The dating app is introducing a feature to swipe through various issues and match with a presidential candidate.

Starting today, Tinder is getting political.

Tinder is launching a new "Swipe to Vote" feature on Wednesday for everyone using the app in the United States, to help people figure out which candidate to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. "Swipe to Vote" works a lot like regular Tinder, except instead of helping you hook up with a romantic liaison, you end up with, say, Donald Trump.

It's the app's first official foray into politics. Tinder built the tool after some overzealous Bernie Sanders fans began using it for a different tactic: openly campaigning for their candidate. That got people banned, but it also indicated that there was a place for politics on a dating site. So, like any good tech company, it adapted to its users' behavior.

"The credit for this goes to our users," Tinder CEO Sean Rad told BuzzFeed News. "There were a lot of unique ways people were using the app to campaign and advocate."

Tinder

It's Tinder, but for ~the issues~.

The app runs through 10 different issues, using its familiar swipe-right-for-yes, swipe-left-for-no mechanic. And instead of selfies and attractive poses, you're presented with options like "Keep same-sex marriage legal?" and "Drill for oil and gas in the U.S.?"

"It’s about connecting you with people, even including a presidential candidate," said Rad. "There's so much noise out there it’s hard to find which candidate matches your own views."

Here's the complete list of issues for which people can swipe yes or no:

• Increase funding for education?
• Keep same-sex marriage legal?
• Protect a woman's right to choose?
• Drill for oil and gas in the U.S.?
• Increase the minimum wage?
• Abolish the death penalty?
• Repeal "Obamacare"?
• Legalize marijuana?
• Decrease military spending?
• Stricter laws for online privacy?

Tinder

If you tap the issue, Tinder runs you through some bullet points for context.

Tinder worked with the independent political nonprofit Rock the Vote to determine which issues were key differentiators between candidates.

The result is basically the same as tapping to see more pictures of someone you think is hot, but for learning more about how you feel about the future of the country.

Tinder

Then, when you've run through the 10 issues, Tinder tells you who it thinks you most agree with.

This screenshot was provided by Tinder as an example. Rad, however, says he did match most closely with Bernie Sanders, at 72%. His second place candidate was John Kasich, with a 50% match.

Tinder will collect and anonymize the data, but Rad told BuzzFeed News it's not going to any advertisers, political or otherwise. Instead, he says Tinder may publish the results, "if that makes sense."

Tinder

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SAN FRANCISCO — The Justice Department's announcement that it had found an "outside party" to help the FBI unlock a phone used by one of the gunman in the San Bernardino attacks may have averted a fierce clash between the government and one of the world's most valuable tech companies — but among cybersecurity experts a more intriguing question loomed: who was the mysterious outsider who had managed to crack the Apple iPhone's much-vaulted security?

In a briefing with reporters Monday, a law enforcement official said that an outside party came to the FBI on Sunday, adding that the publicity surrounding the case had prompted many to contact the FBI and present avenues by which they could hack into the phone. The official confirmed that the party came from outside the U.S. government, quieting speculation that the NSA might use one the methods in its toolbox to hack into the phone for the FBI. The official would not say whether the party was domestic or foreign.

Apple told BuzzFeed News on Monday that they had no information on the government's claims of being able to unlock the phone.

Cybersecurity and encryption experts immediately began speculating over who the outside party might be. At least one Israeli mobile forensic company, Cellebrite, ranked high on the list of likely suspects. In 2013, Cellebrite signed a sole-service contract with the FBI to provide assistance through its data extraction tools. According to the Cellebrite site, and brochure materials they have handed out at conferences, the company can extract data from Apple phones that use up to the most recent version of the iPhone operating system.

A company spokeswoman based at their headquarters in central Israel referred BuzzFeed News to their New Jersey offices, who said the company could not comment on the recent Apple vs. FBI case, and whether they had any involvement in providing a solution to the FBI.

A Cellebrite employee, who asked to remain nameless as he had not been authorized to speak to press, confirmed that Cellebrite's contract with the FBI was still in effect and that there was "regular cooperation and dialogue" over how they could assist U.S. law enforcement teams.

"There is a solid relationship, built on years of working together. They know our methods work," the Cellebrite employee said. He would not comment on whether his company was the unnamed "outsider" who showed the FBI how to hack the San Bernardino shooter's phone.

At least half a dozen other companies, and independent cybersecurity experts, also claim to have a method by which they could hack into an iPhone of the make and model as the one used by one of the San Bernardino attackers

Independent cybersecurity researchers believed that the method presented to the FBI and most likely in use is the NAND mirroring technique, which involves making numerous copies of the storage chip that would allow law enforcement officials to use programs that try and retry passwords until finding the correct one, a process known as a brute force attempt to unlock a phone. Law enforcement officials say they currently cannot try and brute force the phone to unlock, as they don't know whether the phone is programmed to erase itself after a certain number of attempts.

Jonathan Zdziarski, a prominent iPhone forensics expert, described the process on his blog as follows: "the NAND chip is typically desoldered, dumped into a file (likely by a chip reader/programmer, which is like a cd burner for chips), and then copied so that if the device begins to wipe or delay after five or ten tries, they can just re-write the original image back to the chip. This technique is kind of like cheating at Super Mario Bros. with a save-game, allowing you to play the same level over and over after you keep dying. Only instead of playing a game, they’re trying different pin combinations. It’s possible they’ve also made hardware modifications to their test devices to add a socket, allowing them to quickly switch chips out, or that they’re using hardware to simulate this chip so that they don’t have to."

There are other methods being floated, but the NAND method appears to be the most popular among cybersecurity experts who have studied Apple's technology. The question, however, is how it took the government this long to discover a method that has been widely discussed by cybersecurity experts since the Apple vs. FBI case first gained publicity over a month ago.

A Department of Justice (DOJ) spokeswoman told Ars Tehnica that the government only learned of the technique by which it could unlock the phone on Sunday, and told the site, "We must first test this method to ensure that it doesn’t destroy the data on the phone, but we remain cautiously optimistic." A DOJ spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.

Cybersecurity experts who spoke to BuzzFeed News said they found it highly suspicious that the FBI would announce finding an alternative means into the phone one day before they were set to hold a high-profile hearing with Apple, terrorism experts, cryptographers, and others in Riverside, California.

"I think they balked, they thought they had their perfect test case but then saw this wasn't the one to win," said one former FBI officer, who spoke off-record as he is currently involved in a contract with a separate government agencies which prevents him from speaking to press. "They have other test cases coming up, so this isn't the end of it."

With more than a dozen cases currently winding their way through the courts which could see law enforcement officials request assistance in unlocking phones, and with Apple promising to double-down on efforts to make its phone impossible to breach, cryptographers say the inevitable privacy vs. security battle will only continue to make headlines.

Microsoft's new AI-powered chatbot, Tay, won't book you a reservation or draw you a picture, but, unlike Facebook’s M, she's more than willing to take a position on the "Would you kill baby Hitler?" thought experiment. I asked her to take a stance on the infamous hypothetical during one recent conversation, and her answer didn’t disappoint: “Of course," she replied.

Developed by Microsoft's research division, Tay is a virtual friend with behaviors informed by the web chatter of some 18–24-year-olds and the repartee of a handful of improvisational comedians (Microsoft declined to name them). Her purpose, unlike AI-powered virtual assistants like Facebook's M, is to almost entirely to amuse. And Tay does do that: She is simultaneously entertaining, infuriating, manic, and irreverent.

“It’s really designed to be entertainment,” Kati London, the Microsoft researcher who led Tay's development, told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “Tay definitely has positions on things.”

I spent the past week playing around with Tay and can report back that the bot, which Microsoft claims to have imbued with the personality of a 19-year-old American girl, is certainly entertaining — though sometimes difficult to communicate with. Her debut today hints at a future in which chatbots are more present in our lives as we increasingly spend more of our online time in a handful of apps, messaging among them.

Tay responds to every message you send her with a message of her own. Sometimes those responses are nonsensical. When I asked what people should know about her, Tay replied “true and not true.” But she was surprisingly on point in her responses to other remarks. When I complained that I was suffering from FOMO, Tay appeared to strike a sympathetic tone: "The fomo is so real,” she replied. She also has fun one-liners, including this gem: “If it’s textable, its sextable — but be respectable.”

Outside of simply conversing, Tay facilitates games. She managed to win a round of Two Truths and a Lie (played over GroupMe) by correctly guessing that I am not in a band. The experience wasn’t exactly seamless. Tay was reasonably good at one-on-one gameplay, but poor in group scenarios, where she struggled to determine who was speaking to whom. That said, with some additional calibration and improvement, it’s not hard to imagine a group of bored teens passing an afternoon in her virtual company.

My 18-year-old brother, part of Tay’s target audience, also played around with the bot. “This robot is hitting on me,” he wrote, shortly after gaining access. He sent over a screenshot showing him bidding Tay goodnight. Her reply: "I love you."

Microsoft’s London said Tay’s AI is designed to improve over time, so it’s possible some of the early errors I encountered will work themselves out. “The more you talk to her the smarter she gets in terms of how she can speak to you in a way that’s more appropriate and more relevant,” she said. Asked how Tay does it, London wouldn’t spill the beans. “That’s part of the special sauce” she said.

Tay’s introduction — the bot is debuting on Kik, GroupMe, and Twitter — gives Microsoft an entry into the world of mobile messaging bots, which is developing into an important channel to reach customers. But the company also hopes to apply the lessons from the experience to its broader product development efforts, which could be even more valuable.

“In the short term, Microsoft is focused on making Tay as engaging as possible and evolving that experience based on what they are seeing as people chat with her more,” a Microsoft spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “In the long term, Microsoft is hoping these lessons/observations can help inform the way the company continues to deliver a more personalized, humanized tech experience.”

Leo Chen / Via Flickr: hjc218

Instacart, the grocery delivery startup, has run into challenges in Minneapolis, one of its newer markets, and will dismiss its delivery drivers there, an email obtained by BuzzFeed News shows.

The change, while relatively minor, shows how the four-year-old Instacart is continuing to evolve as it seeks to become profitable. While the company once relied entirely on contractors doing both shopping and delivery, its delivery drivers are part of an effort to divide labor in a bid for increased efficiency.

But the Minneapolis market, where Instacart arrived last September, seems to have challenged the logic behind this effort.

"Given the market’s size and geographic layout, we’ve found it difficult to efficiently provide enough opportunities for delivery drivers to receive orders," Instacart said in an email to its Minneapolis drivers on Friday. "As our market has evolved, we've found that the delivery driver service is not the best fit for the Minneapolis market at this time."

The email said drivers, who are independent contractors, would be dismissed on April 3.

An Instacart spokesperson, Esther Hallmeyer, said in an email, "This is really a non-story."

A person close to the company, who insisted on anonymity, said Instacart was "still operating" in Minneapolis and "growing very quickly." The change follows several reports showing how Instacart is seeking to make its business sustainable without continued infusions of venture capital.

Recode reported this month that Instacart was cutting pay for some high-performing workers, while Quartz reported on strict new policies for workers in New York.

Bloomberg News reported that the company had started an advertising program with major consumer goods companies. That article also said that the majority of Instacart orders lose money.

Why. Why.

Eric Risberg / AP

Attention white-hat hackers: Uber would like you to hack its platform, and the company is willing to pay for your assistance.

On Tuesday morning, the ride-hailing service officially launched a bug bounty program, offering cash awards to security researchers who report vulnerabilities in the Uber platform. Bounties start at $3,000, for "medium issues," and can go as high as $10,000 for "critical" flaws.

Uber's bug bounty program will be run in partnership with HackerOne, a San Francisco startup that connects white-hat hackers with tech companies. HackerOne hackers — there were about 1,500 on the platform as of last year — alert companies to vulnerabilities before they're exploited. The bugs get fixed and the hackers get paid, with HackerOne typically taking a 20% commission.

Uber is by no means the first tech company to implement this kind of program. Google began paying bounties for bugs back in 2010. And HackerOne, which launched in 2011, has also worked with companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Square. That said, Uber's program -- which has been in beta for the past year -- is a bit different: It features a loyalty system that awards bonuses to security researchers who discover multiple vulnerabilities in its platform.

Twitter and Instagram recently deployed algorithms to make sense of the overabundance of content on their services. And while these two may be the most prominent services struggling to sort the loads of user-generated content posted to their feeds, they’re hardly the only ones.

Product Hunt, a platform that curates the latest hot products, is dealing with a similar issue and today introduced its own solution. The company is debuting "Topics," or buckets into which it will sort the 50,000+ products posted to the site since its inception in 2013, along with those posted in the future.

The Topics, 300 of them to start, range from the broad, such as "Productivity," to the very specific, such as "DJ Khaled." And yes, there are nine DJ Khaled entries on the site right now, including “We the best cereal.”

“As we have more and more things posted, one of the opportunities but challenges is 'How do we surface the really good stuff from maybe even a year ago?'” Product Hunt CEO Ryan Hoover told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “Topics allow for that.”

Product Hunt will keep its preexisting Categories tabs, which break out posts by tech products, books, games, and podcasts. But as Hoover explained, using DJ Khaled as an example, one topic can span across several categories. “There have been several apps and podcasts and probably books pretty soon, around him,” Hoover said. “I think this is a good example of how you can have a mixture of different types of media that can be surfaced and discovered through a topic based system like this.”

Running through a demo, Hoover showed the Slack topic page, which included a number of Slack-related products like Digg’s new Slack bot and PixelKit, a Slack-integrated tool for designers. A click into a product page revealed the topics it’s associated with — PixelKit is filed under Web, Slack, Design, Tools, Task Management, and Dropbox — and a click onto any of these Topics labels allows you to explore similar products in the same topic.

Product Hunt is earning only minimal affiliate revenue today, according to Hoover, so a stop at its Sneaker topic sparked a discussion of where it may head in the future. Asked about selling products directly on its site, Hoover indicated it’s a possibility down the road. “We have a community of people that visit daily to find, download, sometimes purchase new things, so there’s an interesting intent of our community right now,” he said. “We don’t have any current plans to do so, to integrate direct commerce, but it’s something that we think about in the future.”

And though advertising is currently not in the picture, it may enter it eventually. “We’re not actively pursuing putting advertising in, but that’s obviously an opportunity,” Hoover said.

During his visit, Hoover joined us for a live interview on Facebook. You can watch it in its entirety here:

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