Uber’s new programming language Pyro, Tableau’s new integration with AWS analytics, IBM’s cloud restructuring, and more in today’s tech stories on data science news.
Introducing Pyro for deep probabilistic modeling
Uber AI Labs announces PyTorch-based deep universal probabilistic programming language Pyro
As the first public project to come out of Uber AI Labs, Uber has released a programming language called “Pyro” that will help developers build probabilistic models for AI research. “Pyro is a tool for deep probabilistic modeling, unifying the best of modern deep learning and Bayesian modeling,” wrote Noah Goodman, Stanford researcher and member of Uber AI Labs, in a blog post. Pyro is based on Python and the PyTorch library. “In Pyro, both the generative models and the inference guides can include deep neural networks as components,” Goodman added. “The resulting deep probabilistic models have shown great promise in recent work, especially for unsupervised and semi-supervised machine learning problems.” Uber added that Pyro is an alpha release.
Tableau in data science news
Tableau announces support for Amazon Redshift Spectrum in Tableau 10.4
Tableau has announced an update to its Amazon Redshift connector with support for Amazon Redshift Spectrum (external S3 tables). This feature was released as part of Tableau 10.3.3 and will be available broadly in Tableau 10.4.1. In an official blog post, Tableau said its customers can now connect directly to data in Amazon Redshift and analyze it in conjunction with data in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
IBM revamps its Cloud strategy
IBM brings new cloud data tools, updates Unified Data Governance Platform
Presenting its latest vision for the cloud, IBM has announced a set of new data management products. The company added new tools Data Catalog, Data Refinery, and Analytics Engine on its Watson Data Platform. Keeping in mind the European Union’s incoming GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), IBM also updated its Unified Data Governance Platform to ensure that businesses are better prepared to comply with the new regulation.
IBM’s Goodbye to Bluemix brand
In yet another rebranding, IBM Bluemix Cloud has been renamed as just “IBM Cloud.” The simplified naming, IBM said, is intended to put more focus on data and data science as against the infrastructure. Last year, the company had expunged the SoftLayer name for Bluemix.
Newly launched data platforms
Periscope Data unveils new platform to bolster “data driven culture” for professional data teams
Targeting the large and growing market for big data and analytics software,Periscope Data has launched a new platform using which professional data teams can address the complete analytics life cycle. The Periscope Unified Data Platform enables teams to ingest, store, analyze, visualize and report on data. Periscope said that Unified Data Platform extends the core product with built-in data warehousing capabilities based on Amazon Redshift, as well as with new capabilities to ingest data from any source. The platform is designed to overcome the high costs of incomplete, obsolete and potentially inaccurate data, which costs huge monetary losses to businesses every year. The Unified Data Platform is comprised of the core components including ingestion from virtually any source, storage through a data warehouse, analysis in seconds, visualizations from data charts instantly, and reporting.
Caviar announces real estate-backed digital asset platform
Blockchain startup Caviar has launched a dual-purpose token and crowdfunding platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. Caviar’s token offers access to stable real estate and cryptocurrencies, with built-in downside protection and automatic diversification. In addition, Caviar Platform will allow real estate developers to raise funds for their upcoming projects. The pre-sale, being launched on November 28, aims to raise $25 million.
SIA: MCN collaborates with SAS to unveil single source data platform
Multi Channel Network (MCN) is partnering analytics software company SAS to deliver a new data management solution that integrates all of MCN’s different data sources to provide advertisers with a single consumer view across linear TV and all digital platforms. Known as SIA, the data tool combines MCN’s data sources from TV, online, mobile, location and OOH, as well as data from agencies and advertisers. This includes adding data assets from Telstra, Near (MCN’s location data). It will act as a central nervous system for all of MCN’s data assets and business initiatives, including programmatic TV and addressable advertising as well as new business models around data.