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Now I can learn about the pyramids while having fun (credit: civilization.com)

Hey, kids! Put away those boring old history books. There's a new way to learn about geopolitical conflict. It's a video game!

*Record scratch sound effect*

That's right, it's CivilizationEDU, the new education-focused version of the hit simulation series that will make learning fun! This isn't your daddy's old "Oh no, I died of dysentery" educational gaming, either! Starting next year, The Games for Change Conference and GlassLab Inc. will partner with 2K Games to "provide students with the opportunity to think critically and create historical events, consider and evaluate the geographical ramifications of their economic and technological decisions, and to engage in systems thinking and experiment with the causal/correlative relationships between military, technology, political and socioeconomic development."

(credit: Billie)

Law enforcement does not need a warrant to hack someone’s computer, according to a just-unsealed court order written by a federal judge in Virginia.

This case, United States v. Matish, is one of at least 135 cases currently being prosecuted nationwide stemming from the FBI’s investigation of the Tor-hidden child pornography site called "Playpen."

US District Judge Henry Coke Morgan, Jr. further explained in the order on Thursday that warrantless government-sanctioned hacking "resembles" law enforcement looking through broken blinds. In this case, however, a warrant was sought and obtained. Judge Morgan found that even if the warrant did not exist—or was found to be invalid—the search would have been valid.

Can machines think? This is the question posed by Alan Turing's 1950 paper, Computer Machinery and Intelligence. Turing believed that by the year 2000, our understanding of computers would have evolved to the point where machines could think, work out problems, and be able to imitate a human. As of today, Turing's predictions might not have all come true, but humans are sometimes duped in small ways every day, not least through the many online chat and help bots that make you think you're talking to a human.

What does it mean to be human in a world in which machines can imitate humans? Where does the human component begin and end? What does the human component even consist of? Bulkhead Interactive's The Turing Test explores these questions.

At its core, The Turing Test is a first-person puzzle game in which you explore a research base on Europa, a moon of Jupiter. The puzzles are supposedly designed in such a way so as to make them impossible for a computer to solve. Only a human mind can unlock the puzzles, thus setting up a potential answer for the riddle of what it means to be human.

(credit: Mark Walton)

In the wee hours of Friday morning, the people of the UK voted to leave the European Union with a majority of 52 percent—and according to Google, they don't really know why. Two hours after the referendum polls closed, roughly midnight UK time, the Google Trends Twitter account reported a 250 percent increase in people searching "what happens if we leave the EU." "Are we in or out of the EU?" spiked by 2,450 percent.

Other search terms that peaked following the result include "what happens to foreigners if we leave the EU," "what happens if we stay in the EU," and—perhaps most worryingly considering the gravity of the decision—"what is Brexit?"

Earlier in the evening, the top search in Sunderland (one of the first cities to declare its results) was "How do I vote in the EU referendum?"