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(Credit: UK Resistance) Thanks to all the live listeners for bearing with our first day broadcasting video on Livestream. Be sure to check us out every weekday at 12 p.m ET/9 a.m. PT on the Livestream homepage. Leaked from today's 404 show: - Jeff gives a spoiler-free review of "The Dark Knight Rises." - 46 Things You Probably Don't Know About the Batman films. - eHarmony has some tips to bail you out of a horrible online date. - How bars use music to get you drunk faster. Ep. 1094: Where we've made it to Livestream Episode 1,094 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

(Credit: The Gaming Host) Leaked from today's 404 show: - Guy gets butt kicked for wearing digital eye glasses inside McDonald's. - Burger King employee stands on lettuce, gets busted by Internet. - This is how you paint a 150-foot Batman. - Does this photo of yesterday's storm in New York deserve an Instagram filter? Ep 1092: Where we're monitoring that scan you just interfaced Episode 1,093 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

The Gear4 Renew Sleep Clock, recommended by Dr. Breus (Credit: Gear4) The Sleep Doctor Michael Breus is back in the studio to solve all our snooze-related questions, and he also brings us a new toy! He's showing off the Renew SleepClock by Gear4, a sleep management tool that knows when you're sleeping and takes careful measurements to record your sleep patterns. It also works as a tailored alarm clock that wakes you up at the lightest moment in your sleep cycle, so you'll arise super refreshed. Dr. Breus also gave us one to give away on a future show, so be sure to tune in to find out how to win. As usual, the Doctor also answers questions from our listeners. Today he'll respond to inquiries about the correlation between memory and sleep, and whether or not we can learn things like languages and facts just by sleeping. With the London summer Olympics upon us, Dr. Breus also explains the palpable link between levels of daytime sleepiness and a player's overall success in baseball and football -- according to his article in the Huffington Post, athletes that adhere to a sensible sleep regiment at night are more likely to have longer careers and stay with the teams that originally drafted them. The opposite is also true for those that experience sleep deprivation during the day. We're always learning new things when Dr. Breus swings by the studio, and one listener wrote in to tell us about his own experience: "Thanks to your previous advice on this show, my dad got tested for sleep apnea, and the doctor told him he had one of the worst cases he had ever seen. He now uses a special sleep mask/machine and it's made a huge difference, thanks!" See? Contrary to popular belief, you CAN learn something by listening to our show. Big thanks to Dr. Breus for joining us today! For more sleep advice, check out Dr. Breus' Web site. Ep 1092: Where we wake up screaming Episode 1,092 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

Ep 1091: Where we're back with a vengeance We're back from San Diego Comic-Con 2012 with a wrap-up show of everything we saw at the show. This being our first year, it quickly became obvious that we missed the first rule of Comic-Con: leave your civilian clothes at home! The 404 and the quest for the Comic-Con costume We set out on a path through the convention and interviewed all the creative cosplayers we saw, seeking costume recommendations and trying on a bunch of different robes, masks, capes, and more. Be sure to check out our video from day 1: The quest for the costume. The 404 goes Back to the Future with the Mattel hoverboard We spent day 2 scoping out the happenings at the Mattel booth, where we caught a first glimpse at the company's forthcoming prop replica of Marty McFly's hoverboard from "Back to the Future 2." Replete with velcro wrist strap, authentic motion-sensor sounds from the film, and even a small hole on top for a to-be-announced handlebar accessory, the skateboard of the future (we hope) is all but missing one crucial feature: the hover conversion! We spoke with a rep from Mattel who could neither confirm nor deny its development, so we'll have to stay patient for another three years until 2015, which also happens to be the copyright date on the board itself. The 404 meets David Hasselhoff: A car and a stud Mattel was also on hand showcasing a Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT) scaled-down Hot Wheels replica to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the "Knight Rider" television show. The car is, of course, capable of operating itself, but no automaton would be complete without its driver, and we chatted with Michael Knight aka David Hasselhoff aka The Hoff about his role as a key icon of the 20th century, the show's far-reaching fans, and present technology he'd like to see in future version of the car. The 404 escape the zombie apocalypse, or do they? Anyone who listens to our show knows that Jeff and I are big fans of "The Walking Dead," so we finished our Con with a trip through the zombie apocalypse attraction, The Walking Dead Escape. The simulation pitted us against a horde of the undead that chased us through several levels of Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres. Armed with nothing more than a couple of GoPro cameras, we made our way through the the 45-minute obstacle course, but one of us didn't make it out alive -- check out the video! There's plenty more to recap on today's show, including our meet-up at the CNET Basestation, so click through the slideshow and videos, and watch today's episode below for all the action! Cosplayers flood San Diego Comic-Con 2012 (pictures) 1-2 of 45 Scroll Left Scroll Right Episode 1,091 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

Droning on about drones. Left to right: Rafe Needleman, Daniel Suarez, and Chris Anderson. (Credit: Stephen Beacham/CNET) A little more than a year ago, we did a Roundtable episode on aerial drones and UAVs. The discussion mostly focused on how remote-controlled and robotic vehicles were getting bigger, more capable, and more scary. Since then, a funny thing happened. The drone revolution downsized. Today we're talking about cheap and small drones. Today, perhaps, a collection of a hundred $1,000 drones can be just as capable -- and just as scary -- as a $100,000 drone. Friend or foe? (Credit: DIY Drones) It's not all Skynet doom-and-gloom, though. Small robotic flying vehicles can be used to save lives, keep repressive governments in check, do environmental monitoring, and perform business functions like surveying land. There is both a hopeful upside and a terrifying dark side to the rapid advances in small, cheap drones. We covered both on this episode of Reporters' Roundtable. Our guests: Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and the founder of the DIY Drones community site (and its retail arm, 3D Robotics); and Daniel Suarez, author or the new geek thriller, Kill Decision, which features swarms of drones gone bad. Very bad. As Anderson points out, many of the toy remote-controlled airplanes out there are "just one box away from becoming drones." Not coincidentally, Anderson's company, 3D Robotics, makes such a box, the ArduPilot Mega. It's a $200 controller that, "allows the user to turn any fixed, rotary wing or multirotor vehicle into a fully autonomous vehicle." It's the ubiquity of this technology that was one of the inspirations for Suarez's book, which is in part about, "the miniaturization of war," as he says. Our own military is now, in fact, developing an air-fired missile specifically to launch from drones. There's only a slight overlap between the hobbyist drone and the war drone, Suarez says. Reporters' Roundtable Ep. 127: Attack of the drones Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) iTunes (SD) -- iTunes (HD) Podcast RSS (MP3) Podcast RSS (SD) -- Podcast RSS (HD) Anderson, who's part of a community of drone builders, maintains that the aircraft are being used in plenty of nonaggressive applications, such as filming (like in car commercials) and environmental monitoring. These products give people, "anytime, anywhere access to the sky," he says. There are very few drones over our cities. Commercial interests are not allowed to fly overhead. Nor most local governments. Hobbyists can, if they keep their drones under 400 feet. And the skies will eventually open up to everyone. "Ironically, my 9-year-old can fly drones, but the police department can't." Anderson says. The problem is that our airspace is governed by a policy called sense-and-avoid. Flying vehicle control systems -- be they people or computers -- are ultimately responsible for avoiding other vehicles. And today's drones, as a rule, have no facility to make them aware of other aircraft. Anderson says there is still a long way to go when it comes to autonomous vehicles. The videos we've seen of quadcopters flying through tiny slits or playing instruments are taken in highly controlled environments, he says. Out in the real world, GPS and wind leads to much less precise positioning. Suarez, in his book -- which is fiction, mind you -- added a new tool to the drone developer: Stigmergy, or a drone's capability to lay down a marker that other drones can read as a reinforcer to their behavior (in the case of the book Kill Decision, that's generally the order to attack someone). He's aware that he took poetic license, but he does believe this idea could be "just over the horizon." He also posits that autonomous drones can be built so cheaply and with so many off-the-shelf components that they can be built as untrackable, leading to "anonymous conflict." The fact that a drone can serve

It's not that we're running out of mobile bandwidth. It's just that it's poorly distributed. If you're in your home next to a Wi-Fi router, you might have a clean signal and access to a 12-megabit connection. Meanwhile, someone outside your door could have a smartphone that's struggling to hold onto a slow connection to a cellular tower a mile away. But mesh networking might make things better for everyone. Mesh networks let devices share their connections with other users. If one user has a clean network connection and another nearby user does not, the second user can piggyback on the first's, automatically. If there's a collection of many people, their machines can all cooperate to make connections -- to each other and to the global Internet. In advanced mesh networks, connections and data can hop among devices, creating ad hoc bucket-brigade paths for communication. The concept of mesh networking is not new. Many military systems rely on mesh networking, since forces in the field cannot rely on communications infrastructures. Utilities also use mesh networks for collecting data from equipment, like smart meters. On this Reporters' Roundtable, I interview two innovators in mesh networking. They're both trying to bring this liberating (they say) and bandwidth-saving (ditto) technology to the masses. Reporters' Roundtable Ep. 126: Mesh Networks Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) iTunes (320x180) -- iTunes (640x360) Podcast RSS (MP3) Podcast RSS (320x180) -- Podcast RSS (640x360) Micha Benoliel's company, Open Garden, makes a mesh networking utility for Android smartphones and for Windows and Mac laptops (support for iOS is coming). It's a free app that turns your device into a mobile hot spot. No matter how you're connected to the Net (Wi-Fi or cellular), it makes that connection shareable (over Bluetooth) to other Open Garden users. Likewise, if you're running the product but don't have a connection to the Net, and you're near a user who does, this service seamlessly gets you online. Benoliel says that, for the most part, carriers and ISPs welcome technologies that improve bandwidth for customers and that also lower power requirements (connecting to a nearby hot spot over Bluetooth takes a lot less power than linking to a cell tower). "The only way to improve the wireless networks is to increase the density of microcells or hot spots. I think carriers really understand that," he says. His pitch: "We turn every device into a hot spot... and we improve the network itself." Sri Srikrishna was the founding CTO of the mesh networking company Tropos (recently acquired by ABB), and is now working on bringing mesh technologies to populations where today's standard wireless networking technologies are insufficient, or are blocked. See his paper, "SocialMesh: Can Networks of Meshed Smartphones Ensure Public Access to Twitter During an Attack?" Srikrisha says it's time to do two things for people who don't have reliable means to connect to the global net. First of all, we can make better, more frequency-agile radios. Second: Mesh them together. Hooking users together through mesh networks can also democratize communications and make them, he believes, more robust in the face of repressive regimes that might want to shut down the capability to reach the outside world. With a mesh network, a very small number of users who happen to have a connection can share that with other users who don't. "If you have a large number of these devices, no government will be able to stop it," he says. Srikrishna and Benoliel both claim that the global growth of smartphones -- all are handheld computers easily capable of supporting mesh networking stacks -- should lead to a global infrastructure shift, in which these handsets become a bigger part of the infrastructure itself, not just clients on it. "Can you build a network that's indestructible?" asks Srikrishna. He says it's worth doing. "A lot of the problems in the world can

This DNS Changer Check-Up gave a green light to the vast majority of the world's computers (Credit: http://dns-ok.us/) As far as I can tell, the impact of the FBI pulling the plug on the servers set up to provide temporary domain-name service to computers infected by the DNSChanger malware was pretty low. Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer at the SANS Institute told CNET's Elinor Mills that "we haven't seen a single report" of someone losing Internet access." He called the issue "hype." But Trend Micro Vice President Tom Kellerman says a concerted effort of law enforcement, Internet service providers and security companies successfully warned consumers to fix infected computers before the deadline. In a podcast recorded 16 hours after the servers were taken down (scroll down to listen), Kellerman said: The preventative efforts of the FBI, security companies and ISPs "were successful in limiting the contagion and the effects of this server shutdown that would have originally impacted millions of people.He called it a "testament to the public private partnership of information sharing between the seurity vendors, Internet service providers and law enforcement agencies to prevent mass outages and mass infestation within American computers by the criminal underground based in Eastern Europe." On its website, the FBI said that the malware initially, infected "approximately 4 million computers in more than 100 countries" and that "there were about 500,000 infections in the U.S." Kellerman explained why Macintosh computers, along with Windows PCs, were vulnerable to this and other malware and how the infection could also affect tablets, game consoles, internet phone systems and other devices connected to affected routers. In the interview Kellerman, laid out the sequence of events that led to the Monday morning disconnection of the temporary servers that were providing Internet access to anyone still infected. Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe now: iTunes (audio) | RSS (audio)

Leaked from today's 404 show: - Are 4D movies the next big step for motion pictures? - Warehouse worker jailed for stealing $160,000 from Amazon. - In the future, your drug dealer will be a printer. - Apple bows out of program for environment-minded products. - Louis C.K. and the effort to kill scalpers. Bathroom break video: Omnicorp Product Line 2013 Video voice mail: Jersey from Mike unintentionally stalks Jeff. Ep. 1090: Where going green is so 2010 Episode 1,090 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

(Credit: Every Silly Thing) Leaked from today's 404 show: - Soccer to adapt goal line, ball-tracking technology. - Friday's history lesson: AOL's longest running employee on the history of AOL chat rooms. - British Airways will google passengers in preflight. - Hillbilly Alabamians celebrate Fourth of July by shooting guns into air. - Best Buy lays off 650 Geek Squad employees nationwide. Bathroom break video: Super Moonwalking! The 404: Ep. 1089: Where we go the extra mile Episode 1,089 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

Thanks to Daniel from Anaheim for sending us these 404 shirts custom-made on an mPower garment printer! (Credit: Daniel Wu) Leaked from today's 404 episode: - Jeff, unimpressed with last night's Macy's Fireworks display, left his own message in the sky. - San Diego fireworks fail ends as quickly as it starts. - Dear Interns: Think twice before tweet-talking your coworkers. - Men are from Reddit, women are from Pinterest. Bathroom break video: Anaheim from Daniel shows us how to output 404 shirts using an mPower garment printer! Ep. 1088: Where we get the short end of the shtick Episode 1,088 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

(Credit: The 404 Show) With Justin Yu still under the weather, The 404 Show once again experiments with Joe Kaminski filling in. We consider ourselves very lucky to have a guest with super-powers on our program. The first power is his knack for going on obscenely long tangents about the most meaningless of topics. The second is the ability to give spoiler-free movie reviews, more specifically of The Amazing Spiderman, which was just released. Next it's off to a discussion on Android and the fact that only 10-percent of those devices have Ice Cream Sandwich running on them. What's even more confusing is that Jelly Bean (ICS' successor) was just released last week. It's arguably the most annoying Android reality, so we weigh its pros and cons. Finally, we touch on EA's recent statement that the company will soon be distributing games 100-percent digitally. This shouldn't be much of a surprise, since EA already goes out of the way to combat used game sales (see EA Online Pass). But perhaps the most exciting news of the day is the introduction of the official 404 trucker hat (pictured above). These bad boys will be available should you come and hang out with us at ComicCon 2012. All the info you need is here. We also highly recommend participating on CNET's ComicCon Twitter Contest for your chance to win a game console. The 404 Digest for Episode 1087 Ep. 1087: Where we talk about it without ruining it Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

(Credit: BOWN) Filling in for a Justin Yu who thinks his air conditioner got him sick is the wild card Joey Kaminksi, a man who can apparently talk about -- in painfully great detail -- tipping etiquette in and around New York City. We love Joey for his tangential speaking habits, but also because he lends us his unique skew on the important matters of the day -- that and the fact that he brought us a Google Nexus 7 tablet for us to play with. Do you have a game plan if you ever left your phone behind in a cab? Our producer Ariel Nunez tells the tale of such a predicament. Does Ariel get the phone back? Or is he forced to plop down $500 on a new device in addition to non-defective shorts? The 404 crew also dishes out the dirt that saw multiple Web sites and services go down over the weekend including enormous time-suckers Netflix, Instagram, and Pinterest. How did planet Earth go 45 minutes without commenting on a sepia-filtered photo of your dessert? Find out inside! Make sure you start your holiday week on the right foot by listening to these stories and so much more on today's show! The 404 Digest for Episode 1086 Ep. 1086: Where we left our dreams in a cab Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

(Credit: Crappycinemacouncil.com) Leaked from today's 404 episode: - Durex Facebook app pairs couples with just the right song...The 404 recommends "True" by Spandau Ballet. - Do yourself a favor and download Google Chrome for iOS right this second. - SWAT team throws flashbangs, raids wrong home due to open WiFi network. - Here's the Braun tape recorder that inspired Apple's new podcast app. - Don't forget to set your clocks a second faster this weekend. - Meet up with The 404 at Comic Con 2012 for happy hour (5PM) on Saturday, July 14th! It's at Lou & Mickey's and we'll have an open bar, free food, charging stations, new video games (Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman Absolution), and plenty of prize competitions hosted by Brian Tong! - Post your cosplay suggestions for Jeff and me on The 404 SubReddit! Woody and Buzz? Wayne and Garth? Jay and Silent Bob?! Video voicemail: Blake has a surprise for the show. Video voicemail: Jorge tries BLT chips. Like we promised, here's the old theme and the outro (right-click and save-as): Old theme Outro Ep. 1085: Where we know this much is true Episode 1,085 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar

We're recording this Roundtable on the final day of the Google developers conference, Google I/O. From my perspective as a jaded and grumpy tech journalist, it has been a pretty cool conference. Google launched its own 7-inch Android tablet, a new living room entertainment streaming appliance called the Q, Chrome for Apple's iOS, a competitor to Evite called Google+ Events... and that's just the shipping products. We also saw wing-suit skydivers wearing Google glasses jump out of an airship hovering over Mosone Center and glide to a landing on the convention center roof. So there's a lot to talk about, and I've got two great guests to run down the important topics that came out of the Google I/O conference: In the studio: Stephen Shankland, CNET News senior writer and alpha geek. Via Skype: Esther Dyson. Dyson is an investor in Internet startups in the U.S. and elsewhere, on the board of Airship Ventures (the company that took the Google wing-suit jumpers up), and former chair of the Electronic Fronteir Foundation and of ICANN. Reporter's Roundtable Ep. 125: Google I/O dissected on Reporters' Roundtable Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) iTunes (320x180) -- iTunes (640x360) Podcast RSS (MP3) Podcast RSS (320x180) -- Podcast RSS (640x360) Show notes [0:00] Topic and guests introduced Related stories Google I/O 2012 Roundup The inside scoop on the Nexus 7 tablet (Q&A) Chrome goes mobile at I/O 2012 Google I/O giveaways: $5.5 million buys a lot of buzz Brin: Google Glass lands for consumers in 2014 [2:15] What did Google accomplish at Google I/O? [5:00] How important are Google's hardware products? [7:45] Do these new products mean Google is becoming a hardware company? [9:00] Google glasses: What will this project look like in a few years? [11:15] Aren't these glasses going to be incredibly disruptive, socially? [15:00] How does Google move forward in a world where mobile devices blow up the traditional search and advertising models? [17:30] Why the autonomous car matters so much to Google [19:20] Is the mobile handset a transitional technology? [21:00] Google as media powerhouse: How well can it compete with Amazon and Apple? [23:30] The social sphere: Does Google get social networking, and the way people really want to interact with each other? [29:00] Google and Apple: Frenemies or what? [32:00] Esther on Airship Ventures [34:30] Wrap-up

Bacon chips imported from Canada. Thanks Jerome! (Credit: The 404) Leaked from today's 404 episode: - Rounding up Google I/O Day One: Hands on with the Nexus 7, seeing the world through Google Glasses, a closer look at the Nexus Q, and all the goodies from Google Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean." - How major media outlets confirm celebrity deaths. - Food porn pictures are making you fat. - Pictures of Asians taking pictures of food. - Back to the Future hoax separates the fans from the posers. Video voicemail: St. Paul from Kevin brings hackers into Google's self-driving cars. Ep. 1084: Where we get our dates right Episode 1,084 Listen Now: Download Today's Podcast Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video   Follow us on Twitter!The 404 Jeff Bakalar Justin Yu Add us on Facebook!The 404 Fan Page The 404 Group Justin Yu Jeff Bakalar