Popular dating app Tinder announced Thursday that it is implementing a new Smart Photos algorithm, which alternates the first photos seen by others, notes each response as others swipe on your profile and changes the order of your photos to show the best ones first. "Smart Photos takes into account each individual's swiping pattern when selecting which of your photos they'll see first. It's a system that gets smarter with more input: the more you swipe and the more you're swiped on, the better the algorithm serves you. Yes, there's science behind the swipe," Tinder said on its official blog post. Smart Photos will continuously test users' profile photos for their success so that photos that are most likely to be swiped right will go to the front of your profile.

Linux-based smart home hubs continue to rule the home automation world, with the latest products integrating voice assistants and AI analytics. Industrial, rather than home, applications will likely dominate the Internet of Things (IoT) market in the years to come. Yet, in the early going, the home automation market has had the greatest visibility. And it hasn't always been pretty. Despite steady growth, retail sales have yet to achieve inflated expectations.

Finding the perfect apartment is hard work, and most real estate websites don't make it any easier. Most sites give you a few search filters you can use, but those filters don't narrow down the search enough to be useful. You can look for apartments that have a certain number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and you can even look for apartments that have specific amenities, but you care about more than bedrooms, bathrooms, and amenities. When those are the only filters available, you still have to look through hundreds of properties to find the right one. Then, when you finally do find that property, you have to contact the landlord to schedule a tour.

Amazon's aim is to have Alexa indistinguishable from a human voice. Dave Limp, Amazon's SVP of device and services business is standing in front of an image of the bridge of the starship Enterprise, explaining the inspiration for Amazon's surprise hit Echo device. "A lot of people wondered what was the inspiration for this vision, it really was this, this cultural icon it started here with the tap on the lapel to talk to the computer. And later in the Star Trek series you could be anywhere on the starship Enterprise and you could talk to the computer and she would respond quickly with an answer," he says. With a 100M investment fund and the opening up of cloud service APIs and an SDK, Alexa and the Echo could become the brains of your home automation and IoT network.

Do you have an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot? Good news: you can now use it to cook the perfect steak! When I tried out the ChefSteps Joule immersion circulator earlier this year, I found the gadget to be a sleek, precise way to cook the perfect meat or veggies. However, my fellow testers and I had a complaint: The Joule is controlled via smartphone app, which is a great learning tool for sous vide newbies, but also requires you to touch your phone with messy, food-covered fingers. The solution to that is surprisingly elegant: ChefSteps has announced that you can now control your Joule with Alexa. Now, if your hands are dirty from prepping dinner, you can ask Alexa to set the temperature on your Joule, update you on its current temperature, or turn off.

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg revealed he is dedicating his year to making a home AI butler. Now, he is ready to give a voice to the AI, which he modelled on the J.A.R.V.I.S. stands for (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) system used by Tony Stark in the Iron Man films. Zuckerberg to his personal Facebook page to ask to help on what it should sound like - and admitted'this just got real' when Robert Downey Jr offered to voice it. The project is modelled on the J.A.R.V.I.S. stands for (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) system used by Tony Stark in the Iron Man films. 'I'll do in a heartbeat if Bettany gets paid and donates it to a cause of Cumberbatch's choosing...that's the right kind of STRANGE!' the Iron Man actor responded. In the films, Jarvis was voiced by actor Paul Bettany.

The distraught mom of the tourist allegedly killed by her Tinder date left an Australian courthouse in distress Thursday when she accidentally heard her daughter's last words played on an audio recording, according to reports. Marzabeth Tagpuno Wright was distraught outside the Brisbane Supreme Court after a reporter played the tape of Warriena Wright yelling, "No, no no" -- just before she plunged 14 stories to her death from Gable Tostee's 14th-floor balcony at his posh Gold Coast apartment in Australia, the Courier Mail said. The chilling audio had been played for the jury earlier in the week, but the mom was not in the courtroom at the time.

Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that as his "personal challenge" side project for 2016, he was programming an artificial intelligence to run his home -- a basic AI that could control the lights and temperature, play music on command, unlock the door for recognized friends, and so on. He compared it to J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony Stark's constant computerized companion in Marvel's Iron Man films. Today, Zuckerberg posted on Facebook, "It's time to give my AI Jarvis a voice. Who should I ask to do it?" The crowdsourced responses started immediately, with users recommending Paul Bettany (the actor who voiced J.A.R.V.I.S. in the MCU films), The Dalai Lama, the late Robin Williams, Donald Trump, and a lot more.

On the heels of Samsung's acquisition of Viv just a week ago, a new AI assistant has risen into the spotlight and is jockeying to fill the shoes of its now well-known rival. Ozlo, the Greylock- and Jerry Yang-backed independent entrant to the personal assistant race, is launching today on iOS and the web in an effort to give stalwarts like Siri, Alexa and Cortana a run for their money. The new personal assistant promises early adopters a good memory, a brain full of knowledge, and an independent soul -- everything you could hope for in your new binary friend. When I sat down with Charles Jolley, CEO of Ozlo and previous head of platform for Facebook on Android, the two of us immediately had a nice laugh about the repetitive female names for assistants in the marketplace right now -- Ozlo, by name alone, is already something different. That said, a name is one thing; the more important question is whether Ozlo is useful and doesn't make its users want to throw their phone against a wall after use.

So why does Siri seem so dumb? Why are its talents so limited? Why does it stumble so often? When was the last time Siri delighted you with a satisfying and surprising answer or action? I have an answer for this: when I discovered during the NBA playoffs that Siri can tell you the Vegas betting odds for sporting events. In recent weeks, on multiple Apple devices, Siri has been unable to tell me the names of the major-party candidates for president and vice president of the United States.