A landmark decision has been reached in the ongoing data encryption war. A US magistrate judge in New York, presiding over a drug trafficking case, has ruled Apple cannot be forced to unlock an iPhone by the US government, which has been using the more than 100 year-old All Writs Act (AWA) as part of its argument. While this doesn't directly involve the bigger San Bernardino terrorism case, it's a big win for Apple and smartphone users in general who support their right to encryption, and will certainly help its argument in that case.

"The established rules for interpreting a statute's text constrain me to reject the government's interpretation that the AWA empowers a court to grant any relief not outright prohibited by law," magistrate Judge James Orenstein stated in his order.

In other words, the government overstepped its bounds in its interpretation of the AWA. Orenstein went on to conclude this is a congressional issue.

While fans eagerly await the theatrical release of the superhero bust-up 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' in just a few weeks, online stores are capitalising on the swirl of interest in the title by offering the Blu-ray up for pre-order.

While Warner Bros haven't officially provided a release date or disc specs, Amazon are already taking pre-orders for the Blu-ray release for $33.99. The release is said to include the longer, more intense R-rated director's cut, which has already been passed by the MPAA.

But if you want to see it as soon as possible, 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' will be released in 3D and 2D cinemas, as well as IMAX screens ("Holy big screen, Batman!") on March 25th worldwide.

An Australian startup has successfully Kickstarted its first product: LMcable, a 2-in-1 connector that allows you to charge an iPhone or an Android phone. Data transfer is an option, too. The idea is pretty simple: plug it in one way for a Lightning port, and turn it upside down for micro USB -- no split connectors necessary.

Features include a brass buckle for "neat closure" and portability, a leather-bound cable, and tin-plated copper wires for high durability. And for the environmentally conscious, it utilizes Halogen-free TPE instead of PVC.

$5,000 AUD / ~$3,600 USD was the funding goal, which has been shattered with $59,073 AUD / ~$42,500 USD raised as of press time, and with 29 days to go, no less. The cable is expected to start shipping in mid April (initial planning began last July).

AMD is being very forward about teasing what Roy Taylor calls 'the world's best VR solution' - this time partnering with the Associated Press, and sending them a bunch of dual-GPU powered VR gaming machines. It was only a few days ago when we got our first real look at the R9 Fury X2 inside of the Falcon Northwest Tiki gaming PC.

Roy Taylor took to his personal Facebook and Twitter accounts, saying: "Thanks Wallace Santos for his partnership in shipping the world's best #VR solution to the #AssociatedPress". We still don't know what's inside, but I'm sure it's AMD's dual-GPU based on the Fiji architecture - currently known (or at least, it should be called) the Radeon R9 Fury X2. It's also gone by codename Gemini, which also sounds super-awesome.

AMD is set to "spice things up" at the Game Developers Conference on March 14, where we might see either the dual-GPU in action or Polaris.

It's strangely named but that concern will likely subside after some brief use: SoundHound's Hound app has left beta and is now available to all. If you're looking for a solid voice assistant app (allowing you to search and perform various other tasks with your voice alone), this should be your ticket.

Hound features a slick, fast, and intuitive interface, and appears to be more intelligent than most if not all apps of its kind with language understanding capabilities that combine with speech recognition as well as context and detail comprehension. The result: you can simply say things naturally and get the result you want instead of worrying about accommodating the app.

Now for the bad news: it's only available in the US. We've heard one report that users from Canada can download it, but it simply forwards your voice requests to Google. In any case, those not in the US may want to try an APK mirror here.

The Xbox One Preview Program is getting a pretty substantial update pushed out tomorrow. This update is finally giving you the ability to buy those Xbox 360 backwards compatible games straight through the Xbox One store itself.

If you're lucky enough to have signed up and been chosen for the honor of this program, then you'll also be able to enjoy much larger Party Chat rooms, with up to 16 people able to tell you how much you such at one time. You'll also have the ability to include each person individually into your Twitch broadcast, though each person has the ability to decline should they want to. The party leader can also mute the voice of anyone who opted-in to being part of the broadcast, just in case.

And in case you want to show off the things you've accomplished with the nearly 30 million hours of Xbox 360 in Xbox One gaming time, then you'll also be able to share your Xbox 360 achievements in your Xbox One activity feed, which is only natural given that you can play those games on the console now. So why not celebrate all of your achievements properly.

Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness is being developed primarily for the PlayStation 3, but that doesn't mean that the PlayStation 4 version, which is the only version that'll be available outside the US, has to suffer because of that. Some of the differences between the two versions have been outlined by Square Enix and tri-Ace.

On the latest Star Ocean Program broadcast, they talked about the fact that the framerate would be targeting 60FPS in most cases at 1080P on the PS4, though some of the more challenging scenes might push it more towards 30FPS. The resolution won't scale, though and will remain the same regardless. The PS3 is limited to 720P, 30FPS and far less visual fidelity compared to the big brother port.

Although it's a port, tri-Ace is working hard on ensuring that the graphics are actually taking advantage of the 1152 GCN cores available. It won't be a direct port, with higher resolution textures, more fluid animations, and a higher LOD. The full list of differences is below. At least initially it sounds like they're taking care to not make the mistakes of many ports that have preceded this one.

Well, not it's actually official. After the Seattle Times jumped the gun by just a few hours, Microsoft has announced that Forza Motorsport 6: Apex will be available this Spring absolutely for free.

The game will more than take advantage of the kind of power inherit in PC's. Under the hood the engine will be flying on top of DirectX 12 to help maximize performance. That means we won't be limited to only 1080p and 30FPS. Turn 10 studios does promise the ability to scale very well with different hardware so everyone can still have a good experience. The Xbox One version ran pretty well given its limited hardware.

Just what exactly is this new Forza game supposed to be? Well, Turn 10 says that it's a sort of "curated" version of the original that includes only 60 cars and six different courses to race about on. That's not much, but the price is right and it'll help introduce new, PC only players into the franchise. I'm curious if they'll take advantage of the extra horse-power and improve the graphics and physics even more than they likely already have.

It seems like it's tradition now for games to release out the gate with a day one patch. But Far Cry Primal's doesn't seem to have to fix any glaring or widespread issues, and just brings about bug fixes to make the prehistoric experience that much more harsh.

It was decided that expert mode was just too easy for PC players so your health has been halved and your aim assist has been similarly reduced. And be on the lookout as the AI can also shoot at you 1/3 faster than on Hard difficulty. Expert Mode was made to almost literally put you in the shoes (or wrappings) of a prehistoric human, making it a much more tense experience.

Other fixes include improvements to stability, improved lighting and better looking and more useful aiming reticle and improved destruction graphics when giant mammoths run rampant through the environment. Just some general enhancements, which is far cry (pun intended) from the cleaning up some games have had to have in recent past. Overall performance seems to be quite good, and you can look for our performance analysis very soon.

Just in time for the launch of Far Cry Primal and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on the PC, which launched just earlier today, NVIDIA has a Game Ready Driver ready and available to help optimize the experience.

Driver 362.00 is was released earlier this morning as well and provides some nice stability and performance enhancements that make Gears of War: Ultimate Edition especially. Gears, unfortunately, is only playable on NVIDIA hardware at the moment due to some strange occurrences and performance issues happening on AMD hardware.

Optimizations have been made for Far cry Primal, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and for the newest Dying Light update. That update adds a few new graphics options that you can toy with.