Bitcoin prices crossing 5-figure, Bokeh incremental release 0.12.11, Cloudera Altus Analytic DB, and more in today’s trending stories around data science news.
Bitcoin Mania rolls on with 10k landmark
Bitcoin cryptocurrency smashes through $10,000 record, as experts warn of bubbles
On a wild ride this year, Bitcoin has finally crossed the $10,000 record price for the first time. At the last close, the cryptocurrency was trading at 10948 US Dollar. The 10k mark was imminent, with an already huge anticipation built around the industry, but just after hitting the coveted figure the digital currency saw an incredible hike in the subsequent four hours of the trade. Bitcoin, which experts say is in a massive bubble, is already up more than 875% this year.
A new version from Bokeh
Bokeh 0.12.11 released
Python interactive visualization library Bokeh has announced the release of Bokeh 0.12.11, an incremental release over 0.12.10. Among the highlights, the updated version adds new step glyph method for drawing step lines. Also, the LOD downsampling now works automatically on linked plots and the Bokeh server has been made simpler to embed with less boilerplate. In addition to the improvements to layout, Bokeh 0.12.11 comes with several other bug fixes and better documentation. For full details, see the CHANGELOG and Release Notes. Additionally, examples for each release are uploaded to CDN. Click here to download.
Cloudera claims to change the game in cloud-based data warehouses
Cloudera announces beta version of Cloudera Altus Analytic DB
Cloudera has announced the upcoming beta release of Cloudera Altus Analytic DB, a data warehouse cloud service that aims to bring the warehouse to the data through a cloud-scale architecture to eliminate costly data movement. Built on the Cloudera Altus Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) foundation, Altus Analytic DB delivers self-service BI and SQL, removing the data silos in organizations. The initial beta of Cloudera Altus Analytic DB will be available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). To join the beta, sign up here.
In other data science news
China’s Baidu, Xiaomi enter pact to create smart connected devices under AI and IoT ecosystem
Baidu is teaming up with smartphone supplier Xiaomi to develop advanced consumer electronics products powered by artificial intelligence and connected to the internet of things (IoT). The two companies announced their collaboration at Xiaomi’s first IoT Developer Conference on Tuesday in Beijing, where senior management laid out their vision of smart devices that will deliver what they expect as more enhanced experience to users.
Apache Impala upgraded to Top-Level Project
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) announced that Apache Impala has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the project’s community and products have been well-governed under the ASF’s meritocratic process and principles. Inspired by Google’s F1 database, Impala was originally released in 2012 and entered the Apache Incubator in December 2015. The project has had four releases during its incubation process. “In 2011, we started development of Impala in order to make state-of-the-art SQL analytics available to the user community as open-source technology,” said Marcel Kornacker, original founder of the Impala project. “The graduation to an Apache Top-Level Project is a recognition of the exceptional developer community that stands behind this project.” Apache Impala software is released under the Apache License v2.0 and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. Catch Apache Impala in action at Not Another Big Data Conference, taking place on Dec. 12 in Palo Alto.
Adobe demonstrates future Photoshop tool that uses machine learning to select image subjects
Adobe has previewed an upcoming feature that uses AI to identify and automatically mask subjects in the image. The feature is called Select Subject and it uses Adobe’s AI platform, Sensei. From the “Select and Mask” menu, users can simply click anywhere on the image and it will automatically identify and select the various subjects in the image. From there, the same tools to change the background or edit the subject are available. Adobe teased the feature in a video, saying that it will be available in the next iteration of Photoshop. “Select Subject, powered by Adobe Sensei, is a tool that enables users to make their selections in one click. With Select Subject, you’ll be able to get started with your selections faster than ever before,” Adobe said, giving a sneak peek in the demo video.
DataScience.com now available on AWS Marketplace as a single-click offering
DataScience.com is now an Advanced Tier Technology Partner in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) and its enterprise data science platform is also available as a one-click offering on AWS Marketplace. “As the provider of a solution that integrates with AWS APIs to make launching Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) resources more efficient and facilitates access to data stored in Amazon Redshift and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), we believe we bring a lot of value to customers who are looking to scale AI and data science work across their organizations,” DataScience.com Chief Strategy Officer William Merchan said.