Blockchain Quick Reference. A guide to exploring decentralized blockchain application development

Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt

Blockchain Quick Reference takes you through the electrifying world of blockchain technology and is designed for those who want to polish their existing knowledge regarding the various pillars of the blockchain ecosystem.This book is your go-to guide, teaching you how to apply principles and ideas for making your life and business better. You will cover the architecture, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), tokens, smart contracts, and terminologies of the blockchain technology, before studying how they work. All you need is a curious mind to get started with blockchain technology. Once you have grasped the basics, you will explore components of Ethereum, such as ether tokens, transactions, and smart contracts, in order to build simple Dapps. You will then move on to learning why Solidity is used specifically for Ethereum-based projects, followed by exploring different types of blockchain with easy-to-follow examples. All this will help you tackle challenges and problems. By the end of this book, you will not only have solved current and future problems relating to blockchain technology but will also be able to build efficient decentralized applications.

TensorFlow: Powerful Predictive Analytics with TensorFlow. Predict valuable insights of your data with TensorFlow

Md. Rezaul Karim

Predictive analytics discovers hidden patterns from structured and unstructured data for automated decision making in business intelligence. Predictive decisions are becoming a huge trend worldwide, catering to wide industry sectors by predicting which decisions are more likely to give maximum results. TensorFlow, Google’s brainchild, is immensely popular and extensively used for predictive analysis.This book is a quick learning guide on all the three types of machine learning, that is, supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning with TensorFlow. This book will teach you predictive analytics for high-dimensional and sequence data. In particular, you will learn the linear regression model for regression analysis. You will also learn how to use regression for predicting continuous values. You will learn supervised learning algorithms for predictive analytics. You will explore unsupervised learning and clustering using K-meansYou will then learn how to predict neighborhoods using K-means, and then, see another example of clustering audio clips based on their audio features. This book is ideal for developers, data analysts, machine learning practitioners, and deep learning enthusiasts who want to build powerful, robust, and accurate predictive models with the power of TensorFlow. 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 Predictive Analytics with TensorFlow by Md. Rezaul Karim.

Hands-On Cryptography with Python. Leverage the power of Python to encrypt and decrypt data

Samuel Bowne

Cryptography is essential for protecting sensitive information, but it is often performed inadequately or incorrectly. Hands-On Cryptography with Python starts by showing you how to encrypt and evaluate your data. The book will then walk you through various data encryption methods,such as obfuscation, hashing, and strong encryption, and will show how you can attack cryptographic systems. You will learn how to create hashes, crack them, and will understand why they are so different from each other. In the concluding chapters, you will use three NIST-recommended systems: the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA), and the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA). By the end of this book, you will be able to deal with common errors in encryption.

Swift 3 Game Development. Build iOS 10 Games with Swift 3.0 - Second Edition

Stephen Haney

Swift is the perfect choice for game development. Developers are intrigued by Swift 3.0 and want to make use of new features to develop their best games yet. Packed with best practices and easy-to-use examples, this book leads you step by step through the development of your first Swift game.This book starts by introducing SpriteKit and Swift's new features that can be used for game development. After setting up your first Swift project, you will build your first custom class, learn how to draw and animate your game, and add physics simulations.Then, you will add the player character, NPCs, and powerups. To make your game more fun and engaging, you will learn how to set up scenes and backgrounds, build fun menus, and integrate with Apple Game Center to add leaderboards and achievements. You will then make your game stand out by adding animations when game objects collide, and incorporate proven techniques such as the advanced particle system and graphics. Finally, you will explore the various options available to start down the path towards monetization and publish your finished games to the App Store.By the end of this book, you will be able to create your own iOS games using Swift and SpriteKit.

Python Programming with Raspberry Pi. Build small yet powerful robots and automation systems with Raspberry Pi Zero

Sai Yamanoor, Srihari Yamanoor

Raspberry Pi Zero is a super-small and super-affordable product from Raspberry Pi that is packed with a plethora of features and has grabbed the notice of programmers, especially those who use Python. This step-by-step guide will get you developing practical applications in Python using a Raspberry Pi Zero. It will become a valuable resource as you learn the essential details of interfacing sensors and actuators to a Raspberry Pi, as well as acquiring and displaying data. You will get started by writing a Python program that blinks an LED at 1-second intervals. Then you will learn to write simple logic to execute tasks based upon sensor data (for example, to control a motor) and retrieve data from the web (such as to check e-mails to provide a visual alert). Finally, you will learn to build a home automation system with Python where different appliances are controlled using the Raspberry Pi. The examples discussed in each chapter of this book culminate in a project that help improve the quality of people’s lives.

Hands-On Network Forensics. Investigate network attacks and find evidence using common network forensic tools

Nipun Jaswal

Network forensics is a subset of digital forensics that deals with network attacks and their investigation. In the era of network attacks and malware threat, it’s now more important than ever to have skills to investigate network attacks and vulnerabilities.Hands-On Network Forensics starts with the core concepts within network forensics, including coding, networking, forensics tools, and methodologies for forensic investigations. You’ll then explore the tools used for network forensics, followed by understanding how to apply those tools to a PCAP file and write the accompanying report. In addition to this, you will understand how statistical flow analysis, network enumeration, tunneling and encryption, and malware detection can be used to investigate your network. Towards the end of this book, you will discover how network correlation works and how to bring all the information from different types of network devices together.By the end of this book, you will have gained hands-on experience of performing forensics analysis tasks.

Oracle JET for Developers. Implement client-side JavaScript efficiently for enterprise Oracle applications

Raja Malleswara Rao Malleswara Rao Pattamsetti

This book will give you a complete practical understanding of the Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET) and how you can use it to develop efficient client-side applications with ease. It will tell you how to get your own customized Oracle JET set up.You'll start with individual libraries, such as jQuery, Cordova, and Require.js. You'll also get to work with the JavaScript libraries created by Oracle, especially for cloud developers. You'll use these tools to create a working backend application with these libraries. Using the latest Oracle Alta UI, you'll develop a state-of-the-art backend for your cloud applications. You'll learn how to develop and integrate thedifferent cloud services required for your application and use other third-party libraries to get more features from your cloud applications.Toward the end of the book, you'll learn how to manage and secure your cloud applications, and test them to ensure seamless deployment.

Go Standard Library Cookbook. Over 120 specific ways to make full use of the standard library components in Golang

Radomír Sohlich

Google's Golang will be the next talk of the town, with amazing features and a powerful library. This book will gear you up for using golang by taking you through recipes that will teach you how to leverage the standard library to implement a particular solution. This will enable Go developers to take advantage of using a rock-solid standard library instead of third-party frameworks. The book begins by exploring the functionalities available for interaction between the environment and the operating system. We will explore common string operations, date/time manipulations, and numerical problems. We'll then move on to working with the database, accessing the filesystem, and performing I/O operations. From a networking perspective, we will touch on client and server-side solutions. The basics of concurrency are also covered, before we wrap up with a few tips and tricks. By the end of the book, you will have a good overview of the features of the Golang standard library and what you can achieve with them. Ultimately, you will be proficient in implementing solutions with powerful standard libraries.

User Experience Mapping. Enhance UX with User Story Map, Journey Map and Diagrams

Peter W. Szabo

Do you want to create better products and innovative solutions? User experience maps will help you understand your users and improve communication with them. Maps can also champion user-centricity within the organization.This book is the first print resource covering two advanced mapping techniques—the behavioral change map and the 4D UX map. You’ll explore user story maps, task models, and journey maps, while also creating wireflows, mental model maps, ecosystem maps, and solution maps. You’ll learn how to use insights from real users to create and improve your maps and products.The book delves into each major user experience map type, ranging from simple techniques based on sticky notes to more complex map types, and guides you in solving real-world problems with maps. You’ll understand how to create maps using a variety of software products, including Adobe Illustrator, Balsamiq Mockups, Axure RP, and Microsoft Word. Besides, you can draw each map type with pen and paper too!The book also showcases communication techniques and workshop ideas. You’ll learn about the Kaizen-UX management framework, developed by the author, now used by many agencies and in-house UX teams in Europe and beyond.Buying this book will give you hundreds of hours worth of user experience knowledge, from one of the world’s leading UX consultants. It will change your users’ world for the better. If you are still not convinced, we have hidden some cat drawings in it, just in case.

Splunk 7.x Quick Start Guide. Gain business data insights from operational intelligence

James H. Baxter

Splunk is a leading platform and solution for collecting, searching, and extracting value from ever increasing amounts of big data - and big data is eating the world! This book covers all the crucial Splunk topics and gives you the information and examples to get the immediate job done. You will find enough insights to support further research and use Splunk to suit any business environment or situation.Splunk 7.x Quick Start Guide gives you a thorough understanding of how Splunk works. You will learn about all the critical tasks for architecting, implementing, administering, and utilizing Splunk Enterprise to collect, store, retrieve, format, analyze, and visualize machine data. You will find step-by-step examples based on real-world experience and practical use cases that are applicable to all Splunk environments. There is a careful balance between adequate coverage of all the critical topics with short but relevant deep-dives into the configuration options and steps to carry out the day-to-day tasks that matter.By the end of the book, you will be a confident and proficient Splunk architect and administrator.

Mastering AWS Security. Create and maintain a secure cloud ecosystem

Albert Anthony

Mastering AWS Security starts with a deep dive into the fundamentals of the shared security responsibility model. This book tells you how you can enable continuous security, continuous auditing, and continuous compliance by automating your security in AWS with the tools, services, and features it provides.Moving on, you will learn about access control in AWS for all resources. You will also learn about the security of your network, servers, data and applications in the AWS cloud using native AWS security services. By the end of this book, you will understand the complete AWS Security landscape, covering all aspects of end - to -end software and hardware security along with logging, auditing, and compliance of your entire IT environment in the AWS cloud. Lastly, the book will wrap up with AWS best practices for security.

Hands-On Deep Learning for Games. Leverage the power of neural networks and reinforcement learning to build intelligent games

Micheal Lanham

The number of applications of deep learning and neural networks has multiplied in the last couple of years. Neural nets has enabled significant breakthroughs in everything from computer vision, voice generation, voice recognition and self-driving cars. Game development is also a key area where these techniques are being applied. This book will give an in depth view of the potential of deep learning and neural networks in game development. We will take a look at the foundations of multi-layer perceptron’s to using convolutional and recurrent networks. In applications from GANs that create music or textures to self-driving cars and chatbots. Then we introduce deep reinforcement learning through the multi-armed bandit problem and other OpenAI Gym environments.As we progress through the book we will gain insights about DRL techniques such as Motivated Reinforcement Learning with Curiosity and Curriculum Learning. We also take a closer look at deep reinforcement learning and in particular the Unity ML-Agents toolkit. By the end of the book, we will look at how to apply DRL and the ML-Agents toolkit to enhance, test and automate your games or simulations. Finally, we will cover your possible next steps and possible areas for future learning.

Hands-On Agile Software Development with JIRA. Design and manage software projects using the Agile methodology

David Harned

As teams scale in size, project management can get very complicated. One of the best tools to deal with this kind of problem is JIRA. This book will start by organizing your project requirements and the principles of Agile development to get you started. You will then be introduced to set up a JIRA account and the JIRA ecosystem to help you implement a dashboard for your team's work and issues. You will learn how to manage any issues and bugs that might emerge in the development stage. Going ahead, the book will help you build reports and use them to plan the releases based on the study of the reports. Towards the end, you will come across working with the gathered data and create a dashboard that helps you track the project's development.

Angular Design Patterns. Implement the Gang of Four patterns in your apps with Angular

Mathieu Nayrolles

This book is an insightful journey through the most valuable design patterns, and it will provide clear guidance on how to use them effectively in Angular. You will explore some of the best ways to work with Angular and how to use it to meet the stability and performance required in today's web development world. You’ll get to know some Angular best practices to improve your productivity and the code base of your application.We will take you on a journey through Angular designs for the real world, using a combination of case studies, design patterns to follow, and anti-patterns to avoid.By the end of the book, you will understand the various features of Angular, and will be able to apply well-known, industry-proven design patterns in your work.

Data Lake for Enterprises. Lambda Architecture for building enterprise data systems

Vivek Mishra, Tomcy John, Pankaj Misra

The term Data Lake has recently emerged as a prominent term in the big data industry. Data scientists can make use of it in deriving meaningful insights that can be used by businesses to redefine or transform the way they operate. Lambda architecture is also emerging as one of the very eminent patterns in the big data landscape, as it not only helps to derive useful information from historical data but also correlates real-time data to enable business to take critical decisions. This book tries to bring these two important aspects — data lake and lambda architecture—together.This book is divided into three main sections. The first introduces you to the concept of data lakes, the importance of data lakes in enterprises, and getting you up-to-speed with the Lambda architecture. The second section delves into the principal components of building a data lake using the Lambda architecture. It introduces you to popular big data technologies such as Apache Hadoop, Spark, Sqoop, Flume, and ElasticSearch. The third section is a highly practical demonstration of putting it all together, and shows you how an enterprise data lake can be implemented, along with several real-world use-cases. It also shows you how other peripheral components can be added to the lake to make it more efficient.By the end of this book, you will be able to choose the right big data technologies using the lambda architectural patterns to build your enterprise data lake.

Deployment with Docker. Apply continuous integration models, deploy applications quicker, and scale at large by putting Docker to work

Srdjan Grubor

Deploying Docker into production is considered to be one of the major pain points in developing large-scale infrastructures, and the documentation available online leaves a lot to be desired. With this book, you will learn everything you wanted to know to effectively scale your deployments globally and build a resilient, scalable, and containerized cloud platform for your own use.The book starts by introducing you to the containerization ecosystem with some concrete and easy-to-digest examples; after that, you will delve into examples of launching multiple instances of the same container. From there, you will cover orchestration, multi-node setups, volumes, and almost every relevant component of this new approach to deploying services. Using intertwined approaches, the book will cover battle-tested tooling, or issues likely to be encountered in real-world scenarios, in detail. You will also learn about the other supporting components required for a true PaaS deployment and discover common options to tie the whole infrastructure together.At the end of the book, you learn to build a small, but functional, PaaS (to appreciate the power of the containerized service approach) and continue to explore real-world approaches to implementing even larger global-scale services.

Microservices Deployment Cookbook. Deploy and manage scalable microservices

Vikram Murugesan

This book will help any team or organization understand, deploy, and manage microservices at scale. It is driven by a sample application, helping you gradually build a complete microservice-based ecosystem. Rather than just focusing on writing a microservice, this book addresses various other microservice-related solutions: deployments, clustering, load balancing, logging, streaming, and monitoring.The initial chapters offer insights into how web and enterprise apps can be migrated to scalable microservices. Moving on, you’ll see how to Dockerize your application so that it is ready to be shipped and deployed. We will look at how to deploy microservices on Mesos and Marathon and will also deploy microservices on Kubernetes. Next, you will implement service discovery and load balancing for your microservices. We’ll also show you how to build asynchronous streaming systems using Kafka Streams and Apache Spark. Finally, we wind up by aggregating your logs in Kafka, creating your own metrics, and monitoring the metrics for the microservice.

Hands-On GUI Programming with C++ and Qt5. Build stunning cross-platform applications and widgets with the most powerful GUI framework

Lee Zhi Eng

Qt 5, the latest version of Qt, enables you to develop applications with complex user interfaces for multiple targets. It provides you with faster and smarter ways to create modern UIs and applications for multiple platforms. This book will teach you to design and build graphical user interfaces that are functional, appealing, and user-friendly.In the initial part of the book, you will learn what Qt 5 is and what you can do with it. You will explore the Qt Designer, discover the different types of widgets generally used in Qt 5, and then connect your application to the database to perform dynamic operations. Next, you will be introduced to Qt 5 chart which allows you to easily render different types of graphs and charts and incorporate List View Widgets in your application. You will also work with various Qt modules, like QtLocation, QtWebEngine, and the networking module through the course of the book. Finally, we will focus on cross-platform development with QT 5 that enables you to code once and run it everywhere, including mobile platforms. By the end of this book, you will have successfully learned about high-end GUI applications and will be capable of building many more powerful, cross-platform applications.

Hands-On Neural Networks with Keras. Design and create neural networks using deep learning and artificial intelligence principles

Niloy Purkait

Neural networks are used to solve a wide range of problems in different areas of AI and deep learning. Hands-On Neural Networks with Keras will start with teaching you about the core concepts of neural networks. You will delve into combining different neural network models and work with real-world use cases, including computer vision, natural language understanding, synthetic data generation, and many more. Moving on, you will become well versed with convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, autoencoders, and generative adversarial networks (GANs) using real-world training datasets. We will examine how to use CNNs for image recognition, how to use reinforcement learning agents, and many more. We will dive into the specific architectures of various networks and then implement each of them in a hands-on manner using industry-grade frameworks. By the end of this book, you will be highly familiar with all prominent deep learning models and frameworks, and the options you have when applying deep learning to real-world scenarios and embedding artificial intelligence as the core fabric of your organization.

MySQL 8 for Big Data. Effective data processing with MySQL 8, Hadoop, NoSQL APIs, and other Big Data tools

Shabbir Challawala, Chintan Mehta, Kandarp Patel, Jaydip Lakhatariya

With organizations handling large amounts of data on a regular basis, MySQL has become a popular solution to handle this structured Big Data. In this book, you will see how DBAs can use MySQL 8 to handle billions of records, and load and retrieve data with performance comparable or superior to commercial DB solutions with higher costs.Many organizations today depend on MySQL for their websites and a Big Data solution for their data archiving, storage, and analysis needs. However, integrating them can be challenging. This book will show you how to implement a successful Big Data strategy with Apache Hadoop and MySQL 8. It will cover real-time use case scenario to explain integration and achieve Big Data solutions using technologies such as Apache Hadoop, Apache Sqoop, and MySQL Applier. Also, the book includes case studies on Apache Sqoop and real-time event processing.By the end of this book, you will know how to efficiently use MySQL 8 to manage data for your Big Data applications.

Scala Design Patterns. Design modular, clean, and scalable applications by applying proven design patterns in Scala - Second Edition

Ivan Nikolov

Design patterns make developers’ lives easier by helping them write great software that is easy to maintain, runs efficiently, and is valuable to the company or people concerned. You’ll learn about the various features of Scala and will be able to apply well-known, industry-proven design patterns in your work. The book starts off by focusing on some of the most interesting and latest features of Scala while using practical real-world examples. We will be learning about IDE’s and Aspect Oriented Programming. We will be looking into different components in Scala. We will also cover the popular Gang of Four design patterns and show you how to incorporate functional patterns effectively. The book ends with a practical example that demonstrates how the presented material can be combined in real-life applications. You’ll learn the necessary concepts to build enterprise-grade applications. By the end of this book, you’ll have enough knowledge and understanding to quickly assess problems and come up with elegant solutions.

Learning Scala Programming. Object-oriented programming meets functional reactive to create Scalable and Concurrent programs

Vikash Sharma

Scala is a general-purpose programming language that supports both functional and object-oriented programming paradigms. Due to its concise design and versatility, Scala's applications have been extended to a wide variety of fields such as data science and cluster computing. You will learn to write highly scalable, concurrent, and testable programs to meet everyday software requirements.We will begin by understanding the language basics, syntax, core data types, literals, variables, and more. From here you will be introduced to data structures with Scala and you will learn to work with higher-order functions. Scala's powerful collections framework will help you get the best out of immutable data structures and utilize them effectively. You will then be introduced to concepts such as pattern matching, case classes, and functional programming features. From here, you will learn to work with Scala's object-oriented features. Going forward, you will learn about asynchronous and reactive programming with Scala, where you will be introduced to the Akka framework. Finally, you will learn the interoperability of Scala and Java.After reading this book, you'll be well versed with this language and its features, and you will be able to write scalable, concurrent, and reactive programs in Scala.

Introduction to Programming. Learn to program in Java with data structures, algorithms, and logic

Nick Samoylov

Have you ever thought about making your computer do what you want it to do? Do you want to learn to program, but just don't know where to start? Instead of guiding you in the right direction, have other learning resources got you confused with over-explanations?Don't worry. Look no further. Introduction to Programming is here to help.Written by an industry expert who understands the challenges faced by those from a non-programming background, this book takes a gentle, hand-holding approach to introducing you to the world of programming. Beginning with an introduction to what programming is, you'll go on to learn about languages, their syntax, and development environments. With plenty of examples for you to code alongside reading, the book's practical approach will help you to grasp everything it has to offer. More importantly, you'll understand several aspects of application development. As a result, you'll have your very own application running by the end of the book. To help you comprehensively understand Java programming, there are exercises at the end of each chapter to keep things interesting and encourage you to add your own personal touch to the code and, ultimately, your application.

Tkinter GUI Application Development Cookbook. A practical solution to your GUI development problems with Python and Tkinter

Alejandro Rodas de Paz

As one of the more versatile programming languages, Python is well-known for its batteries-included philosophy, which includes a rich set of modules in its standard library; Tkinter is the library included for building desktop applications. Due to this, Tkinter is a common choice for rapid GUI development, and more complex applications can benefit from the full capabilities of this library. This book covers all of your Tkinter and Python GUI development problems and solutions.Tkinter GUI Application Development Cookbook starts with an overview of Tkinter classes and at the same time provides recipes for basic topics, such as layout patterns and event handling. Next, we cover how to develop common GUI patterns, such as entering and saving data, navigating through menus and dialogs, and performing long-running actions in the background.You can then make your apps leverage network resources effectively and perform graphical operations on a canvas and related tasks such as detecting collisions between items. Finally, this book covers using themed widgets, an extension of Tk widgets that have a more native look and feel. Finally, this book covers using the canvas and themed widgets.By the end of the book, you will have an in-depth knowledge of Tkinter classes, and will know how to use them to build efficient and rich GUI applications.