FALL 2017.4 Communique of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences
Artificial intelligence goes bilingual—without a dictionary by Matthew Hutson
Automatic language translation has come a long way, thanks to neural networks—computer algorithms that take inspiration from the human brain. But training such networks requires an enormous amount of data: millions of sentence-by-sentence translations to demonstrate how a human would do it. Now, two new papers show that neural networks can learn to translate with no parallel texts—a surprising advance that could make documents in many languages more accessible.
Most machine learning—in which neural networks and other computer algorithms learn from experience—is “supervised.” A computer makes a guess, receives the right answer, and adjusts its process accordingly. That works well when teaching a computer to translate between, say, English and French, because many documents exist in both languages. It doesn’t work so well for rare languages, or for popular ones without many parallel texts.
“Imagine that you give one person lots of Chinese books The two new papers, both of and lots of Arabic books—none which have been submitted to Computers might soon translate between many more languages. next year’s International of them overlapping—and the person has to learn to translate Conference on Learning Chinese to Arabic. That seems impossible, right?” says the first Representations but have not been peer reviewed, focus on author of one study, Mikel Artetxe, a computer scientist at the another method: unsupervised machine learning. To start, each University of the Basque Country (UPV) in San Sebastiàn, Spain. constructs bilingual dictionaries without the aid of a human “But we show that a computer can do that.” teacher telling them when their guesses are right. That’s possible because languages have strong similarities in the WHAT’S INSIDE ways words cluster around one another. The words for table and chair, for example, are frequently used together in all Files Go! By Google 2 languages. So if a computer maps out these cooccurrences like a giant road atlas with words for cities, the Algorithms: Jump Search 3 maps for different languages will resemble each other, just with different names. A computer can then figure out the best way to overlay one atlas on another. Voilà! You have a bilingual Top 4 PC Game Controllers and Gamepads 4 dictionary. Germany's Interior Minister Wants Backdoors In Cars, Digital Devices
5 The new papers, which use remarkably similar methods, can
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Rivalries in Computing History
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also translate at the sentence level. They both use two training strategies, called back translation and denoising. In back translation, a sentence in one language is roughly translated into the other, then translated back into the original language. If the back-translated sentence is not identical to the original, the (Continued on page 2)
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Files Go! by Google by Steve Dent
Another long overdue feature is the ability to share files offline, Airdrop-style. When you enable the feature, it lets you discover other devices via Bluetooth and create a WiFi "hotspot" to share files. If a friend also has Files Go and file sharing enabled, it's simply a matter of hitting send or receive. "The file transfers are encrypted, fast (up to 125 Mbps) and free," says Google.
Google has filled a big hole in its Android system by releasing Files Go!, its mobile file organization and sharing app. Launched in beta in November, the app makes it easier for Android users to free up space, find files, back them up to the cloud, and share them with other smartphones, even offline. It's one of the linchpin apps of Google's Oreo 8.1 (Go edition), a slimmed down version of Android meant for the less-powerful devices in developing nations. Files Go! will also be handy for power users who currently lean on third-party file organization apps, which are often paid or adsupported. On top of giving you direct access to your downloads, received files, apps, images, video, audio and documents, it will offer suggestions for freeing up space. For instance, it can tell you how much you can free from your app cache, unused apps, large files and downloaded files. It'll also offer to move files to an SD card, if you have one.
The app can also remind you when you're low on storage and let you backup files to Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and other apps. Google says it has been testing the app for a month and has saved users an average of 1GB space. It's now available for all on the Google Play Store, assuming you have Android 5.0 or higher. Source: Engadget
method that scores about 40, or humans, who can score more than 50, but it’s better than word-for-word translation. The neural networks are adjusted so that next time they’ll be closer. authors say the systems could easily be improved by becoming Denoising is similar to back translation, but instead of going semisupervised–having a few thousand parallel sentences from one language to another and back, it adds noise to a added to their training. sentence (by rearranging or removing words) and tries to translate that back into the original. Together, these methods In addition to translating between languages without many teach the networks the deeper structure of language. parallel texts, both Artetxe and Lample say their systems could help with common pairings like English and French if the There are slight differences between the techniques. The UPV parallel texts are all the same kind, like newspaper reporting, system back translates more frequently during training. The but you want to translate into a new domain, like street slang or other system, created by Facebook computer scientist medical jargon. But, “This is in infancy,” Artetxe’s co-author Guillaume Lample, based in Paris, and collaborators, adds an Eneko Agirre cautions. “We just opened a new research avenue, extra step during translation. Both systems encode a sentence so we don’t know where it’s heading.” from one language into a more abstract representation before decoding it into the other language, but the Facebook system “It’s a shock that the computer could learn to translate even verifies that the intermediate “language” is truly abstract. without human supervision,” says Di He, a computer scientist at Artetxe and Lample both say they could improve their results by Microsoft in Beijing whose work influenced both applying techniques from the other’s paper. papers. Artetxe says the fact that his method and Lample’s— uploaded to arXiv within a day of each other—are so similar is In the only directly comparable results between the two surprising. “But at the same time, it’s great. It means the papers—translating between English and French text drawn approach is really in the right direction.” from the same set of about 30 million sentences—both achieved a bilingual evaluation understudy score (used to Source: ScienceMag measure the accuracy of translations) of about 15 in both directions. That’s not as high as Google Translate, a supervised (Continued from page 1)
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Jump Search } // Doing a linear search for x in block // beginning with prev. while (arr[prev] < x) { prev++;
Image source: Stoimen’s Web Log Like Binary Search, Jump Search is a searching algorithm for sorted arrays. The basic idea is to check fewer elements (than linear search) by jumping ahead by fixed steps or skipping some elements in place of searching all elements.
// If we reached next block or end of // array, element is not present. if (prev == min(step, n)) return -1;
For example, suppose we have an array arr[] of size n and block (to be jumped) size m. Then we search at the indexes arr[0], arr [m], arr[2m]…..arr[km] and so on. Once we find the interval (arr [km] < x < arr[(k+1)m]), we perform a linear search operation from the index km to find the element x. Let’s consider the following array: (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610). Length of the array is 16. Jump search will find the value of 55 with the following steps assuming that the block size to be jumped is 4.
} // If element is found if (arr[prev] == x) return prev; return -1; }
// Driver program to test function int main() STEP 1: Jump from index 0 to index 4; { STEP 2: Jump from index 4 to index 8; int arr[] = { 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, STEP 3: Jump from index 8 to index 16; 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, STEP 4: Since the element at index 16 is greater than 55 we 610 }; will jump back a step to come to index 9. int x = 55; STEP 5: Perform linear search from index 9 to get the int n = sizeof(arr) / sizeof(arr[0]); element 55.
// Find the index of 'x' using Jump Search What is the optimal block size to be skipped? int index = jumpSearch(arr, x, n); In the worst case, we have to do n/m jumps and if the last checked value is greater than the element to be searched for, // Print the index where 'x' is located we perform m-1 comparisons more for linear search. Therefore cout << "\nNumber " << x << " is at index the total number of comparisons in the worst case will be ((n/ " << index; m) + m-1). The value of the function ((n/m) + m-1) will be return 0; minimum when m = √n. Therefore, the best step size is m = √n. } // C++ program to implement Jump Search Time Complexity : O(√n) Auxiliary Space : O(1) #include <iostream> #include <cmath> Important points: using namespace std; Works only sorted arrays. The optimal size of a block to be jumped is O(√ n). This int jumpSearch(int arr[], int x, int n) makes the time complexity of Jump Search O(√ n). { The time complexity of Jump Search is between Linear // Finding block size to be jumped Search ( ( O(n) ) and Binary Search ( O (Log n) ). int step = sqrt(n); Binary Search is better than Jump Search, but Jump search has an advantage that we traverse back only once (Binary // Finding the block where element is Search may require up to O(Log n) jumps, consider a // present (if it is present) situation where the element to be search is the smallest int prev = 0; element or smaller than the smallest). So in a systems while (arr[min(step, n)-1] < x) where jumping back is costly, we use Jump Search. { prev = step; step += sqrt(n); if (prev >= n) return -1;
Source: GeeksforGeeks
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Top 4 PC Game Controllers and Gamepads By Michael Klappenbach
PC game controllers and gamepads have always been somewhat of an afterthought for PC gaming; Support across games was sparse at best and most non- first person shooters didn't support them at all. With more games being developed for all the major platforms, support for PC gamepads has become almost universal with all new games. Over the past few years, many new options have become available from quite a few different manufacturers. The list of PC game controllers that follow all offer ease of use, comfort and lots of buttons to game with.
provides gamers with vibration feedback to give your gaming a more realistic and immersive feel from games that support vibration feedback. The F710 Gamepad can also be paired with Steam's Big Picture allowing you to surf the web, play games and more. 03 Xbox 360 Controller for Windows Connection: Wired or Wireless Programmable: No Vibration: Yes
01 Xbox One Elite Controller
The Xbox 360 Controller for Windows is the PC specific version of the popular Xbox 360 gamepad although there is no difference between the Xbox 360 version and this PC version other than the With the Xbox One Elite name printed on the packaging. It controller Microsoft has comes in both wired and wireless option, both of which are created one of the best PC compatible for use on the PC or Xbox 360. The wireless version game pads available, improving upon the Xbox 360 controller in of the gamepad includes a 2.4 GHz wireless USB receiver, with a number of ways. The Xbox One Elite game controller offers 30ft range, that can be purchase separately and is also both USB wired and wireless capability and is compatible with compatible with existing Xbox 360 controllers, however, it does both Xbox One consoles and Windows based PCs. The Elite require a re-sync if you are switching between the two. game controller allows players to customize buttons and joysticks to their preference. The directional pad and analog The ergonomic design of the Xbox 360 Controller provides a thumb joysticks are interchangeable and allow for players to comfortable feel even after hours of play. The gamepad customize the height and feel of the joysticks. The standard six controller includes 10 buttons - six on the top of the gamepad top action buttons and four trigger buttons are fully and four trigger buttons that can quickly be pressed with your programmable and feature a hair trigger lock allowing for a index finger, 2 dual analog joysticks and an 8-way directional faster rate of firing. The Xbox One Elite also features a gamepad. rubberized diamond grip and has a great ergonomic design that makes it comfortable to use for long periods of time. 04 Razer Sabertooth Connection: Wired & Wireless Programmable: Yes Vibration: Yes
02 Logitech Wireless Gamepad F710 Connection: Wireless (USB port needed for receiver) Programmable: Yes Vibration: Yes The Logitech F710 Wireless Gamepad is Logitech's top of the line PC gamepad controller that provides console like controls on many PC action games and console ports. The F710 allows gamers to play console ports with their console native style controls while also allowing programmable buttons that allow for use with PC games that may require keyboard inputs. The Logitech F710 Wireless Gamepad uses 2.4 GHz wireless USB receiver which keeps your gaming free from any tangled cords. The gamepad features the familiar console gamepad layout with 10 programmable buttons, 2 analog joysticks and an 8-way directional pad. The 8-way directional pad also includes individual switches for each direction making it more responsive and accurate than D-pads that use a single pivot point to control the eight directions. Finally the F710 gamepad
Connection: Wired Programmable: Yes Vibration: Yes The Razer Sabertooth Elite Gaming Controller is a PC and Xbox 360 gamepad packed with a ton of features. Like many other game pads the Razer Sabertooth is fully customizable allowing gamers to program keys depending on their game and style. It also includes onboard memory for saving profiles so if you take it on the road you'll never have to be without your custom setup. The Razor Sabertooth also features six shoulder/trigger buttons and two programmable rocker buttons on the bottom of the game pad. This is in addition to the 4 buttons and two joystick buttons on the top of the gamepad. The gamepad also has the standard dual analog joysticks and 8-way directional pad. Finally the Razor Sabertooth includes a built in OLED screen for profile switching and easy customization that allow players to adjust sensitivity as well as save and load profiles. Source: Lifewire
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Germany's Interior Minister Wants Backdoors In Cars, Digital Devices by Lucian Armasu
According to a new report from German newspaper Redaktions Netzwerk Deutschland (RND), Germany’s Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizièr, has written a draft proposal in which he would like German cars, as well as other digital devices being sold in Germany, to grant police backdoor access. The minister is expected to present the proposal at next week’s Ministry of Interior conference.
dollars in potential sales when Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA’s surveillance came out.
Undermining Trust In Connected And Self-Driving Cars All of that pales in comparison to undermining trust in cars (German cars, in this case), especially the cars with autonomous driving features that we’re going to see in the next few years. As if it wasn’t bad enough that car manufacturers Giving Police More Surveillance Powers weren’t taking digital security all that seriously with both According to the RND report, the German minister would like connected cars and self-driving cars, now the German Interior intelligence agencies and police to gain “exclusive” access to Minister is proposing that all such cars should come with builtcars, as well as digital devices such as computers, mobile in security vulnerabilities in the future. devices, kitchen appliances, and smart TVs. The “back door” access would, in essence, allow the government to bypass the Calling these vulnerabilities “exclusive access” won’t change security protections some of these devices have. The police the fact that backdoors never remain exclusive for long -have been complaining that sometimes they can’t install especially when the malicious actors already know a backdoor intercept equipment on some cars because their security is in there and that they just have to find it. systems are “too good.” Maizièr would also like cars and digital devices to have a “kill switch” the government can use at will to Plus, if Germany gets its “exclusive access” to connected cars shut down certain devices, allegedly to stop cybercrime. and robocars, chances are high that UK, Russia, the U.S., Australia, China, and many other countries will soon demand Compromising Security Of Digital Devices that the carmakers give them the same “exclusive access,” too, The topic of compromising the security of digital devices in just like they've been doing with data requests. The more order to give governments easier access to their targets’ data governments and government employees get such access, the has already been discussed quite a bit in recent years, as the more likely it will be that someone will mess up somewhere. U.S. and UK governments have been ramping up their attacks on encryption and proposed their own backdoors. Finally, if German cars (Mercedez-Benz, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Opel, Porsche, etc) start including backdoors, and Many security experts have come out against such plans then these backdoors are inevitably exploited, those car brands because they would undermine the security of digital devices, are going to see an immediate damage to their reputations just as the weak encryption promoted by the U.S. government around the world. The exploits could be used not just by car in the '90s has been hurting browser security to this day. thieves, but also to put people’s lives in danger on the road. As the German economy relies so much on its car industry, it could Additionally, backdoors and weak encryption would also see a significant negative impact as well. undermine the trust people have in these devices, which could lead to fewer sales of the compromised products around the Source: tom’sHARDWARE world, similarly to how American companies lost billions of
JavaScript Tips Verify that a given argument is a number function isNumber(n){ return !isNaN(parseFloat(n)) && isFinite(n);
} Get the max or the min in an array of numbers var
numbers = [5, 458 , 120 , -215 , 228 , 400 , 122205, -85411];
var maxInNumbers = Math.max.apply(Math, numbers); var minInNumbers = Math.min.apply(Math, numbers); Empty an array var myArray = [12 , 222 , 1000 ]; myArray.length = 0; // myArray will be equal to []. 5
Rivalries in Computing History AMD vs. Intel
graphical interface was developed by Xerox PARC, not Apple. Intel and AMD have been around for The pair had a complicated decades. But even relationship over the though both following 15 years. They companies were were competitors in the founded in the late home computer market, 60s, their rivalry yet Apple depended on didn’t heat up for Microsoft developing another 20 years. applications such as Word Things were going well in the beginning. Intel entered into a and Excel for the Mac, so it cross-licensing agreement with AMD in 1976, and in 1982 the licensed some of its pair signed a technology exchange agreement, as IBM didn’t technologies to its chief want Intel to be its sole source of chips. The PC maker competitor. On the flip side, Apple pursued a copyright lawsuit demanded a second-source manufacturer for its x86 against Microsoft and HP, which it ultimately lost. microprocessor, so a deal was signed that gave AMD access to Intel’s second-gen 286 chip technology. Fast forward to 1997, Apple wasn't doing well before the company brought back Steve Jobs as part of the NeXT The relationship started to fall apart in the mid-80s when Intel acquisition. During that year's Macworld Expo, Jobs infamously refused to give AMD a license to its 386 microprocessor. AMD announced that Apple had formed a 5-year deal with Microsoft said this was part of a plan for its rival to create a PC chip that would see the continued development of Internet Explorer monopoly, and in 1987 it accused Intel of breaking the contract and Office for the Mac. Microsoft also invested $150 million they signed five years earlier. AMD petitioned for arbitration, into its rival, saving it from the brink of bankruptcy. and so began years of legal battles between the pair. The following decade saw Apple's Lazarus-like resurgence. In 1995, the companies agreed to settle all litigation as part of a iPods made the company cool again. The “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” global settlement. Intel got $58 million, while AMD got $18 ads ran for about four years and 66 episodes, hammered home million and a perpetual license to the microcode found in Intel’s the Apple=hip PC=nerdy narrative. The iPhone made the 386 and 486 chips. However, more lawsuits followed, which company an undisputed industry leader. ultimately led to a $1.4 billion EU fine against Intel based on anti-competitive practices toward AMD. After a few decades, Microsoft and Apple seem to have a better relationship these days. Microsoft’s Bing was until recently the In the early 2000s, AMD was beating Intel handily for the first default search engine for Apple’s virtual AI, Siri. Office on Mac time with their successful Athlon chips, but the introduction of is flourishing on its own particular way. The mocking ads are Intel’s Core architecture and the move to a tick-tock cycle still around to an extent. Tim Cook said that while they do still model (now the process-architecture-optimization model) saw compete, they can partner on more things than they compete AMD relegated to be the budget option for over a decade. on. “I’m not a believer of holding grudges,” the CEO said. Today, Intel dominates the PC market, though AMD has seen a renaissance in enthusiast markets thanks to new Zen Source: Techspot processors. Also AMD GPUs are found in many gaming consoles.
Famous Microsoft Interview Puzzle
Microsoft vs. Apple Easily the most famous tech rivalry of all time, the battle between Microsoft and Apple has raged since the mid-80s and continues today. Whether it's PC vs. Mac, Windows vs. OS X, iPhone vs. Windows Mobile, or more recently iPad Pro vs. Surface Pro. Things weren’t always this way, though. The two companies worked together during the early 80s, with Microsoft developing software for the Apple II. Bill Gates even joked that his company had more people working on the Mac than Steve Jobs did. The relationship went south after Jobs accused Gates of ripping off the Macintosh OS for Microsoft’s version of a GUI OS: Windows. When faced with this accusation, Gates famously replied: "Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.” The first
Is Your Husband a Cheat? A certain town comprises of 100 married couples. Everyone in the town lives by the following rule: If a husband cheats on his wife, the husband is executed as soon as his wife finds out about him. All the women in the town only gossip about the husbands of other women. No woman ever tells another woman if her husband is cheating on her. So every woman in the town knows about all the cheating husbands in the town except her own. It can also be assumed that a husband remains silent about his infidelity. One day, the mayor of the town announces to the whole town that there is at least 1 cheating husband in the town. What do you think happens? Answer 6