Life and stories are so closely intertwined that, at times, it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins. On Flipboard, stories flow from one to the next, weaving a rich tapestry that does an amazing job of showcasing all that life has to offer. The Galaxy Note 7 was the best phone available when it was released in August. A culmination of all of the company's strongest technologies to date, coupled with some fascinating new arrivals, Samsung somehow made the whole thing work in harmony, fit into a beautifully crafted 5.7-inch design. Even a war as pitiless as Syria's can have a low point.

He's a lightning-fast learner, he speaks eight languages and he's considered an expert in multiple fields. He's got an exemplary work ethic, is a speed reader and finds insights no one else can. On a personal note, he's a mean chef and even offers good dating advice. Named after IBM's first CEO, Watson was born back in 2007 as part of an effort by IBM Research to develop a question-answering system that could compete on the American quiz show "Jeopardy." Since trouncing its human opponents on the show in 2011, it has expanded considerably.

It could be the ultimate upgrade for the discerning tank owner - a kit that makes your vehicle entire remote controlled. General Dynamics, the maker of the Abrams tank and the Stryker armoured fighting vehicle, has revealed a partnership to do just that. It is working with Kairos Autonomi, to create a simple plug in kit that could let army bosses upgrade their tanks, troop carriers and virtually any other vehicle. The M1 Abrams is an American third-generation main battle tank named after General Creighton Abrams, former Army chief of staff and commander of United States military forces in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972. Weighing nearly 62 metric tons, it is one of the heaviest main battle tanks in service.

In this paper, we study how the mean shift algorithm can be used to denoise a dataset. We introduce a new framework to analyze the mean shift algorithm as a denoising approach by viewing the algorithm as an operator on a distribution function. We investigate how the mean shift algorithm changes the distribution and show that data points shifted by the mean shift concentrate around high density regions of the underlying density function. By using the mean shift as a denoising method, we enhance the performance of several clustering techniques, improve the power of two-sample tests, and obtain a new method for anomaly detection.

The goal of semi-supervised learning is to improve supervised classifiers by using additional unlabeled training examples. In this work we study a simple self-learning approach to semi-supervised learning applied to the least squares classifier. We show that a soft-label and a hard-label variant of self-learning can be derived by applying block coordinate descent to two related but slightly different objective functions. The resulting soft-label approach is related to an idea about dealing with missing data that dates back to the 1930s. We show that the soft-label variant typically outperforms the hard-label variant on benchmark datasets and partially explain this behaviour by studying the relative difficulty of finding good local minima for the corresponding objective functions.

Principal component regression (PCR) is a widely used two-stage procedure: principal component analysis (PCA), followed by regression in which the selected principal components are regarded as new explanatory variables in the model. Note that PCA is based only on the explanatory variables, so the principal components are not selected using the information on the response variable. In this paper, we propose a one-stage procedure for PCR in the framework of generalized linear models. The basic loss function is based on a combination of the regression loss and PCA loss. An estimate of the regression parameter is obtained as the minimizer of the basic loss function with a sparse penalty. We call the proposed method sparse principal component regression for generalized linear models (SPCR-glm). Taking the two loss function into consideration simultaneously, SPCR-glm enables us to obtain sparse principal component loadings that are related to a response variable. However, a combination of loss functions may cause a parameter identification problem, but this potential problem is avoided by virtue of the sparse penalty. Thus, the sparse penalty plays two roles in this method. The parameter estimation procedure is proposed using various update algorithms with the coordinate descent algorithm. We apply SPCR-glm to two real datasets, doctor visits data and mouse consomic strain data. SPCR-glm provides more easily interpretable principal component (PC) scores and clearer classification on PC plots than the usual PCA.

The article examines in some detail the convergence rate and mean-square-error performance of momentum stochastic gradient methods in the constant step-size and slow adaptation regime. The results establish that momentum methods are equivalent to the standard stochastic gradient method with a re-scaled (larger) step-size value. The size of the re-scaling is determined by the value of the momentum parameter. The equivalence result is established for all time instants and not only in steady-state. The analysis is carried out for general strongly convex and smooth risk functions, and is not limited to quadratic risks. One notable conclusion is that the well-known bene ts of momentum constructions for deterministic optimization problems do not necessarily carry over to the adaptive online setting when small constant step-sizes are used to enable continuous adaptation and learn- ing in the presence of persistent gradient noise. From simulations, the equivalence between momentum and standard stochastic gradient methods is also observed for non-differentiable and non-convex problems.

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella and president Brad Smith embarked on a four-day European tour to meet with business and government leaders, and promote the company's cloud computing services in Europe. Microsoft, which has invested over 3 billion in Europe to date, announced that it has more than doubled its cloud capacity in Europe in the past year, and intends to deliver Microsoft Cloud to European customers from data centers in France, starting in 2017. "We continue to invest heavily in cloud infrastructure to meet the growing demand from European customers and partners," said Nadella. "Building a global, trusted, intelligent cloud platform is core to our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. There's never been a better time for organizations across Europe to seize new growth and opportunity with the Microsoft Cloud."

When Microsoft bought Mojang, the makers of the insanely popular Minecraft, in a surprise 2.5 billion deal in September 2014, nobody knew what to think. The game seemed an odd fit for Microsoft, whose biggest moneymakers are its productivity software and Windows PC operating system. Minecraft's millions of players fretted that the game was destined to be ruined under its new corporate parent, or that Microsoft would restrict the game to its own Xbox and Windows platforms. Two years later, Minecraft is more popular and widely available than ever. Since the beginning of this year, Mojang says, people have bought 53,000 copies of Minecraft every single day.

Google has hired comedy writers from Pixar and The Onion in a bid to make its smart assistant more likeable. It hopes to use their talent to'infuse personality' into its AI helper, which will be used in the firm's new Pixel phones, Duo app and Home speaker. The ultimate goal is to make users feel more emotionally connected to their personal software agent and the firm believes a livelier disposition could make this happen. In a world of order-taking machines, Google Assistant aims to be a comedian. The search giant has recently hired comedy writers from Pixar and The Onion, a satire newspaper, in order to'infuse personality' into its virtual assistant that will live in Google Home (pictured) Earlier this month, Google unveiled its Pixel smartphones and eagerly awaited Home speaker that will both be designed with the smart assistant.