Shaun W. Bridges, a computer crime expert and a former Secret Service special agent who helped bring down Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, will plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering for skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin and routing the money to his own accounts, according to federal court documents.

Using information he got from his interrogation of a Silk Road customer service representative who had administrator access, Bridges accessed Silk Road's systems in January 2013, reset several passwords and transferred about 20,000 bitcoin from the accounts, according to the complaint. He then converted the bitcoin into cash through a Japan-based bitcoin exchange and from there sent the money to the shell company's investment accounts, investigators said. Based on conversion rates at the time various transactions were made, federal prosecutors put the value of Bridges' loot at $820,000.

A second investigator, Carl Force, the Drug Enforcement Administration's lead undercover agent in the Silk Road case, faces a hearing in August for allegedly stealing bitcoin from Silk Road - and for allegedly blackmailing Ulbricht while at the same time selling him information about the investigation.

The past three years have been the driest in California history dating to the 1849 Gold Rush. Low snow-pack, combined with 2014 being the hottest year in history in the state, exacerbated the situation. With all the attention focused on California's water woes, an observer might conclude that the Golden State's drought is the exception. It isn't. Forty states expect to see water shortages in at least some areas in the next decade. In a 2013 survey by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), state water managers from around the country said they expect freshwater shortages to continue into the next decade, even under "average" conditions.

Montana was listed in the GAO report as the state most likely to have a statewide water shortage in the next decade. Many other western states are in a similar predicament. About 36 percent of Texas is experiencing moderate or exceptional drought, but that actually represents an improvement. In 2011, 100 percent of the state was experiencing drought. Texas lawmakers passed a referendum for $2 billion of the state's rainy day fund to be used to leverage $27 billion in bonds to implement a state water conservation plan. In Kansas, drought conditions also are a little better this year. Last year, 93 percent of Kansas was facing severe drought. The East is not immune. Delaware and North Carolina are likely to experience regional water shortages in the next decade. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the western part of North Carolina is already "abnormally dry."

This week will mark a first for Washington, as the state breaks ground in construction for their inaugural animal overpass. Interstate 90 in the Northwest cuts through the forests and mountains of the region, having long proved dangerous and fatal for wildlife. Now, the Department of Transportation will begin building a 150 foot-long structure freeway overpass designed specifically for all animals to endure safe passage, set to open in 2019.

While this is the first overpass, four underpasses are already open, and cameras have documented the transit of deer, coyotes, and otters, among others. It is presumed that all animals will look to the overpass, including black bears, cougars, and elk - though perhaps not at the same time. Two more overpasses are in the plans and perhaps more if there is enough money. Such structures have proven successful elsewhere, as more than 20,000 crossings a year from 30 species has been documented in Montana. Banff National Park in Canada has an extensive working of animal crossings, as seen above.

Last weekend, 24 teams from around the world converged in Pomona, California to compete for the DARPA Robotics Challenge. DARPA launched the competition in response to the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami when, if robots been among the first responder teams, human lives could have been saved. Up in the grandstand, hundreds of excited children and parents were ready for a modern-day gladiator spectacle. "Will there be killer robots?" asked one boy, who was very disappointed to find out the steel humanoids were there to help, not destroy.

After a difficult assault course, designed around a hazardous environment, which required robots to drill through a wall, release a mounted valve, climb stairs and drive an off-road utility vehicle, Team KAIST from Korea walked away with the $2 million first prize. In the end, the modification that set their DRC-Hubo apart was something that the other robots found difficult-the egress test-or getting out of the vehicle. Many of the other robots in the competition failed to dismount and had the indignity of their teams wheeling over the safety harness to tether and lift them out, losing points and time, before continuing other tasks. Team IHMC Robotics from the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition came in second.

A theme emerged: robot competitions are here to stay. "We aren't in competition with each other," said Dr. Arati Prabhakar, DARPA Director. "Really we are in competition against the problems of the world." Aging populations, environmental disasters, and dwindling natural resources are serious issues. But the glory, prize money and the global glow of publicity are nice, too

The US Air Force has responded to fears that it is weaponizing space through its secret space shuttle by providing some details of what it will contain at launch on Wednesday. The now not-so-secret X-37B launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on an Atlas V rocket operated by the United Launch Alliance. According to the published manifest the X-37B will be carrying a new form of Hall ion-powered thruster, ten CubeSats, a satellite containing a TCP/IP web server, test equipment for plasma thrusters, and a device to control low-orbital vehicles, among other gizmos.

The ion thruster being carried aboard the X-37B is owned by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and is a new, hopefully more efficient version of a drive system that uses electrical fields to accelerate ions for thrust. An older model is currently in use on three military communications satellites. "Space is so vitally important to everything we do," said Major General Tom Masiello, AFRL commander. "A more efficient on-orbit thruster capability is huge. Less fuel burn lowers the cost to get up there, plus it enhances spacecraft operational flexibility, survivability and longevity." There's no word on how long testing will take, but it's not really an issue for the X-37B - the spacecraft already holds the longevity record for a reusable spacecraft with a 674-day sojourn that ended last year. That's a lot of testing time and it's likely there's more in the X-37B's holds than the Air Force is letting on

HEVC (H.265) might be getting more attention, but Google's VP9 appears to match H.265 in quality and might play a bigger role in the transition from Flash to HTML5. VP9 is an open and royalty free video coding format being developed by Google to succeed H.264 and be competitive with HEVC, as part of its WebM project. HEVC has already made inroads into commercial hardware and software, following on the heels of the already widespread MPEG-4/AVC rollout. Intel, NVIDIA, ARM, Broadcom, LG, Philips, Samsung, and Realtek are among the many hardware vendors that have agreed to incorporate VP9 codec support. While VP9 may play only a minor role in broadcast markets, mobile, or OTT (although a handful of LG & Samsung 4K TVs already support it), it may never-the-less be an essential component for reaching the traditional desktop/notebook market.

VP9 delivers similar quality to H.264 at 50-60% of the data rate, and ultimately it may be the only UHD codec that plays on Firefox and Opera. Today, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome-which together comprise about 60% of browser share-all play VP9, while no browsers play HEVC. Adobe has not announced support for HEVC decode in Flash Player, and it's very unlikely that Firefox, with 17% of overall browser market share, will ever license HEVC. YouTube currently offers several resolutions of VP9 video, with Opus audio in the WebM file format, with adaptive bit-rate streaming, including 720p and 1080p, and will be using VP9 for 4K resolution content. Given that it's now pretty much the default on system configurations that support it, Google says YouTube users watched 25 billion hours of VP9 video in the last year.

Adobe has released security updates for Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. These updates address 13 vulnerabilities that could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. Adobe recommends users update their product installations to the latest versions:

Linux users should update to version 11.2.202.466
Windows and Macintosh users should update to version 18.0.0.160
Extended Support Release for Windows and Macintosh is 13.0.0.292.*

Users of Internet Explorer on Windows 8.x and Google Chrome on Windows, Linux and Mac will receive the Flash Player update for their respective browser automatically. Adobe also released updates for the AIR runtime on Windows, Mac and Android, as well AIR SDK and Compiler, because these programs bundle Flash Player.

History has shown that attackers are quick to target new Flash flaws after a fix becomes available for them. Earlier this year, attackers started exploiting a Flash Player vulnerability just one week after Adobe released a patch for it.

Airbus hasn't won a new airline customer for its flagship A380 superjumbo, the world's biggest commercial jet, in almost three years and needs to sell close to 30 a year just to break even. Now Airbus is set to face a fresh challenge as used A380 aircraft hit the market. Malaysia Airlines would like to dispose of two of its six A380s, while two built for failed carrier Skymark Airlines are seeking new owners. Thai Airways could also attempt to sell some of its six planes, all of them less than three years old. In addition, some of the oldest A380s are poised come off lease.

The A380, marketed as seating about 540 people in three classes, is generally too large for all but the densest routes, or ones where carriers must pack passengers onto fewer flights because of a lack of airport slots. Airbus COO John Leahy said second-hand A380s will be attractive to customers who would otherwise opt for a smaller and cheaper plane like the Boeing Co. 777 because they'll be available at similar rates. Used A380s are likely to be available at a fraction of the plane's $428 million list price. Second-hand A380s will benefit from the fact that airlines have generally used them on long routes, accruing a relatively low number of flight cycles.

According to NASA, there is almost 3,000 tons of space debris residing in a low-Earth orbit. This includes old, derelict satellites, leftover rocket parts and bodies, and other parts and tiny bits of wreckage produced by collisions of other larger objects. Impacts from this junk can cause damage to satellites due to their speed, as most are traveling about 22,370 miles per hour. As more and more satellites and spacecraft are sent into space, the problem of space debris is growing. Most spacecraft, including the International Space Station, can withstand impacts from most of the smaller junk in the neighborhood of 0.4 inches due to the shielding on the crafts. However, there are more than 700,000 pieces larger than that currently in orbit. While items larger than 4 inches are easy to spot, the ones between 0.4 inches and 4 inches in size are difficult to identify and dodge.

Researchers at the Extreme Universe Space Observatory could be getting a powerful laser installed in the Japan section of the International Space Station to help shoot down the space junk. Once the EUSO detects space junk, the Coherent Amplification Network laser would then blast the debris, burning off a thin film of matter from the surface and nudging the junk downward to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. The full-scale version would be armed with a 100,000-watt ultraviolet CAN laser than could fire 10,000 pulses per second. Researchers believe that this could blast space junk from a range of about 60 miles.

Chromebooks may be hot-ticket items, but with its sixth-generation A-series chips for mainstream laptops, AMD is instead placing its bets on Microsoft's Windows 10. The new chips, code-named Carrizo, will appear in laptops priced between US$400 and $800 from Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba. The first wave of laptops will become available starting in July, initially with Windows 8, and later in the year with Windows 10.

The new chips include quad-core A8 and A10 processors, which have up to six GPU cores, and the faster FX chips, which have up to eight GPU cores. The chips draw between 15 watts to 35 watts of power. Some new laptops based on the chips were shown at the Computex trade show in Taipei this week. PC makers are considering the new Carrizo chips for Windows laptops, not for Chromebooks, said Adam Kozak, marketing manager at AMD. Laptops also will get thinner and lighter, as Carrizo chips are about 29 percent smaller than their predecessors.