters generally had expected.

But during the same  period last  year, Adobe had a much bigger profit – nearly $224 million, on sales of $1.1 billion.

Another day, another U.S. government surveillance roundup:

• Yahoo became the latest tech company to disclose the number of law-enforcement requests it has received in the past several months. Its magic numbers: 12,000 to 13,000 between December and May. With its move Monday night, the Sunnyvale company joins Apple, Facebook and Microsoft in the tech companies’ quest to prove their claims that they aren’t giving the government direct access to their users’ personal information.

Yahoo also said in a blog post disclosure that it will soon release global law enforcement transparency reports twice a year, with the first one coming later this summer. In addition, it echoed the other companies in urging the government to allow them to distinguish between FISA requests and other routine requests. Citing that lack of government permission to do so, Google has so far refused to make the disclosures that the other tech giants have.

• In an interview with Charlie Rose that aired last night, President Obama reiterated his defense of government spying programs. The president characterizes the surveillance as “transparent,” and says Congress and a special FISA court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) are its overseers.

Obama also repeated previous explanations about what the spying entails: “If you’re a U.S. person, then NSA is not listening to your phone calls and it’s not targeting your emails unless it’s getting an individualized court order.” But he did not answer when Rose asked him if the FISA court turns down requests from the intelligence community, saying only that the number of requests are “surprisingly” small. (BuzzFeed has a partial transcript.)

Speaking of the FISA court, does it provide adequate oversight? Experts believe it lost some “teeth” after the 2001 Patriot Act and the  2008 FISA Amendments Act, according to NPR. The court has become ”less a court than an administrative entity or ministerial clerk,” William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University, told NPR.

• NSA Chief Keith Alexander and others are testifying at a House of Representatives Intelligence Committee hearing today. What Alexander claims: The surveillance has foiled “a little over 10″ terrorist plots. He also said that “theoretically,” the spying programs could have prevented 9/11: “We couldn’t connect the dots because we didn’t have the dots,” he said. And the revelation of the programs — sparked by former government tech contractor Edward Snowden — could have “a long and irreversible impact on our nation’s security and on that of our allies,” he said.

NSA Chief Keith Alexander testifies Tuesday in Washington. (McClatchy-Tribune)

“I really only want to meet with entrepreneurs under 25. I mean, if you’re 30, what are you doing at South by [Southwest]?”

— Alex Banayan, 20, the subject of a profile in the July issue of Fortune that calls him the world’s youngest venture capitalist, when he was at the SXSW tech and music conference in March. He is an associate at San Francisco-based Alsop Louie, along with four other “student VCs” who keep track of startups at universities such as Stanford, MIT and USC (where he is a student). Banayan also is writing a book in which he hopes to interview famous people such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and ask them to recount how they got their big breaks. As of last year, Banayan — then a teenage VC — said he had spoken with 11 of the 25 people he wanted to feature in his book.

Screen shot from Alex Banayan’s website

The Bloomberg Next Big Thing Summit, a two-day conference to showcase the latest and greatest in entrepreneurial ventures and technological innovation, kicked off Monday in Half Moon Bay. The conference, which goes through Tuesday, is one of those rare events that bring the big Silicon Valley players, including executives from Facebook and Twitter, together with political leaders such as Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, mathematicians and startup founders. They explore the big ideas and companies of the day that are reshaping retail, media, mobile, science and technology industries — and potentially our lives.

Here’s a rundown of a few of those next big things:

• GitHub – the open-source software site and code-sharing service from San Francisco could be the opposite of Yahoo, in that its office of Fourth Street is often a lonely place. About 70 percent of GitHub employees don’t live in the Bay Area, and those who do live in the neighborhood aren’t required to come to the office, said GitHub Chief Information Officer Scott Chacon. Flexibility, he said, is part of being a great entrepreneur. (Yahoo, by comparison, recently banned working from home.)

GitHub landed a whopping $100 million investment last year from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz . Already, GitHub has earned the reputation as the go-to resource for coding and one of the most powerful social networks for developers.

• Crowdfunding – online and social fundraising has been used to fund the creative pursuits artists and musicians, provide the seed funding for a company and raise money for a noble cause. But did you know that crowdfunding helped make a baby? So said Slava Rubin, founder and CEO of Indiegogo, an international crowdfunding site with headquarters in San Francisco. Rubin told the audience that one enterprising couple raised thousands of dollars on the site to pay for fertility treatments. The procedure was successful, and they recently had the first crowdfunded baby.

• HBO GO – Launched in 2011, HBO GO lets viewers watch the network’s shows on their laptops, tablets, smartphones and Xbox . The service, provided through an app, has a hefty monthly subscription fee (while Hulu and other internet TV providers offer free streaming) but media experts said on Monday that HBO’s move to the app store could help the company avoid the fate of obsolescence that awaits most other cable networks.

• Aereo TV – The internet TV provider may face ongoing legal hurdles, but Aereo satisfies consumers’ growing need to watch whatever TV they want, whenever they want.  Cable companies, watch out.  Aereo is poised to upend the TV industry as we know it.

• Mobile ticketing – StubHub, the online ticketing marketplace owned by eBay, is pushing for more venues to accept mobile ticketing. Most consumers want to keep their tickets on their smartphone, but because the technology at concert halls and sporting stadiums hasn’t caught up, many consumers have to make an extra trip to FedEx to print their tickets, said StubHub president Chris Tsakalakis.

Technology in stadiums across the globe is lacking – there are only about five stadiums in the world with decent wireless, said Oliver Slipper, CEO of Perform Group. But Silicon Valley is about to lead the pack. The new 49ers stadium in Santa Clara will have a terabyte of bandwidth, making it one of the most wired venues in the world.

• Weather – real-time data from social networks about weather and road conditions could help prevent accidents and keep people safe during storms. Companies such as The Weather Company are figuring this out. CEO David Kenny said he was pushing for earlier naming of blizzards so that Twitter users could hashtag the name of the snowstorm in a tweet. The hashtags (#) could then be used to track the storm’s progress.

• Cybersecurity – If you think your social security number and credit card information hasn’t already been compromised, you’re living a lie, said Mark McLaughlin, chairman CEO of Palo Alto Networks. Companies are trying to play defense from not only a troublemaking teenage hacker, but also potential threats from foreign governments and terrorist organizations. Basically, everyone is worried, no one has the answer.

“The anxiety is very high about the threats out there,” McLaughlin said.

In case you don’t sling enough code in your cubicle all day, CodeEval of San Francisco is giving you a chance to come up with a program that finds the shortest distance among some of the city’s hungry startups.

The company launched its first contest of the summer for freeway fliers on Monday with a billboard on Highway 101 posing a challenge. And no, it’s not just for fun, though the CodeEval folks hope it will be fun.

“The main reason why were doing this is because all the tech companies here are having a very tough time kind of standing out from everyone else,” CodeEval co-founder William Hsu tells me. “Essentially, every single company is hiring developers and we all know there is a huge shortage of developers in the Bay Area.”

The idea is that once a code ninja successfully solves the digital riddle, he or she might follow through and hit a button that allows him or her to apply for a job at startups Mashery, Flurry, New Relic or Glassdoor.

It could happen.

It’s no coincidence that the billboard is along Highway 101 just north of the San Francisco International exit, along the route home for those big Google and Facebook buses packed with laptop-toting programmers.

“We just thought it was kind of a fun thing to do, especially with all these shuttles going back and forth,” Hsu says. “They have their laptops open. Take a stab at it. Maybe they’d consider a more challenging position at one of those smaller companies. I heard Facebook stock isn’t doing so well recently.”

In any other part of the country, such a contest might be folly. Get people riding home from work to do even more work for fun? Talk about a busman’s holiday.

But this is Silicon Valley and here, you just never know.

Today we’re serving up quick links to developments in the U.S. government surveillance saga:

• Apple, Facebook and Microsoft — which were reported to be part of the National Security Agency’s Prism surveillance program — have released the number of government requests they received for user data. As the Merc’s Brandon Bailey notes, though, all those requests are lumped together. They can be for investigations for robberies or missing children; the companies did not break out requests from the intelligence agencies such as the NSA.

Google, which releases a Transparency Report twice a year, already details the number of government requests it receives. It has called on the United States to llow companies to make the distinction between intelligence-agency requests and others. “ ”Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately,” Google reportedly said in a statement Friday.

As for the direct access to the Internet companies’ user information that the government supposedly enjoys — which the companies have denied — whistleblower Edward Snowden said during a live chat hosted by the Guardian today that “more detail is coming.” Also, as the Merc’s Jeremy Owens notes, Snowden said the tech companies’ nearly identical denials were “misleading,” and that although they are legally required to comply with the government, it does not mean their compliance is ethical.

• What’s the scope of the surveillance? Depends on who’s answering the question. Government officials are saying that the NSA doesn’t collect location data even though it can, according to the Wall Street Journal. CNet reported over the weekend that “thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls” without court authorization; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence denied the report.

And here’s what Snowden had to say about that: “The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant.”

Photo of Edward Snowden from the Guardian via AP