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The 404 792: Where we do that voodoo that we do (podcast)

Natali Morris fills in for Wilson Tang today and assures our mutual destruction when she "accidentally" spills hot water on the mixer console...the rest of the show is spent worrying about spontaneous electrocution, but we manage to fit in a handful of stories about 3D Lego printing, the strange trend of unboxing videos, our favorite April Fools' tech product, and the ongoing Porn Wiki Leaks fallout.

The 404 Digest for Episode 792

Customize your own Lego sets using 3D printing, coming soon. MakerBot specializes in consumer-level 3D printers. Only you can prevent lame unboxing videos. Another Windows 7 tablet, and a Windows 8 tablet coming soon after--why? RE35 turns any 35mm film camera into a digital sensor (4/1).

Porn Wiki Leaks reveals the personal information of 15,000 stars. One box of Lucky Charms cereal, hold the cereal. Amazon.com sells Rice Krispies Treats Cereal for less than retail value. This might be the perfect cereal bowl to solve all your soggy problems.

Episode 792 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

The 404 758: Where it's Wilson vs. Watson on Jeopardy 404 (podcast)

Last night, IBM's "Watson" supercomputer competed against the top human competitors on "Jeopardy" to test Watson's ability to use artificial intelligence in the context of the English language.

Represented by a lighted blue avatar, Watson performed well against quiz game champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, finishing the first round with a tie against the latter at $5,000. It did this with the help of 10 racks of IBM Power 750 servers running Linux, although like everyone else we wonder if the speed at which Watson can "press" a buzzer is fair to the other contestants.

Either way, this sounds like the exposition for an unwritten Roland Emmerich movie starring Will Smith, so start loading up your ID4 viruses.

Howard Stern's "Private Parts" aired on HBO last weekend, and the King of All Media himself pulled a Tang and liveblogged behind-the-scenes commentary throughout the showing. In addition to answering questions from fans, Stern also talked about his co-stars, revealed details about specific shots, and even dished about adult film star Jenna Jameson's antics onset.

Stern's arrival on Twitter is an obvious move, although it took him a while to jump on the bandwagon--the star joined the Twitterverse on February 3, the same day he defended David Letterman's honor and galvanized his crew on "The Late Show."

Stern's incendiary approach to celebrity gossip and media makes Twitter an apt medium for speaking to his more than 270,000 followers. The Lord of Fart Manor can be found at @HowardStern.

Next on the show, we discuss Gawker and Facebook's recent site redesigns. The Internet is giving a cold shoulder to the Gawker network after it debuted an app-style blog layout last week.… Read more

Instant info

The Windows Control Panel gives access to some of the operating system's nuts and bolts, but it doesn't always provide as much information as it could. ReSysInfo is a basic program that presents information about a variety of your computer's components all in one spot.

ReSysInfo looks very much like the Windows Control panel, with a collection of icons representing information about drives, networks, keyboards, and other hardware and software. Unlike the Control Panel, ReSysInfo doesn't actually let you change any settings, but it does allow you to quickly view the settings and other information. There … Read more

The 404 722: Where Wilson goes AWOL (podcast)

Today is Wilson's last day on the show before he ships out to China tomorrow. Don't worry, he'll be back with us at CES in January, but before he leaves we test his ability to predict the future of tech one last time. To nobody's surprise, all of his predictions are related to Apple. We also ask Wilson to check the validity of this growing Chinese trend, give predictions on tomorrow's Google Chrome OS event, run through the latest Facebook design, and more!

It started with small trinkets, then moved on to blinking LEDs, and now Chinese kids are attaching condoms to their cell phones. The movement is a countrywide effort for young people to show their support for contraceptives, although a condom danging from your phone must look pretty funny to everyone else.

Also, the phone charms are generic with no markings to indicate manufacturer, type, or even an expiration date. While he's there, hopefully Wilson can also promote our own adjunct method of birth control: The 404 Podcast!

Google is finally ready to unveil its big Chrome OS project with an event tomorrow, December 7, in San Francisco. The search engine giant provided no other details in the invite, but we're thinking the Chrome Web Store may finally materialize tomorrow, giving users an easy way to search and download Web applications.

Additionally, Google plans to incentivize developers to use the store by offering a 5 percent "processing fee," as opposed to the 30 percent cut that store operators typically receive from applications sales.

Last night Facebook received yet another face-lift for profile pages as previewed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an interview with Lesley Stahl on yesterday's episode of 60 Minutes.

Big changes include more prominent photos at the top of the page and a new "Featured Friends tool that highlights your most important friends. Popular features like your "Wall" and "Personal Information" get moved to a new column under the main profile photo, and infinite scrolling means you can browse profile photos faster than ever.

Users can take the new layout for a spin by going to http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/ and clicking the green "Take the tour" button.

If you'd like to leave a video voice mail for the show, record a YouTube video and send the link to the404(at)cnet(dot)com! You can also leave an audio-only voice mail at 1-866-404-CNET (2638), or just shoot us a note at the404(at)cnet.com. Have a safe flight to the motherland, Wilson!

Episode 722 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

MovieReshape: New abs for old actors

Want giant biceps in all those home videos you're posting to YouTube? Forget hassling with barbells and simply adjust the muscularity control slider in MovieReshape, an image alteration program developed at the Max Planck Institut Informatik in Germany. The system allows for "quick and easy manipulation of the body shape and proportions of a human actor in arbitrary video footage"--without frame-by-frame manipulation.

The approach is based on a morphable 3D model of human shapes and poses derived from laser scans of more than 100 men and women of various shapes and sizes. The program--which is currently … Read more

HP, Hynix team on flash memory replacement

Hewlett-Packard is sitting on a new kind of technology that may one day replace flash memory, but has yet to mass produce it. That appears about to change.

HP has chosen Hynix to manufacture the once-theoretical circuit technology known as a memristor, the companies plan to announce Tuesday.

Together HP and Seoul-based Hynix will develop the memristor and sell it commercially as a new memory technology called ReRAM, or resistive random access memory. The first products will be available in anywhere from three to five years, according to R. Stanley Williams, the director of HP Labs' Information and Quantum Systems … Read more

Brain 'pacemaker': Smarter Parkinson's care?

The idea of an electronic device implanted in the brain tends to evoke spooky scenarios a la "Total Recall." But if a team of international scientists has its way, brain implants will one day be viewed as a viable and commonplace therapy for conditions like Parkinson's disease, depression, and even age-related loss of brain elasticity.

The scientists are working on a biomimetic chip called the Rehabilitation Nano Chip (ReNaChip) that could be used to wire computer applications and sensors to the brain, building off of current procedures to make those approaches more precise.

The chip itself wouldn't be implanted in the brain; instead, it would be hooked up to tiny electrodes that provide precisely controlled stimulation to diseased areas.

An existing procedure called deep brain stimulation (DBS) is already used to treat neurological symptoms, most commonly Parkinson's effects such as tremor, rigidity, stiffness, slowed movement, and walking problems.

It involves a surgically implanted, battery-operated medical device called a neurostimulator that delivers electrical stimulation to targeted areas in the brain that control movement, blocking the abnormal nerve signals that cause Parkinson's symptoms.

However, the ReNaChip team says over-stimulation of the brain is a serious concern in current procedures, as it can cause patients to lose some therapeutic benefits over time. That's where their work comes in. … Read more

Vintage Roland drum machines on your iPhone

Electronic music fans and gearheads take note: you can now get ReBirth, a software emulator that duplicates the sounds and controls of Roland TR-808 and 909 drum machines and TB-303 bass synth, on your iPhone for only $6.99.

Back in the early 1980s, the Roland TR-808 was the king of drum machines. The old warhorses, beloved for their booming kick-drum sound, are still around, and have been resurrected in software emulators and name-checked by countless hip-hop artists-- Kanye West even named his 2008 album "808s and Heartbreak" after it.

In 1997, Propellerhead Software released a program, ReBirth, … Read more

The 404 558: Where we lose big on a Double Down (podcast)

This is an image of a new KFC sandwich called the Double Down. If you can't tell, it puts a twist on the classic sandwich and replaces the bread bun with two boneless white-meat chicken fillets (your choice of Original Recipe or grilled) hugging two slices of bacon, Monterey Jack AND pepper jack cheese, topped off with the Colonel's own "secret recipe sauce." Coronary artery bypass graft on the side, please.

Rather than try this monstrosity ourselves, we'll refer you to NPR's nutritional rundown--not surprisingly, the taste testers tell us that the sandwich contains 1,380 milligrams of salt, nearly the maximum daily amount recommended by the American Heart Association. Anyone else think they should have kept the meat on the inside and used two hash brown buns? Maybe for Double Down 2.0!

There's a lot to talk about on today's episode of The 404 Podcast that won't give you a heart attack--news like Conan O'Brien announcing a new late-night talk show to debut this November.

Fans of Team Coco who didn't get tickets to see him live on the "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour" will be able to watch the comedian every night on the basic cable network TBS. George Lopez's "Lopez Tonight" will follow the show at midnight.

We also continue our conversation about the dangers of multitasking with an older story about a woman in Florida who crashed her car into the back of truck while landscaping her lady parts. Ex-con Megan Jones told the cops she was meeting her boyfriend and wanted to be ready for the visit, which we certainly respect, but some things are just better left at home or in a truck stop bathroom stall.

We're down to crunch time for tax season and we've got CBS MoneyWatch.com's Jill Schlesinger, aka The Financial Decoder, on the show tomorrow to help you cram and answer your pressing questions, so send all your financial Qs to the404(at)cnet(dot)com!

EPISODE 558 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

See doomsday's possible approach, streamed live

Now I don't want anyone to panic, but on Thursday, for the first time in two years, famous scienticians from the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock, which is perhaps the most bad-ass-named fake clock in the world after the "Timex of Space and Time" (which I just made up).

Nobody knows if the hand will move closer to the figurative midnight (which, apparently, causes all-out nuclear war or something equally destructive) or farther away (which I believe causes extinct species to come back to life). … Read more