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In 2013, a group at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering brought miniaturization to the world of drones, creating a tiny robot that could fly using rapidly beating wings. Now, after adding a handful of team members from other institutions, Robert Woods' team is back with a paper that gives an update to the group's little flying machines—one that lets the robots hang upside down like bats.

This might at first seem like a frivolous addition (although doing something because it's pretty cool can be a major motivator for cutting-edge engineering). But the researchers have some pretty solid reasons for adding the feature. One of the main reasons you'd build a drone, tiny or otherwise, is to be able to look down on an area from a high vantage point. A big limitation of this approach is that getting to and staying in that high vantage point takes energy.

If there's a way to latch on to something and sit there, it could provide big energy savings, which could allow the drone to monitor an area for much longer than it would otherwise be able to. In the case of a miniature drones, the authors have latch points like "trees, buildings, or powerlines."

Net neutrality law and protection of data equality (credit: Getty Images | Kagenmi)

Internet service customers have filed 20,991 net neutrality complaints since the rules went into effect on June 12 of last year, according to new data released by the Federal Communications Commission.

The data includes 86,114 Internet service complaints filed since October 31, 2014 against home Internet and cellular ISPs. Net neutrality has been the most common type of complaint since the rules went into effect and is near the top of the list even when counting the first seven months of the data set in which net neutrality complaints weren't yet being accepted. In the full data set, billing complaints led the way at 22,989—with 16,393 since June 12. The other top categories for the entire period since late 2014 were service availability with 14,251 complaints, speed with 11,200 complaints, and privacy with 7,968 privacy complaints.

Despite the large numbers, this data doesn't show that there were any net neutrality violations. The FCC's website notes that the agency doesn't verify the facts in each complaint; these are just raw numbers based on the categories selected by customers when they file complaints. As we've written before, complaints filed under the net neutrality category are often unrelated to the core net neutrality rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Consumers often complain about slow speeds, high prices, and data caps under the net neutrality category.

The Android game Galaxy On Fire running on the Chromebook Pixel. (credit: Google)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—It's really happening. Android apps are coming to Chrome OS. And it's not just a small subset of apps; the entire Google Play Store is coming to Chrome OS. More than 1.5 million apps will come to a platform that before today was "just a browser," and Android and Chrome OS take yet another step closer together.

In advance of the show, we were able to sit down with members of the Chrome OS team and get a better idea of exactly what Chrome OS users are in for. The goal is an "It just works" solution, with zero effort from developers required to get their Android app up and running. Notifications and in-line replies should all work. Android apps live in native Chrome OS windows, making them look like part of the OS. Chrome OS has picked up some Android tricks too—sharing and intent systems should work fine, even from one type of app or website to another. Google is aiming for a unified, seamless user experience.

Starting in early June, developer channel builds of Chrome OS will see a pop-up message allowing them to opt-in to Google Play and Android app compatibility. This will roll out to touch-enabled Chromebooks first in the "M53 Dev" version, with support for non-touch devices coming soon after. We were told a full-scale rollout to the Chrome OS stable channel should happen sometime in September or October.

Sean Gallagher

The Stiletto crouches pierside at National Harbor. Forty feet wide and 80 feet long, the Stiletto is nearly three times the size of a World War II PT boat yet less than a third of the weight. Its pentamaran design makes it capable of handling (and plowing through) pretty much anything short of a gale—though turning head-on into the waves can be brutal.

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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—At this week's Navy League Sea-Air-Space exposition (an annual seapower conference and trade show for the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard) Ars got a chance to board and tour a craft called the Stiletto. The Stilleto is prototype boat built for the Navy in 2006 that has become the military's on-call floating laboratory for rapid research and development of new sensors, weapons systems, and communications. With a carbon fiber hull, the Stiletto is light enough (45 tons, unloaded) to be craned onto a cargo ship for transport—but it can also carry 20 tons of cargo and tear through most sea states at high speeds.

Now operating from Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek near Norfolk, Virginia, the Stiletto was originally intended to be part of a new Navy combat concept—groups of small, highly networked boats carrying sensors and weapons and working as a group to take on enemies in coastal, river, and shallow ocean waters. Built with special operations in mind, the Stiletto has a stealthy profile and a unique pentamaran hull that essentially acts as a surface effect hull at high speeds, allowing the craft to rise out of the water and reach speeds of 60 knots (69 miles an hour, or 110 kilometers per hour).

After being used in several exercises in the mid-2000s, the Stiletto was deployed to the Caribbean for counter-narcotics operations in 2008 with a joint Navy-Coast Guard team. Since then, it has served as a "maritime demonstration craft" operated by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock, Combatant Craft Division. But it is funded directly by the Department of Defense's Office of Research, Test, Development and Evaluation (RDT&E). (Full disclosure: my last tour of service in the Navy was with "special boats," so the Stiletto is my 1990 self's technological dream.)

(credit: Eric Constantineau)

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and other like-minded senators have come out forcefully against the pending change to federal judicial rules that would expand judges’ ability to authorize remote access hacking of criminal suspects’ devices.

On Thursday, Wyden submitted a bill that aims to stop the proposed amendments to Rule 41 dead in its tracks. The entire bill is one sentence long: “The proposed amendments to rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which are set forth in the order entered by the Supreme Court of the United States on April 28, 2016, shall not take effect.”

For now, the bill is co-sponsored by two other Democrats, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.). A companion bill is expected in the House of Representatives.

I dunno, looks like a game to me...

The creator of a game about a Palestinian child struggling to survive with her family in the 2014 Gaza strip says the title has been rejected from the games section of the iOS App Store because, as he puts it, "it has a political statement."

Liyla and the Shadows of War is currently listed on Google Play as an Adventure game, and it includes "challenging decision, events and puzzles awaiting for you [sic]" according to its online press kit. But Palestinian creator Rasheed Abueideh tweeted a rejection message in which Apple said the game was "not appropriate in the games category" and that it would be "more appropriate to categorize your app in News or Reference for example."

The rejection didn't go into detail about where Apple draws the line between "Games" and "News," but Apple's App Store Review guidelines have laid out the company's thinking since 2010: "We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app." Those same guidelines also lay out a vague "I'll know it when I see it" standard for when content goes "over the line" in ways not specifically prohibited by the guidelines (Apple has yet to respond to a request for comment from Ars).