A hands-on guide enriched with examples to master deep reinforcement learning algorithms with Python About This Book ? Your entry point into the world of artificial intelligence using the power of Python ? An example-rich guide to master various RL and DRL algorithms ? Explore various state-of-the-art architectures along with math Who This Book Is For If you’re a machine learning developer or deep learning enthusiast interested in artificial intelligence and want to learn about reinforcement learning from scratch, this book is for you. Some knowledge of linear algebra, calculus, and the Python programming language will help you understand the concepts covered in this book. What You Will Learn ? Understand the basics of reinforcement learning methods, algorithms, and elements ? Train an agent to walk using OpenAI Gym and Tensorflow ? Understand the Markov Decision Process, Bellman’s optimality, and TD learning ? Solve multi-armed-bandit problems using various algorithms ? Master deep learning algorithms, such as RNN, LSTM, and CNN with applications ? Build intelligent agents using the DRQN algorithm to play the Doom game ? Teach agents to play the Lunar Lander game using DDPG ? Train an agent to win a car racing game using dueling DQN In Detail Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the trending and most promising branch of artificial intelligence. Hands-On Reinforcement learning with Python will help you master not only the basic reinforcement learning algorithms but also the advanced deep reinforcement learning algorithms. The book starts with an introduction to Reinforcement Learning followed by OpenAI Gym, and TensorFlow. You will then explore various RL algorithms and concepts, such as Markov Decision Process, Monte Carlo methods, and dynamic programming, including value and policy iteration. This example-rich guide will introduce you to deep reinforcement learning algorithms, such as Dueling DQN, DRQN, A3C, PPO, and TRPO. You will also learn about imagination-augmented agents, learning from human preference, DQfD, HER, and many more of the recent advancements in reinforcement learning. By the end of the book, you will have all the knowledge and experience needed to implement reinforcement learning and deep reinforcement learning in your projects, and you will be all set to enter the world of artificial intelligence. Style and approach This is a hands-on book designed to further expand your machine learning skills by understanding reinforcement to deep reinforcement learning algorithms with applications in Python.

Test your C++ programming skills by solving real-world programming problems covered in the book About This Book ? Solve a variety of real-world programming and logic problems by leveraging the power of C++17 ? Test your skills in using language features, algorithms, data structures, design patterns, and more ? Explore areas such as cryptography, communication, and image handling in C++ Who This Book Is For This book will appeal to C++ developers of all levels. There's a challenge inside for everyone. What You Will Learn ? Serialize and deserialize JSON and XML data ? Perform encryption and signing to facilitate secure communication between parties ? Embed and use SQLite databases in your applications ? Use threads and asynchronous functions to implement generic purpose parallel algorithms ? Compress and decompress files to/from a ZIP archive ? Implement data structures such as circular buffer and priority queue ? Implement general purpose algorithms as well as algorithms that solve specific problems ? Create client-server applications that communicate over TCP/IP ? Consume HTTP REST services ? Use design patterns to solve real-world problems In Detail C++ is one of the most widely-used programming languages and has applications in a variety of fields, such as gaming, GUI programming, and operating systems, to name a few. Through the years, C++ has evolved into (and remains) one of the top choices for software developers worldwide. This book will show you some notable C++ features and how to implement them to meet your application needs. Each problem is unique and doesn't just test your knowledge of the language; it tests your ability to think out of the box and come up with the best solutions. With varying levels of difficulty, you'll be faced with a wide variety of challenges. And in case you're stumped, you don't have to worry: we've got the best solutions to the problems in the book. So are you up for the challenge? Style and approach A recipe-based approach where each problem is solved with the help of step by step instructions.

Enhance the power of NumPy and start boosting your scientific computing capabilities About This Book ? Grasp all aspects of numerical computing and understand NumPy ? Explore examples to learn exploratory data analysis (EDA), regression, and clustering ? Access NumPy libraries and use performance benchmarking to select the right tool Who This Book Is For Mastering Numerical Computing with NumPy is for you if you are a Python programmer, data analyst, data engineer, or a data science enthusiast, who wants to master the intricacies of NumPy and build solutions for your numeric and scientific computational problems. You are expected to have familiarity with mathematics to get the most out of this book. What You Will Learn ? Perform vector and matrix operations using NumPy ? Perform exploratory data analysis (EDA) on US housing data ? Develop a predictive model using simple and multiple linear regression ? Understand unsupervised learning and clustering algorithms with practical use cases ? Write better NumPy code and implement the algorithms from scratch ? Perform benchmark tests to choose the best configuration for your system In Detail NumPy is one of the most important scientific computing libraries available for Python. Mastering Numerical Computing with NumPy teaches you how to achieve expert level competency to perform complex operations, with in-depth coverage of advanced concepts. Beginning with NumPy's arrays and functions, you will familiarize yourself with linear algebra concepts to perform vector and matrix math operations. You will thoroughly understand and practice data processing, exploratory data analysis (EDA), and predictive modeling. You will then move on to working on practical examples which will teach you how to use NumPy statistics in order to explore US housing data and develop a predictive model using simple and multiple linear regression techniques. Once you have got to grips with the basics, you will explore unsupervised learning and clustering algorithms, followed by understanding how to write better NumPy code while keeping advanced considerations in mind. The book also demonstrates the use of different high-performance numerical computing libraries and their relationship with NumPy. You will study how to benchmark the performance of different configurations and choose the best for your system. By the end of this book, you will have become an expert in handling and performing complex data manipulations. Style and approach This mastering guide will help you master your skills required to perform a complex numerical computation. The book contains the right mixture of theory and practical examples that will help you in dealing with the advanced NumPy and build solutions for your numeric and scientific computational problems

Use the power of BLE to create exciting IoT applications About This Book ? Build hands-on IoT projects using Bluetooth Low Energy and learn about Bluetooth 5 and its features. ? Build a health tracking system, and indoor navigation and warehouse weather monitoring projects using smart devices. ? Build on a theoretical foundation and create a practice-based understanding of Bluetooth Low Energy. Who This Book Is For If you're an application developer, a hardware enthusiast, or just curious about the Internet of Things and how to convert it into hands-on projects, then this book is for you. Having some knowledge of writing mobile applications will be advantageous. What You Will Learn ? Learn about the architecture and IoT uses of BLE, and in which domains it is being used the most ? Set up and learn about various development platforms (Android, iOS, Firebase, Raspberry Pi, Beacons, and GitHub) ? Create an Explorer App (Android/iOS) to diagnose a Fitness Tracker ? Design a Beacon with the Raspberry Pi and write an app to detect the Beacon ? Write a mobile app to periodically poll the BLE tracking sensor ? Compose an app to read data periodically from temperature and humidity sensors ? Explore more applications of BLE with IoT ? Design projects for both Android and iOS mobile platforms In Detail Bluetooth Low Energy, or Bluetooth Smart, is Wireless Personal Area networking aimed at smart devices and IoT applications. BLE has been increasingly adopted by application developers and IoT enthusiasts to establish connections between smart devices. This book initially covers all the required aspects of BLE, before you start working on IoT projects. In the initial stages of the book, you will learn about the basic aspects of Bluetooth Low Energy—such as discovering devices, services, and characteristics—that will be helpful for advanced-level projects. This book will guide you through building hands-on projects using BLE and IoT. These projects include tracking health data, using a mobile App, and making this data available for health practitioners; Indoor navigation; creating beacons using the Raspberry Pi; and warehouse weather Monitoring. This book also covers aspects of Bluetooth 5 (the latest release) and its effect on each of these projects. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience of using Bluetooth Low Energy to integrate with smart devices and IoT projects. Style and approach A practical guide that will help you promote yourself into an expert by building and exploring practical applications of Bluetooth Low Energy.

Monitor your Elasticsearch cluster's health, and diagnose and solve its performance and reliability issues About This Book Understand common performance and reliability pitfalls in ElasticSearch Use popular monitoring tools such as ElasticSearch-head, BigDesk, Marvel, Kibana, and more This is a step-by-step guide with lots of case studies on solving real-world ElasticSearch cluster issues Who This Book Is For This book is for developers and system administrators who use ElasticSearch in a wide range of capacities. Prior knowledge of ElasticSearch and related technologies would be helpful, but is not necessary. What You Will Learn Explore your cluster with ElasticSearch-head and BigDesk Access the underlying data of the ElasticSearch monitoring plugins using the ElasticSearch API Analyze your cluster’s performance with Marvel Troubleshoot some of the common performance and reliability issues that come up when using ElasticSearch Analyze a cluster’s historical performance, and get to the bottom of and recover from system failures Use and install various other tools and plugins such as Kibana and Kopf, which is helpful to monitor ElasticSearch In Detail ElasticSearch is a distributed search server similar to Apache Solr with a focus on large datasets, a schema-less setup, and high availability. This schema-free architecture allows ElasticSearch to index and search unstructured content, making it perfectly suited for both small projects and large big data warehouses with petabytes of unstructured data. This book is your toolkit to teach you how to keep your cluster in good health, and show you how to diagnose and treat unexpected issues along the way. You will start by getting introduced to ElasticSearch, and look at some common performance issues that pop up when using the system. You will then see how to install and configure ElasticSearch and the ElasticSearch monitoring plugins. Then, you will proceed to install and use the Marvel dashboard to monitor ElasticSearch. You will find out how to troubleshoot some of the common performance and reliability issues that come up when using ElasticSearch. Finally, you will analyze your cluster’s historical performance, and get to know how to get to the bottom of and recover from system failures. This book will guide you through several monitoring tools, and utilizes real-world cases and dilemmas faced when using ElasticSearch, showing you how to solve them simply, quickly, and cleanly. Style and approach This is a step-by-step guide to monitoring your ElasticSearch cluster and correcting performance issues. It is filled with lots of in-depth, real-world use-cases on solving different ElasticSearch cluster issues.

Learn how to leverage the power of R for Business Intelligence About This Book Use this easy-to-follow guide to leverage the power of R analytics and make your business data more insightful. This highly practical guide teaches you how to develop dashboards that help you make informed decisions using R. Learn the A to Z of working with data for Business Intelligence with the help of this comprehensive guide. Who This Book Is For This book is for data analysts, business analysts, data science professionals or anyone who wants to learn analytic approaches to business problems. Basic familiarity with R is expected. What You Will Learn Extract, clean, and transform data Validate the quality of the data and variables in datasets Learn exploratory data analysis Build regression models Implement popular data-mining algorithms Visualize results using popular graphs Publish the results as a dashboard through Interactive Web Application frameworks In Detail Explore the world of Business Intelligence through the eyes of an analyst working in a successful and growing company. Learn R through use cases supporting different functions within that company. This book provides data-driven and analytically focused approaches to help you answer questions in operations, marketing, and finance. In Part 1, you will learn about extracting data from different sources, cleaning that data, and exploring its structure. In Part 2, you will explore predictive models and cluster analysis for Business Intelligence and analyze financial times series. Finally, in Part 3, you will learn to communicate results with sharp visualizations and interactive, web-based dashboards. After completing the use cases, you will be able to work with business data in the R programming environment and realize how data science helps make informed decisions and develops business strategy. Along the way, you will find helpful tips about R and Business Intelligence. Style and approach This book will take a step-by-step approach and instruct you in how you can achieve Business Intelligence from scratch using R. We will start with extracting data and then move towards exploring, analyzing, and visualizing it. Eventually, you will learn how to create insightful dashboards that help you make informed decisions—and all of this with the help of real-life examples.

Turn your Raspberry Pi into a secret agent toolbox with this set of exciting projects About This Book Turn your Raspberry Pi into a multi-purpose secret agent gadget for audio and video surveillance, Wi-Fi exploration, or playing pranks on your friends Detect an intruder on camera or with sensors and set off an alarm or receive messages to your phone Find out what the other computers on your network are up to and make yourself anonymous on the Internet This book has been updated for new additions to your toolkit featuring the tiny, recently released Raspberry Pi Zero board Who This Book Is For This book is for those who are new to the Raspberry Pi Zero ,Raspberry Pi 2 or Raspberry Pi 3 and have some experience with the original Raspberry Pi models, and even for those budding secret agents who would like to use Pi Zero as a secret agent toolbox. No programming experience is assumed. Suitable for the novice and expert alike, each topic provides a fast and easy way to get started with exciting applications, with practical examples in every chapter. What You Will Learn Install and configure the Raspbian Jessie operating system for maximum mischief Detect an intruder with motion detection or a laser trip wire and set off an alarm Listen in to conversations from a distance over Bluetooth Distort your voice in weird and wonderful ways Track the Pi's whereabouts using GPS Connect your Pi to the mobile Internet using a 3G dongle and make yourself anonymous on the net Display secret messages and codes to fellow agents on a LED display In Detail This book is for all mischievous Raspberry Pi owners who’d like to see their computer transform into a neat spy gadget to be used in a series of practical pranks and projects. No previous skills are required to follow along, and if you’re completely new to Linux, you’ll pick up much of the basics for free. We’ll help you set up your Raspberry Pi Zero , Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 and guide you through a number of pranks and secret agent techniques that are so inconspicuous yet high on mischief. You’ll learn how to configure your operating system for maximum mischief and start exploring audio, video, or Wi-Fi techniques. We’ll show you how to record, listen, or talk to people from a distance and how to set up your own phone network. Then, you’ll plug in your webcam and set up a motion detector with an alarm and find out what the other computers on your Wi-Fi network are up to. Once you've mastered the techniques, we’ll combine them with a battery pack and GPS for the ultimate off-road spy kit. Style and Approach This easy-to-follow guide is for budding secret agents who want to create tools for mischief, stealth, and reconnaissance. It’s full of fun, practical examples and easy-to-follow recipes, guaranteeing maximum mischief for all skill levels.

Build, manage, and secure your infrastructure by utilizing the power of SaltStack About This Book First book in the market to incorporate all the latest features of SaltStack. Leverage the power of SaltStack for building, managing and securing your infrastructure. Effectively use commands and control the state of your infrastructure in a jiffy. Who This Book Is For This book is aimed at System Administrators who are looking forward to manage their infrastructure using SaltStack with no prior knowledge about it. What You Will Learn Install Salt on your servers Run commands on all or some of your minions instantly from a central managing server Write custom Salt modules to handle your infrastructure’s unique needs Define the state of your infrastructure and use Salt to enforce that state. Create platform-agnostic state definitions for greater flexibility and power Manage virtual servers on public or private clouds using Salt Cloud Use the event system in Salt to create a reactive and self-healing infrastructure In Detail SaltStack is one of the best infrastructure management platforms available. It provides powerful tools for defining and enforcing the state of your infrastructure in a clear, concise way. With this book learn how to use these tools for your own infrastructure by understanding the core pieces of Salt. In this book we will take you from the initial installation of Salt, through running their first commands, and then talk about extending Salt for individual use cases. From there you will explore the state system inside of Salt, learning to define the desired state of our infrastructure in such a way that Salt can enforce that state with a single command. Finally, you will learn about some of the additional tools that salt provides, including salt-cloud, the reactor, and the event system. We?ll finish by exploring how to get involved with salt and what?s new in the salt community. Finally, by the end of the book, you'll be able to build a reliable, scalable, secure, high-performance infrastructure and fully utilize the power of cloud computing. Style and approach This will be a comprehensive guide on SaltStack along with installation and setting up of Salt on couple of platforms. Then enlightening the readers about remote execution system and configuration management system and ending with concepts of security and best practices.

Over 40 recipes to help you set up and configure Linux networks About This Book Move beyond the basics of how a Linux machine works and gain a better understanding of Linux networks and their configuration Impress your peers by setting up and configuring a Linux server and its various network elements like a pro This is a hands-on solution guide to building, maintaining, and securing a network using Linux Who This Book Is For This book is targeted at Linux systems administrators who have a good basic understanding and some prior experience of how a Linux machine operates, but want to better understand how various network services function, how to set them up, and how to secure them. You should be familiar with how to set up a Linux server and how to install additional software on them. What You Will Learn Route an IPv6 netblock to your local network Modify your named instance to support setting hostnames for your IPv6 addresses Use SSH for remote console access Configure NGINX with TLS Secure XMPP with TLS Leverage iptables6 to firewall your IPv6 traffic Configure Samba as an Active Directory compatible directory service In Detail Linux can be configured as a networked workstation, a DNS server, a mail server, a firewall, a gateway router, and many other things. These are all part of administration tasks, hence network administration is one of the main tasks of Linux system administration. By knowing how to configure system network interfaces in a reliable and optimal manner, Linux administrators can deploy and configure several network services including file, web, mail, and servers while working in large enterprise environments. Starting with a simple Linux router that passes traffic between two private networks, you will see how to enable NAT on the router in order to allow Internet access from the network, and will also enable DHCP on the network to ease configuration of client systems. You will then move on to configuring your own DNS server on your local network using bind9 and tying it into your DHCP server to allow automatic configuration of local hostnames. You will then future enable your network by setting up IPv6 via tunnel providers. Moving on, we’ll configure Samba to centralize authentication for your network services; we will also configure Linux client to leverage it for authentication, and set up a RADIUS server that uses the directory server for authentication. Toward the end, you will have a network with a number of services running on it, and will implement monitoring in order to detect problems as they occur. Style and approach This book is packed with practical recipes and a task-based approach that will walk you through building, maintaining, and securing a computer network using Linux.

Create solutions that are easy to maintain, quick to upgrade, and follow proven concepts and designs About This Book Design software that is maintainable outside the ecosystem of their creators Ensure quality by following patterns that have been proved to work Over two dozen practical Architectural and Design patterns Who This Book Is For Learning Dynamics NAV Patterns is intended for developers, architects, (technical) consultants, and application managers. You may have very little or no knowledge about NAV patterns, but you should be acquainted with programming. What You Will Learn Apply object-oriented practices to C/AL programming Structure your application to avoid merge conflicts Refactor legacy code and avoid anti-patterns Design decision trees to decide when to use which patterns Clone codes and their application in Dynamics NAV Make your application extensible by creating predefined hooks and facades In Detail Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a complete ERP system, which also contains a robust set of development tools to support customization and enhancement. These include an object designer for each of the seven application object types, a business application oriented programming language with .NET interface capability, a compiler, a debugger, and programming testing language support. Learning Dynamics NAV Patterns will guide you through the NAV way of solving problems. This book will first introduce you to patterns and the software architecture of the NAV and then help you to build an example application. Then, it walks you through the details of architectural patterns, design patterns, and implementation patterns. This book will also talk about anti-patterns and handling legacy code. Finally, it teaches you to build solutions using patterns. Proven patterns and best practices will help you create better solutions that are easy to maintain in larger teams across several locations. It will guide you through combining abstract patterns using easy-to-understand examples and will help you decide which patterns to use in which scenarios. Style and approach This book explains the concepts of patterns, code structuring, and object-oriented concepts in a way that is easy to understand for Dynamics NAV specialists through practical examples.

This book is for web developers willing to build better web applications. A basic knowledge of PHP, XML, JavaScript and MySQL, or a strong will to learn-as-you-type, is assumed.

The book is uniquely practical. A richly textured case study is used throughout the book. Although some aspects of the Airport Passenger Services business process are simplified for sake of clarity and efficiency, it provides a comprehensive practical grounding for theoretical UML knowledge. The case study itself was developed in partnership with employees of Zurich Airport. The book was written for business analysts, technical architects and developers. It does not require detailed programming knowledge, nor is prior experience of UML mandatory. It shows how, with UML, simple models of business processes and specification models can be created and read with little effort.

This book is full of step-by-step example-oriented tutorials which will show readers how to integrate Solr in PHP applications using the available libraries, and boost the inherent search facilities that Solr offers.If you are a developer who knows PHP and is interested in integrating search into your applications, this is the book for you. No advanced knowledge of Solr is required. Very basic knowledge of system commands and the command-line interface on both Linux and Windows is required. You should also be familiar with the concept of Web servers.

A step-by-step tutorial-based guide aimed at giving you hands-on practical experience to develop AR applications for Android.Augmented Reality for Android Application Development is for Android mobile application developers who are familiar with Android Development Tools and deployment, JMonkeyEngine, and the Vuforia SDK.

This is a step-by-step tutorial that covers the basics of working with the MicroStrategy platform.If you are a BI developer who would like to use MicroStrategy to build BI apps, this book is ideal for you. This book is also for mid-management executives who need to analyze data and Excel files that are too complicated to manage. A basic concept of BI is assumed.

A practical guide, packed with illustrations, that will help you become proficient with Hudson and able to utilize it how you want.If you are a Java developer or administrator who would to like automate some of the mundane work required to build and test software and improve software quality, this is the book for you. If you are a development manager or tester, you can also benefit from learning how Hudson works by gaining some insight into test results and historical trends.

This practical and easy-to-understand learning tutorial is one big exciting exercise for students and engineers that are always short on their schedules and want to regain some lost time with the help of Simulink.This book is aimed at students and engineers who need a quick start with Simulink. Though it's not required in order to understand how Simulink works, knowledge of physics will help the reader to understand the exercises described.

KNIME Essentials is a practical guide aimed at getting the results you want, as quickly as possible."Knime Essentials" is written for data analysts looking to quickly get up to speed using the market leader in data processing tools, KNIME. No knowledge of KNIME is required, but we will assume that you have some background in data processing.

If you are a professional, student, or educator who wants to learn to use IPython Notebook as a tool for technical and scientific computing, visualization, and data analysis, this is the book for you. This book will prove valuable for anyone that needs to do computations in an agile environment.

This book is packed with real world examples that cover concepts and usability of the core modules of a complex application. If you are Project manager or consultant looking forward to using and implementing Oracle Primavera Contract Management in your organization, then this is the best guide for you. No prior knowledge of PCM required.

This is a hands-on book to quickly get you up to speed with SQL Server 2012. It covers all the new features of the core database engine as well as the business intelligence (BI) services.The book begins by taking you step-by-step through the installation process, showing you what to install and which services and features you need. Once you have your SQL Server in place, you learn how to administer it and then explore new T-SQL functions to expand your query-writing toolkit. You will discover how the enhancements to Integration Services, Analysis Services and Reporting Services make developing BI solutions easier. It will then introduce you to SQL Server Data Tools, your new and improved development environment for creating database and BI projects.A hands-on example guides you through the steps required to run Distributed Replay, giving you the experience you need to apply this in the field. The book then takes you through a detailed example to show you how to create a Data Quality Services project and cleanse real-world data. Easy to follow code samples provide you with the queries you need to set up Availability Groups using the new AlwaysOn technology.Once you are comfortable with these new features you will be ready to migrate your data to the cloud and into SQL Azure. An exploration of Hadoop will help you understand big data and how it really is the next big thing,This concise reference is for database administrators, SQL Server Developers and BI professionals. Anyone who is familiar with SQL Server 2008 R2 and needs to make the jump to the latest version with the shortest learning curve will find this book useful.