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Editor's note
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More and more drivers are opting to install suitably mysterious sounding “black boxes” in their cars as a way of shaving down high insurance prices. These boxes send telemetric data to insurance companies, allowing them to monitor how well the customer is driving. Seems like a good deal if you consider yourself a good driver – after all, what’s wrong with rules if you don’t break them?
Of course, as many drivers who have been caught behind a painfully slow law-abiding driver will know, some people do want to bend the rules – a little bit. And these innocuous seeming devices may just reveal something about the apparatus, rules and conventions that govern how we behave – and beg the question of how much free will we really have in today’s surveillance culture.
In Hong Kong at least, the rules are being fought against: city workers and unions have joined the anti-government “Umbrella Revolution”. And could today’s humanoid robots pass off as human? A new Turing
test for androids will allow us to find out.
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Josephine Lethbridge
Interdisciplinary Editor
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Top stories
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AdamEdwards/Shutterstock.com
Mike Ryder, Lancaster University
Those money-saving black boxes reveal a lot about the rules that govern our lives.
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The message: a trademark umbrella during the original 2014 protests.
Shutterstock
Michael Joseph Richardson, Newcastle University
The Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong is evolving ...
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Hanon Robotics’ android “Sophia”.
Anton Gvozdikov/Shutterstock
Carl Strathearn, Staffordshire University
Alan Turing devised a way to test if AI is functionally the same as a human – we've done the same for androids.
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Politics + Society
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James Somerville, Glasgow Caledonian University
The Addison Act of 1919 introduced admirable housing standards, but in the century since the industry has put a sqeeze on space and quality.
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Gillian McNaull, Queen's University Belfast
Women's prisons have become stopgaps, a place to simply put people society does not know what else to do with.
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Stefan Pedersen, University of Leeds
The first generation of spacefarers realised that Earth binds our planetary civilisation into a coherent whole. When, if ever, will politics catch up?
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Paul Whiteley, University of Essex; Harold D Clarke, University of Texas at Dallas
If the strategy succeeds, the Tories could win a snap election with 40% of the vote.
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Timothy Oliver, University of Manchester
Many have said that the UK is irreparably divided and therefore dysfunctional to the point of impeding the ability of any one party to govern it effectively.
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Environment + Energy
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Ruth McKie, De Montfort University
Climate deniers recently gathered to talk shop at Donald Trump's hotel in Washington DC. There's more to their links with the president than a reservation, though.
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Jennifer Fitchett, University of the Witwatersrand; Stefan Grab, University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa's annual sardine run is occurring increasingly late, and there have been instances where it doesn't happen at all. Here's why.
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Education
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Alexander Lovell, Swansea University
Wales's schools mostly teach in English at present but its new curriculum will make Welsh language part of every lesson in all schools.
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Cities
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Edward Truch, Lancaster University
The values of a national park, translated to an urban context, to make life better for local people.
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Arts + Culture
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Hannah Hamad, Cardiff University
Carry On films have been compared to a Leave voter's wet dream. But they were more thoughtful and honest than that.
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Business + Economy
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Joel Segel, Pennsylvania State University; Douglas L. Leslie, Pennsylvania State University; Gary Zajac, Pennsylvania State University; Max Crowley, Pennsylvania State University; Paul L. Morgan, Pennsylvania State University
State governments are leading the charge against opioid makers over their role in the epidemic. A team of researchers at Penn State examined just how much the crisis has cost them.
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