16th Feb 2018 – Data Science News Daily Roundup

Facebook introduces Tensor comprehensions, IBM adds AI to Video Cloud, Microsoft’s VS now includes Anaconda and more in today’s top stories around machine learning, deep learning, and data science news.

1. Facebook Announces Tensor Comprehensions

Facebook AI Research (FAIR) announced the release of Tensor Comprehensions, a C++ library and mathematical language for running large-scale models on various hardware backends. It features a Just-In-Time compilation to produce automatic, on-demand, and high-performance codes for machine learning needs.

The release includes:

• a mathematical notation to express a broad family of ML ideas in a simple syntax
• a C++ frontend for this mathematical notation based on Halide IR
• a polyhedral Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler based on Integer Set Library (ISL)
• a multi-threaded, multi-GPU autotuner based on evolutionary search

For further details, you may visit the facebook research blog.

2. IBM adds AI Capabilities to IBM Video Cloud

IBM Cloud Video unveiled new AI-powered Automated Watson Caption Support and Speech-to-Text capabilities to its enterprise video offering. These new AI capabilities will help in recognizing speech within videos and convert spoken words and phrases into text for video captions. Here’s how they would be helpful.

• Automatic transcript generation and real-time processing will slash editing workflows and costs.
• The advanced search and discovery features will help in optimizing employee engagement through.
• Increased accessibility and compliance will make content more digestible for all team members.

To know more, read the official press release published online.

3. Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code is now included in the Anaconda distribution

Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code will now ship as part of the popular Python data science platform Anaconda. According to Microsoft, “Visual Studio Code can easily be installed at the same time as Anaconda, providing a great editing and debugging experience for Python users, with special features tailor-made for Anaconda users.” Microsoft has previously made investments in the Python community with Python extension for VS Code and support for Python in Azure Machine Learning, SQL Server, and Azure Notebooks. According to the Anaconda team, “VS Code is a good IDE choice for its users on Windows, macOS, and Linux because of its debugging, code completion, and Git integration features.” It also offers a number of extensions that developers can tailor to their specific needs.

4. MongoDB announces support for multi-document ACID transactions in version 4.0

MongoDB has announced that it will support multi-document ACID transactions in its 4.0 release. With this release, MongoDB will now have the power of NoSQL and cross-collection ACID transaction support. This combination will make it easy for developers to write mission-critical applications leveraging the power of MongoDB.  ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) describes the ability to guarantee that a transaction is valid, which is difficult when data is distributed across multiple documents. With these multi-document transactions, MongoDB will now provide a globally consistent view of data across replica sets and enforce all-or-nothing execution to maintain data integrity.

5. Cloudant 2.8.0 is now released

Cloudant, the cloud-based service based on the Apache-backed CouchDB project, has released their version 2.8.0. The changes include:

• Added support for /_search_disk_size endpoint which retrieves disk size information for a specific search index.
• Updated default IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management token URL.
• Removed broken source and target parameters that constantly threw AttributeError when creating a replication document.

The entire changes are available at the GitHub repo.