SAN FRANCISCO - Millions of users of Amazon's Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa, the human-sounding virtual assistant that can tell them the weather, order takeout and handle other basic tasks in response to a voice command. So a customer was shocked last year when Alexa blurted out: "Kill your foster parents." Alexa has also chatted with users about sex acts. She gave a discourse on dog defecation. And this summer, a hack Amazon traced back to China may have exposed some customers' data, according to five people familiar with the events.

Recommender systems have recently attracted many researchers in the deep learning community. The state-of-the-art deep neural network models used in recommender systems are typically multilayer perceptron and deep Autoencoder (DAE), among which DAE usually shows better performance due to its superior capability to reconstruct the inputs. However, we found existing DAE recommendation systems that have similar implementations on similar datasets result in vastly different parameter settings. In this work, we have built a flexible DAE model, named FlexEncoder that uses configurable parameters and unique features to analyse the parameter influences on the prediction accuracy of recommender systems. This will help us identify the best-performance parameters given a dataset. Extensive evaluation on the MovieLens datasets are conducted, which drives our conclusions on the influences of DAE parameters. Specifically, we find that DAE parameters strongly affect the prediction accuracy of the recommender systems, and the effect is transferable to similar datasets in a larger size. We open our code to public which could benefit both new users for DAE -- they can quickly understand how DAE works for recommendation systems, and experienced DAE users -- it easier for them to tune the parameters on different datasets.

Abstract--Next generation networks are expected to be ultra dense and aim to explore spectrum sharing paradigm that allows users to communicate in licensed, shared as well as unlicensed spectrum. Such ultra-dense networks will incur significant signaling loadat base stations leading to a negative effect on spectrum and energy efficiency. To minimize signaling overhead, an adhoc approachis being considered for users communicating in unlicensed and shared spectrum. Decision of such users need to completely decentralized as: 1) No communication between users and signaling from the base station is possible which necessitates independent channel selection at each user. Collision occurs when multiple users transmit simultaneously on the same channel, 2) Channel qualities may be heterogeneous, i.e., they are not same across all users, and moreover are unknown, and 3) The network could be dynamic where users can enter or leave anytime. We develop a multi-armed bandit based distributed algorithm for static networks and extend it for the dynamic networks. The algorithms aim to achieve stable orthogonal allocation (SOC) in finite time and meet the above three constraints with two novel characteristics: 1) Low complex narrowband radio compared to wideband radio in existing works, and 2) Epoch-less approach for dynamic networks. We establish convergence of our algorithms to SOC and validate via extensive simulation experiments. Index Terms--Multi-player multi-armed bandit, ad-hoc networks, dynamicnetworks, distributed learning. I. INTRODUCTION Next generation wireless networks such as 5G aim to offer the wide range of new services such as enhanced local broadband, high-speed multimedia, mission-critical control, private networks such as Industrial IoT and enterprise [1] via spectrum sharing. Such networks with diverse service requirements are expected to greatly enhance user experience [1]. Recently, 3GPP proposed a new radio (NR) based heterogeneous networksconsisting of base stations of various sizes. Compared to existing networks, NRs can operate not only in licensed spectrum but also in the shared (2.3 GHz/ 3.5 GHz) as well as unlicensed spectrum (2.4 GHz / 5-7 GHz / 57-71 GHz). Such network opens up many interesting challenges such as resource allocation, dynamic and contextaware networkadaptation, and in-depth knowledge discovery in the complex environment for which machine learning and artificial intelligence frameworks offer novel solutions [1-4]. The next generation networks are envisioned to work on the principle of separate signaling (large base station) and data infrastructure (small base stations) which allows adaptation of data network to the current traffic situation while maintaining the coverage. These networks will be ultra dense with very high peak rate but relatively lower expected traffic per network node [1].

In 1994, soon after Jeff Bezos incorporated what would become Amazon, the entrepreneur briefly contemplated changing the company's name. The nascent firm had been dubbed "Cadabra," but Bezos wanted a less playful, more accurate alternative: "Relentless." Twenty-four years later, perhaps no adjective better describes Bezos' empire than the name he once wanted to give it. The company is known as the "everything store," but in its dogged pursuit of growth, Amazon has come to dominate more than just ecommerce. Amazon is a fashion designer, advertising business, television and movie producer, book publisher, and the owner of a sprawling platform for crowdsourced micro-labor tasks.

Surface Go is Microsoft's big bet on a tiny-computer future Lauren Goode, Wired At the top of the list is Wired's detailed piece on the $399 Surface Go, Microsoft's long-rumored smaller Surface device. Smart speakers (and the virtual assistants they house) offer voice control for so many connected devices it's hard to keep count. Those audio gadgets can also assist with a range of questions -- that is, if they can understand you. The Washington Post took a close look at the performance of Alexa and Google Assistant when it comes to understanding people with strong accents. The results show that while these devices are certainly handy and increasingly popular, there's still a lot of room for improvement.

Each new year brings a frisson of excitement among book lovers as they anticipate the happy hours ahead absorbed in a library's worth of fresh reads. And 2019 looks to be bumper year. To whet your appetite we've picked a selection of fiction titles from a range of established and new authors. The list is by no means exhaustive. It may not even end up tempting you.

An Amazon customer got a grim message last year from Alexa, the virtual assistant in the company's smart speaker device: "Kill your foster parents." The user who heard the message from his Echo device wrote a harsh review on Amazon's website, Reuters reported - calling Alexa's utterance "a whole new level of creepy". An investigation found the bot had quoted from the social media site Reddit, known for harsh and sometimes abusive messages, people familiar with the investigation told Reuters. The odd command is one of many hiccups that have happened as Amazon tries to train its machine to act something like a human, engaging in casual conversations in response to its owner's questions or comments. The research is helping Alexa mimic human banter and talk about almost anything she finds on the internet.

The notch enables slimmer display borders and features like Face ID on the new iPhones and a dual selfie camera system on Google's Pixel 3 XL. But if you prefer a phone without the notch, your choices are limited – at least among the best smartphone picks. Fox News has compiled a list of five of the best. The Pixel phone line was first introduced just a little more than two years ago. The third generation Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL (the latter now with a notch) are among the best smartphones on the planet.

If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA TODAY's newsroom and any business incentives. Christmas is just a few days away, and you haven't bought all (or maybe any?) of your gifts yet. Okay, that doesn't sound great, but don't panic--there are still a ton of wonderful gifts available on Amazon, the king of expedited shipping, that can make it to your doorstep in time for the big day. Lucky for you, many of our favorite products here at Reviewed are their lowest prices of the season.

Cutting cable TV is certainly a forward-thinking move, but controlling your streaming TV device by voice is even more futuristic. Using voice commands can be a lot faster than fiddling with a remote, and with smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home, you don't even need to use your hands. Still, not all streaming devices are on the same level when it comes to voice control. In the interest of sorting it all out, here's a rundown of everything you can and can't do, sorted by streaming platform: Not every Roku player has voice controls built into its remote, but for those that do, you can hit the microphone button to control playback, launch apps, search for things to watch, and launch music from Pandora, iHeartRadio, or TuneIn. Roku's biggest limitation is its inability to launch specific TV shows, movies, or live channels with voice alone.