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The Mighty Hercules stands in the foreground, with the Gulfstream IV behind it. (credit: Lee Hutchinson)

Every minute of every hour, sophisticated weather satellites are circumnavigating the world, keeping vigil over the planet's atmosphere and streaming data back to the ground. But when it comes to hurricanes and their imminent landfalls, a somewhat lower and slower tool is the most valuable: the venerable WC-130 aircraft. Using a design dating back to 1962, these durable workhorses fly directly into the heart of the storm, where no satellite can see.

The “Mighty Hercules,” capable of flying about 18 hours without refueling, has been the mainstay of the US Air Force’s “Hurricane Hunters” program since 1999. Just weeks before the beginning of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season on June 1, the National Hurricane Center and the Air Force invited the press to take a close-up look at one of these planes (along with a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Gulfstream IV) at Scholes Field in Galveston.

This sliver of an island along the northern Texas coast has seen its share of large cyclones. It's close to where the devastating Hurricane Ike made landfall in 2008, and before that, Hurricane Alicia passed directly over the island in 1983. Galveston's most memorable hurricane is the Great Storm of 1900, which caused an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 fatalities and is still the deadliest natural disaster in US history. Fortunately, no storms threatened on the late spring afternoon when Ars visited Scholes Field. Instead, under partly sunny skies, we had a great opportunity to check out the tech used to fly into, and above, the most powerful terrestrial storms known to humans.

LG is challenging Samsung's Note smartphones with a new stylus-equipped handset of its own. While the Stylus 2 was announced earlier this year, the Stylus 2 Plus builds on that phone's design and improves the guts for a more powerful device.

The two biggest improvements are in the Stylus 2 Plus' screen and processor. Rather than the 5.7-inch, 1280×720 display on the first model, the new model has the same size screen but with a 1920×1080 resolution. The processor has also been upgraded to a 1.4GHz octa-core chip from the first phone's 1.2GHZ quad-core CPU.

The Stylus 2 Plus will also have 16GB of onboard storage, a 3,000 mAh battery, and a fingerprint sensor on the back of the handset. The cameras will change depending on where the device is sold: some markets will get a 16-megapixel rear camera and an 8MP front-facing camera. Others will have the same 13MP rear camera and 5MP front-facing camera in the original Stylus 2. RAM will change depending on region as well, with some countries receiving 3GB of RAM and others getting 2GB.

(credit: Hayes Davidson / Sebastian Anthony)

Ars Technica is looking for an Engagement Coordinator to join its London-based team. As the job title implies, this position does not involve writing on the site, though it does report directly to the editor (me). This is a role that will be mostly focused with social media, investigating new platforms and technologies, SEO, analytics and statistics, and other stuff that helps increase the impact and reach of Ars Technica UK's superb and sometimes dauntingly awesome editorial output.

Ars Technica UK had a very successful first year: we were profitable (I'm told this is very rare for a new publication), and we tripled both our headcount and readership. Editorial-wise, we are doing well. But there is another challenge that we need to crack: think about those millions of science, tech, policy, and car nerds out there who aren't currently reading Ars Technica... but should be. I want to hire someone who can reel those new readers in.

The ideal candidate would be based in London. You will have to be present at our swanky new office on Hanover Square, just off Oxford Circus most of the time (but you can work from home occasionally). Ideally you would be proficient with traffic analysis and reporting tools such as Google Analytics and Hitwise, and be able to process that data in such a way so as to help me make decisions. Ideally you would have professional experience as an SEO specialist, social media guru, marketing bod, or some other similarly nu-digital-mediaesque role.