The latest leaked build of Windows Blue has floated out and onto the Internet, with build 9364 of the upcoming updated OS is available in both 32- and 64-bit, and will set you back around 2.63GB as an ISO file.

This is of course a leaked build, nothing official, so it's only available from the usual file-sharing websites. The latest build shows off some updated larger and smaller Live Tiles, some more Start screen customization as well as updated side-by-side app view which helps multi-tasking quite a bit as you can now display two applications with matching width.

There are some other things included with build 9364, such as a Play option under the Devices panel, a screenshot button on the Share sidebar, as well as Internet Explore 11 which comes included with Windows Blue.

The US skies will be filled with drones in the coming decade (or less at this rate) but it looks like NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks that privacy concerns should be pushed to the side. During a radio interview last week, Mayor Bloomberg essentially said that drones are an inevitable part of our future, comparing them to the thousands of cameras around Manhattan already in place. He said:

What's the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building? We're going into a different world, uncharted... you can't keep the tide from coming in.

Bloomberg continued, saying that our future will see more visibility and less privacy for citizens. Face recognition will be integrated into drone surveillance, where he wondered if a drone is that much more invasive than someone standing outside of your house. Bloomberg did tack on that legislation is needed, but warned against hasty action, saying "these are long-term, serious problems."

If you thought Dell would just fly off into the night and go public without anyone else bidding, well, you were wrong. The Blackstone Group submitted a preliminary offer before the original deal deadline on Saturday for Dell to go private for $24.4 billion.

Under the terms of the "go shop" clause in the agreement, it allowed Dell to seek other suitors. A second offer was received by investor Carl Icahn who purchased a bunch of shares a couple of weeks ago. There's no concrete details on Blackstone's deal, but they are offering between $13.65 and $15 per share in a deal that will see shareholder participation. Blackstone have invited GE Capital and others in order to help them out with financing the deal.

Icahn have previously demanded Dell pay $15.7 billion in special dividends above the buyout price or risk a proxy fight. Icahn's proposed dividend of $9 per share sees a 67% premium to existing shareholders over the current $13.65 offer that is currently at play with the buyout from Michael Dell, Microsoft and investment company Silver Lake.

Google Glass isn't even here yet and we're already seeing lawmakers make their movies. West Virginia lawmakers are trying to push in a new bill that would make it illegal to drive while "using a wearable computer with head mounted display."

The news comes from CNET, from a piece by Chris Matyszczyk, where he received an e-mail from Gary G. Howell, a Republican in the West Virginia Legislature. The e-mail read "your article on Google Glass prompted this bill." Matyszczyk asked Howell how this had all of the sudden transpired, but Howell isn't totally against Glass, telling Matyszczyk:

I actually like the idea of the product and I believe it is the future, but last legislature we worked long and hard on a no-texting-and-driving law. It is mostly the young that are the tech-savvy that try new things. They are also our most vulnerable and underskilled drivers. We heard of many crashes caused by texting and driving, most involving our youngest drivers. I see the Google Glass as an extension.

There are thousands of people, myself included, saddened by the news that Google are shutting down Reader in a couple of months. Why did they do it? News is now coming out that the Mountain View-based company closed Reader due to the hidden costs of keeping users' data private.

This is coming from an unnamed source of AllThingD, who said that the closure of Reader is at least partly due to Google's reluctance to build out the staff and infrastructure needed to deal with the legal and privacy issues related to Reader. The source added that Google are trying to position themselves so that they stop getting into expensive lawsuits, by adding dedicated staff to deal with legal issues to each of their teams.

When Google announced the closure of Reader, they didn't even have a project manager of full-time engineer dedicated to it. Google reportedly didn't want to spend the money building the service into a full-blown app, and on the flip side, didn't want to sell it to a third-party because of its deep integration with other Google Apps.

Blizzard have yet another game that gamers will pour hours into, where during the Penny Arcade Expo, Blizzard announced a free-to-play, collectible card game based on the Warcraft franchise. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will see players select one of nine characters as they take turns summoning characters, casting spells and using weapons in a one-versus-one online game.

The company have said that they love collectible card games and have been playing them since their Silicon & Synapse days, adding that creating a digital card game like Hearthstone felt natural, so they constructed a small team of 15 developers to smash out the title. They were reportedly given more creative freedom to experiment, but it looks like it could pay off.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will be made available for PC and Mac users, with an iPad version arriving at a later date. You can try to apply for beta access through your Battle.net account.

Apple have reached 100% renewable energy usage at all of their data centers, with their corporate facilities not far behind with 75% renewable energy. Considering the company was at just 35% renewable energy for their corporate facilities two years ago, this is a swift, and great change:

Our goal is to power every facility at Apple entirely with energy from renewable sources - solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. So we're investing in our own onsite energy production, establishing relationships with suppliers to procure renewable energy off the grid, and reducing our energy needs even as our employee base grows.

 

Our investments are paying off. We've already achieved 100 percent renewable energy at all of our data centers, at our facilities in Austin, Elk Grove, Cork, and Munich, and at our Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. And for all of Apple's corporate facilities worldwide, we're at 75 percent, and we expect that number to grow as the amount of renewable energy available to us increases. We won't stop working until we achieve 100 percent throughout Apple.

With Tim Cook steering the Apple ship, we are seeing the company go in a new direction, something I'm guessing will help them gain more users, but not alienate others who like iOS. The latest news is that the Apple CEO has set Jony Ive with leadership of Apple's Human Interface teams, as well as his role as the head of Industrial Design.

This news has suggested that Apple's hardware and software user interfaces could be intertwined even more, with one executive in charge of everything you see and touch on an iOS device. The Wall Street Journal has chimed in, confirming that this is true, with mobile software teams being briefed about new hardware prototypes earlier in the design cycle. Ive is now sitting in on the human interface team's review sessions, where he can have more one-on-one time with the new designs.

Some suggested that in Apple's next mobile operating system, Ive is pushing a more "flat design" that is starker and simpler, according to developers who have spoken to Apple employees but didn't have further details. Overall, they expect any changes to be pretty conservative. For the past few years, Apple has unveiled versions of its mobile operating system in the summer.

 

Design is one example of the increased "collaboration across hardware, software and services" that Apple said it was aiming for when Cook pushed senior vice president and mobile software chief Scott Forstall out of the company last year.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have put up a $100,000 of initial funding for someone who designs the "next generation of condoms." The money won't stop there, as the funding will expand up to $1 million for whoever is capable of delivering the next-gen contraception.

Considering that the basic form of contraception hasn't received many changes over the years, it is used by an estimated 750 million people across the world for both reducing unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually-transmitted infections. The Foundation's description of the challenge explains it as: "The primary drawback from the male perspective is that condoms decrease pleasure as compared to no condom."

A next-gen condom might give men more sensation, pushing them to use them more often, for the good of global health. When it comes to female condoms, "suffer from some of the same liabilities as male condoms, require proper insertion training and are substantially more expensive than their male counterparts."

My Facebook feed has been set ablaze of the last few days due to the first expansion to StarCraft 2, Heart of the Swarm, being released. Blizzard have now announced that they sold 1.1 million copies of the game in just 48 hours.

The 1.1 million copies are from combined physical and digital copies, but Blizzard hasn't said how it split in terms of sales. Blizzard launched StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm on my birthday, I mean March 12, and saw their launch date event broadcast online with an additional 1.1 million viewers, with the concurrent viewers sitting at around 125,000.

Samsung might not be baking in their octo-core Exynos 5 processor in to the US-based Galaxy S4, but it looks as though they could be saving some of those eight-core processors for their upcoming, but still rumored Galaxy Tab 3 Plus.

The rumored tablet will feature the octo-core Exynos 5 processor, a Super AMOLED Full HD display which will arrive as either a 10.1- or 11.6-inch panel. There are reportedly two prototypes floating around, with the final screen size not yet finalized. We should hear more on this in the coming weeks.

Apple is still trying to begin to (because they aren't right now) compete with Google and their far superior mapping service, where the Cupertino-based company have just acquired an indoor GPS tracking startup, WiFiSlam.

The Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Apple have acquired the startup, who specializes in WiFi-assisted indoor GPS functionality for smartphones. What makes this news interesting is that the company was reportedly founded by a few ex-Google staff a couple of years ago, with one of their investors included a Google employee. A stronger confirmation on this is the fact that any WiFiSlam-related apps have been removed from the Google Play Store.

Apple reportedly coughed up $20 million for the startup, but no confirmation on this has materialized. I'm sure we'll see more on this in the future.

And just like that the tech crowd has moved on from the Galaxy S4 to the Galaxy S4 Mini. Samsung first introduced the "Mini" line with the Galaxy S3 Mini last year. We're now seeing what are purported to be leaked pictures and specifications of an upcoming Galaxy S4 Mini smartphone.

The expected launch time for the device pictured above is sometime in June or July. The screen will be a smaller 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD. This yields a pixel density of just 256 ppi. The device will be powered by an unknown 1.6GHz dual-core processor. The operating system will be Android 4.2.2 with the TW Nature UX 2.0 laid on top.

We're hearing that the device might also come with a dual SIM slot, which some customers will appreciate. Considering the device will be a budget phone, I'm leaning towards it not coming with a dual SIM. We'll have to wait and see.

Google continues to expand its Transparency Report. This time Google has added a list of recently submitted URLs for takedown that the company declined. This latest update comes on the heels of Google expanding the report to include a statistics on the number of false DMCA takedown requests received.

Besides having the effect of calling out the sheer ignorance (stupidity?) of the rights managements groups, the new section brings attention to these links that the company attempted to have removed. Obviously, some of the requested links that were rejected by Google are more entertaining than others.

For instance, Audiolock issued a takedown request for 25 different URLs. Google denied 84 percent because many of the links were to the band's music on iTunes, Spotify, and eMusic. Go figure.

Check out the newly updated Transparency Report and feel free to send us any especially humorous takedown requests similar to the one above.

After a security hole was discovered in Apple's iForgot password recovery page that allowed passwords to be recovered with just an e-mail and date of birth, Apple has disabled the page for obvious reasons. Navigating to the page now returns a "Currently Unavailable" status message that suggests you "check back later."

Make sure to enable two-step authentication on your account to help protect from future vulnerabilities such as this.

At the time of writing, Apple's page continually timed out for both my coworkers and myself.

Apple obviously felt the sting of a recently settled lawsuit as they have added a warning to free apps that have in-app purchases. This will allow parents to easily identify which free apps offer in-app purchases and hopefully prevent their kids from going crazy with micro-transactions.

The warning doesn't appear to be present on the mobile App Store or on the Apple website. It is confirmed to be showing in the App Store that is contained within iTunes. We do expect it to eventually show up on the mobile version of the App Store.

An interesting idea that could spring from this new warning is the ability to filter apps that allow in-app purchases. Apple has clearly identified free apps that contain in-app purchases. Now all they need to do is implement a parental filter to prevent those apps from being used or downloaded. Apple has not said that this feature will be implemented.

We won't deny the fact that Google's self-driving car is very well equipped when it comes to computing power. It has an massive array of sensors and is able to process all of that data in near real-time. But, can the car compete with, say, a UC Berkeley Nobel laureate? The car sure seems to think so:

The parking spot looked perfectly acceptable to it. This brings up an interesting question about Google's self-driving car and parking. Is the car able to tell where it is legal to park? Can it detect handicapped signs and limited time parking signs? All questions that I'm sure will be answered as the technology progresses.

Occasionally an interviewer manages to get under the skin of a person they are interviewing. Often times it makes for a great interview. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was being interviewed on Finnish TV--video embedded below--and the interviewer continually asked about the Lumia 928. Elop managed to dodge those questions and get away with tossing the interviewer's iPhone.

During the interview, Elop calls the fact that the interviewer has an iPhone "embarrassing" and then tosses it away. The interviewer continues to pester him about the Lumia 928, though Elop was interested in sharing the Lumia 620. Watch the video and enjoy a CEO tossing an interviewer's iPhone.

T-Mobile is working quickly to roll out its LTE network. It appears that they are beginning to test installations in a few different cities and OpenSignal has seen their app utilized on the new 4G LTE installations. Lucky for us, we have some early testing data on the network that show it should be able to compete.

A quick disclaimer before we actually dive into the hard numbers: these tests were carried out with little load on the network and were likely in strong signal locations. With that said, the T-Mobile LTE came up with an average download speed of 25Mb/s and 8Mb/s upload. Combine that with an average ping of 40ms and it starts to look really good. Of course, real world speeds will be slower.

It's also interesting to note that the network was being tested with the Samsung Note II, Samsung Galaxy S4, an unlocked AT&T Galaxy S3, and the SII HD LTE. OpenSignal says they have detected testing in Seattle, Denver, Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York, San Diego, Kansas City, and the San Jose/Bay Area.

Apple appears to be taking security more seriously. Just a mere 24 hours after Yontoo adware was discovered to be affecting Mac OS X systems, Apple has pushed out an update to its malware definitions to protect from the malware. The Yontoo adware was found to be injecting ads into sites visited in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

Apple hasn't always been so quick to respond to new threats. For a long time, Apple actually advertised that Mac OS X was basically invulnerable to viruses. Variants of Yontoo are bound to show up and it will be interesting to see if Apple is able to keep them at bay. As always, we'll keep our eye on the latest security threats and alert users when major problems arise.