Wooden propellers lie on a stripped-down drone, among tyres and gas canisters. Elsewhere, a four-wheeled contraption stands silent, preparing for its deadly mission. As the battle for Mosul rages on, Iraqi forces recently discovered this ISIS factory which has been making various death machines - from aerial drones to multi-wheeled robot bombs. The crude hardware was unearthed in a warehouse in the Al-Shifa neighbourhood on the fringes of the Islamic State-occupied Old City. Working with whatever they can salvage, the jihadis have been retrofitting hobby drones with explosives and, in some cases, building devices from metal pipes and repurposed small engines - including from motorbikes.

The cyber security attacks are evolved from wild predator-prey chase to well-designed targeted attacks which are creating significant financial and reputational damages to businesses and government. Identification of these attacks is becoming very difficult for the cyber security defense teams as the signs of these attacks are very subtle. Hackers are using disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to plan and launch these attacks. The usage of these disruptive technologies in various areas of business are multiplying security vulnerabilities and escalating attack surface. At the same time, AI and machine learning can be used to automate security monitoring and predictive analysis.

Microsoft's Windows operating system seems to have been having a really bad year given the major cyber attacks taking place including the WannaCry incident and the most recently discovered Petya campaign. As a result, Microsoft has responded with a new and improved anti-virus software that is integrated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities designed to detect malware before it infects a system. Microsoft will be launching its Windows 10 Creator Update during the month of September or October, and along with it, Microsoft has left no table unturned that could threaten its security. As such, Microsoft stated that it would be releasing a new and improved AI based antivirus software. Essentially, the tech giant will be upgrading its Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with AI that analyzes files for malware. The software will be collecting data from various cloud service platforms such as those of Azure, Endpoint, and Office to build effective machine learning models for the anti-virus software that can detect malware-infected files immediately.

Nothing is certain but death and taxes -- not even investing. There are no guarantees when you're putting your money in the stock market, and investors looking for a sure thing are bound to be disappointed. Yet there are a few things investors can look for to give them a better chance of finding a successful investment. Find a company that's tapping into an emerging trend and is the dominant player in that field. Seek out an innovator that isn't afraid to take calculated risks to leverage the future.

Fast forward to 2030 and the children who started school in 2017 will need to be just as skilled in critical thinking, creativity and empathy as they are in literacy and numeracy and technology. It is impossible to accurately predict the jobs of the future, says Mark Scott, the secretary of the NSW Department of Education, but schools will need to prepare the next generations of students for a world that will be dominated by intelligent machines. Malcolm Turnbull announces a new 10-year schools funding plan, and a new review by David Gonski. Labor brands the funding plan "an act of political bastardry". It's not as harsh as 2014, but the government is still looking to save billions of dollars in higher education costs in the budget.

The UK government has been warned of the "serious consequences" that will be suffered if it insists on introducing highly controversial new technology regulations. Theresa May wants to weaken encryption and increase censorship, and is planning to forcing internet companies to let spies and agencies read everyone's private communications. UK government ministers this week discussed surveillance proposals with representatives from the US, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia at a Five Eyes meeting in Ottawa. However, a coalition of privacy advocates has told the government that its plans will have disastrous consequences. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. I don't speak Dutch so I have no idea what words like "hoppen" or "crashen" mean, and you'll just have to take wild guesses about what's going on in this video. Or autotranslate the captions, that works too.

I've written a few times that perhaps the biggest unsolved problem in robocars is how to know we have made them safe enough. While most people think of that in terms of government certification, the truth is that the teams building the cars are very focused on this, and know more about it than any regulator, but they still don't know enough. The challenge is going to be convincing your board of directors that the car is safe enough to release, for if it is not, it could ruin the company that releases it, at least if it's a big company with a reputation. We don't even have a good definition of what "safe enough" is though most people are roughly taking that as "a safety record superior to the average human." Some think it should be much more, few think it should be less.

Jean-Claude Juncker has revealed that he does not own a smartphone. The president of the European Commission made the admission while speaking about the growing importance of technology. He said he doesn't need to be "a techie" to know that "our future is digital". The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

The flight plan for the ill-fated 1970 Apollo 13 mission which had to be altered following the an emergency on board has been unearthed. The 352-page document bears the annotations made by all three crew members recording in detail the actions they had to take after an explosion ripped off part of their space ship. Apollo 13 was to be the third mission to land on the moon, but just under 56 hours into flight, an oxygen tank explosion forced the crew to cancel the lunar landing and move into the Aquarius lunar module to return back to Earth. The drama that unfolded during the Apollo 13 mission was re-told in the Hollywood film starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon as Swigert and the late Bill Paxton as Haise. The mission is famous for the line ''Houston, we have had a problem here', which is often misquoted as'Houston, we have a problem'. The flight plan for the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission which had to be drastically altered following the'Houston, we have had a problem' emergency on board has been unearthed The Apollo 13 mission which set off on April 11, 1970 was meant to culminate in a third moon landing, with Lovell and Haise voyaging to the lunar surface while Swigert orbited in the command module Odyssey.