On this episode of The New Screen Savers for Saturday, December 2, 2017, with Leo Laporte and Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ:

• Meet a maker-extraordinaire who creates costumes, armor, weapons, and sci-fi gear from scratch. Shawn Thorsson, from Thorsson & Associates Workshop, is self-taught and builds all his amazing works of art in his shop in Sonoma County. Learn how he does it, plus see examples he brought along including Iron Man, a TIE Fighter pilot from Star Wars, and the Schick Hydrobot.
• What is machine learning and how does a neural network work? SethBling explains how he created two neural networks, MarI/O and MariFlow, to play Super Mario World and Super Mario Kart.
• Which smartphone takes the best 'portrait' style photos? Jason Howell compares five phones to find out, the iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, Pixel 2 XL, Samsung Galaxy Note 8, and OnePlus 5T.
• In our Holiday Gift Guide, Sam Machkovech shares his top virtual reality games for the Rift, Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, and PlayStation VR.

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ

Guests: SethBling, Shawn Thorsson, Sam Machkovech, and Jason Howell

The New Screen Savers records live every Saturday at 3PM Pacific on twit.tv/live. Episodes are available for download and streaming later that evening at https://twit.tv/shows/new-screen-savers.

Thanks to CacheFly for the bandwidth for this show.

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