What do you get the millionaire in your life who has everything? How about the Seabreacher mini-sub. Described as a dolphin-inspired cross between a jet ski and a submarine, the Seabreacher has a top speed of 45mph above the waves and 20mph below them. The two-man £30,000 craft is 15' long and its design makes it self-righting. Strangely, this doesn't come with a laser package.

narramissic writes "The awkwardly named Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace (HANG UP) Act was approved by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on a voice vote Thursday. The bill would make permanent the long-standing ban on in-flight cell phone calls by the FAA and FCC. 'Polls show the public overwhelmingly doesn't want to be subjected to people talking on their cell phones on increasingly over-packed airplanes. However, with Internet access just around the corner on U.S. flights, it won't be long before the ban on voice communications on in-flight planes is lifted,' said Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon who co-sponsored the HANG UP Act in a statement. 'Cash-strapped airlines could end up charging some passengers to use their phones while charging others to sit in a phone-free section of the plane,' he said."

Barence writes "Britain's six leading internet providers have signed a Government-led agreement to stamp out illegal music file sharing. The six providers — BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, Sky and Carphone Warehouse — will implement a series of measures against those found to be file sharing. Offenders may find their internet connection is throttled, or may even have their traffic 'filtered' to prevent media files from being downloaded. The ISPs are reportedly reluctant to impose the BPI's preferred 'three strikes and you're out' approach of cutting off users' broadband connections."

krygny writes "NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft (whose extended mission is called EPOXI) has created a video of the moon transiting Earth as seen from 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds. 'Our video shows some specific features that are important for observations of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars,' said Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center... 'A "sun glint'" can be seen in the movie, caused by light reflected from Earth's oceans, and similar glints to be observed from extrasolar planets could indicate alien oceans. Also, we used infrared light instead of the normal red light to make the color composite images, and that makes the land masses much more visible.'" Here are links to the two videos, one red-green-blue and the other infrared-green-blue.

Cowards Anonymous passes along a PCWorld article that begins, "The robotic arm on the Mars Lander found itself in a tough position over the weekend. After receiving instructions for a movement that would have damaged its wrist, the robotic arm recognized the problem, tried to rectify it and then shut down before it could damage itself, according to Ray Arvidson, a co-investigator for the Mars Lander's robotic arm team and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis."

ya really writes "My family has one of those BUDs (Big Ugly Dishes) sitting in their back yard still. The other day they asked me if I would take it apart for them. Aside from simply recycling it, I was wondering if there are any alternatives for its use. It was one of the last made before DirectTV and Dish took over satellite broadcasting, and even has a digital receiver. I'd say it was made around 1996."

tomhudson writes "While we bemoan the current oil crisis, I ran across an editorial that led me to research a more immediate threat. Ramped-up production of flat-panel displays means the material to make them will be 'extinct' by 2017. This goes for other electronics as well. Quoting: 'The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany's University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet's stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.' More links at the journal entry."

An anonymous reader writes "British biologists have received government approval to create the world's first human stem cells from hybrid embryos, part pig, part human. The Warwick Medical School team, led by Justin St. John of the Clinical Sciences Research Institute, was granted the country's third animal-human embryo license from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which goes into effect today (July 1)." The above link requires (free) registration; the Telegraph's coverage does not.

jmcbain writes "The NY Times has an opinion piece on how the next Windows could be designed (even through Microsoft has already laid plans for Windows 7). The author suggests 'A monolithic operating system like Windows perpetuates an obsolete design. We don't need to load up our machines with bloated layers we won't use.' He also brings up the example of Apple breaking ties with its legacy OS when OS X was built. Can Windows move forward with a completely new, fast, and secure OS and still keep legacy application support?"

An anonymous reader writes "A new study suggests RFID systems can cause 'potentially hazardous incidents in medical devices.' (Here is the JAMA study's abstract.) Among other things, electrical interference changed breathing machines' ventilation rates and caused syringe pumps to stop. Some hospitals have already begun using RFID tags to track a wide variety of medical devices, but the new finding suggests the systems may have unintended consequences."

Dude With An Afro writes "What could have been a great Google project is now history. For those who never used it, Google Browser Sync was a Firefox extension that synchronized your bookmarks, web history, browser sessions and passwords across multiple computers by temporarily saving them to Google's servers. According to the Google Browser Sync team: 'It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don't have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.' For all of those who fell in love with Google's Browser Sync, our only hope now is to resort to poorly maintained 3rd party extensions without Google's blessing." While it was undoubtedly a useful utility, the argument can also be made that it wasn't the most secure extension in the world, what with having your personal data kept on Google's servers and shot around the internet.

An anonymous reader writes "DigitalBurn.com has posted a review of HTC's new X7510 Advantage smartphone. It is technically a smartphone, but looks more like a small laptop since it has a 5" VGA touchscreen display. Other features include tri-band HDSPA 3G data, a 3 megapixel auto-focus camera, a magnetically attached QWERTY keyboard, and a full-blown Opera 9 web browser. It can even be hooked up to a TV or external monitor/projector."

robipilot writes "Mac stolen, Mac comes online, owner connects using 'Back to My Mac,' owner takes picture of culprit, and voila, criminal caught. OK, it wasn't quite that simple, but here's an interesting story of using some built-in technology on the Mac to recover a stolen laptop."

RickRussellTX writes "The DOE awarded $126.6 million in grants today to projects that will pump 1 million tons of CO2 into underground caverns at sites in California and Ohio. Environmental groups call carbon sequestration "a scam", claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar. I just hope nobody drops a Mentos down the wrong pipe."

Josh Fink brings us a CNN story discussing evidence found by researchers which indicates that humans came close to extinction roughly 70,000 years ago. A similar study by Stanford scientists suggests that droughts reduced the population to as few as 2,000 humans, who were scattered in small, isolated groups. Quoting: "'This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history,' said Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence. 'Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.'"