Month: July 2016

Shaun Bridges was captured by CCTV security cameras, leaving a Secret Service field office with a large bag. The government said the bag may have contained hard drives with keys needed to access his Bitstamp wallet.

Newly unsealed court documents have revealed that one of the corrupt federal agents investigating Silk Road, the online drug marketplace, is suspected of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin—after he pleaded guilty last year.

Shaun Bridges is one of two agents who pled guilty to stealing from the Darknet market. Bridges stole about $800,000 worth of bitcoins from Silk Road drug dealers after he and a partner arrested a Silk Road admin and learned how to reset passwords. That led to Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of running Silk Road in February 2015, attempting to order the murder of the admin, Curtis Green. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison last year.

Bridges' scam was later discovered, though. The former Secret Service agent, who served on a Baltimore-based task force investigating Silk Road, was arrested in March 2015 and pled guilty a few months later. In January, Bridges was arrested again just one day before he was scheduled to turn himself in. The documents unsealed Thursday shed light on why the second arrest took place.

(credit: Robert S. Donovan)

If you're a kid, few things are better than homemade cookies. Unlike store-bought sweets, you get to gobble up any bits of cookie dough stuck to the bowl and beaters, which can be more exciting than the cookies themselves.

Of course, most adults know you’re not supposed to eat raw dough because the raw eggs in it may contain Salmonella. But now there’s something else to worry about: E. coli in the flour.

On May 31, General Mills recalled 10 million pounds of flour, sold under three brands after an investigation linked the grain to an outbreak of E. coli O121 (you can see the recall information here). On Friday, the company expanded the recall as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tallied new cases. So far, the tainted flour has sickened 42 and sent 11 to the hospital. Although many strains of E. coli are harmless, the O121 serotype can lead to symptoms that typically include abdominal pain and diarrhea, often bloody. This E. coli can also even cause severe illness that leads to kidney failure. Young children, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems are the most at risk of these severe cases.

Happy Fourth from everyone at Ars! While the American half of the staff takes a much-need vacation over the next two days, we thought this would be a good time to share our personal picks for a very important piece of everyday tech: our headphones. Ars' staff is never lacking in opinions, and our preferences range from earbuds (to keep us tethered to our smartphones and subscription-music apps) to giant cans (because we want the right combination of sound and comfort while rocking out or getting our online-gaming frag on).

This isn't a scientific "best headphones of all time" list by any stretch. This is the gear we each use in our day-to-day lives, and we look forward to hearing your own picks as well. Without further ado: let's get canned!

KSC-32i FitClips, Koss: $14

Foreground buildings: Contractors Canteen, Changing Rooms, Showers, etc. || Green, Yellow, and Red buildings: Contractors’ Offices || White Building: Canteen and Infirmary for Contractors || Tall building: Assembly Hall || To the right of the Assembly Hall and behind the other buildings: Cryostat Assembly Site (credit: Dave Loschiavo)

ST. PAUL-lez DURANCE, France—Rolling hills and oak woodlands dominate rural Southern France. However, about 35km north of Aix-en-Provence, nature has given way to a team of 1,000 construction workers who are laboring around the clock to build the largest physics experiment that’s never been discussed by Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, and Howard.

Known as ITER, this experimental Tokamak fusion reactor is intended to be the last necessary step to prove the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion as a commercial energy source. It is a collaborative effort of China, the European Union (through Euratom), India, Japan, Korea, Russia, Switzerland (also through Euratom), and the United States. In total, it will include 35 countries.

The scale of this project, in so many dimensions, is nothing short of awe inspiring and humbling. Physically, the main buildings used to assemble and house the Tokamak reactor stand 60m (~200ft) tall and sit in a leveled area of 40 hectares (~100 acres). The entire site, adding the open space and office buildings, measures 180 hectares. Logistically, as a construction project, the ITER team is tracking over 200,000 actions necessary to bring the effort to fruition.

You know what a King game looks like by now. Despite the broad array of fantastical names and exotic themes, each one is, at its core, a match-three game in which blocks are switched to create lines of uniform colours. It's not a new concept and King certainly didn't invent it, but the young Swedish company has undoubtedly acquired more success from the formula than anyone else on mobile devices.

Through the first quarter of 2016, King has had three titles in the top 15 grossing games on the Apple App Store and Google Play in the US. Candy Crush Saga is arguably the most famous and most played mobile game ever released, and that orange and yellow logo is synonymous with gaming on the go. It's this success that resulted in the studio recently being acquired by Activision-Blizzard for a rather princely sum, despite concerns that it's nothing more than a flash-in-the-pan, one trick pony. Its IPO back in 2014 was a disaster, after all.

Indeed, the company has struggled to bestow the enormous success of Candy Crush upon its other products. With so many people still swiping digital blocks of sugar to pass the time, and with King's line-up being so mechanically uniform, why would players deviate towards another IP? The likes of Pet Rescue Saga, Diamond Digger Saga, and Alpha Betty Saga have been but mere farts in the wind compared to the freemium, money-ranking behemoth that is Candy Crush.