On one side I’m happy that Falcon Heene—the boy who allegedly was flying uncontrollably inside a homemade, spaceship-shaped helium balloon—was actually safe all the time, hiding at home. On the other, I just want to bitchslap him. Repeatedly.

This may sound funny, but it is not: A six-year-old boy is floating away without control in a homemade UFO, made with lots of tin foil and balloons full of helium.

A 6-year-old boy is floating over northeastern Colorado in a homebuilt lighter-than-air craft and authorities are racing to try and rescue him. The homemade flying saucer , covered in foil and filled with helium, lifted the boy into the air near Fort Collins Thursday morning after the balloon became untethered at the family home. Fort Collins police and other authorities have been alerted and Airtracker 7 has launched in an effort to locate the boy. We’re told the boy was near Milliken around noon and was heading southeast at about 7,000 feet, which would be about 2,000 feet above ground level. Skies in the area are partly cloudy and southwest wind speeds are 15 to 20 miles per hour. “It is believed the device could rise to 10,000 feet,” said Eloise Campanella, Larimer County Sheriff’s Officer spokeswoman. Deputies from Larimer and Weld counties are tracking the balloon as it drifts.

You can see the video live here.

If you saw this over your head, what would you think? Aliens have come to kick our asses? God has come to kick our asses? Apparently, the bizarre cloud formation seen in Moscow recently is just a natural phenomenon.

Talking to the Daily Mail, a spokesman from Moscow’s weather forecasting service said: “Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west – this is how the effect was produced.

“This is purely an optical effect, although it does look impressive,” he added.

Ok, so it’s just clouds — but when you watch the video you still expect an alien ship to drop through that hole with lasers blazing. [Telegraph]

Yes, McKinnon should pay for his crime somehow, he did break the law after all, but to pay to close security gaps he exposed while omitting the crime is a bit unreasonable. I’m happy that the ridiculous damages bill is being challenged by experts, because as Peter Sommer, professor of security at the London School of Economics, put it:

Damage assessments of computer security breaches should consider “whether the victims have taken reasonable steps to limit the damage”.

According to what we’re seeing about this series of intrusions, they would’ve been preventable, had Uncle Sam’s security experts been on the ball. So really, they should be paying McKinnon a consultation fee for pointing out the security gaps in the first place. [Computer Weekly via Slashdot]

We know this because on Friday Russia declassified pages and pages of its Cold War UFO sightings. A full 50% of the sightings were in the ocean, and a further 15% were in lakes like Baikal (the world’s deepest).

In one sad case, three Russian navy diving cadets lost their lives chasing “a group of humanoid creatures dressed in silvery suits.” In another, straight out of The Abyss, a sub commander details an encounter where an underwater UFO reached speeds of 230 knots. “It was like the objects defied the laws of physics,” he said.

Regardless, accuracy of these reports aside, we can take solace in the fact that Ed Harris has experience with both space and sea. [Scoop Deck via Wired]

“I could be crazy, but I think I see a bubble canopy on this aircraft, which would seem to rule out the “UCAV” theory! The plot thickens…”

There’s no record of any plane with this shape and a canopy in the US military arsenal. [The Dew Line]

This an artist rendering based on (not so) classified and unpublished photos obtained by UVonline.com reporter Darren Lake. The photo of the unidentified flying object—which apparently is a mystery unmanned aircraft nobody has ever heard off—was taken in Kandahar in 2007, but has been published now by a french magazine. [Air-Cosmos and UVonline via Flight Global]

The men at Area 51, among other projects, worked on the OXCART spyplane, now known as the SR-71 Blackbird. The mach-3 plane was unlike anything ever seen before, designed to spy on the Russians during the Cold War, and so it kind of makes sense that such odd flying objects were seen around Roswell back in the day.

The stories the Area 51 workers have are almost as crazy as UFOs, however. For example: During the first flight of the OXCART, the plane malfunctioned and the pilot ejected into a field, where three civilian passersby in a pickup truck stopped to help him. The pilot warned the men not to go near the top-secret plane, saying there was a nuclear weapon on board as a deterrent. The men, spooked, dropped him off at a police station where the CIA picked him up.

“As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign national security nondisclosures. As part of [the pilot's] own debriefing, the CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth serum. “They wanted to see if there was anything I’d forgotten about the events leading up to the crash.”"

The agents listed the crashed plane as a generic Air Force plane, and it’s still listed that way in the records today.

Check out the full article for more stories and explanations that are sure to fail to deter the crazy conspiracy nutballs. [LA Times via Boing Boing Gadgets]

The UFO features four colour-coded outlets, a lidded bowl on top to store your gadgets (or chips—whichever you prefer) and a festive colour changing light that visually reminds you about how much power you are currently using.

The device itself has no switches—instead, the unit is controlled via the iPhone using a free app. It allows you to turn each of the four outlets on or off as well as monitor your power consumption remotely. Expect this green snack bowl/power strip to be available this summer for around $US200. [Visible Energy via OhGizmo]

Jiang insists that the elaborate white designs were inspired by the theme of “watching,” and involve fully or partially obstructed faces on each model – like guests at a gala celebration wearing masks. But I’m not blind—I’ve been to many a gala celebration, and nobody has worn anything even close to this.

Nope. To me, the message in this collection is clear: “Welcome to China, space creatures. One Universe, One Dream.” [Jezebel and 3news]

Photo from Getty