Feds Take Down Online Fraud Bazaar ‘Silk Road’, Arrest Alleged Mastermind  —  Defendant Charged With Drug Trafficking, Hacking, Money Laundering  —  Prosecutors in New York today said that federal agencies have taken over the Silk Road, a sprawling underground Web site that has earned infamy as the “eBay of drugs.”

Edward Snowden's E-Mail Provider Defied FBI Demands to Turn Over Crypto Keys, Documents Show  —  The U.S. government obtained a secret court order demanding that Edward Snowden's e-mail provider, Lavabit, turn over its private SSL key, which would have allowed the FBI to wiretap the service's users.

They're (Almost) All Dirty: The State of Cheating in Android Benchmarks  —  Thanks to AndreiF7's excellent work on discovering it, we kicked off our investigations into Samsung's CPU/GPU optimizations around the international Galaxy S 4 in July and came away with a couple of conclusions:

Supply constraints to delay or limit rollout of a Retina iPad Mini this year, say sources  —  Apple iPad Mini with sharper display faces delay  —  (Reuters) - Apple Inc will be unable to widely roll out a new version of the iPad Mini with a high-resolution “retina” display this month …

The complete history of Twitter as told through tortured descriptions of it in the New York Times  —  Twitter needs no introduction.  But it wasn't always so for the “blogging-like tool for quick updates” (2006), which grew into “another leading social network” (2013).

Apple to fix iMessage delivery glitch on iOS 7 in upcoming software update  —  iMessages to Nowhere?  —  Apple Inc. said it's aware of a glitch in iOS7 that is disrupting some iMessage texts and is working on a fix to quell mounting complaints after the company released the biggest overhaul of its iPhone operating system in years.

In a Big Mobile Move, Pivotal Buys Xtreme Labs for $65 Million in Cash  —  In a bid to up its mobile development expertise, the Web-focused software company Pivotal has made its first acquisition: Xtreme Labs.  —  San Mateo, Calif.-based Pivotal, which started its life as a joint venture of EMC and VMware …

Hulu Plus now works with Chromecast  —  Hulu has added Chromecast support to their Hulu Plus app—just in time for the fall television season.  Now you can easily enjoy your favorite shows, such as “Modern Family,” “New Girl” and “Parks and Recreation,” on your big-screen TV by casting from Hulu Plus on your mobile phone or tablet.

Dell unveils first four Venue tablets, including a Microsoft Surface competitor  —  HP isn't the only beleaguered PC manufacturer unleashing a tablet blitz.  Today, Dell is revealing a full product lineup of new tablets under the recently resurrected Venue brand.

N.S.A. Experiment Traced U.S. Cellphone Locations  —  WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency in 2010 and 2011 conducted a secret pilot project to test the collection of bulk data about the location of Americans' cellphones, but the agency ultimately decided against putting such a program …

This is the Fitbit Force, a smarter fitness tracking watch  —  Fitbit is set to release a new fitness tracking band called the Force.  The new device will be positioned above the company's current fitness band, the Flex, and will feature a built-in altimeter that measures your present altitude.

Apple hires longtime cable exec as engineering director for ‘something big’  —  Cable television industry veteran Jean-François Mulé will take an engineering position at Apple for an undisclosed project, rekindling speculation that the Cupertino company is further developing a set-top cable box.

Facebook's check-in based free Wi-Fi rolling out nationally with Cisco's help  —  Last year, Facebook began trialling a novel approach to Wi-Fi: it gave consumers free access to high-speed internet in exchange for checking in at a business.  Starting today, it's expanding that initiative even further with the help of Cisco.