AC writes "Got $2 million in assets? Then you can join BillionaireXchange; just the place to find a 2006 Bugatti Veyron with a Start Bid of $1,050,000.00. Or perhaps you are looking for a boat like the Disco Volante (from James Bond), for example the 2000 Azimut Motor Yacht, a lovely 85-footer with a Start Bid of $2,700,000.00. On the other end of the deal, did your hedge fund leave you in the lurch? This is the place to sell those extravagant toys you thought you could afford."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control have now developed a scheme for protecting implantable medical devices against wireless attacks. The approach relies on using ultrasound waves to determine the exact distance between a medical device and the wireless reader attempting to communicate with it." I had no idea that things have gotten so bad that hearts are being hacked.

richardkelleher writes "It seems it doesn't always roll downhill, sometimes it is armor. The case-bearing leaf beetle apparently protects itself by constructing armor made from excrement. Females of these species typically construct bell-shaped receptacles made of feces around an egg immediately after they lay one."

A German car thief got a little more than he bargained for when he stole a van that was transporting Circus Probst's five-year-old lion. A few hours later the van was found crashed into a road sign and the thief has yet to be found. Caesar the lion was unhurt but appeared to be suffering from some indigestion.

The Edinburg, Texas police department gave the local prison a donation of fruit seized from a truck that was used to smuggle drugs. In addition to the fruit they were also kind enough to include 25 pounds of pot. The drugs were missed in the initial search of the produce truck. Prison officials rewarded the inmates who reported the drugs by strip searching them.

Ponca City, We love you writes "Juliet Eilperin writes in the Washington Post that while for years, humans have thought of great white sharks as wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore, it turns out we were wrong. Scientists lured 179 great white sharks to their boat with a carpet decoy designed to look like a seal, and used a lance to attach satellite tags with the aid of 2.3-inch titanium darts to track the sharks and discovered that Pacific white sharks spend months near the northern and central California coast between August and February, foraging among elephant seals, sea lions, and other prey. The sharks were spotted as far inland as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, east of the Golden Gate Bridge. 'It shows you how wild it is off our West Coast of North America. This is Yellowstone,' says Stanford University marine sciences professor Barbara A. Block. The fact that 'a major concentration' of great whites can ignore humans 'shows us the sharks are really minding their own business. The number of interactions with people is very small, considering,' says Salvador J. Jorgensen."

A brilliant fundraiser at a Goldsboro, North Carolina middle school was stopped after school district administrators became concerned that it might not be a very good idea. Instead of selling candles, candy, or magazine subscriptions the middle school was selling grades. $20 would get you 10 extra credit points on two tests. Principal Susie Shepherd defended the practice, saying "Last year they did chocolates, and it didn't generate anything." I'm with Susie, bribery is something you want to ingrain in a child early.

IamAHack writes "I heard this story this morning on public radio's 'Marketplace Morning Report' about an Alaskan bush pilot whose plane was mauled by a grizzly bear. A judicious application of duct tape was all that was needed to make the plane airworthy again. Another life changed forever by duct tape."

sprinkletown writes "A Boston-based wind energy company is facing an unusual problem for its proposed wind farm in Maine: the site is too windy for even the burliest of turbines. From the article: 'First Wind’s vice-president of business development Matthew Kearns said at a public meeting in Rumford that because of the strong, irregular wind resource on Black Mountain, the Longfellow Wind Farm project may no longer be viable. “The wind is very, very turbulent, so we don’t even know yet whether to proceed with the project at all,' Kearns told a packed house eager to learn about the company’s future plans in the area.'"

PhrostyMcByte writes "November 24th will mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the pivotal work that helped bring the theory of evolution through natural selection into popularity. Around this same time, Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron is spearheading a plan to pass out 50,000 free copies at universities around the country. The catch? Each copy will be altered to include creationist propaganda and FUD targeting evolution and Darwin himself."

elstonj writes "The vacuum, long an instrument for chasing cats, has now been turned against its own. What better use for automatic home appliances than to have them chase each other in classic video game style? From the article: 'We've seen mixtures of Roomba and Pac-Man before, but nothing like this. A team of developers have hacked five floor-cleaning bots to create a sort of OCD version of the game, with the Pac-Man bot sucking up little white rectangles whilst being chased by robot incarnations of Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde. But, when the Pac-Man vacuum finds a power pellet those ghostly rovers turn blue and start fleeing. The tech is supposed to be a demonstration of the developers' Unmanned Aerial System suite, designed for guidance of airborne vehicles, but we're too busy geeking out to care about potential real-world applications of this tech.'"

25 years ago a methyl isocyanate gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India killed at least 3,787 with some putting the death toll as high as 10,000. Luckily the Indian government has realized that a place this special shouldn't be off limits to tourists so they'd like you to gather the kids and come on down for a visit. The doors have been locked since the disaster out of concerns over contamination and just common decency, but that is about to change for one week only. The man with the worst job title in the history of job titles, gas tragedy minister Babulal Gaur said, "The government hopes that allowing people to visit the site would satisfy their curiosity and remove misconceptions that things at the plant have been kept under wraps. I have visited the site numerous times and handled the waste on several occasions. There's nothing to worry about."

Learn more in 4 minutes than the entirety of your high school history class.

MarkWhittington writes "It seems that a SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) experiment happened decades before the Project Ozma occurred in 1960. The historians at the blog Letters of Note have uncovered a telegram sent in 1924 by then Chief of Naval Operations Edward W. Eberle instructing the United States Navy to listen for radio transmissions from the planet Mars."

There's only one thing Cook County prosecutors hate more than crime, and that's being proven wrong. This leads us to journalism professor David Protess and his class. Already having helped prove the innocence of 11 men behind bars, his investigative journalist students have spent 3 years investigating the case of a man convicted of killing a security guard. The students believe they have evidence that shows the wrong man is in prison. In response, the Prosecutors Office has issued subpoenas to professor David Protess seeking his students’ grades, his syllabus and their private e-mails. They claim since the team was made up of students, they may have been under pressure to prove the case to get a good grade. “Why are we talking about our grades when we should be talking about whether there’s an innocent man in prison?” said Evan Benn, a former Protess student mentioned in the state’s subpoena.

jones_supa writes "Sheboygan Press tells a story of an American youngster called Calvin Gosz who was selling a right to his name in eBay. The auction site later removed the item as inappropriate. However, the 'Newegg of Finland,' Verkkokauppa.com caught on the idea and contacted Calvin via Facebook. For $5,000 Mr. Gosz changed his name to Verkkokauppa Com. Gosz, who moved to Sheboygan from Florida in September, said the name change was an idea to raise money after many unsuccessful attempts in finding a job. 'That company has been great to me. I was just surprised they actually transferred the money. Nice of them to help me out like that,' Calvin comments. He is eligible to change his name back after two months."

emeraldd writes "Everett Bradford's 'Prometheus Device' is a hand-mounted appliance that shoots fire."

mr crypto writes "From the BBC News article, 'A South Korean woman is celebrating after passing the written exam for a driving license — on her 950th attempt. After four years of trying, 68-year-old Cha Sa-soon finally managed to secure the 60 out of 100 points needed to pass the test.' Maybe some things should just not be."

CNETNate writes "You'll laugh, but mostly you'll cry. Some of the questions Google gets asked to deliver results for is beyond worrying. 'Can you put peroxide in your ear?', 'Why would a pregnancy test be negative?', and 'Why can't I own a Canadian?' being just a selection of the truly baffling — and disturbing — questions Google is regularly forced to answer."

An anonymous reader writes 'After having played on the slot machine for over 30 minutes, Bill Seebeck was ecstatic when he hit the $166 million jackpot. However, The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tampa was less than enthusiastic, telling Seeback his win was a mistake because the machine malfunctioned. Thus, the casino refused to pay Seebeck his prize as the machine was only supposed to have a maximum pay out of $99K. Currently, the casino refuses to pay out even that amount.'