Jeff Bertolucci

If you are hoping the next iPhone will finally sport a bigger screen, the latest Apple rumors may bring a smile to your face.

Apple news site 9to5Mac claimed to be in possession of several images showing what appears to be the casing for the next-generation device. These photos show a partial aluminum backing, as well as a bigger display and a new dock connector.

If you've ever quit Netflix -- only to come crawling back once you've realized that Hulu only has TV shows and the MPAA is cracking down on other video-streaming sites, you've probably noticed that when you re-signup for Netflix your data is still on the servers. Even if you quit the service over a year ago.

Well, those of you crying privacy foul need worry no more -- Netflix has agreed to delete former users' video history and queue data within one year of their leaving the service. The company agreed to this stipulation in a settlement regarding a class-action privacy lawsuit filed against Netflix last year. The lawsuit accused Netflix of violating the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which makes it illegal for video rental services to disclose viewers' video habits without written consent.

If you’re in the market for a new all-in-one PC, the Dell XPS One 2710 is an appealing option. It’s fast, it handles Blu-ray discs, it delivers a great picture on its 27-inch PLS screen, and it costs all of $3500 less than the current category leader, HP’s Z1 Workstation. That’s no typo: Costing $1999 (as configured, price as of May 30, 2012), the XPS One 2710 racks up an impressive series of wins and makes few blunders.

It should come as little surprise that much of the XPS One 2710’s speed can be traced directly to its use of an Intel Ivy Bridge processor--namely, the 3.1GHz Core i7-3770S, the lower-power, 65W chip in the high-end Ivy Bridge lineup. The i7-3770S helped the XPS One 2710 nail an overall score of 143 on our WorldBench 7 suite of tests. To put that score in perspective, note that the far pricier HP Z1 Workstation posted a mark of 159 equipped with a 3.5GHz Intel Xeon E31280 processor, double the memory (16GB), a 600GB solid-state drive (versus the 2TB hard drive in Dell’s AIO), and an Nvidia Quadro 4000M graphics card, which offers 336 GPU cores versus 384 cores for the integrated Kepler chip on the XPS One, the Nvidia GT 640M.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may be extradited to Sweden for questioning about allegations of sexual offenses, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, upholding a lower court ruling and dismissing Assange's appeal.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority issued a European Arrest Warrant for Assange in November 2010, seeking his extradition to Sweden for questioning over allegations of sexual offenses. He was arrested in London on Dec. 7, 2010, and placed under virtual house arrest while courts examined the extradition request, which he opposed.

Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the Wall Street Journal’s tenth annual D: All Things Digital conference, appearing at the same event that his predecessor, Steve Jobs, had headlined several times before. Answering questions from conference hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Cook said his company is doubling down on Siri, played coy about Apple’s approach to the gaming and television markets, and spoke emotionally about Jobs’s death.

Double doubling down

As with any public appearance of an Apple executive, there was a good-natured give and take about future product releases. Mossberg and Kara tried to cajole Cook into revealing future product details, knowing full well that he would do no such thing. (In fact, the Apple CEO declared that the company was “doubling down on secrecy” when it comes to product releases.) However, he did offer a few tantalizing tidbits, most notably about the Siri feature of the iPhone 4S.

[Tim Cook kicked off this year’s D: All Things Digital conference on Tuesday. The Apple CEO was interviewed by conference hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, in a lively, engaging conversation. Here’s an edited roundup of the highlights.]

The head of TED, the organizer of conferences around brainy presentations on a wide variety of subjects, says online video will continue to play a central role for the group and he has high hopes for its new education platform.

TED Curator Chris Anderson said that the group's popularity surged after its decision to post its content freely online about six years ago, and that a million people watch a TED presentation each day around the world. But he said the current model of watching embedded videos on Web pages may eventually fade.

A McAfee study of PCs around the world found that 17 percent had no antivirus protection, and the U.S. outpaced the average with 19 percent of PCs unprotected.

The study counted as unprotected machines those that had no antivirus protection installed, or whose antivirus subscription had expired. In the U.S., 12 percent of PCs did not contain any antivirus program, and 7 percent had software that was expired.

A court in New Zealand has granted Kim Dotcom, founder of the Megaupload file-sharing site, access to documents which contain evidence against him, and are held by prosecuting authorities both in New Zealand and the U.S.

"A denial of the provision of information that could enable a proper adversarial hearing in my view would amount to a denial of the opportunity to contest and that would effectively mean that the process is one sided...," District Court Judge David J. Harvey said in his ruling on Tuesday.

Here's how to use Plex, a free tool for streaming media from a PC to a Roku set-top box. And if your PC seems to be too sluggish to play media promptly, I'll give you some tips to decide when it's time to reinstall Windows.

My tiny Roku set-top delivers everything I could possibly want to my TV: Amazon (both Prime and Instant), Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Pandora.

Well, okay, not quite everything: The Roku can't stream my personal library of music, photos, and videos without a little help from Plex, anyway. Plex works like a charm, though it can be tricky to set up. Here's how to get started:

1. Add the Plex channel to your Roku.

2. Download and install the Plex Media Server utility for Windows. This is the software that'll link your media library to your box.

3. Right-click the Plex Media Server icon in your System Tray, then choose Media Manager. That should open a new tab in your browser, which is where you'll set up the media you want to share with your Roku. It may take a minute or two before any options appear, so be patient.

4. Eventually you'll see five options for adding media to your library. The process is the same for all, so click one (say, Photos), then click Add and navigate to the folder containing the photos you want to add. Click Add again if you want to include additional folders.

5. When you've finished making your selections, click Add Section. Again, it may take a minute or two for your media to appear in the browser tab.

6. Now head to your TV, fire up the Roku, and choose the Plex channel. You should see your selected media channels, which you can now browse and view as you like.

If you have trouble navigating your media owning to filename confusion, check out Plex's Naming Guide, which is a bit confusing but can ultimately be of some help.

Also, if you have trouble with pixelation, grab the latest version of Plex Media Server directly from Plex.

HTC said on Wednesday its newest smartphones models had all passed a required U.S. Customs review, clearing device shipments to the country after they were previously delayed because of the inspection.

The Taiwanese smartphone vendor completed the review process with U.S. customs, and the devices were found to be in compliance with an International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling, HTC said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing.

Whether or not Facebook acquires facial recognition services provider Face.com, as rumors say it will, the persistence of the speculation calls attention to the expanding use of the technology in social applications.

Face.com's first app, Photo Finder, allowed Facebook users to search for photos of themselves that others had uploaded. Photo Tagger, which suggests names for people pictured, launched in November 2009. Just over a year later, Facebook licensed Face.com's technology to begin suggesting friends for users to tag.