For all the career renaissance we've seen from Alec Baldwin over the last three or four years, not even his Golden Globe for 30 Rock overshadows his legendary turn as "Sociopathic Father" in last year's wildly popular Web-exclusive release Thoughtless Little Pig. Even Morley Safer couldn't stop talking about it last night on 60 Minutes; in the accompanying video, watch the "appalling" Baldwin float like a butterfly and sting like a bee under Safer's withering sallies, punch back with word of his forthcoming book on "divorce and parental alienation" and finally score the knockout with his disarming rejoinder about a potential political career: "There's other things I want to do. I mean, in a matter of weeks I'm going to be 50... By 60 Minutes correspondent terms, I am a young man!" Oh, Alec, you bastard. We just can't stay mad at you. [60 Minutes]

Is Hector Ruiz launching AMD into the business of making PCs? Not exactly. But after getting pummeled by Intel in 2007, the chipmaker wants to have more of a hand in designing them. It's no longer enough to sell chips, a field in which AMD excels technically; one must sell "chipsets" — entire ready-to-go packages of computing parts, including all the silicon a computer needs. Dell, HP, and others will actually manufacture AMD's new "Business Class" desktops and notebooks.

New York entrepreneur Jeff Dachis has landed $50 million from Austin Ventures to fund a comeback — but not as a New York entrepreneur. He's trading a 212 office line for one in the 512, to launch a new company promising to bring the Web 2.0 revolution to businesses. Despite the change in venue, and the new version number, that sounds eerily like the premise of Razorfish a decade ago — the digital consultancy which Dachis launched, and whose value he watched plummet from $5.5 billion at the height of the 2000 bubble to $8.2 million in a 2002 fire sale. So what is Dachis's company, if not simply Razorfish 2.0?

Looks like last week's news that the Britney Spears Comeback Tour were showing signs of slowing down were more prophetic than we thought. On Saturday night, Spears was on her way to break bread with her semi-estranged mother Lynne when she rear-ended a Nissan that stopped in traffic in front of her on the 101. The cause of the accident? Britney was applying her makeup while driving:

Just as the Britney Spears Comeback Tour was picking up fuel with that promising role on HIMYM and a temporary absence from the tabloids, it appears that Spears may be regressing. The National Enquirer is reporting that Britney and her recently reunited manager Larry Rudolph are shopping around a reality show that would look, talk and walk far different from Chaotic: no K. Fed, two babies to feed, and no one to drug her and prompt intelligent conversation:

Can you believe it's been eight years since Mrs. Frank Gifford "left" her post as co-host of Regis & Kathie Lee? (Yes kids, before there was Kelly, there was Kathie Lee.) It seems like just yesterday that the former pageant queen was smothering us with her cackling chatter and inane stories. But that was yesterday; this is Today.

Should Britney have skipped that whole "comeback" disaster at the MTV Video Music Awards and just headed straight to television? TV Guide is reporting today that Spears is "in talks" to reprise her role as a dermatologist's secretary in love with Josh Radnor's character on How I Met Your Mother, due to critical approval and a dramatic increase in the show's ratings that night. Yahoo reports that the allegedly sinking show drew in 10.6 million viewers tuning in to Britney's episode, compared to the average 7.8 million average for the season. Paired with reports that Brit has reunited with her former manager Larry Rudolph, it looks as though her Comeback Tour has finally been given some fuel, albeit slightly later than scheduled...

Arguably the Judd Apatow of the '80s and currently the movies' equivalent of J.D. Salinger, prolific writer-producer-director John Hughes dropped out of filmmaking in 1991 after helming eight movies and developing stories and characters for nearly two dozen more to come. But now, in a symbolic Easter-weekend resurrection perhaps possible only in Hollywood, the writer Hughes and producer Apatow share above-the-line credit for the latest doomed Owen Wilson vehicle, Drillbit Taylor:

Having cleared his name of obstruction-of-justice charges, former Credit Suisse tech investment banker Frank Quattrone is launching his own boutique firm, Qatalyst Partners. Several big Valley names volunteered quotes for the press release. It's not surprising that Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who's made his own moral missteps, would be forgiving of Quattrone. But Gideon Yu, Facebook's CFO, makes a more curious appearance. He gave a statement applauding Quattrone's partner Jonathan Turner, not Quattrone himself. But still, it amounts to an endorsement. Does Yu really think Quattrone did nothing wrong? Or, as a minister's son, is he just expressing the highest form of the Valley's belief in the power of redemption?

Thank goodness! Just a day after our missing-persons alert on former videoblogger Amanda Congdon, she turned up on her blog with a 794-word entry she's been working on for a month. Here's a version she could have fit in a Twitter: "I'm going daily on a new videoblog in 2008. I'm in pre-production for the new project now." More Amanda, coming to you live in less than 11 months!

Belief is a powerful thing in this valley of hopes and dreams. Yahoo's board is set to reject Microsoft's offer to buy the company at $31 a share. Instead, Jerry Yang and Yahoo's other directors are seeking at least $40 a share, or nearly $60 billion — a price Microsoft may not be willing to pay. This is incredibly gutsy. It may wreck the hopes of a deal. And yet it may save the company.

As this pair of new video samples demonstrates, he's ready to step in at a moment's notice and fill the gaping banter-hole that would certainly develop between presenters like Will Smith and Mark Wahlberg should the WGA and AMPTP not reach a deal before the ceremony, saving everyone involved from another Golden Globes-style debacle.

Terry Semel is still Yahoo's chairman, but the company is rapidly erasing his mark on the business — chiefly any push into original content, a business Wall Street views as expensive and unrewarding. He's clearly not interested in carrying on that argument in the Yahoo boardroom. Instead, PaidContent reports, he's reviving his old company, Windsor Digital, the investment vehicle which carried him between Warner Bros. and Yahoo.

Electronics retailer TigerDirect plans to raise CompUSA from the grave, using its trademarks and a handful of stores to give its own retail presence fresh life. CompUSA went under last month when it was sold to restructuring specialist Gordon Brothers, which is closing most of its stores, including the helpfully located flagship on Market Street in downtown San Francisco, which catered to hordes of Moscone Center convention-goers. If the deal goes through, TigerDirect would pick up the CompUSA brand and website, as well as 16 stores located in Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico — sorry, San Francisco. (Photo by Mary Jane Irwin)

Can it possibly be that Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger is already tired of the emotional demands of enveloping the panicked citizenry of Malibu in his strong arms each time a wildfire cuts a new swath through some eight-figure weekend homes, and might be planning a return to the Hollywood superstardom he's briefly forsaken to dabble in public service? THR's Ray Richmond blogs that some picket-line chatter amongst the writers of Schwarzenegger's signature blowing-shit-up fare indicates that he may have his eye on a possible comeback:

26-year-old Tim Sykes had a bit of a career derailment when the hedge fund he built out of Bar Mitzvah money tanked. He was disinvited from a Trader Monthly party and he had to give up his butler! But now, Tim is having a resurgence, thanks to the website where he's sharing his wisdom with the masses. "I proud to announce that, TIM, or Transparent Investment Management, gained nearly 14% in November, even as both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 lost 4% and the NASDAQ tanked 7%. It was a difficult month for most people (since everyone loves to be bullish), but it's during these kinds of markets that the ability to go both long or short really comes in handy (aka why hedge funds rock!)," he writes douchily in an email newsletter.

You can preorder James Frey's third novel 'Bright Shiny Morning' on Amazon for delivery this June 8. Boy, that's a fast turnaround for a September acquisition! Guess it didn't need to be edited much, being so genius and all.

Aleksey Vayner, the most popular Halloween costume of 2006, plagiarist, fabulist and the king of all banker-boy douchebags, has come to New York City begging for a job and amends. Why the delay? As Dealbreaker notes, Vayner graduated in May and "was going to go pro in tennis, with a debut playing doubles in the US Open. Unfortunately, his partner hurt his wrist two hours before their match."

From the mailbag: "I overheard someone blabbing that [former Jane and Sassy editor] Jane Pratt is planning a pow-wow with her old staff this week. Only the ones who worked for her (not Brandon Holley) are invited (Debbie, Josh, Jeff, Jauretsi, Lori, Bill, Eric, Erin, Kenya, Annemarie, Johan, Stephanie, Gigi). I'm dying to know if this is just a friendly gathering or is Jane plotting something? An old Sassy reader can only hope." Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes! Which makes Jane's last editor Brandon Holley, who we've also heard might be rallying the old troops towards some end or other, Madelyne Pryor?

Seth Goldstein, the former Silicon Alley stalwart now stationed in suburban-quaint Mill Valley, Calif., has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding for SocialMedia, his Facebook-application startup. Among SocialMedia's works: the Food Fight and Trakzor widgets. Charles River Ventures lead the investment with SoftTech's Jeff Clavier and Ning cofounder Marc Andreessen (!) participating. Wait a minute, that Seth Goldstein? The ex-VC who brought infamous delivery dotbomb Kozmo to Flatiron Ventures? The guy who, last we heard, was working on AttenTV and other attention-focused ventures?