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More than a game: Mastering Mahjong with AI and machine learning

Reading time 2 min
Views 1K
Microsoft corporate blog Machine learning *Artificial Intelligence Logic games


Microsoft researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that has taught itself the intricacies of Mahjong and can now match the skills of some of the world’s top players.

The complex board game of chance, bluff, and strategy was invented in China thousands of years ago and remains a passionate pastime for millions of Asians today, with many dedicated competitors playing online.

Computers have learned to play Chess and another ancient Chinese game, Go, amid much fanfare in the past. But scientists at Microsoft Research (MSR) Asia see their achievement as far more than just a case of technology mastering yet another game.

The researchers – who named their system Super Phoenix, or Suphx for short – developed a series of AI algorithmic breakthroughs to navigate the uncertain nature of Mahjong. With more work, these could potentially be applied in real situations to solve problems thrown up by unknown factors and random events.
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Total votes 11: ↑11 and ↓0 +11
Comments 0

Celestia: Bugs' Adventures in Space

Reading time 6 min
Views 903
PVS-Studio corporate blog Open source *C++ *Astronautics Astronomy
Picture 1

Celestia is a three-dimensional space simulator. Simulation of the space allows exploring our universe in three dimensions. Celestia is available on Windows, Linux and macOS. The project is very small and PVS-Studio detected few defects in it. Despite this fact, we'd like to pay attention to it, as it's a popular educational project and it will be rather useful to somehow improve it. By the way, this program is used in popular films, series and programs for showing space. This fact, in turns, raises requirements to the code quality.
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Total votes 27: ↑25 and ↓2 +23
Comments 0

What's new in ML.NET and Model Builder

Reading time 2 min
Views 906
Microsoft corporate blog .NET *Big Data *Machine learning *Artificial Intelligence
We are excited to announce updates to Model Builder and improvements in ML.NET. You can learn more in the «What’s new in ML.NET?.» session at .NET Conf.

ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) for .NET developers.

ML.NET offers Model Builder (a simple UI tool) and CLI to make it super easy to build custom ML Models using AutoML.

Using ML.NET, developers can leverage their existing tools and skillsets to develop and infuse custom AI into their applications by creating custom machine learning models for common scenarios like Sentiment Analysis, Recommendation, Image Classification and more!..

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Total votes 4: ↑4 and ↓0 +4
Comments 0

How to Write a Smart Contract with Python on Ontology? Part 1: the Blockchain & Block API

Reading time 5 min
Views 2.8K
Python *Distributed systems *Cryptocurrencies
Sandbox
image

This is an official tutorial published earlier on Ontology Medium blog
Excited to publish it for Habr readers. Feel free to ask any related questions and suggest a better format for tutorial materials

Foreword


In this article, we will begin to introduce the smart contract API of Ontology. The Ontology’s smart contract API is divided into 7 modules:


In this article, we will introduce the Blockchain & Block API, which is the most basic part of the Ontology smart contract system. The Blockchain API supports basic blockchain query operations, such as obtaining the current block height, whereas the Block API supports basic block query operations, such as querying the number of transactions for a given block.

Let’s get started!

First, create a new contract in SmartX and then follow the instructions below.

1. How to Use Blockchain API


References to smart contract functions are identical to Python’s references. Developers can introduce the appropriate functions as needed. For example, the following statement introduces GetHeight, the function to get the current block height, and GetHeader, the function to get the block header.
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Total votes 20: ↑18 and ↓2 +16
Comments 0

Geolocation and geoposition — mega-tool

Reading time 5 min
Views 2.1K
Maps API *API *Geoinformation services *Software Microservices *
Translation

Introduction


Today, geolocation and geo-positioning have turned into a state that we did not dream about 60 years ago, during the first thoughts about creating an Internet network.

This article was prepared thanks to the IPGeolocation.io

Cartography has turned into a miracle — from insanely large sheets of paper to what fits in the palm of your hand.

Today, maps are used not only to search for a cultural center in Paris, but to be able to find everything:

  • nearest hotel
  • pharmacy or hospital
  • grocery store
  • university or school
  • Pink Concert venue in San Francisco

The transformation of technology will not stop there. It will be better and more accurate than ever.

Evolution in time


Let's see how the evolution of geolocation began. The journey of this phenomenon begins in ancient times.

Excursion into the past
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Total votes 9: ↑8 and ↓1 +7
Comments 0

Top Software Development Companies for Enterprise & Startups

Reading time 9 min
Views 3.4K
Development of mobile applications *Development for Android *Start-up development Offices of IT companies Software


Every day we hear about new budding software programs. With the rapid advances in the software development industry, new players entering the market and have captured a large segment of the market. So, when you need to track business projects, handle the allocation of assets, and solve other IT challenges, you need help from the top software development companies. However, it doesn’t mean that you should select a software development company on the basis of how appealing it was once. Today, people prefer to check the full profile of a company first and then decide to get their service.

To ease your pressure down, listing here some of the internationally acclaimed software development companies from the development niche. This list has been curated on the basis of a variety of reliable resources like Clutch, GoodFirms, Google SERPs, user's feedback & reviews, different independent review firms including medium.com, themanifest.com, etc. Based on the collected data, I’ve assigned the total score for each of the 10 leaders, and here I represent a list of the top software development companies that are doing best in their domain.

List of the Top Software Development Companies


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Total votes 10: ↑8 and ↓2 +6
Comments 1

How we made landmark recognition in Cloud Mail.ru, and why

Reading time 11 min
Views 2.2K
VK corporate blog Algorithms *Image processing *Machine learning *Artificial Intelligence


With the advent of mobile phones with high-quality cameras, we started making more and more pictures and videos of bright and memorable moments in our lives. Many of us have photo archives that extend back over decades and comprise thousands of pictures which makes them increasingly difficult to navigate through. Just remember how long it took to find a picture of interest just a few years ago.

One of Mail.ru Cloud’s objectives is to provide the handiest means for accessing and searching your own photo and video archives. For this purpose, we at Mail.ru Computer Vision Team have created and implemented systems for smart image processing: search by object, by scene, by face, etc. Another spectacular technology is landmark recognition. Today, I am going to tell you how we made this a reality using Deep Learning.
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Total votes 45: ↑44 and ↓1 +43
Comments 0

Make it easier to get finished: Interview with John Romero, developer of Doom

Reading time 12 min
Views 5.5K
RUVDS.com corporate blog Programming *Game development *Game design *Interview
At the last Tech Train IT festival, we met the legendary John Romero, who designed and developed the iconic Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. We talked about whether game developers need soft skills, which working tools to pay attention to, and which co-founder of Id Software's favorite toys are. Questions were asked by Nikita Tsaplin, the founder of RUVDS.


→ Text and video in Russian
Total votes 26: ↑25 and ↓1 +24
Comments 0

Bypassing LinkedIn Search Limit by Playing With API

Reading time 7 min
Views 16K
JavaScript *API *Reverse engineering *Data storage *Social networks and communities
Translation
[Because my extension got a lot of attention from the foreign audience, I translated my original article into English].

Limit


Being a top-rated professional network, LinkedIn, unfortunately, for free accounts, has such a limitation as Commercial Use Limit (CUL). Most likely, you, same as me until recently, have never encountered and never heard about this thing.

image

The point of the CUL is that when you search people outside your connections/network too often, your search results will be limited with only 3 profiles showing instead of 1000 (100 pages with 10 profiles per page by default). How ‘often’ is measured nobody knows, there are no precise metrics; the algorithm decides it based on your actions – how frequently you’ve been searching and how many connections you’ve been adding. The free CUL resets at midnight PST on the 1st of each calendar month, and you get your 1000 search results again, for who knows how long. Of course, Premium accounts have no such limit in place.

However, not so long ago, I’ve started messing around with LinkedIn search for some pet-project, and suddenly got stuck with this CUL. Obviously, I didn’t like it that much; after all, I haven’t been using the search for any commercial purposes. So, my first thought was to explore this limit and try to bypass it.

[Important clarification — all source materials in this article are presented solely for informational and educational purposes. The author doesn't encourage their use for commercial purposes.]
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Total votes 10: ↑9 and ↓1 +8
Comments 3

Important Things to Know About Tensorflow 2.0

Reading time 5 min
Views 2.8K
Open source *Development of mobile applications *Machine learning *Mobile applications design *Artificial Intelligence


Deep Learning applications have changed a lot of things. Some which give hope for a brighter future, and some which raise suspicions. However, for developers, the growth of deep learning applications has made them more perplexed about choosing the best among so many deep learning frameworks out there.

TensorFlow is one of the deep learning frameworks that comes in mind. It is arguably the most popular deep learning framework out there. Nothing justifies the statement better than the fact that Tensorflow is used by the likes of Uber, Nvidia, Gmail among other big corporations for developing state-of-the-art deep learning applications.

But right now, I am on a quest to find whether it indeed is the best deep learning framework. Or perhaps find what makes it the best out of all other frameworks it competes against.
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Total votes 14: ↑11 and ↓3 +8
Comments 0

Modern Presentation Format?

Reading time 7 min
Views 2.9K
Interfaces *Usability *Presentations
Translation

Nowadays, when VR helmets have become part of our reality and Tesla cars fly in space, you can use all the power of browser engines to create truly interactive, cross-platform and stylish presentations, rather than make a set of PPTX pages or, even worse, a PDF document in "illustrative material for explanatory and calculation report" style.



Since 2015, I have been trying to find the optimal presentation format for myself (apart from graduation projects). And now I think I have almost succeeded. It all started with PowerPoint, and ended with web frameworks based on JavaScript.


There are several JavaScript engines which can be used to create cool presentations: Marp, Reveal, landslide, hacker-slides, slidify and others. In some engines, you can use Markdown, some are embedded in an IDE, and some have their own editors. I have tried the first two engines.


As a demonstration, slide examples and video are available.

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Total votes 9: ↑8 and ↓1 +7
Comments 0

How we created IoT system for managing solar energy usage

Reading time 5 min
Views 1.2K
System Analysis and Design *IT Infrastructure *Big Data *Smart House IOT

If you have no idea about the development architecture and mechanical/electrical design behind IoT solutions, they could seem like "having seemingly supernatural qualities or powers". For example, if you show a working IoT system to 18th century people, they'd think it's magic.This article is sort of busting such myth. Or, to put it more technically, about hints for fine-tuning the IoT development for an awesome project in solar energy management area.

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Total votes 9: ↑7 and ↓2 +5
Comments 0

TOP-23 Language Learning Apps

Reading time 6 min
Views 5K
Learning languages
There are hundreds of language learning apps and hundreds of reviews and comparisons. Actually most of the comparisons are about the same programs. Are the apps really helpful or this is only ad and marketing? Yes, and Yes.

I have been studying English using various methods and resources over five years. Language learning is not my greatest talent but I have achieved B2 level (from A2) using only my smartphone and PC. I found a set of features that really helps you study a foreign language. Some of them are crucial, others are just useful. Under the cut you will find a rating of the language learning apps that I composed by analyzing these features, As Objective As Possible.
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Total votes 10: ↑9 and ↓1 +8
Comments 13

How to get the team to search for more productive ideas

Reading time 4 min
Views 1.5K
Agile *Design Presentations Brain
The creation of design models as well as visualization of solutions is for some reason always a subject of great interest among all members of a productive team, be it a manager eager to master Sketch, or a developer who wants to make cool interfaces without the need to go to a designer. But we all know what happens when it comes to actually doing stuff.



My way


Hi, everybody!

My name is Anna and I work for an American company Scentbird NY as a product designer. Prior to that I was involved in developing flagship products in Alfa-Bank design team.

I was probably born under a lucky star but all my life I've been working with the developers who suggest the best product solutions, better than a lot of product managers and product owners. But anyway, my observation is that the earlier you involve developers into working on a particular task, the better off you are.

What you are about to read is actually a blueprint on how to conduct brainstorm sessions and generate not-so-obvious yet effective solutions, which are apparently really easy to reach and not that time-consuming.
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Total votes 14: ↑14 and ↓0 +14
Comments 4

TOKEN2 Molto-1, world's first multi-profile TOTP hardware token

Reading time 3 min
Views 1.3K
Token2.com corporate blog Information Security *Computer hardware
[Update 15/09/2020: Molto2 is coming]

imageOur new product currently being finalized, the Token2 Molto-1, will expand on our technology by now supporting up to 10 Time based One-Time Password (TOTP) profiles. Earlier this year, with the miniOTP-2, miniOTP-3, and C301 we introduced the world’s first programmable TOTP tokens with time sync. The aim of these products was to provide a solution to the time drift that affects hardware tokens. We didn’t want to stop there, though! We also recognize the desire for multiple profiles which is why our latest product is a programmable multi-profile hardware token, called Token2 Molto-1. The clue is in the name, at least for anyone who understands Italian — “molto” is “many” in Italian. Having a multi-profile programmable hardware token means you can have only one device for up to 10 of your accounts.
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Total votes 4: ↑3 and ↓1 +2
Comments 6

Understanding Lean and Agile in Software Development

Reading time 3 min
Views 1.1K
Software
image

Software development can be very tricky as it requires a lot of hard work and patience. The constant change of trends and technologies are pushing businesses and software development companies to adapt to these changes and ascertain their development accordingly. These sudden and quick alterations often slow down the development and impact of the planning and development of the software application.

However, to cater to these volatile demands, there are various frameworks available for software developers that helps them with the volatile market and user expectations. These software development frameworks are a big help and support to the developers as it quickens the development process and takes measure to cater to changes too. While we already know of the traditional waterfall model, others have been a constant partner in the software development process.
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Total votes 5: ↑4 and ↓1 +3
Comments 1

A Brief History of Video Conferencing: From the Beginning to Full Commercial Use

Reading time 11 min
Views 8.2K
History of IT Old hardware Video equipment IT-companies Video conferencing
A Brief History of Video Conferencing

Video conferencing systems, so familiar to us today, have come a long way — more than a hundred years passed from fantastic ideas inspired by belief in unstoppable technical progress to the first mass implementation of video conferencing systems. A lot of dramatic events have come along the way. The way to success wasn’t easy at all.
Total votes 19: ↑15 and ↓4 +11
Comments 4

How Microgaming Software Developers Protect Users from Hacks

Reading time 5 min
Views 3.1K
Growth Hacking *Software
Microgaming is justly considered a founding father of the online gambling industry as it created the world’s first online casino platform back in 1994. And the first mobile casino was launched in 2004, again by Microgaming. Over the years, the brand’s legendary casino products have gained a high-profile reputation.
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Total votes 3: ↑2 and ↓1 +1
Comments 0

Internet of Things (IoT) is going to Change the World. Future of IoT

Reading time 3 min
Views 1.6K
Machine learning *Development for IOT *Software Artificial Intelligence IOT
For the past two years, there’s been a lot of buzzing about the Internet of Things (IoT). This has to lead to the rapid selection of connected devices over industries and is determined to pass the 11 billion mark by the end of the year. Major Companies including IoT software development as their major services.

All these “things” are now creating their things, namely, lots and lots of data. This data will be at the core of commercial and industrial digital transformation (which is essentially the underlying force behind the fourth industrial revolution).

In other words, life as we know it is about to change forever! How is it going to change? Let’s take a look.

1. AI (Artifical Intelligence) can Effectively Manage Oceans of information

We can’t talk about IoT without AI as the latter has the power to make IoT a whole lot smarter and more efficient.

In fact, consultants believe that AI is the brains behind IoT systems that may facilitate build them run power tool.

For example, as more and more connected devices start communicating with each other, enterprises will need to leverage deep learning, image recognition, natural language processes, and neural-network driven decisions to help them understand each other (and us humans) better.

So far, we can say that IoT has felt like an isolated experience where it was just about simple data. Going forward, businesses will strive to achieve highly integrated experiences by using AI to better understand their employees, customers, and the general public living in smart cities.
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Total votes 10: ↑10 and ↓0 +10
Comments 6