The International Data Corporation (IDC), an firm that analyzes tech trends around the globe, released its quarterly Worldwide Tablet Market Study today, showing that tablet sales show no signs of slowing down any time soon.

The study shows that tablet shipments have increased 142 percent year over year for Q1 2013. Tablet shipments totaled 49.w million units in this first quarter, surging past the entire first two quarters of 2012 combined.

All tablet makers saw huge gains in the tablet space, though Apple’s overall share of the market is decreasing. The iPad is still the world’s largest tablet being sold, with 19.5 million shipping in the last quarter, up from 11.8 in last year’s Q1, an increase of 64 percent.

The U.S government has been warming up to consumer smartphones for some time. A couple months ago, the Pentagon announced that it will permit “the use of commercial products for classified communications for the first time.” Android handsets and iPhones are starting to be used in areas that previously didn’t offer security clearance.

In a world that has been ruled by Blackberry, the latest Samsung and Apple devices are about to be let into deeper parts of the government.

Everyone’s favorite digital rights crusaders Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have just released an annual report, ranking the biggest companies in tech for who does the best job protecting your data from being rifled through by the Federal Government.

Google’s really good about it. Apple? They’ll give away all your emails and data if the government just breathes on them, and they won’t bother telling you about it either.

AT&T has today announced the LG Optimus G Pro, a 5.5-inch Android-powered smartphone that will sell for $199 when it launches on May 3. The device is designed to give Samsung’s Galaxy Note II a run for its money, with a 1080p display and the latest quad-core Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm.

Samsung has had to defend the Galaxy S4’s plastic form factor quite a bit since the device was announced back in March, and one of the ways it has done that is by touting the handsets durability. Plastic, Samsung claims, makes the device much more robust than competing smartphones because it bends and absorbs impact.

But as we suspected all along, aluminum is stronger. In a smartphone torture test performed by warranty provider SquareTrade, the Galaxy S4 fails to beat the iPhone 5 in drop tests, and even proved to be more fragile than its predecessor, the Galaxy S III.