Solar Impulse 2 has successfully landed in Hawaii after completing its audacious five-day journey across the Pacific Ocean. The mission, which has been dogged by recent delays, touched down safely at Kalaeloa Airport with Swiss pilot Andri(C) Borschberg in the cockpit. He had endured more than 100 hours alone in the plane with minimal sleep during the flight - smashing the record for the longest solo flight in aviation history by two days. The plane had originally been intended to fly straight from China to Hawaii, but worsening weather on the way meant Borschberg had to abort and land in Japan. Bad weather had also kept the plane grounded in China for several weeks longer than intended.

The next leg of the global circumnavigation flight was to be a four-day crossing to Phoenix, Arizona, but that has been postponed at least until 2016. The plane's batteries overheated and were damaged beyond repair during the latest leg of the trip. It's not the technology itself that was the problem, the pilots say, but how the batteries were insulated. Replacing and testing the batteries will take at least a few months, and because the days in the Northern Hemisphere are already getting shorter, completing the rest of the journey in 2015 isn't an option.

The flight began in March over the desert sands of Abu Dhabi, and flown across Oman, India, Myanmar, China, Japan, and the Pacific Ocean. If all goes to plan, Bertrand Piccard will fly the next leg to Phoenix, Arizona, sometime in April. Piccard and Borschberg will alternate flying across the U.S., the Atlantic, and eventually all the way back to Abu Dhabi, completing the 35,000 kilometer (22,000 mile) journey.

Native to the forests of Borneo, Nepenthes hemsleyana feeds on bat guano, which provides the plant with all the nutrients it needs, minus the hassle of digestion. To that end, N. hemsleyana has developed special structures that reflect bats' ultrasonic calls back to them - an ability that helps the plant attract bats to roost in its pitcher so that it can feast on the animal's feces, a new study has found. The signals are specific to the bat species Kerivoula hardwickii, making it easier for the bats to find their partner plant.

Unlike its carnivorous cousins, N. hemsleyana is not especially adept at catching insects. Yet scientists noticed that it somehow manages to thrive. Pursuing the mystery, Schiner and his team discovered that N. hemsleyana provides some insect-eating bats with a spacious, stable, and parasite-free roosting spot. In return, the bats fertilize the plant with their feces, the researchers discovered. "Carnivorous plants in general have already solved the problem of nutrient deficiency in a very unusual way by reversing the 'normal system' of animals feeding on plants. It is even more astonishing that in the case of N. hemsleyana the system is taking a new turn," Dr. Schiner said.

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo from 2002, died of a tumor Saturday at Kyoto University Hospital, after a lengthy illness. He was 55. He had not been seen recently at game events, such as E3 in Los Angeles, where he was usually a participant. The announcement drew a flood of emotional tributes from game fans and industry rivals.

Iwata led Nintendo's development into a global company, with its hit Wii home console and DS handheld, and also through its recent troubles caused by the popularity of smartphones. Iwata had been poised to lead Nintendo through another stage after it recently did an about-face and said it will start making games for smartphones, meaning that Super Mario would soon start arriving on cellphones and tablets. The company returned to profit in the fiscal year ended March 2015 after several years of losses.

Iwata succeeded Hiroshi Yamauchi, who ruled over the Kyoto-based company for half a century, transforming it from a traditional playing-card company to a technological powerhouse. Iwata is survived by his wife Kayoko. A funeral service will be held on July 17. His replacement was not immediately announced, but the company said star game designer Shigeru Miyamaoto will remain in the leadership team along with Genyo Takeda.

The most expensive weapon in history, the U.S. Air Force's $350 billion F-35 stealth jet was outperformed by an F-16 (designed in the early 1970s) in a mock dogfight. The F-35 test pilot said new plane was too cumbersome to dodge enemy fire, and deemed it totally inappropriate for fighting aircraft within visual range. U.S. military leaders have extolled the virtues of the F-35 jets. Marine Lt Gen. Robert Schmidle said the planes were like flying computers and that they could detect an enemy five to 10 times faster than the enemy could detect it.

While the F-35 is a "multi-role" aircraft and not a purpose-built air superiority fighter (unlike the closely guarded F-22), the fifth-generation aircraft is designed to excel in electronic warfare, air-to-surface combat and air-to-air combat. The US is anxious to sell them to their NATO allies to replace aging F-16, F/A-18, F-4, and Harrier fleets. The F-16 has served in the Air Forces of 26 nations, including the U.S., Israel, Egypt, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. Most are expected to purchase the new F-35 jet. Britain plans to purchase 138 F-35 jets from the US, but at present costs that would add up to a total of $19 billion. US Vice President Joe Biden promised a delivery of the jets to Israel 'next year', amid reports that Tel Aviv has approved a new deal to add 14 more jets to its 2010 order for 19 aircraft. Australia has committed to purchasing 72 F-35s. Japan has ordered 42 F-35As. South Korea has also ordered 40 F-35As, with plans for 20 more, budget permitting.

DuckDuckGo announced they hit a milestone, surpassing the 10 million daily query mark on June 22, 2015. DuckDuckGo saw 10,218,617 queries on June 22nd alone. The company gives credit to that surge in users based on them being a privacy focused search engine. Gabriel Weinberg wrote, "we're proud to be helping so many people take back their privacy." DuckDuckGo has grown 600% since Edward Snowden's NSA surveillance news broke two years ago. And yet only a few percent of people have even heard of DuckDuckGo and other private alternatives.

Founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo is based in Paoli, Pennsylvania rather than Silicon Valley. The site, which does not track user data, now handles some 3bn searches a year - although that is only about the same volume that Google processes in 24 hours. Since last year, it has been a built-in search option in both Safari and Firefox. The site also promises to provide the information users want with fewer clicks through features such as instant answers, themes and !bangs. DuckDuckGo hopes these other features will help it continue to build on the audience gained from people looking for more private ways to search the web following the Snowden revelations.

The Federal Communications Commission approved a proposal to explore including broadband as part of a decades-old program that subsidizes phone service for low-income consumers. The plan would expand the government's Lifeline program - created 30 years ago to help financially struggling Americans access basic telecommunication services - to include broadband Internet access. The commission must now figure out the specifics of incorporating broadband into Lifeline, after which another vote will be held. As expected, Republicans opposed extending the phone subsidy, arguing that the program has been subjected to fraud and abuse.

Established in 1985, the Lifeline program offers low-income users a $9.25 monthly subsidy for basic telephone services. It was updated in 2008 to include wireless phones, and now Wheeler wants to reboot it again to "make sure it is still performing the critical function for which it was formed." His proposal would give eligible consumers the option to apply the subsidy to broadband Internet access.

The rise of ad blocking is becoming a serious problem for digital media companies. And for Google, it's turning into a multi-billion dollar issue. PageFair, a company that works with publishers to measure the cost of ad blocking and to help them display less intrusive advertising that can be whitelisted by the ad blockers, estimates that Google lost out on $6.6 billion in global revenue to ad blockers last year. To put that into context, that's 10% of the total revenue Google reported in 2014.

Adblock Plus, one of the most popular ad blockers, does give internet companies the chance for their ads to be whitelisted if they meet an "acceptable ads" policy - which includes what they deem as non-intrusive ads like sponsored search links. But bigger digital advertising companies like Google (as well as Microsoft, Amazon, and Taboola) are made to pay Adblock Plus huge fees - up to 30% of the additional ad revenues they would have made were the ads unblocked, according to The Financial Times. Google has managed to claw back around $3.5 billion by getting on ad blockers' whitelists, but Google is rumored to be paying $25 million to Adblock Plus alone just to do so.

But Google is not necessarily critical of ad blockers, in spite of the threat they pose to its revenue. Earlier this month Google CEO Larry Page was questioned by shareholder at the company's AGM as to whether he was worried about the rise of ad blockers. He responded that the best response to ad blockers from the industry will be to create better ads.

While HDCP 2.2 was developed to defeat media pirates, it has far more potential to thwart ordinary folks who just want to enjoy a movie in the privacy of their home. With current versions of HDCP rendered ineffective and all manner of 4K content on the horizon, Hollywood decided it needed stronger security. Cryptanalysts demonstrated HDCP to be breakable three years before the FCC approved it as a "Digital Output Protection Technology" in 2004. By 2010, a master key that effectively neutralized HDCP v1 was leaked. Versions 2.0 and 2.1 were summarily cracked as well. The main difference with 2.2 is the encryption systems used in the handshake are more complex than in prior versions. HDCP 2.2 is not backward compatible with the previous versions of HDCP that are currently used by most of the HD devices in all our homes. Having a non-HDCP 2.2 sound bar or AV receiver in your home theater system will be enough to terminate the handshake.

If you jumped on the Ultra HD bandwagon when 4K TVs and media devices first hit stores in 2013, don't assume your purchases support HDCP 2.2 and will work with future 4K devices and content-most of those early models don't and won't. If you've haven't dipped a toe into the 4K pool yet, we stand by our advice to wait it out until content producers and providers crank out enough 4K content to make the necessary hardware-upgrade expense worth it. That may take years.

SpaceX's perfect launch record came to an end, today, as an unmanned cargo ship destined for the International Space Station exploded minutes after launching from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sunday morning. The 208-foot-tall (63-meter) rocket was the company's 19th Falcon 9 launch since its 2010 debut, including six previous cargo runs for NASA under a 15-flight contract worth more than $2 billion.

The spacecraft carried 2,477kg of food, clothing, equipment and science experiments for the station. The gear included the first of two docking systems for space taxis under development by SpaceX and Boeing to park at the station. NASA hopes to turn over crew transportation to the US companies before the end of 2017, breaking Russia's monopoly. The crew on the International Space Station has about four months of food and supplies on board, so the accident does not pose an immediate problem for them. However, NASA's second cargo transporter, run by Orbital ATK , remains grounded following a launch accident in October. In April, a Russian Progress cargo ship also failed to reach the station.

In two new studies, a team of researchers led by hydrologists from the University of California, Irvine assessed the depletion of groundwater on a global scale using readings from NASA's GRACE satellites. The satellites monitor changes in Earth's gravity and act as a "scale in the sky," measuring shifts in the total amounts of water, both above and below ground. They concluded that likely much less water remains in aquifers than previously estimated. Groundwater is the primary source of water for about 2 billion people.

Over half of the world's biggest aquifers are being depleted. They are past sustainability tipping points, and a third of those big aquifers - 13 of those - are seriously distressed. The most severe situations seen in dry areas where little or no water is seeping into the ground to offset the amounts pumped out. The researchers found the Arabian Aquifer System, which supplies water to more than 60 million people, to be the most overstressed in the world, followed by the Indus Basin aquifer of northwestern India and Pakistan, and the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa, the Canning Basin in Australia and the aquifer system of the North China Plain. The aquifer beneath California's Central Valley was labeled as highly stressed. The Ogallala Aquifer didn't show up as being in decline, overall, even though portions of it likely have only a few decades of water left.

These problems can be addressed with proper management strategies, including replenishing aquifers when possible, recycling wastewater and adopting water-saving irrigation techniques.