When it comes to sex tapes, Donald Trump clearly doesn't get it. And that seems downright un-American. While abusing former Miss Universe Alicia Machado during an early-morning tweet, the Republican nominee for president of the United States called her "disgusting" and encouraged followers to look into her past, which, he said, included a "sex tape." Machado, for those not following the news cycle, is the beauty queen Trump previously berated for gaining weight and called "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping." She since has become an American citizen and a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton, who told her story at the first presidential debate.

US Presidential hopeful Zoltan Istvan, a Third Party candidate in the race to become America's next leader, has warned that the development of AI is going to have the biggest impact on humanity that has ever been. Scientists across the globe have been frantically working on the development of artificial intelligence, which would see machines or software expressing intelligence on par with humans. Many have warned on the perils of developing machines that are as capable as us, as it could realistically make humans obsolete as they could take our jobs, and eventually see us as more of a hindrance. Mr Istvan, a transhumanist – a movement that wants to use science and technology to radically change the human being and the human experience by merging our bodies with machine – and futurist, share similar worries.

A Somali police officer says a car bomb blew up at the entrance of a restaurant in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, killing two people. Mohamed Hussein said the blast Saturday occurred at the Blue Sky restaurant close to the presidential palace. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, but the Islamic extremist group of Shabab often carries out such attacks. Shabab, Al Qaeda's East African affiliate, is fighting to impose a strict version of Islam in this Horn of Africa nation. Despite losing a lot of ground in recent years, the extremist group continues to carry out lethal attacks in many parts of the country, especially in the capital.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard unveiled a new attack drone which is similar to a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle captured five years ago and is capable of carrying bombs, state media reported on Saturday. The drone, called the "Saegheh," or Thunderbolt, was unveiled at an expo showcasing the latest achievements by the Revolutionary Guard. This photo released on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2016, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, shows a new attack drone called Saegheh or Thunderbolt in an undisclosed location in Iran. "This long-range drone is capable of hitting four targets with smart precision-guided bombs with high accuracy," the head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace arm, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA, Reuters reported. The semi-official Tasnim news agency said the drone is similar to the RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone used by the U.S. Iran's state-run Press TV said the long-range drone can carry four precision-guided bombs.

Popular literature is replete with scary renditions of Artificial Intelligence. Numerous articles, stories, and novels depict an Eeeeeeeevil AI taking over the world to the detriment of humanity. . From my perspective it appears that all of HollyWeird and most of the legacy publishers to include the Hugo wanna-bes have bought into this meme. The world is doomed if we let the evil machine overlords take over. . I suggest that we have been in a war with a form of artificial intelligence since shortly after the Agricultural Revolution. .

My name is Josh Pause, and I'm trying to build a machine that can think. Have you ever stopped to ponder just how deliciously absurd that idea is? As a matter of fact, I'm not sure which is more absurd to me: a machine that can think, or, the fact that everyone around me assumes that this machine is both inevitable and destined to rise up and destroy us. These naysayers would have me believe that I am some sort of mad scientist, foolishly chasing my own blind ambitions towards the detriment of mankind. They would have me doubt my own intuition, my own instincts, and my own internal definitions of right and wrong. While we're on the subject of Stanley Kubrick, here's a fun bit of widely-believed trivia: In the late 1960s, NASA went to Stanley Kubrick for help in staging a fake moon landing.

There's a lot of pop culture to sort through week after week. Times staff writer Chris Barton offers his take on what's up and what's down in music, movies, television and just about anything else out there that is worth considering. The Westerlies: How does a four-piece trumpet and trombone instrumental combo earn raves from both indie-leaning music blogs and public radio while also performing at the Newport Jazz Festival and local rock clubs? The answer can be heard in the sprawling self-titled album due Oct. 7. Over two discs the New York City-based, Seattle-born brass band occupies a lively territory between jazz, Steven Foster-styled folk and chamber music with bracing melodies and, crucially, an undeniable sense of fun.

The military already has small drones, ranging from the palm-sized Black Hornet to the hand-tossed Raven. But these are either, in the case of the Black Hornet, mostly the domain of Special Forces, or like the Raven, kept at the Company level, and neither of these drones are cheap. Ravens cost at least 250,000 a system, when set up to military specifications. Yet drones, especially ones deployed at the squad level, don't have to be expensive. Commercial quadcopters and toy drones have seen use in the Ukrainian civil war, and there, soldiers trying to shoot them down with rifles.

Russia has warned the United States against carrying out any attacks on Syrian government forces, saying it would have repercussions across the Middle East. Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying that a U.S. intervention against the Syrian army "will lead to terrible, tectonic consequences not only on the territory of this country but also in the region on the whole." She says regime change in Syria would create a vacuum that would be "quickly filled" by "terrorists of all stripes." U.S.-Russian tensions over Syria have escalated since the breakdown of a cease-fire last month, with each side blaming the other for its failure. Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes have launched a major onslaught on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo.

Since its inception in the late 50s, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the US Department of Defense, has funded multiple research and development projects to come up with sophisticated technology for the military. Their current goal is to invest in IoT and artificial intelligence to keep "warfighters informed as they never have been before," DARPA said. By investing in IoT and artificial intelligence, DARPA wants to build better weapons and spying mechanisms to improve war tactics and performance. The new sensors and electromagnetic systems will allow the US military to hack into enemy devices and communication systems to collect and analyze data. As GPS can occasionally prove unreliable, DARPA has also been looking into developing new tracking technology, superior and more reliable than current GPS.