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