Python Reinforcement Learning Projects. Eight hands-on projects exploring reinforcement learning algorithms using TensorFlow

Sean Saito, Yang Wenzhuo, Rajalingappaa Shanmugamani

Reinforcement learning is one of the most exciting and rapidly growing fields in machine learning. This is due to the many novel algorithms developed and incredible results published in recent years.In this book, you will learn about the core concepts of RL including Q-learning, policy gradients, Monte Carlo processes, and several deep reinforcement learning algorithms. As you make your way through the book, you'll work on projects with datasets of various modalities including image, text, and video. You will gain experience in several domains, including gaming, image processing, and physical simulations. You'll explore technologies such as TensorFlow and OpenAI Gym to implement deep learning reinforcement learning algorithms that also predict stock prices, generate natural language, and even build other neural networks.By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience with eight reinforcement learning projects, each addressing different topics and/or algorithms. We hope these practical exercises will provide you with better intuition and insight about the field of reinforcement learning and how to apply its algorithms to various problems in real life.

Learning ASP.NET Core 2.0. Build modern web apps with ASP.NET Core 2.0, MVC, and EF Core 2

Jason De Oliveira, Michel Bruchet

The ability to develop web applications that are highly efficient but also easy to maintain has become imperative to many businesses. ASP.NET Core 2.0 is an open source framework from Microsoft, which makes it easy to build cross-platform web applications that are modern and dynamic. This book will take you through all of the essential concepts in ASP.NET Core 2.0, so you can learn how to build powerful web applications. The book starts with a brief introduction to the ASP.NET Core framework and the improvements made in the latest release, ASP.NET Core 2.0. You will then build, test, and debug your first web application very quickly. Once you understand the basic structure of ASP.NET Core 2.0 web applications, you'll dive deeper into more complex concepts and scenarios. Moving on, we'll explain how to take advantage of widely used frameworks such as Model View Controller and Entity Framework Core 2 and you'll learn how to secure your applications. Finally, we'll show you how to deploy and monitor your applications using Azure, AWS, and Docker. After reading the book, you'll be able to develop efficient and robust web applications in ASP.NET Core 2.0 that have high levels of customer satisfaction and adoption.

Mastering VMware vSphere 6.5. Leverage the power of vSphere for effective virtualization, administration, management and monitoring of data centers

Paolo Valsecchi, Karel Novak, Andrea Mauro

VMware vSphere 6.5 provides a powerful, flexible and secure foundation for next-generation applications which helps you create an effective digital transformation. This book will be based on VMware vSphere 6.5 which empowers you to virtualize any complex application with ease. You’ll begin by getting an overview of all the products, solutions and features of the vSphere 6.5 suite, comparing the evolutions with the previous releases. Next ,you’ll design and plan a virtualization infrastructure to drive planning and performance analysis. Following this , you will be proceeding with workflow and installation of components. New network trends are also covered which will help you in optimally designing the vSphere environment. You will also learn the practices and procedures involved in configuring and managing virtual machines in a vSphere infrastructure. With vSphere 6.5, you’ll make use of significantly more powerful capabilities for patching, upgrading, and managing the configuration of the virtual environment. Next we’ll focus on specific availability and resiliency solutions in vSphere. Towards the end of the book you will get information on how to save your configuration, data and workload from your virtual infrastructure. By the end of the book you’ll learn about VMware vSphere 6.5 right from design to deployment and management.

Hands-On Chatbot Development with Alexa Skills and Amazon Lex. Create custom conversational and voice interfaces for your Amazon Echo devices and web platforms

Sam Williams

Have you ever wondered how Alexa apps are made, how voice-enabled technologies work, or how chatbots function? And why tech giants such as Amazon and Google are investing in voice technologies? A better question is: why should I start developing on these platforms? Hands-On Chatbot Development with Alexa Skills and Amazon Lex covers all features of the Alexa Skills kit with real-world examples that help you develop skills to integrate Echo and chatbots into Facebook, Slack, and Twilio with the Amazon Lex platform.The book starts with teaching you how to set up your local environment and AWS CLI so that you can automate the process of uploading AWS Lambda from your local machine. You will then learn to develop Alexa Skills and Lex chatbots using Lambda functions to control functionality. Once you’ve come to grips with this, you will learn to create increasingly complex chatbots, integrate Amazon S3, and change the way Alexa talks to the user. In the concluding chapters, we shift our focus to Amazon Lex and messaging chatbots. We will explore Alexa, learn about DynamoDB databases, and add cards to user conversations.By the end of this book, you will have explored a full set of technologies that will enable you to create your own voice and messaging chatbots using Amazon.

GeoServer Beginner's Guide. Share geospatial data using Open Source standards - Second Edition

Stefano Iacovella

GeoServer is an opensource server writtenin Java that allows users to share, process,and edit geospatial data. This book willguide you through the new featuresand improvements of GeoServer and willhelp you get started with it. GeoServerBeginner's Guide gives you the impetus tobuild custom maps using your data withoutthe need for costly commercial softwarelicenses and restrictions. Even if you donot have prior GIS knowledge, you will beable to make interactive maps after readingthis book.You will install GeoServer, access your datafrom a database, and apply style points,lines, polygons, and labels to impress sitevisitors with real-time maps. Then youfollow a step-by-step guide that installsGeoServer in minutes. You will explorethe web-based administrative interfaceto connect to backend data stores suchas PostGIS, and Oracle. Going ahead, youcan display your data on web-basedinteractive maps, use style lines, points,polygons, and embed images to visualizethis data for your web visitors. You willwalk away from this book with a workingapplication ready for production.After reading GeoServer Beginner's Guide,you will be able to build beautiful custommaps on your website using your geospatialdata.

Kubernetes for Developers. Use Kubernetes to develop, test, and deploy your applications with the help of containers

Joseph Heck

Kubernetes is documented and typically approached from the perspective of someone running software that has already been built. Kubernetes may also be used to enhance the development process, enabling more consistent testing and analysis of code to help developers verify not only its correctness, but also its efficiency. This book introduces key Kubernetes concepts, coupled with examples of how to deploy and use them with a bit of Node.js and Python example code, so that you can quickly replicate and use that knowledge.You will begin by setting up Kubernetes to help you develop and package your code. We walk you through the setup and installation process before working with Kubernetes in the development environment. We then delve into concepts such as automating your build process, autonomic computing, debugging, and integration testing. This book covers all the concepts required for a developer to work with Kubernetes.By the end of this book, you will be in a position to use Kubernetes in developmentecosystems.

Building RESTful Web services with .NET Core. Developing Distributed Web Services to improve scalability with .NET Core 2.0 and ASP.NET Core 2.0

Gaurav Aroraa, Tadit Dash

REST is an architectural style that tackles the challenges of building scalable web services. In today's connected world, APIs have taken a central role on the web. APIs provide the fabric through which systems interact, and REST has become synonymous with APIs. The depth, breadth, and ease of use of ASP.NET Core makes it a breeze for developers to work with for building robust web APIs. This book takes you through the design of RESTful web services and leverages the ASP.NET Core framework to implement these services. This book begins by introducing you to the basics of the philosophy behind REST. You'll go through the steps of designing and implementing an enterprise-grade RESTful web service. This book takes a practical approach, that you can apply to your own circumstances. This book brings forth the power of the latest .NET Core release, working with MVC. Later, you will learn about the use of the framework to explore approaches to tackle resilience, security, and scalability concerns. You will explore the steps to improve the performance of your applications. You'll also learn techniques to deal with security in web APIs and discover how to implement unit and integration test strategies. By the end of the book, you will have a complete understanding of Building a client for RESTful web services, along with some scaling techniques.

Practical Data Wrangling. Expert techniques for transforming your raw data into a valuable source for analytics

Allan Visochek

Around 80% of time in data analysis is spent on cleaning and preparing data for analysis. This is, however, an important task, and is a prerequisite to the rest of the data analysis workflow, including visualization, analysis and reporting. Python and R are considered a popular choice of tool for data analysis, and have packages that can be best used to manipulate different kinds of data, as per your requirements. This book will show you the different data wrangling techniques, and how you can leverage the power of Python and R packages to implement them.You’ll start by understanding the data wrangling process and get a solid foundation to work with different types of data. You’ll work with different data structures and acquire and parse data from various locations. You’ll also see how to reshape the layout of data and manipulate, summarize, and join data sets. Finally, we conclude with a quick primer on accessing and processing data from databases, conducting data exploration, and storing and retrieving data quickly using databases.The book includes practical examples on each of these points using simple and real-world data sets to give you an easier understanding. By the end of the book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of all the data wrangling concepts and how to implement them in the best possible way.

Swift iOS Programming for Kids. Help your kids build simple and engaging applications with Swift 3.0

Steffen D. Sommer, Jim Campagno

This book starts at the beginning by introducing programming through easy to use examples with the Swift Playgrounds app. Kids are regularly encouraged to explore and play with new concepts to support knowledge acquisition and retention – these newly learned skills can then be used to express their own unique ideas. Children will be shown how to create their first iOS application and build their very own movie night application.

Learn pfSense 2.4. Get up and running with Pfsense and all the core concepts to build firewall and routing solutions

David Zientara

As computer networks become ubiquitous, it has become increasingly important to both secure and optimize our networks. pfSense, an open-source router/firewall, provides an easy, cost-effective way of achieving this – and this book explains how to install and configure pfSense in such a way that even a networking beginner can successfully deploy and use pfSense.This book begins by covering networking fundamentals, deployment scenarios, and hardware sizing guidelines, as well as how to install pfSense. The book then covers configuration of basic services such as DHCP, DNS, and captive portal and VLAN configuration. Careful consideration is given to the core firewall functionality of pfSense, and how to set up firewall rules and traffic shaping. Finally, the book covers the basics of VPNs, multi-WAN setups, routing and bridging, and how to perform diagnostics and troubleshooting on a network.

Nginx HTTP Server. Harness the power of Nginx to make the most of your infrastructure and serve pages faster than ever before - Fourth Edition

Martin Bjerretoft Fjordvald, Clement Nedelcu

Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high-speed internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity.This book is a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI, and more. In addition, this complete direct reference will be indispensable at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes. This book mainly targets the most recent version of Nginx (1.13.2) and focuses on all the new additions and improvements, such as support for HTTP/2, improved dynamic modules, security enhancements, and support for multiple SSL certificates. This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules so that it does exactly what you need quickly and securely. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different approaches that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.

Angular 2 Cookbook. Discover over 70 recipes that provide the solutions you need to know to face every challenge in Angular 2 head on

Matthew Frisbie

Angular 2 introduces an entirely new way to build applications. It wholly embraces all the newest concepts that are built into the next generation of browsers, and it cuts away all the fat and bloat from Angular 1. This book plunges directly into the heart of all the most important Angular 2 concepts for you to conquer. In addition to covering all the Angular 2 fundamentals, such as components, forms, and services, it demonstrates how the framework embraces a range of new web technologies such as ES6 and TypeScript syntax, Promises, Observables, and Web Workers, among many others.This book covers all the most complicated Angular concepts and at the same time introduces the best practices with which to wield these powerful tools. It also covers in detail all the concepts you'll need to get you building applications faster. Oft-neglected topics such as testing and performance optimization are widely covered as well. A developer that reads through all the content in this book will have a broad and deep understanding of all the major topics in the Angular 2 universe.

Managing Mission - Critical Domains and DNS. Demystifying nameservers, DNS, and domain names

Mark E.Jeftovic

Managing your organization's naming architecture and mitigating risks within complex naming environments is very important. This book will go beyond looking at “how to run a name server” or “how to DNSSEC sign a domain”, Managing Mission Critical Domains & DNS looks across the entire spectrum of naming; from external factors that exert influence on your domains to all the internal factors to consider when operating your DNS. The readers are taken on a comprehensive guided tour through the world of naming: from understanding the role of registrars and how they interact with registries, to what exactly is it that ICANN does anyway? Once the prerequisite knowledge of the domain name ecosystem is acquired, the readers are taken through all aspects of DNS operations. Whether your organization operates its own nameservers or utilizes an outsourced vendor, or both, we examine the complex web of interlocking factors that must be taken into account but are too frequently overlooked. By the end of this book, our readers will have an end to end to understanding of all the aspects covered in DNS name servers.

Mastering Elixir. Build and scale concurrent, distributed, and fault-tolerant applications

André Albuquerque, Daniel Caixinha

Running concurrent, fault-tolerant applications that scale is a very demanding responsibility. After learning the abstractions that Elixir gives us, developers are able to build such applications with inconceivable low effort. There is a big gap between playing around with Elixir and running it in production, serving live requests. This book will help you fll this gap by going into detail on several aspects of how Elixir works and showing concrete examples of how to apply the concepts learned to a fully ?edged application. In this book, you will learn how to build a rock-solid application, beginning by using Mix to create a new project. Then you will learn how the use of Erlang's OTP, along with the Elixir abstractions that run on top of it (such as GenServer and GenStage), that allow you to build applications that are easy to parallelize and distribute. You will also master supervisors (and supervision trees), and comprehend how they are the basis for building fault-tolerant applications. Then you will use Phoenix to create a web interface for your application. Upon fnishing implementation, you will learn how to take your application to the cloud, using Kubernetes to automatically deploy, scale, and manage it. Last, but not least, you will keep your peace of mind by learning how to thoroughly test and then monitor your application.

DevOps: Continuous Delivery, Integration, and Deployment with DevOps. Dive into the core DevOps strategies

Sricharan Vadapalli

DevOps is the most widely used software engineering culture and practice that aim sat software development and operation. Continuous integration is a cornerstone technique of DevOps that merges software code updates from developers into a shared central mainline.This book takes a practical approach and covers the tools and strategies of DevOps. It starts with familiarizing you with DevOps framework and then shows how toper form continuous delivery, integration, and deployment with DevOps. You will explore DevOps process maturity frameworks and progression models with checklist templates for each phase of DevOps. You will also be familiar with agile terminology, methodology, and the benefits accrued by an organization by adopting it. You will also get acquainted with popular tools such as Git, Jenkins ,Maven, Gerrit, Nexus, Selenium, and so on.You will learn configuration, automation, and the implementation of infrastructure automation (Infrastructure as Code) with tools such as Chef and Ansible.This book is ideal for engineers, architects, and developers, who wish to learn the core strategies of DevOps.This book is embedded with useful assessments that will help you revise the concepts you have learned in this book. This book is repurposed for this specific learning experience from material from Packt's Hands-on DevOps by Sricharan Vadapalli.

OpenVPN Cookbook. Get the most out of OpenVPN by exploring it's advanced features. - Second Edition

Jan Just Keijser

OpenVPN provides an extensible VPN framework that has been designed to ease site-specific customization, such as providing the capability to distribute a customized installation package to clients, and supporting alternative authentication methods via OpenVPN’s plugin module interface. This book provides you with many different recipes to help you set up, monitor, and troubleshoot an OpenVPN network. You will learn to configure a scalable, load-balanced VPN server farm that can handle thousands of dynamic connections from incoming VPN clients. You will also get to grips with the encryption, authentication, security, extensibility, and certifications features of OpenSSL. You will also get an understanding of IPv6 support and will get a demonstration of how to establish a connection via IPv64. This book will explore all the advanced features of OpenVPN and even some undocumented options, covering all the common network setups such as point-to-point networks and multi-client TUN-style and TAP-style networks. Finally, you will learn to manage, secure, and troubleshoot your virtual private networks using OpenVPN 2.4.