Wayne Williams

HoloLens is unquestionably one of the most exciting pieces of hardware being developed by Microsoft at the moment. The augmented reality system, or "untethered holographic computer" as the software giant refers to it, was first announced a year ago, but since then there’s been no word on when we can actually expect to see it.

Today, however, Microsoft announces a Development Edition which is now open for pre-orders, with shipping starting on March 30. This is the first step towards a consumer version.

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Windows Defender, Windows 10’s built in antivirus tool, will keep your PC safe from numerous threats, but it’s not on a par with dedicated third-party anti-malware solutions.

Microsoft is working to make it more useful however, including adding offline capabilities that will allow you to run a system scan at bootup, and without an internet connection. That will make the tool much better at detecting and removing malicious software. Windows Defender Offline is not available to all at the moment, but you can still try it out.

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Recently Anonymous has mostly been in the news for targeting Islamic State on the web, playing its part in helping to shut down thousands of ISIS-supporting accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

But the hacktivist collective, which has been active since 2003, has initiated a lot of campaigns over the years, targeting a variety of people and organizations, some more successfully than others. The group’s list of achievements is quite impressive -- ranging from getting an internet predator arrested, to taking on the Church of Scientology.

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Four years ago today, on 29 February 2012, the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the original Raspberry Pi. Conceived as an ultra-cheap way to encourage kids to code as they had back in the 1980s and 90s, the uncased credit card sized computer quickly found an appreciative audience outside of the education system, with over a million Pis sold in the first year alone. Since then the firm has released several new versions, including the Raspberry Pi 2 (launched a year ago), and most recently the ultra-elusive $5 Raspberry Pi Zero.

Today, to celebrate the Pi’s 4th birthday, a new member joins the family. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is significantly more powerful than its predecessors and yet is priced at just $35, the same price as the Raspberry Pi 2.

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As pointed out on Twitter, and reported by TechCrunch, Apple made a little tweak to its website’s CSS code to prevent people misreading the tagline for its latest operating system, OS X El Capitan.

The line should say, "There’s more to love with every click", but the word "click" looked a lot like an entirely different, and ruder word.

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Google’s Chromecast is a nifty piece of kit. The $35 dongle lets you stream content from your smartphone or tablet to the big screen. It’s great for casting TV shows, movies, music, sports, games and more.

At the moment you need to purchase a dongle and attach it to your set via HDMI to use this functionality, but in the future that step might not be required as Google is reportedly looking to partner with TV manufacturers to offer Chromecast-like functionality natively.

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Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14267 arrived on the Fast ring 6 days ago and brought some very welcome improvements with it, including three additions to Microsoft Edge, although sadly still no support for extensions.

Today Microsoft rolls out another Fast ring update, Build 14271, and also an update for Mobile, Build 14267.1004. This is the first time the software giant has released new builds for PC and mobile on the same day.

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The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s $5 barebones computer remains ever-elusive for many would be buyers. Almost as quickly as the device goes back in stock it sells out again.

On Wednesday 24 February, The Pi Hut is going to start selling a fresh batch of Pi Zero stock, and you’ll have not one, but two chances to get your hands on the desirable little piece of kit.

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The debate about whether Apple should help the FBI to access content stored on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters rumbles on. Based on our poll, the majority of BetaNews readers are against Apple cracking the phone (67 percent say no, 30 percent say yes, and 3 percent are currently undecided), and most tech firms have expressed similar sentiment.

But in an interview today with the Financial Times (story behind a paywall) Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has come out firmly on the side of the FBI.

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One of the (many) things that divides opinion about Windows 10 is Microsoft’s decision to make updates mandatory. If you have Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise or Education editions you can defer updates, but you can’t reject them outright.

Windows 10 Home users don’t have this luxury and updates are installed automatically once they become available.

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Microsoft has been rolling out new Windows 10 Insider Preview builds to the Fast ring at a rate of about one a week for the past month or so.

The latest build, 14267, introduced some welcome improvements, including three additions to Microsoft Edge, but it also added a fast startup bug which has stopped some users being able to boot Windows.

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Linux Mint is one of the best distos around, but if you’ve installed it recently you might have done so using a compromised ISO image.

The Linux Mint team today reveals that hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack the Mint website so it pointed to this bad version.

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The US courts say Apple should help the FBI access the contents of an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, but Apple is refusing, on the grounds that it doesn’t want to erode the security of Apple customers.

I’m personally on Apple’s side, as is my colleague Joe Wilcox, but Donald Trump wants Apple to use "common sense" and open its phone up, while John McAfee is claiming he can help the FBI unlock Apple’s device within "three weeks", primarily through the use of social engineering. The FBI for its part says it doesn’t want Apple to create a backdoor in all iPhones, just unlock the one belonging to the killer.

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Ad blocking has been going on for years, but it’s risen in popularity a lot lately, thanks in part to Apple allowing ad blockers into the App Store. Popular content blocker Adblock Plus has been having conversations with advertisers recently too and is looking to discover just why people block ads on the web.

In an interesting move, mobile network operator Three has announced that it will be using ad blocking technology created by Israeli startup Shine to block adverts on a network level.

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After a flurry of new builds, Insiders on the Fast ring have had to wait a whole two weeks for the latest Windows 10 update to arrive.

Unlike previous Fast ring releases, which focused on updates to OneCore (the core that Windows 10 shares across devices) and preparing the ground work for future additions, like extensions, Build 14267 actually has some improvements worthy of note, including several usability enhancements to Microsoft Edge.

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