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.