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An artist's conceptualization of DARPA's ACTUV sub hunting robo-ship in action. (credit: DARPA)

One of the biggest problems the US Navy faces today is the threat of quiet, short-range diesel-electric submarines. When running on batteries alone, these subs are extremely difficult for the Navy's ships, subs, and patrol craft to detect with passive sonar. In war games with US allies—and in recent propaganda-generating "drills" by Iran's navy—US ships have consistently ended up in the periscope crosshairs of diesel submarines that have gone undetected or that the Navy has simply lost track of. The best way to keep tabs on diesel submarines is to literally stay on top of them, tracking them with subs or ships from the moment they set out to sea until they return home.

This is the sort of thing the US Navy used to do with Soviet submarines operating off the coast of the US. The problem is that doing it for diesel submarines in distant parts of the world would tie up ships and sailors, pulling them away from other missions—and the US Navy doesn't have the same sort of resources for antisubmarine warfare that it had during the Cold War to bring to bear on the diesel-electric subs of potential adversaries. This is especially true for those operating in waters far from the US. That's a problem that a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project now nearing fruition seeks to solve with drone ships.

During a roundtable with media last week, Deputy Director Steve Walker announced that DARPA and its contractor Leidos would launch the first full prototype of an autonomous ship designed to hunt submarines and trail them for weeks at a time. Eventually, autonomous vessels could be deployed to track the latest generation of quiet diesel-electric submarines over distances of thousands of miles, providing targeting information to US Navy submarines, ships, and patrol planes—or simply harassing the subs with relentless active tracking to deter them from carrying out their mission.

Samsung's Galaxy S6. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Samsung has announced that it will ship its first Android 6.0 Marshmallow update today. The newest version of Android will be coming to the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, with the announcement saying that "other Galaxy devices will soon follow."

Samsung doesn't explicitly say so, but we would guess today's rollout is only for unlocked, "International" devices. The announcement cryptically states that Samsung will "make separate announcements on details of OS updates schedule for each market according to market situation and carriers’ requirements."

Last year, Samsung started rolling out Lollipop to the flagship Galaxy S5 just 31 days after launch. For Marshmallow, that delay increased to a whopping 133 days. Of course, this number only pertains to unlocked devices. If you bought a device through a carrier, it's up to the company to stick its fingers in the update pie.

Capcom

This white fireball is full of hurt.

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With each new Street Fighter game comes an intense amount of scrutiny from fighting-game fans who are eager to see how new characters and mechanics have shaken up world's most popular quarter-circle-motion fisticuffs series. That scrutiny only intensifies in the case of a big, fat number bump. This isn't just the "Super Ultra Turbo Chibi-Sumo Edition," this here's one louder, isn't it?

Street Fighter V will certainly have fans talking, what with its new "V-Trigger" system and other noticeable tweaks throughout its roster of old favorites, peculiar returners, and weird new brawlers. But for the first time in a new-number Street Fighter game, people will almost certainly talk more about what's missing.

Capcom has advertised this as the first, last, and only retail edition for Street Fighter V—meaning, the game will supposedly live on as a constantly updated service, complete with free balance patches, free mode updates, and not-quite-free content purchase options. What Capcom hasn't advertised is the fact that the game, as it's launching on Tuesday, is already in desperate need of those updates.

One of the problems with much of science is that it is often a quasi-sedentary profession. Apart from those lucky few who have to trek through muddy fields in Vietnam or scale icy cliffs in Antarctica, the rest of us mostly took the job because it was indoors and required no heavy lifting.

That said, scientists get a lot of exercise. Usually, this involves energetically jumping to conclusions—there is nothing quite like seeing two data points, fitting a straight line and yelling, “We understand this COMPLETELY.”

The newest craze among the more energetic set is aquatic: shark jumping. Science is undergoing a cultural change at the moment, thanks to the Open Science movement, an idea that I am broadly supportive of. But some of the latest goals and statements seem a little… unrealistic to me.