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 -- There are reports that Orlando shooter Omar Mateen had been using a gay chat and dating app called Jack'd for at least a year before his assault at a gay dance club left 49 victims dead and 53 wounded on Sunday. However the company that runs the app says it can't find profile information and that police haven't contacted them. 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.

This post is by Amy Nicholson, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. Here's a task for you: Type "I want to get started with machine learning" into your favorite search engine. I get back a whole list of options from Coursera, Azure, Amazon, kdnuggets, reddit,… and I could continue on and on. So where should one get started? In this post, I share my experiences of using the Cortana Intelligence Gallery in conjunction with the Azure ML Studio, and how that combination helped me break down the otherwise high barriers into popular ML techniques and start building my own ML models as well as my knowledge about this space. A little bit of background into how I got into this project.

"A breakthrough in machine learning would be worth ten Microsofts." - Bill Gates Machine learning (ML) is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that allows computers to learn and make predictions based on previous data sets. With significant overlap in fields like data mining and statistical modeling, machine learning exhibits distinct differences compared to more traditional forms of AI. Where traditional artificial intelligence focuses on areas like reasoning and abstract thinking, the primary purpose of machine learning is to create software that can learn from past experience. Applications of ML are vast, from facial recognition technology to conversational AI like Amazon's Alexa. As you will see in the coming paragraphs, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about the ever-expanding scope of this technology.

When will Siri come out on the Mac? Will Siri be on macOS Sierra? What features will Siri for Mac have? Apple announced a slew of new things at WWDC 2016 including the much anticipated introduction of Siri, its voice activated assistant, to its Mac computers. If you're after the full lowdown on the announcement of macOS Sierra, here is our roundup.

Slowly but surely, cyber security is evolving from the days of castles and moats into the modern era of software driven business. In the 1990s, after several failed attempts to build secure operating systems, the predominant security model became the network-perimeter security model enforced by firewalls. The way it works is clear: Machines on the inside of the firewall were trusted, and anything on the outside was untrusted. This castle-and-moat approach failed almost as quickly as it began, because holes in the wall had to be created to allow emerging internet services like mNews, email and web traffic through. Artificial intelligence will replace large teams of tier-1 SOC analysts who today stare at endless streams of threat alerts.

This undated image provided by the Orlando Police Department shows Omar Mateen, the shooting suspect at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. The gunman opened fire inside the crowded gay nightclub early Sunday before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said.

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 -- There are reports that Orlando shooter Omar Mateen had been using a gay chat and dating app called Jack'd for at least a year before his assault at a gay dance club left 49 victims dead and 53 wounded on Sunday. 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. Kevin West was at Pulse the night of the attack and said he recognized Mateen from the app.

This post originally appeared in ClickZ earlier this month. Forget all that "this is the year of mobile" nonsense. Mobile has more than arrived. From time spent to ad dollar growth, mobile is dominating; it's a rocket ship that's already in orbit. Over the past few weeks, I attended two different conferences – the Modern Marketing Summit Upfront and Eniac's M1 ("Mobile-First") Summit – where that was discussed a lot by thought leaders and mobile gurus from across today's leading agencies, brands, vendors and investors.

Apple unveiled a series of improvements to its Siri digital assistant on Thursday, but the tech giant still trails rivals such as Google and Amazon in the red-hot field of artificial intelligence, experts say. Apple's biggest move was to open up the talking iPhone assistant to third-party developers for inclusion in their apps, paving the way for users to hail a ride from Uber or send a message with Tencent's WeChat using voice commands. Experts in artificial intelligence applauded the move as an important step forward, in part because the more people use an artificial intelligence system, the better it becomes. But some wondered why Apple had not made Siri an open platform much sooner, noting that competing products including Amazon.com's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and the Google app are already open to developers. "Is it too little too late?"

The iPhone's talking pal Siri has, to date, been about as helpful as an umbrella in a hurricane. At the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple AAPL 1.07 % CEO Tim Cook touted new features and catch-up software tweaks, from the iPhone and Mac to the Apple Watch and TV. One of the few technologies that spanned all those products was Siri, the virtual assistant that lets us talk and interact with gadgets like they know us. Siri is growing up, and moving to the center of Apple's universe. In the months ahead, Siri will arrive on Mac computers and tackle more complex tasks on the Apple TV, where it first appeared last year.