The collection and analysis of user data drives improvements in the app and web ecosystems, but comes with risks to privacy. This paper examines discrete distribution estimation under local privacy, a setting wherein service providers can learn the distribution of a categorical statistic of interest without collecting the underlying data. We present new mechanisms, including hashed K-ary Randomized Response (KRR), that empirically meet or exceed the utility of existing mechanisms at all privacy levels. New theoretical results demonstrate the order-optimality of KRR and the existing RAPPOR mechanism at different privacy regimes.

At the 2016 E3 conference, USA TODAY's Brett Molina speaks to CEO of Insomniac Games, Ted Price, about a new Spiderman game unvielded for the Playstation 4. Shawn Layden, President of Sony Interactive Entertainment America and Chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, speaks on stage during the PlayStation E3 2016 Press Conference at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Even before the doors opened to the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video game industry dazzled game players. Press events from Microsoft, Sony and other video game publishers on Sunday and Monday offered a peek into the future of the video game industry. Here are 10 announcements -- in no particular order -- that generated the most buzz during E3 2016. It's more than a year away from making its debut, but Project Scorpio certainly carries a lot of potential.

As more information continues to pour in about what happened at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, here's what we know about the shooter, Omar Mateen. The logo of Jack'd, an online dating and chat app for gay men. According to some reports, Orlando shooter Omar Mateen used the app to message men in the months prior to the shooting. SAN FRANCISCO -- The CEO of Jack'd, a Tinder-like gay chat and dating app, says he hasn't been contacted by law enforcement since reports surfaced late Monday Orlando shooter Omar Mateen might have been using the app for at least a year. The service also hasn't been able to substantiate Mateen had been a member, said Hector Camacho, CEO of Jack'd parent company Online Buddies. According to the Los Angeles Times, Mateen, 29, had messaged at least one regular Pulse patron sporadically over the past year using the Jack'd app.

Despite the hardware news this week, E3 2016 is still all about the games. For gamers, that means a bounty of new trailers revealing gameplay and cinematic introductions to new worlds. Whether you're a fan of the PC, Xbox One or PlayStation, it's hard not to get excited about what's ahead. This may be the most buzzed-about trailer coming out of E3 2016. The first game from "Metal Gear Solid" creator Hideo Kojima after his departure from Konami was always going to be a big deal, but then you add some really interesting visuals and a naked Norman Reedus, better known as Daryl from "The Walking Dead," holding a baby and that's a recipe for success.

The U.S. spends 270 billion on incarceration each year, has a prison population of about 2.2 million and an incarceration rate that's spiked 220 percent since the 1980s. But with the advent of data science, White House officials are asking experts for help. On Tuesday, June 7, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's Lynn Overmann, who also leads the White House Police Data Initiative, stressed the severity of the nation's incarceration crisis while asking a crowd of data scientists and artificial intelligence specialists for aid. "We have built a system that is too large, and too unfair and too costly -- in every sense of the word -- and we need to start to change it," Overmann said, speaking at a Computing Community Consortium public workshop. She argued that the U.S., a country that has the highest amount of incarcerated citizens in the world, is in need of systematic reforms with both data tools to process alleged offenders and at the policy level to ensure fair and measured sentences.

Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch stars in a strangely dark but hilarious sci-fi movie written by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that was created by filmmaker Oscar Sharp and his technologist collaborator Ross Goodwin.

For PlayStation maker Sony, this year's E3 video game conference has been all about games. From a virtual reality Resident Evil to a surprise Spider-Man title, PlayStation gamers have plenty to look forward to in the coming months. TIME sat down with SIE Worldwide Studios Chairman Shawn Layden to talk about the future of PlayStation. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. TIME: Sony came out this week and confirmed that a high-end PlayStation 4 is in the works.

In the never-ending search for the real Sasquatch, a man believes he has captured footage of a Bigfoot sighting in Southeast Idaho. The drone video taken by a resident shows what appears to be a hairy, two-legged creature running across a clearing before entering a wooded area and disappearing. The footage was shot near the Hawkins Reservoir west of Downey in Southeast Idaho. The reservoir is located approximately 35 miles south of Pocatello. Sasquatch, is that you?: The drone video taken by a resident in Southeast Idaho shows what appears to be a hairy creature running across a clearing before entering a wooded area and disappearing At around 25 seconds into the two-minute video, the figure can faintly be seen running through the grass.

Meet the future face of healthcare assistance - a friendly faced robot named Pepper. Its diction is still a little odd, and his movements sometimes a bit hesitant, but the robot is all geared up to help patients at two Belgian hospitals. The humanoid assistant, who has a screen on his chest and a round head, is the first robot in the world to be used to greet people in a medical setting, its software creators said. Two of Belgium's hospitals have installed Pepper robots in their receptions for trials. The robots will help patients in Ostend and Liege. In Liege, at the Centre Hospitalier Regional La Citadelle, the robot helper will remain in the hospital's reception area.

Microsoft is committing the same sin today that it did with the launch of the Xbox One: The focus of a game console shouldn't be about the platform, but the games. Compare the first images shown off at Microsoft's press conference, and then at Sony's. Microsoft launched its new Xbox One S console in the first few seconds, while Sony (following a long introduction by an in-house orchestra) led off with an extended clip from the new God of War game. To its credit, I don't think Microsoft necessarily set out to make the Xbox One the focus of its E3 presentation. But by the end of it, we weren't talking about games like the creepily dystopian We Happy Few, but whether or not gamers should buy a slimmer Xbox One S or wait for the vastly more powerful Project Scorpio.