Hands-On Neuroevolution with Python. Build high-performing artificial neural network architectures using neuroevolution-based algorithms

Iaroslav Omelianenko

Neuroevolution is a form of artificial intelligence learning that uses evolutionary algorithms to simplify the process of solving complex tasks in domains such as games, robotics, and the simulation of natural processes. This book will give you comprehensive insights into essential neuroevolution concepts and equip you with the skills you need to apply neuroevolution-based algorithms to solve practical, real-world problems.You'll start with learning the key neuroevolution concepts and methods by writing code with Python. You'll also get hands-on experience with popular Python libraries and cover examples of classical reinforcement learning, path planning for autonomous agents, and developing agents to autonomously play Atari games. Next, you'll learn to solve common and not-so-common challenges in natural computing using neuroevolution-based algorithms. Later, you'll understand how to apply neuroevolution strategies to existing neural network designs to improve training and inference performance. Finally, you'll gain clear insights into the topology of neural networks and how neuroevolution allows you to develop complex networks, starting with simple ones.By the end of this book, you will not only have explored existing neuroevolution-based algorithms, but also have the skills you need to apply them in your research and work assignments.

The Kaggle Book. Data analysis and machine learning for competitive data science

Konrad Banachewicz, Luca Massaron, Anthony Goldbloom

Millions of data enthusiasts from around the world compete on Kaggle, the most famous data science competition platform of them all. Participating in Kaggle competitions is a surefire way to improve your data analysis skills, network with an amazing community of data scientists, and gain valuable experience to help grow your career.The first book of its kind, The Kaggle Book assembles in one place the techniques and skills you’ll need for success in competitions, data science projects, and beyond. Two Kaggle Grandmasters walk you through modeling strategies you won’t easily find elsewhere, and the knowledge they’ve accumulated along the way. As well as Kaggle-specific tips, you’ll learn more general techniques for approaching tasks based on image, tabular, textual data, and reinforcement learning. You’ll design better validation schemes and work more comfortably with different evaluation metrics.Whether you want to climb the ranks of Kaggle, build some more data science skills, or improve the accuracy of your existing models, this book is for you.Plus, join our Discord Community to learn along with more than 1,000 members and meet like-minded people!

Instant Social Media Marketing with HootSuite. Manage and enhance your social media marketing with HootSuite

Kunal Mathur

Social media enables people to interact, share content, collaborate, and participate in user generated content. There are websites and applications dedicated to social networking, bookmarking, microblogging, and social curation; generating a lot of information in a very engaging manner. If it is not done correctly, then it can present real problems for a brand or company's image and reputation.Instant Social Media Marketing with HootSuite is a practical guide that provides marketers with explanatory, step-by-step exercises to search, comment, track, and analyse conversations over the Web about their topics of interest or brands.This fast-paced guide on the HootSuite social marketing tool breaks down the confusion that surrounds learning and managing social profiles. It will provide you with a number of clear, practical recipes that will help you understand and benefit from regular reporting.You will also learn about posting, replying, scheduling, and managing various social media profiles directly from HootSuite. Step-by-step instructions will show you how to check user profiles, conversations, create and assign tasks to teams, and generate reports using HootSuite Analytics.If you have multiple social profiles such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others, and want to simplify your life by managing all of them from same the tool and generate reports, then this is the book for you.

Instant Moodle Quiz Module How-to. Create Moodle quizzes to enhance learning using practical, hands-on recipes

Joan Coy, Moodle Trust

Enhancing learning experience and improving student success has many instructors searching for effective tools. Moodle Quiz is just such a tool to aid instructors in creating powerful assessment experiences for their learners. Instant Moodle Quiz Module How-to is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of clear step-by-step procedures, which will help you take advantage of the real power that is behind Moodle Quiz, and give you a good grounding in using it to achieve effective assessment in your courses.This book covers how Moodle Quiz module can be used to create effective assessment FOR and OF learning in your courses. It will take you through a number of clear, practical recipes that will help you harness the power of Moodle Quiz quickly and painlessly.You will begin by learning to set up clear categories, carefully designed questions and helpful feedback to create the question bank that is the foundation of Moodle Quiz. Once you have configured the quiz and specified your security requirements, you can select questions by hand or randomly. Once learners have completed the quiz you can interact one-on-one or examine statistical data for large groups using the easily generated reports.Using Instant Moodle Quiz Module How-to you will learn how to create effective quizzes and how to provide meaningful feedback and evaluate results.

Ubuntu Server Cookbook. Arm yourself to make the most of the versatile, powerful Ubuntu Server with over 100 hands-on recipes

Uday Sawant

Ubuntu is one of the most secure operating systems and defines the highest level of security as compared other operating system. Ubuntu server is a popular Linux distribution and the first choice when deploying a Linux server. It can be used with a $35 Raspberry Pi to top-notch, thousand-dollar-per-month cloud hardware. Built with lists that there are 4 million + websites built using Ubuntu. With its easy-to-use package management tools and availability of well-known packages, we can quickly set up our own services such as web servers and database servers using Ubuntu.This book will help you develop the skills required to set up high performance and secure services with open source tools. Starting from user management and an in-depth look at networking, we then move on to cover the installation and management of web servers and database servers, as well as load balancing various services. You will quickly learn to set up your own cloud and minimize costs and efforts with application containers. Next, you will get to grips with setting up a secure real-time communication system. Finally, we’ll explore source code hosting and various collaboration tools. By the end of this book, you will be able to make the most of Ubuntu’s advanced functionalities.

Blender 3D Incredible Machines. Design, model, and texture complex mechanical objects in Blender

Christopher Kuhn, Allan Brito

Blender 3D is one of the top pieces of 3D animation software. Machine modeling is an essential aspect of war games, space games, racing games, and animated action films. As the Blender software grows more powerful and popular, there is a demand to take your modeling skills to the next level. This book will cover all the topics you need to create professional models and renders. This book will help you develop a comprehensive skill set that covers the key aspects of mechanical modeling. Through this book, you will create many types of projects, including a pistol, spacecraft, robot, and a racer. We start by making a Sci-fi pistol, creating its basic shape and adding details to it. Moving on, you’ll discover modeling techniques for larger objects such as a space craft and take a look at how different techniques are required for freestyle modeling. After this, we’ll create the basic shapes for the robot and combine the meshes to create unified objects. We'll assign materials and explore the various options for freestyle rendering. We’ll discuss techniques to build low-poly models, create a low-poly racer, and explain how they differ from the high poly models we created previously. By the end of this book, you will have mastered a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations.

Instant Nancy Web Development. Leverage the powerful and lightweight .NET-based Nancy Web Framework

Christian Horsdal

Nancy is a C# web framework which aims to provide you ,the application developer, with an easy path to follow, where things will naturally fall into place and work. Nancy is a powerful, flexible, and lightweight web framework that allows you to get on with your job.Instant Nancy Web Development will give Readers practical introduction to building, testing, and deploying web applications with Nancy. You will learn how to take full advantage of Nancy to build clean application code, and will see how this code lends itself nicely to test driven development. You will also learn how to hook into Nancy to easily extend the framework.Instant Nancy Web Development offers you an in-depth exploration of all the major features of the Nancy web framework, from basic routing to deployment in the Cloud, and from model binding to automated tests.You will learn how to build web applications with Nancy and explore how to build web sites using Razor views. Next, you will learn how to build web based APIs suitable for JavaScript clients, mobile clients, and even desktop applications. In fact, you will learn how to easily combine the two into one.Finally, you will learn how to leverage Nancy to write clean and maintainable web applications quickly.

AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications. Enhance the user experience of your PHP website using AJAX with this practical tutorial featuring detailed case studies

Mihai Bucica, Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea, Filip Chereches-Tosa, ...

Assuming a basic knowledge of PHP, XML, JavaScript and MySQL, this book will help you understand how the heart of AJAX beats and how the constituent technologies work together. After teaching the foundations, the book will walk you through numerous real-world case studies covering tasks you'll be likely to need for your own applications:Server-enabled form-validation pageOnline chat collaboration toolCustomized type-ahead text entry solutionReal-time charting using SVGDatabase-enabled, editable and customizable data gridRSS aggregator applicationA server-managed sortable list with drag&drop support using the script.aculo.us JavaScript toolkitThe appendices guide you through installing your working environment, using powerful tools that enable debugging, improving, and profiling your code, working with XSLT and XPath.From the Author, Cristian Darie AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications is mainly a book for beginners, but when designing its contents we tried to find the ideal blend of topics that would help both novice and experienced web developers make a big step forward. One customer was very kind to let us know, through a review, that we succeeded:The theory behind all the technologies used is very clearly explained, without boring you with details about obvious things. Right from the first chapter you start learning by examples. The examples can be easily adapted to many web projects and they cover stuff that is both useful and fun.Here are a few examples of such useful and fun things that you can find in this book:details on using proxy scripts to work around the security measures in modern browsersclient-side and server-side code that doesn't break when fed with special characters (such as

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Exam Guide. Validate your knowledge of Kubernetes and implement it in a real-life production environment

Mélony Qin, Brendan Burns, Mark Whitby, Alessandro Vozza

Kubernetes is the most popular container orchestration tool in the industry. The Kubernetes Administrator certification will help you establish your credibility and enable you to efficiently support the business growth of individual organizations with the help of this open source platform.The book begins by introducing you to Kubernetes architecture and the core concepts of Kubernetes. You'll then get to grips with the main Kubernetes API primitives, before diving into cluster installation, configuration, and management. Moving ahead, you’ll explore different approaches while maintaining the Kubernetes cluster, perform upgrades for the Kubernetes cluster, as well as backup and restore etcd. As you advance, you'll deploy and manage workloads on Kubernetes and work with storage for Kubernetes stateful workloads with the help of practical scenarios. You'll also delve into managing the security of Kubernetes applications and understand how different components in Kubernetes communicate with each other and with other applications. The concluding chapters will show you how to troubleshoot cluster- and application-level logging and monitoring, cluster components, and applications in Kubernetes.By the end of this Kubernetes book, you'll be fully prepared to pass the CKA exam and gain practical knowledge that can be applied in your day-to-day work.

Delphi Cookbook. Recipes to master Delphi for IoT integrations, cross-platform, mobile and server-side development - Third Edition

Daniele Spinetti, Daniele Teti

Delphi is a cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) that supports rapid application development on different platforms, saving you the pain of wandering amid GUI widget details or having to tackle inter-platform incompatibilities. Delphi Cookbook begins with the basics of Delphi and gets you acquainted with JSON format strings, XSLT transformations, Unicode encodings, and various types of streams. You’ll then move on to more advanced topics such as developing higher-order functions and using enumerators and run-time type information (RTTI). As you make your way through the chapters, you’ll understand Delphi RTL functions, use FireMonkey in a VCL application, and cover topics such as multithreading, using aparallel programming library and deploying Delphi on a server. You’ll take a look at the new feature of WebBroker Apache modules, join the mobile revolution with FireMonkey, and learn to build data-driven mobile user interfaces using the FireDAC database access framework. This book will also show you how to integrate your apps with Internet of Things (IoT).By the end of the book, you will have become proficient in Delphi by exploring its different aspects such as building cross-platforms and mobile applications, designing server-side programs, and integrating these programs with IoT.

Learn Java 12 Programming. A step-by-step guide to learning essential concepts in Java SE 10, 11, and 12

Nick Samoylov

Java is one of the preferred languages among developers, used in everything right from smartphones, and game consoles to even supercomputers, and its new features simply add to the richness of the language. This book on Java programming begins by helping you learn how to install the Java Development Kit. You will then focus on understanding object-oriented programming (OOP), with exclusive insights into concepts like abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism, which will help you when programming for real-world apps. Next, you’ll cover fundamental programming structures of Java such as data structures and algorithms that will serve as the building blocks for your apps. You will also delve into core programming topics that will assist you with error handling, debugging, and testing your apps. As you progress, you’ll move on to advanced topics such as Java libraries, database management, and network programming, which will hone your skills in building professional-grade apps.Further on, you’ll understand how to create a graphic user interface using JavaFX and learn to build scalable apps by taking advantage of reactive and functional programming.By the end of this book, you’ll not only be well versed with Java 10, 11, and 12, but also gain a perspective into the future of this language and software development in general.

3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook. A comprehensive guide to exploring rendering algorithms in modern OpenGL and Vulkan

Sergey Kosarevsky, Viktor Latypov

OpenGL is a popular cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) used for rendering 2D and 3D graphics, while Vulkan is a low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics API that targets high-performance applications. 3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook helps you learn about modern graphics rendering algorithms and techniques using C++ programming along with OpenGL and Vulkan APIs.The book begins by setting up a development environment and takes you through the steps involved in building a 3D rendering engine with the help of basic, yet self-contained, recipes. Each recipe will enable you to incrementally add features to your codebase and show you how to integrate different 3D rendering techniques and algorithms into one large project. You'll also get to grips with core techniques such as physically based rendering, image-based rendering, and CPU/GPU geometry culling, to name a few. As you advance, you'll explore common techniques and solutions that will help you to work with large datasets for 2D and 3D rendering. Finally, you'll discover how to apply optimization techniques to build performant and feature-rich graphics applications.By the end of this 3D rendering book, you'll have gained an improved understanding of best practices used in modern graphics APIs and be able to create fast and versatile 3D rendering frameworks.

Monitoring Elasticsearch

Dan Noble, Pulkit Agrawal, Mahmoud Lababidi

ElasticSearch is a distributed search server similar to Apache Solr with a focus on large datasets, a schema-less setup, and high availability. This schema-free architecture allows ElasticSearch to index and search unstructured content, making it perfectly suited for both small projects and large big data warehouses with petabytes of unstructured data.This book is your toolkit to teach you how to keep your cluster in good health, and show you how to diagnose and treat unexpected issues along the way. You will start by getting introduced to ElasticSearch, and look at some common performance issues that pop up when using the system. You will then see how to install and configure ElasticSearch and the ElasticSearch monitoring plugins. Then, you will proceed to install and use the Marvel dashboard to monitor ElasticSearch. You will find out how to troubleshoot some of the common performance and reliability issues that come up when using ElasticSearch. Finally, you will analyze your cluster’s historical performance, and get to know how to get to the bottom of and recover from system failures.This book will guide you through several monitoring tools, and utilizes real-world cases and dilemmas faced when using ElasticSearch, showing you how to solve them simply, quickly, and cleanly.

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager. Deploy a scalable solution by ensuring high availability and disaster recovery using Configuration Manager with this book and

Marius Sandbu

Microsoft Configuration Manager is both extensive and complex, and for many, it is the primary tool for Enterprise management. With each new release, Configuration Manager continually proves itself to be the ultimate solution for managing both clients and mobile devices.This book covers in detailed and easy-to-understand steps how to set up highly available Configuration Manager roles and backend services such as SQL, DNS, and AD. You will learn how to plan for high availability, what kind of roles there are, and how they scale.The book starts by examining what needs to be taken into account when planning for high availability before moving on to focus on the different roles and how they can be set up. The book will also go through different scenarios as well as various backup and recovery procedures. You will learn how to identify bottlenecks within the different components and create sample design scenarios for high availability on Configuration Manager. The book will also look at the different high availability options and how to deploy them.

Modernizing Oracle Tuxedo Applications with Python. A practical guide to using Oracle Tuxedo in the 21st century

Aivars Kalvans

Despite being developed in the 1980s, Oracle Tuxedo still runs a significant part of critical infrastructure and is not going away any time soon. Modernizing Oracle Tuxedo Applications with Python will help you get to grips with the most important Tuxedo concepts by writing Python code.The book starts with an introduction to Oracle Tuxedo and guides you in installing its latest version and Python bindings for Tuxedo on Linux. You'll then learn how to build your first server and client, configure Tuxedo, and start running an application. As you advance, you'll understand load balancing and work with the BBL server, which is at the heart of a Tuxedo application. This Tuxedo book will also cover Boolean expressions and different ways to export Tuxedo buffers for storage and transmission, before showing you how to implement servers and clients and use the management information base to change the configuration dynamically. Once you've learned how to configure Tuxedo for transactions and control them in application code, you'll discover how to use the store-and-forward functionality to reach destinations and use an Oracle database from a Tuxedo application.By the end of this Oracle Tuxedo book, you'll be able to perform common Tuxedo programming tasks with Python and integrate Tuxedo applications with other parts of modern infrastructure.

Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project and Portfolio Management. For project managers and consultants, this book will help you master the main elements of Primavera P6, together with the new features in Version 8. Lots of screenshots and clear explanations make for an easy ride

Elaine Britt Krazer, Daniel Williams

In 2008 Oracle acquired Primavera Software, Inc., a leading provider of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions for project-intensive industries.Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management is an integrated project portfolio management (PPM) solution comprising role-specific functionality to satisfy each team member's needs, responsibilities, and skills. It provides a single solution for managing projects of any size, adapts to various levels of complexities within a project, and intelligently scales to meet the needs of various roles, functions, or skill levels in your organization and on your project team.Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project and Portfolio Management aims to show you all the features and functionality of the software thoroughly and clearly.With Oracle Primavera P6 Version 8: Project and Portfolio Management, readers will master the core concepts of Primavera P6 and the new features associated with version 8.This book is divided into two sections, in the first section we learn the fundamental concepts behind managing projects which include organizing projects, adding activities and relationships, assigning roles and resources, scheduling a project, and much more. In the second section we cover portfolio management and how to make the best use of the web client that includes working with portfolios, portfolio analysis, portfolio capacity planning, ROI, tracking performance, and lots more.