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With Ex Machina, the directorial debut of 28 Days Later and Sunshine writer Alex Garland, we can finally put the Turing test to rest. You've likely heard of it -- developed by legendary computer scientist Alan Turing (recently featured in The Imitation Game), it's a test meant to prove artificial intelligence in machines. But, given just how easy it is to trick, as well as the existence of more rigorous alternatives for proving consciousness, passing a test developed in the '50s isn't much of a feat to AI researchers today. Ex Machina isn't the first film to expose the limits of the Turing test, but it's by far one of the most successful. And, like the films 2001 and Primer, it's a work of science fiction that might end up giving you a case of philosophical whiplash.

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Marine Joint Strike Fighter

The Pentagon thinks the US is losing its technological dominance over adversaries and is changing the way it develops and buys new weapons. It just rolled out a program called "Better Buying Power 3.0" designed to better tap into the latest technology and significantly bolster cybersecurity. Defense under secretary Frank Kendall said that the program is motivated by "a steady erosion of our technological superiority" caused in part by a shrinking modernization budget that's often raided to pay for day-to-day operations.

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NBC's "2015 iHeartRadio Music Awards" - Portrait Studio

Exclusive content was mentioned more that once during Tidal's recent relaunch at the hands of Jay Z & Co. Not to be outdone by the celebrity-backed competition, it seems Apple is also looking to offer releases that you won't be able to find anywhere else -- at lease for a period of time. Bloomberg reports the folks in Cupertino are in talks with Florence and the Machine, Taylor Swift and "more than a dozen" others about exclusive deals for its upcoming streaming service. The former has an album that's set to drop in June -- a follow-up to 2011's Grammy-nominated effort Ceremonials. If you'll recall, Ms. Swift's catalog will be available on Tidal, as it doesn't have a free option like the service she spurned last year.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group that defends civil liberties in the digital world, is facing off against the Entertainment Software Association, the organization that represents most major video game publishers in the US. The EFF wants to allow players to put abandoned games back online and has asked the US Copyright Office for an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This would allow players to legally modify the code of online games that are no longer supported by publishers, in the hope of reconnecting these titles to new, third-party servers. This includes games like Battlefield 1942, Star Wars: Battlefront, SOCOM 4, Resistance: Fall of Man and Mario Kart Wii. Many modern games rely on servers to function; if Activision pulled the plug on Destiny, for example, even its single-player campaign would disappear, since the entire game needs an online connection.

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If you've been itchin' to take a look at the mobile version of Microsoft's new browser, now is your chance. The latest Windows 10 Technical Preview is available for phones, delivering Project Spartan and early looks at both its Reading List and Reading View features. As promised, the folks in Redmond also included Outlook Mail and Outlook Calendar apps this time around -- both of which are now the default options for the mobile version of Windows. New Phone and Messaging apps are here as well, as is retooled software for Maps, People (contacts) and an updated App Switcher. Nearly all of the additions sport the redesigned UI that Microsoft has been showing off since Windows 10 was announced back in January.

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Rusty iron cannon on the platform of Juyongguan pass, Changping County, Beijing, China

According to a new report from Citizen Lab, China has not only built itself a "Great Cannon" but has already fired it as well. This potent online weapon seems to be capable of intercepting internet traffic at the national level then directing it at specific networks to knock them offline. China's already widely suspected of being behind the recent attack against Github, which was overloaded for nearly a week via "an ongoing and evolving large DDOS attack." Now it appears that Github's attackers used the Cannon to redirect that traffic from Chinese search engine giant Baidu to cripple the website. All reportedly because the San Francisco-based website hosted a pair of pages that link to content banned in China.

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Look no further than the world of eSports for a concrete example of how the very idea of popular culture has warped in the past decade. Just because something is popular with an enormous group of people, that doesn't mean that it's truly ubiquitous. When most people see the word "baseball" around the world, they can conjure up the basics. eSports, and all of the many very different games that fall under that banner, still occupy a weird, weird space. Take League of Legends, arguably the most popular eSport in the world. The League of Legends World Championship can net 32 million viewers and all of those viewers can still be called "crazy" by successful, seemingly popular sports reporters while scholarships for League of Legends college players are laughed at. Just because there are millions of fans, that doesn't mean everyone knows what they're fans of.

Engadget will be your guide into this world of competition. If you don't know what eSports are, what a MOBA is or what a League of Legends may be, then we have a show for you. JXE Training Day is a regular eSports show for beginners, introducing competitive games and how to look at them. Our first series begins with an extensive, bi-weekly look at League of Legends.

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Amazon 2014 Summer TCA

There's another confusing video acronym on the horizon: HDR, or high dynamic range. When it comes to photos, HDR refers to merging footage shot in different exposures into a single, hyper-realistic scene -- but for video it's more about improving the dynamic range of contrast and color. Today Amazon announced that it'll be bringing the feature to its Prime Instant Video service, starting with its original series, later this year. The company claims that it will offer better contrast and "detailed shadows and distinct highlights to make colors appear richer." That's something filmmakers have wanted for some time, but judging from HDR demos we saw at CES, it's not an aesthetic appropriate for everything. Amazon isn't the only company hyping it up: Netflix also demoed 4K HDR video at CES, and its chief product officer Neil Hunt even considers it "more important" than 4K.

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The US and China are like two neighbors who annoy each other with loud music after 11pm, but can't bring themselves to discuss the problem properly. The latest passive-aggressive broadside between the pair sees the US blocking Intel from being able to sell its Xeon Phi chips to China to upgrade the latter's Tianhe-2 supercomputer. BBC News is reporting that the US Department of Commerce shot down the move because of a concern that the hardware would be used to conduct "nuclear explosive activities."

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Nikon's best DSLRs will soon be able to record sharper video, making them much more useful for videographers. The Japanese company says its D4s, D810 and D750 full-frame DSLRs will get "greater support for recording high-definition, uncompressed data" to external recorders via the HDMI port. In addition, you'll be able to send start/stop commands to supported video recorders and edit video more efficiently, presumably via the addition of timecode or other metadata. There's no word on exact video specifications or whether RAW output would be supported, but the company promised to reveal more at NAB tomorrow (the firmware is due this summer). Considering that Nikon was the first to put video on a DSLR, we're glad it's not treating it like the ugly stepchild anymore.

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