Deep learning just may be the buzziest, most misunderstood term in the tech world. And October was a banner month for the enigmatic subject. The term "deep learning" is, essentially, a synonym for a type of neural network approach. And though voguish at the moment, the goal of the field has long been to create a system that can independently learn. Now, research into machine learning is rapidly accelerating, and those intellectual seeds are bearing widely applicable fruits.

Data Analytics is one of the most sought-after skill sets today, with students and professionals alike aspiring to be enabled with the necessary skills to derive data-driven business insights in their careers. It also helps organisations attain a competitive advantage over others. Data Analytics is not limited to mathematicians, statisticians or IT professionals with programming skills. The need to analyse data has become so elementary today that a professional in any business is expected to know the necessary skills. While professionals today are aware of the need to be trained, some are unaware of how to embark on a career in analytics.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most buzzed-about terms in technology. The AI market is estimated to reach $5.05 billion USD by 2020, up from $419.7 million USD in 2014 – a 53% increase. With the launch of Facebook's chatbots, Amazon's Echo, and IBM's Watson, companies in many fields are considering how they can use new AI tools to their advantage. Advertising agencies that use AI, machine learning, and image recognition are hyper-targeting consumers by learning their interests and tastes. An everyday example is Facebook's targeted ads, which use artificial intelligence to narrow target segments down in a matter of hours.

We just came back from a week at an idyllic beach resort in Malaysia. Not having to wear shoes for a week felt liberating. Internet was non-existent in most parts of the island and sketchy at best at upmarket resorts. Even though it was utopia for a week, we could not wait to get back on the grid. Technology is a double-edged sword.

Artificial intelligence (AI), in its most widely understood definition, involves the ability of machines to emulate human thinking, reasoning and decision-making. Though AI continues to develop and become more sophisticated, internet users worldwide are seeing benefits of the technology, like its ability to complete dangerous tasks, or even the companionship it provides. Weber Shandwick and KRC Research polled 2,100 adult internet users in Brazil, Canada, China, the UK and the US. The benefits of AI mentioned range widely, but generally, respondents believe the technology can help solve a lot of problems, as well as assist them with any decisions they need to make--ultimately it's convenient. Some 69% of internet users said that one of the perceived benefits of AI was that it gives them time to pursue other activities, and almost as many respondents said AI can deliver services that provide greater ease and convenience. Furthermore, internet users can see the benefits AI can bring to the economy, as well as to energy and natural resources.

Killer computers, robot uprisings: Hollywood has long had a deep fascination for artificial intelligence. Even off screen, AI is increasingly a key part of the media business -- but thus far, the reality isn't nearly as dramatic as movies like "Her" or "Ex Machina" make it out to be. This story first appeared in the November 08, 2016 issue of Variety. Case in point: You've probably been contacted by AI today without even knowing it. That push notification on your mobile phone, the email newsletter of your favorite website, or the videos recommended to you while binge-watching are being powered by machine-learning algorithms that rely on huge amounts of data to make smart decisions about the media you'd be inclined to consume.

Probabilistic Temporal Tensor Factorization (PTTF) is an effective algorithm to model the temporal tensor data. It leverages a time constraint to capture the evolving properties of tensor data. Nowadays the exploding dataset demands a large scale PTTF analysis, and a parallel solution is critical to accommodate the trend. Whereas, the parallelization of PTTF still remains unexplored. In this paper, we propose a simple yet efficient Parallel Probabilistic Temporal Tensor Factorization, referred to as P$^2$T$^2$F, to provide a scalable PTTF solution. P$^2$T$^2$F is fundamentally disparate from existing parallel tensor factorizations by considering the probabilistic decomposition and the temporal effects of tensor data. It adopts a new tensor data split strategy to subdivide a large tensor into independent sub-tensors, the computation of which is inherently parallel. We train P$^2$T$^2$F with an efficient algorithm of stochastic Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers, and show that the convergence is guaranteed. Experiments on several real-word tensor datasets demonstrate that P$^2$T$^2$F is a highly effective and efficiently scalable algorithm dedicated for large scale probabilistic temporal tensor analysis.

Jump to an update: • Waiting for Hillary on a gray morning • A few thoughts on the unthinkable • Palin speaks at the Trump party • Trump's path • Settling in for the night at Hillary Clinton's party • If Trump wins, he would likely also control all three branches of government • A new electoral map is upending the old one • The part of the night when Democrats start to freak out • Marco Rubio, again • The exit polls show a breakdown in demographics that is entirely predictable • A shooting near a polling place in Los Angeles • Early exit polls: No evidence Comey made a difference • Is the South still the conservative heartland? Clinton's motorcade arrived soon after. At campaign events and at her party last night, Clinton was permanently inside a huge bubble of safe space guarded by the Secret Service. At today's event, they were nowhere to be seen. Clinton arrived in a small caravan that stopped in a busy street. The only visible protection was provided by a handful of New York cops who hadn't received notice she was coming just then and halfheartedly tried to convince a crowd to move backward. Soon, Clinton's staff and the crowd and a few people who happened to have been walking down the street were mashed together for a panicky moment. A bicyclist, nearby, screamed, "Get out of the way, you fucking morons."--A. The executive branch of the United States government has grown in its power over the past eight years. After 9/11, George W. Bush built an aggressive national-security apparatus that Barack Obama only partially reined in. To cite just one of the powers that Commander-in-Chief Donald J. Trump would acquire, the American President has grown comfortable with killing alleged terrorists remotely with unmanned vehicles. Congress has done little in the way of oversight of this program, and it is just one of the many new powers Trump could inherit. Similarly, Congress has shown no interest in rewriting the overly broad war authorizations that Bush and Obama used to wage campaigns across the Middle East and Africa. As Congress and the White House became unable to pass legislation, Obama also pushed the boundaries with respect to the use of executive orders. These can be rescinded on day one of a Trump Presidency, but, just as important, Trump will undoubtedly push the boundaries of executive orders beyond what Obama did.

I find myself being summoned from various directions, as if I've just stepped into a party with my closest friends. Many pins I see are interesting to me -- it's a pleasant feeling. A house with a window lined with dark brown wooden shutters. A shelf made from the back of an iMac. A media console on wheels with iron legs and wooden slats.

Chat applications are becoming a mainstream trend and our preferred way of interacting with colleagues, friends and family. From the early days of SMS to the favorite snaps of our children, real-time online conversations are everywhere and here to stay. The acquisition of WhatAapp by Facebook in 2014 for a hefty $22 Billion price tag made it clear and promising as TechCrunch noticed it one year later. But although TechCrunch saw messaging apps as the future of mobile portal, they remained more or less next to the Internet, without a direct impact, except their increasing audience. The recent surge of interest in Bots and AI is changing the game and we'll be witnessing the second major fragmentation of the Internet.