Silk Road investigators charged with stealing bitcoin

Virtual evidence is no less tempting to a corrupt agent than cash or drugs found in a raid: Two former US federal agents face charges related to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin in the course of investigating the Silk Road marketplace. A former DEA special agent, who worked undercover to cultivate a relationship with recently convicted Ross Ulbricht, allegedly used online personas to engage in complex bitcoin transactions to steal both from the government and the targets of the investigation. And a former Secret Service agent who served as a computer forensics expert allegedly took more than $800,000 in digital currency that he gained control of during the Silk Road investigationand put it in his account at now-defunct bitcoin exchange Mt Gox.

Intel wants to quadruple SSD storage capacity

Everyone wants more storage capacity on their mobile devices without making them any larger, and Intel is working on it: one effort underway is to stuff more bits in a single cell, which could quadruple solid-state drive capacity. The technique that Intel calls QLC (quad-level cell) could put 10TB of storage on standard 2.5-inch drives. Intel said QLC is still at the research stage, and didnt provide a timeline for the release of flash chips based on the technology.

Smartwatch segment to grow 500% in 2015, says IDC

The buzz around the Apple Watch will help fuel 500 percent growth in smartwatch shipments this year, says IDC. The market researcher expects Apple to take 62 percent of the market, even as it lowered its forecast from 22 million to 15.9 million units shipped thanks to a later on-sale date than was expected. IDC sees 25.7 million smart wearables shipping this year, quite a bit less than the 40 million rival researcher Gartner is forecasting.

Samsung, LG call a truce

Silicon Valley executives may believe in unicorns but they probably dont believe theres a land where two bitter rivals decide to end legal action against each other because the petty dispute is wasting everyones time and money. But there is such a place, and its called South Korea: Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have made up over an incident where an executive from LG was charged with deliberately damaging Samsungs new washing machines ahead of a trade show. The companies said in a joint statement they had decided to bury their differences and focus on improving their services and products. And for good measure, the two companies have also ended a dispute over the alleged theft of OLED technology.

IBM putting $3 billion into new IoT unit

IBM wants to claim a bigger piece of the emerging Internet of things market, and to do that it will invest US$3 billion over four years to establish a new business unit. Chris OConnor will run the group, which is going after customers in travel, logistics, insurance, public utilities, transportation and retail.

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The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Tuesday, March 31