Architects of Intelligence. The truth about AI from the people building it

Martin Ford

Financial Times Best Books of the Year 2018TechRepublic Top Books Every Techie Should ReadHow will AI evolve and what major innovations are on the horizon? What will its impact be on the job market, economy, and society? What is the path toward human-level machine intelligence? What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances?Architects of Intelligence contains a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews where New York Times bestselling author, Martin Ford, uncovers the truth behind these questions from some of the brightest minds in the Artificial Intelligence community.Martin has wide-ranging conversations with twenty-three of the world's foremost researchers and entrepreneurs working in AI and robotics: Demis Hassabis (DeepMind), Ray Kurzweil (Google), Geoffrey Hinton (Univ. of Toronto and Google), Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics), Yann LeCun (Facebook) , Fei-Fei Li (Stanford and Google), Yoshua Bengio (Univ. of Montreal), Andrew Ng (AI Fund), Daphne Koller (Stanford), Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley), Nick Bostrom (Univ. of Oxford), Barbara Grosz (Harvard), David Ferrucci (Elemental Cognition), James Manyika (McKinsey), Judea Pearl (UCLA), Josh Tenenbaum (MIT), Rana el Kaliouby (Affectiva), Daniela Rus (MIT), Jeff Dean (Google), Cynthia Breazeal (MIT), Oren Etzioni (Allen Institute for AI), Gary Marcus (NYU), and Bryan Johnson (Kernel).Martin Ford is a prominent futurist, and author of Financial Times Business Book of the Year, Rise of the Robots. He speaks at conferences and companies around the world on what AI and automation might mean for the future.Meet the minds behind the AI superpowers as they discuss the science, business and ethics of modern artificial intelligence. Read James Manyika’s thoughts on AI analytics, Geoffrey Hinton’s breakthroughs in AI programming and development, and Rana el Kaliouby’s insights into AI marketing. This AI book collects the opinions of the luminaries of the AI business, such as Stuart Russell (coauthor of the leading AI textbook), Rodney Brooks (a leader in AI robotics), Demis Hassabis (chess prodigy and mind behind AlphaGo), and Yoshua Bengio (leader in deep learning) to complete your AI education and give you an AI advantage in 2019 and the future.

Roslyn Cookbook. Compiler as a Service, Code Analysis, Code Quality and more

Manish Vasani

Open-sourcing the C# and Visual Basic compilers is one of the most appreciated things by the .NET community, especially as it exposes rich code analysis APIs to analyze and edit code. If you want to use Roslyn API to write powerful extensions and contribute to the C# developer tool chain, then this book is for you. Additionally, if you are just a .NET developer and want to use this rich Roslyn-based functionality in Visual Studio to improve the code quality and maintenance of your code base, then this book is also for you.This book is divided into the following broad modules:1. Writing and consuming analyzers/fixers (Chapters 1 - 5): You will learn to write different categories of Roslyn analyzers and harness and configure analyzers in your C# projects to catch quality, security and performance issues. Moving ahead, you will learn how to improve code maintenance and readability by using code fixes and refactorings and also learn how to write them. 2. Using Roslyn-based agile development features (Chapters 6 and 7): You will learn how to improve developer productivity in Visual Studio by using features such as live unit testing, C# interactive and scripting.3. Contributing to the C# language and compiler tool chain (Chapters 8 - 10): You will see the power of open-sourcing the Roslyn compiler via the simple steps this book provides; thus, you will contribute a completely new C# language feature and implement it in the Roslyn compiler codebase. Finally, you will write simple command line tools based on the Roslyn service API to analyze and edit C# code.

Android Things Projects. Efficiently build IoT projects with Android Things

Francesco Azzola

Android Things makes developing connected embedded devices easy by providing the same Android development tools, best-in-class Android framework, and Google APIs that make developers successful on mobile.With this book, you will be able to take advantage of the new Android framework APIs to securely build projects using low-level components such as sensors, resistors, capacitors, and display controllers. This book will teach you all you need to know about working with Android Things through practical projects based on home automation, robotics, IoT, and so on. We’ll teach you to make the most of the Android Things and build enticing projects such as a smart greenhouse that controls the climate and environment automatically. You’ll also create an alarm system, integrate Android Things with IoT cloud platforms, and more. By the end of this book, you will know everything about Android Things, and you’ll have built some very cool projects using the latest technology that is driving the adoption of IoT. You will also have primed your mindset so that you can use your knowledge for profitable, practical projects.

Progressive Web Apps with React. Create lightning fast web apps with native power using React and Firebase

Scott Domes

For years, the speed and power of web apps has lagged behind native applications. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) aim to solve this by bridging the gap between the web apps and native apps, delivering a host of exciting features. Simultaneously, React is fast becoming the go-to solution for building modern web UIs, combining ease of development with performance and capability. Using React alongside PWA technology will make it easy for you to build a fast, beautiful, and functional web app.After an introduction and brief overview of the goals of PWAs, the book moves on to setting up the application structure. From there, it covers the Webpack build process and the process of creating React components. You'll learn how to set up the backend database and authentication solution to communicate with Firebase and how to work with React Router. Next, you will create and configure your web app manifest, making your PWA installable on mobile devices. Then you'll get introduced to service workers and see how they work as we configure the app to send push notifications using Firebase Cloud Messaging. We'll also explore the App Shell pattern, a key concept in PWAs and look at its advantages regarding efficient performance. Finally, you'll learn how to add of?ine capabilities to the app with caching and confirm your progress by auditing your PWA with Lighthouse. Also, you'll discover helper libraries and shortcuts that will help you save time and understand the future of PWA development.

NativeScript for Angular Mobile Development. Creating dynamic mobile apps for iOS and Android

Nathan Walker, Nathanael J. Anderson

NativeScript is an open source framework that is built by Progress in order to build truly native mobile apps with TypeScript, JavaScript or just Angular which is an open source framework built by Google that offers declarative templates, dependency injection, and fully featured modules to build rich applications. Angular’s versatile view handling architecture allows your views to be rendered as highly performant UI components native to iOS and Android mobile platforms. This decoupling of the view rendering layer in Angular combined with the power of native APIs with NativeScript have together created the powerful and exciting technology stack of NativeScript for Angular.This book focuses on the key concepts that you will need to know to build a NativeScript for Angular mobile app for iOS and Android. We’ll build a fun multitrack recording studio app, touching on powerful key concepts from both technologies that you may need to know when you start building an app of your own. The structure of the book takes the reader from a void to a deployed app on both the App Store and Google Play, serving as a reference guide and valuable tips/tricks handbook.By the end of this book, you’ll know majority of key concepts needed to build a successful NativeScript for Angular app.

Mastering Unity 2017 Game Development with C#. Create professional games with solid gameplay features and professional-grade workflow - Second Edition

Alan Thorn

Do you want to make the leap from being an everyday Unity developer to being a pro game developer? Then look no further! This book is your one-stop solution to creating mesmerizing games with lifelike features and amazing gameplay. This book focuses in some detail on a practical project with Unity, building a first-person game with many features. You'll delve into the architecture of a Unity game, creating expansive worlds, interesting render effects, and other features to make your games special. You will create individual game components, use efficient animation techniques, and implement collision and physics effectively. Specifically, we'll explore optimal techniques for importing game assets, such as meshes and textures; tips and tricks for effective level design; how to animate and script NPCs; how to configure and deploy to mobile devices; how to prepare for VR development; how to work with version control; and more. By the end of this book, you'll have developed sufficient competency in Unity development to produce fun games with confidence.

SQL Server 2016 Developer's Guide. Build efficient database applications for your organization with SQL Server 2016

Milo?° Radivojevifá, Dejan Sarka, William Durkin

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 is considered the biggest leap in the data platform history of the Microsoft, in the ongoing era of Big Data and data science. This book introduces you to the new features of SQL Server 2016 that will open a completely new set of possibilities for you as a developer. It prepares you for the more advanced topics by starting with a quick introduction to SQL Server 2016's new features and a recapitulation of the possibilities you may have already explored with previous versions of SQL Server. The next part introduces you to small delights in the Transact-SQL language and then switches to a completely new technology inside SQL Server - JSON support. We also take a look at the Stretch database, security enhancements, and temporal tables.The last chapters concentrate on implementing advanced topics, including Query Store, column store indexes, and In-Memory OLTP. You will finally be introduced to R and learn how to use the R language with Transact-SQL for data exploration and analysis. By the end of this book, you will have the required information to design efficient, high-performance database applications without any hassle.

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.