Learning Microsoft Cognitive Services. Use Cognitive Services APIs to add AI capabilities to your applications - Third Edition

Leif Larsen

Microsoft Cognitive Services is a set of APIs for integrating artificial intelligence in your applications to solve logical business problems. If you’re new to developing applications with AI, Learning Microsoft Cognitive Services will give you a comprehensive introduction to Microsoft’s AI stack and get you up-to-speed in no time.The book introduces you to 24 APIs, including Emotion, Language, Vision, Speech, Knowledge, and Search. Using Visual Studio, you can develop applications with enhanced capabilities for image processing, speech recognition, text processing, and much more. Moving forward, you will work with datasets that enable your applications to process various data in the form of image, video, or text.By the end of the book, you’ll be able to confidently explore Cognitive Services APIs for building intelligent applications that can be deployed for real-world business uses.

SQL Server 2017 Administrator's Guide. One stop solution for DBAs to monitor, manage, and maintain enterprise databases

Marek Chmel, Vladimir Muzny

Take advantage of the real power of SQL Server 2017 with all its new features, in addition to covering core database administration tasks. This book will give you a competitive advantage by helping you quickly learn how to design, manage, and secure your database solution. You will learn how to set up your SQL Server and configure new (and existing) environments for optimal use. After covering the designing aspect, the book delves into performance-tuning aspects by teaching you how to effectively use indexes. The book will also teach you about certain choices that need to be made about backups and how to implement a rock-solid security policy and keep your environment healthy. Finally, you will learn about the techniques you should use when things go wrong, and other important topics, such as migration, upgrading, and consolidation, are covered in detail. Integration with Azure is also covered in depth. Whether you are an administrator or thinking about entering the field, this book will provide you with all the skills you need to successfully create, design, and deploy databases usingSQL Server 2017.

Apache Hadoop 3 Quick Start Guide. Learn about big data processing and analytics

Hrishikesh Vijay Karambelkar

Apache Hadoop is a widely used distributed data platform. It enables large datasets to be efficiently processed instead of using one large computer to store and process the data. This book will get you started with the Hadoop ecosystem, and introduce you to the main technical topics, including MapReduce, YARN, and HDFS.The book begins with an overview of big data and Apache Hadoop. Then, you will set up a pseudo Hadoop development environment and a multi-node enterprise Hadoop cluster. You will see how the parallel programming paradigm, such as MapReduce, can solve many complex data processing problems.The book also covers the important aspects of the big data software development lifecycle, including quality assurance and control, performance, administration, and monitoring. You will then learn about the Hadoop ecosystem, and tools such as Kafka, Sqoop, Flume, Pig, Hive, and HBase. Finally, you will look at advanced topics, including real time streaming using Apache Storm, and data analytics using Apache Spark. By the end of the book, you will be well versed with different configurations of the Hadoop 3 cluster.

Windows Forensics Cookbook. Over 60 practical recipes to acquire memory data and analyze systems with the latest Windows forensic tools

Scar de Courcier, Oleg Skulkin

Windows Forensics Cookbook provides recipes to overcome forensic challenges and helps you carry out effective investigations easily on a Windows platform. You will begin with a refresher on digital forensics and evidence acquisition, which will help you to understand the challenges faced while acquiring evidence from Windows systems. Next you will learn to acquire Windows memory data and analyze Windows systems with modern forensic tools. We also cover some more in-depth elements of forensic analysis, such as how to analyze data from Windows system artifacts, parse data from the most commonly-used web browsers and email services, and effectively report on digital forensic investigations. You will see how Windows 10 is different from previous versions and how you can overcome the specific challenges it brings. Finally, you will learn to troubleshoot issues that arise while performing digital forensic investigations. By the end of the book, you will be able to carry out forensics investigations efficiently.

Mastering Distributed Tracing. Analyzing performance in microservices and complex systems

Yuri Shkuro

Mastering Distributed Tracing will equip you to operate and enhance your own tracing infrastructure. Through practical exercises and code examples, you will learn how end-to-end tracing can be used as a powerful application performance management and comprehension tool. The rise of Internet-scale companies, like Google and Amazon, ushered in a new era of distributed systems operating on thousands of nodes across multiple data centers. Microservices increased that complexity, often exponentially. It is harder to debug these systems, track down failures, detect bottlenecks, or even simply understand what is going on. Distributed tracing focuses on solving these problems for complex distributed systems. Today, tracing standards have developed and we have much faster systems, making instrumentation less intrusive and data more valuable.Yuri Shkuro, the creator of Jaeger, a popular open-source distributed tracing system, delivers end-to-end coverage of the field in Mastering Distributed Tracing. Review the history and theoretical foundations of tracing; solve the data gathering problem through code instrumentation, with open standards like OpenTracing, W3C Trace Context, and OpenCensus; and discuss the benefits and applications of a distributed tracing infrastructure for understanding, and profiling, complex systems.

Unity 2017 Mobile Game Development. Build, deploy, and monetize games for Android and iOS with Unity

John P. Doran

Unity has established itself as an overpowering force for developing mobile games. If you love mobile games and want to learn how to make them but have no idea where to begin, then this book is just what you need. This book takes a clear, step-by-step approach to building an endless runner game using Unity with plenty of examples on how to create a game that is uniquely your own.Starting from scratch, you will build, set up, and deploy a simple game to a mobile device. You will learn to add touch gestures and design UI elements that can be used in both landscape and portrait mode at different resolutions. You will explore the best ways to monetize your game projects using Unity Ads and in-app purchases before you share your game information on social networks. Next, using Unity’s analytics tools you will be able to make your game better by gaining insights into how players like and use your game. Finally, you’ll learn how to publish your game on the iOS and Android App Stores for the world to see and play along.

Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook. A Step-by-Step Guide leveraging Custom Scripts and Integrated Tools in Kali Linux - Second Edition

Michael Hixon, Justin Hutchens

With the ever-increasing amount of data flowing in today’s world, information security has become vital to any application. This is where Kali Linux comes in. Kali Linux focuses mainly on security auditing and penetration testing. This step-by-step cookbook on network scanning trains you in important scanning concepts based on version 2016.2. It will enable you to conquer any network environment through a range of network scanning techniques and will also equip you to script your very own tools.Starting with the fundamentals of installing and managing Kali Linux, this book will help you map your target with a wide range of network scanning tasks, including discovery, port scanning, fingerprinting, and more. You will learn how to utilize the arsenal of tools available in Kali Linux to conquer any network environment. The book offers expanded coverage of the popular Burp Suite and has new and updated scripts for automating scanning and target exploitation. You will also be shown how to identify remote services, how to assess security risks, and how various attacks are performed. You will cover the latest features of Kali Linux 2016.2, which includes the enhanced Sparta tool and many other exciting updates.This immersive guide will also encourage the creation of personally scripted tools and the skills required to create them.

Bayesian Analysis with Python. Introduction to statistical modeling and probabilistic programming using PyMC3 and ArviZ - Second Edition

Osvaldo Martin

The second edition of Bayesian Analysis with Python is an introduction to the main concepts of applied Bayesian inference and its practical implementation in Python using PyMC3, a state-of-the-art probabilistic programming library, and ArviZ, a new library for exploratory analysis of Bayesian models.The main concepts of Bayesian statistics are covered using a practical and computational approach. Synthetic and real data sets are used to introduce several types of models, such as generalized linear models for regression and classification, mixture models, hierarchical models, and Gaussian processes, among others. By the end of the book, you will have a working knowledge of probabilistic modeling and you will be able to design and implement Bayesian models for your own data science problems. After reading the book you will be better prepared to delve into more advanced material or specialized statistical modeling if you need to.