Learn Python The Hard Way pdf file (Download links below)

Hello guys,
Today I'm gonna be posting about learning Python, the programming language.

What is Python? Executive Summary

Python is an interpreted, object-oriented, high-level programming language with dynamic semantics. Its high-level built in data structures, combined with dynamic typing and dynamic binding, make it very attractive for Rapid Application Development, as well as for use as a scripting or glue language to connect existing components together. Python's simple, easy to learn syntax emphasizes readability and therefore reduces the cost of program maintenance. Python supports modules and packages, which encourages program modularity and code reuse. The Python interpreter and the extensive standard library are available in source or binary form without charge for all major platforms, and can be freely distributed.

Often, programmers fall in love with Python because of the increased productivity it provides. Since there is no compilation step, the edit-test-debug cycle is incredibly fast. Debugging Python programs is easy: a bug or bad input will never cause a segmentation fault. Instead, when the interpreter discovers an error, it raises an exception. When the program doesn't catch the exception, the interpreter prints a stack trace. A source level debugger allows inspection of local and global variables, evaluation of arbitrary expressions, setting breakpoints, stepping through the code a line at a time, and so on. The debugger is written in Python itself, testifying to Python's introspective power. On the other hand, often the quickest way to debug a program is to add a few print statements to the source: the fast edit-test-debug cycle makes this simple approach very effective.

How to learn Python by yourself!!
Python is a very simple and straightforward language that can be learnt very easily if you have the right resources.

The things you'll need to be a master Python programmer are:

• A working computer.(DUH!)
• An internet connection.(OPTIONAL)
• This awesome book by Zed A. Shaw known as Learn Python The Hard Way
• A text editor. (Consider Notepad++)
• Dedication

So, what are you waiting for? Just click on the below links and start learning! Happy Coding!

Learn Python The Hard Way by Zed A. Shaw

Notepad++

The Real Reason AI Won’t Take Over Anytime Soon

Artificial intelligence has had its share of ups and downs recently. In what was widely seen as a key milestone for artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, one system beat a former world champion at a mind-bendingly intricate board game. But then, just a week later, a "chatbot" that was designed to learn from its interactions with humans on Twitter had a highly public racist meltdown on the social networking site.

How did this happen, and what does it mean for the dynamic field of AI?

In early March, a Google-made artificial intelligence system beat former world champ Lee Sedol four matches to one at an ancient Chinese game, called Go, that is considered more complex than chess, which was previously used as a benchmark to assess progress in machine intelligence. Before the Google AI's triumph, most experts thought it would be decades before a machine could beat a top-ranked human at Go. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures].

But fresh off the heels of this win, Microsoft unveiled an AI system on Twitter called Tay that was designed to mimic a 19-year-old American girl. Twitter users could tweet at Tay, and Microsoft said the AI system would learn from these interactions and eventually become better at communicating with humans. The company was forced to pull the plug on the experiment just 16 hours later, after the chatbot started spouting racist, misogynistic and sexually explicit messages. The company apologized profusely, blaming a "coordinated attack" on "vulnerabilities" and "technical exploits."

Despite Microsoft's use of language that seemed to suggest the system fell victim to hackers, AI expert Bart Selman, a professor of computer science at Cornell University, said the so-called "vulnerability" was that Tay appeared to repeat phrases tweeted at it without any kind of filter. Unsurprisingly, the "lolz" to be had from getting the chatbot to repeat inflammatory phrases were too much for some to resist.

Selman said he is amazed Microsoft didn't build in sufficient safeguards to prevent such an eventuality, but he told Live Science the incident highlights one of modern AI's major weak points: language comprehension.

Teaching AI

AI is very good at parsing text — that is, unraveling the grammatical patterns that underpin language — Selman said, which allows chatbots like Tay to create human-sounding sentences. It's also what powers Google's and Skype's impressive translation services. "But that's a different thing from understanding semantics — the meaning of sentences," he added.

Many of the recent advances in AI technology have been thanks to an approach called deep learning, which at some level mimics the way layers of neurons behave in the brain. Given huge swathes of data, it is very good at finding patterns, which is why many of its greatest successes have been in perceptual tasks like image or speech recognition. [A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence]

While traditional approaches to machine learning needed to be told what to look for in order to "learn," one of the main advantages of deep learning is that these systems have "automatic feature discovery," according to Shimon Whiteson, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford.

The first layer of the network is optimized to look for very basic features in the data, for instance the edge of objects in an image. This output is then fed to the next layer, which scans for more complex configurations, say squares or circles. This process is repeated up the layers with each one looking for increasingly elaborate features so that by the time the system reaches the higher levels, it is able to use the structures detected by lower layers to identify things like a car or a bicycle.

"With deep learning, you can just feed raw data into some big neural network, which is then trained end-to-end," Whiteson told Live Science.

Big payoffs

This has led to some superhuman capabilities. Selman said deep-learning systems have been shown to outperform medical specialists at diagnosing disease from MRI scans. Combining the approach with so-called reinforcement learning, in which machines use reward signals to hone in on an optimal strategy, has also been successful with tasks where it is possible to build accurate virtual simulations, said Kaheer Suleman, chief technology officer and co-founder of Canadian AI startup Maluuba. Google's AI system, dubbed AlphaGo, became an expert by playing itself millions of times and using this combination of methods to sharpen its skills and develop strategies.

"The big challenge for AI is in domains where there is no massive collection of labeled data, or where the environment cannot be simulated well," Suleman said. "Language is a great example of such a domain. The internet contains endless text, but nowhere is its "meaning" labeled in some machine-digestible form."

Maluuba is developing algorithms that can read text and answer questions about it, but Suleman said there are several features of language that make this particularly difficult. For one, language is hugely complex — meaning is spread across multiple levels, from words to phrases to sentences. These can be combined in an infinite number of ways and every human uses language differently.

And all language is abstract; words are simply symbols for things in a real world that a machine often can't experience.

"From the perspective of machine learning, the learned system is only as good as the data you provide it," Whiteson said.

Without access to the lifetime of data on the physical world and the wealth of social interactions that a human has accumulated, it’s little surprise Tay didn't understand what, for instance, the Holocaust is, let alone why it's inappropriate to deny it.

Looking ahead

Despite these challenges, Maluuba posted a paper last month to arXiv, an online repository for preprint research papers, describing how its system was able to answer multiple-choice questions about unfamiliar text with more than 70 percent accuracy, outperforming other neural network approaches by 15 percent, and even outdoing hand-coded approaches. Maluuba's approach combined deep learning with neural network structures, engineered to interact with each other in a way that interactions result in a rudimentary form of reasoning. The company is also working on spoken dialogue systems that can learn to engage in natural conversations with humans.

Selman said language-focused AI can be surprisingly powerful for applications where the subject matter is fairly restricted. For instance, technical helplines are things he predicts could soon be automated (and some already are, to a degree), as could relatively senior administrative jobs that boil down to routine interactions like updating spreadsheets and sending out formulaic emails.

"Weaknesses are exposed in these uncontrolled, very open-ended settings, which involve multiple aspects of human intelligence but also really understanding other people," Selman said.

But progress is certainly being made on this front, Whiteson said, with Google's self-driving car being a prime example. Sharing the street with humans requires the machine to understand more than just the rules of the road — it also needs to be able to follow unstated social norms and navigate ethical dilemmas when avoiding collisions, he added.

And as advances in AI and robotics result in increasing numbers of machines being used in the real world, the ability to interact with humans is no longer some lofty goal for sci-fi aficionados. Researchers are now searching for new approaches that could help machines not only perceive, but also understand the world around them.

"Deep learning is great, but it's not a silver bullet," Whiteson said. "There are a lot things still missing. And so a natural next step that people are working on is how can we add things to deep learning so that it can do even more."

"Now all of these thorny questions about what it is we want machines to do and how do we make sure they do it are becoming of practical importance so people are starting to focus on them a lot more now.”

Odd-Even second phase begins today: Startups come to the rescue with apps to help you commute easily. 

Delhi government has kickstarted the second phase of its odd-even scheme today, which will continue until 30 April. While this may help curb the increasing effects of air pollution, it could make daily commuting a nightmare. Like most spheres of life, mobile apps could come to your rescue to ensure you have a smooth and hassle-free ride. Some taxi aggregator startups are ensuring that no stone is left unturned, by offering discount, free rides and even free petrol. Let’s take a look at the several options for Delhites for a cost-effective and comfortable commute in the next 15 days. 

Shuttl

For those, who take public transport and are looking for cost-effective ways to travel rather than taxis, Shuttl could be an alternative. It is a bus aggregator platform that generates an e-ticket for each user along with a reserved seat number. It has teamed up with bus drivers and runs air-conditioned buses that ply on fixed routes. The Gurgaon-based startup that recently received $20 million funding has helped build an improved tech product and in expansion by covering Delhi/NCR region with over 100 routes and more than 500 buses. The startup is expecting an increase in riders by 50 percent in this coming phase. For the second phase, they’ve added over 100  buses, making the new count over 500.

The Shuttl app is available to download on Apple App store, Google’s Play storeand Windows store.

Odd-Even ride

While those were alternative to buses, what about people who own a car? The motive of Odd-Even is to get lesser vehicles on road and car pooling is a great way to achieve it. You can team up with people and get your vehicles out alternately by car pooling. However, your dear and ones may not be travelling in the same direction as you. Here’s when Odd-Even comes to the rescue. Using this app, you need to key in details like car number, phone number and route, and a list of people travelling in the same direction will popular your screen. This app is available for Android users.

Popular car pooling services – Ola Share, Carpool by Meru and UberPool

And, if you want to ensure that you are commuting with known brands, then there are options such as Ola Share, Carpool by Meru and Uber Pool. needless to say, you just need to key in the destination and number of seats, and a nearby vehicle heading in the same direction will be routed to your location. Knowing that these are the most used vehicles, you can easily get a option to make your commute easy.

Facebook launches Messenger platform with chatbots

Facebook will now allow businesses to deliver automated customer support, e-commerce guidance, content and interactive experiences through chatbots. By providing utility through its huge developer and business ecosystem, Facebook could boost loyalty with Messenger, one-up SMS and keep up with chat competitors like Kik, Line andTelegram that have their own bot platforms.

This confirms TechCrunch’s scoops from January that Facebook was working with chatbot developers, and last week that a program for automated agents would launch at F8. [Update: the official name for the platform is “bots on Messenger” not “agents on Messenger,” which was a previous codename.].

Facebook announced a slew of chatbot partnerships with developers who got early access, like 1-800-Flowers, so you can order flowers by just sending its Messenger bot a friend’s name. Or CNN could send you a “daily digest” of stories that match your interests, and skip the topics you don’t care about.

Zuckerberg explained that with AI and natural language processing combined with human help, people will be able to talk to Messenger bots just like they talk to friends.

Starshot Project: Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg launch most ambitious alien-finding project ever!

The backers hope that the project can send tiny rockets  25 trillion miles into space in just 20 years – and send back pictures, potentially showing worlds that could support life.

Tiny rockets are going to be sent into space to study the far universe in the most ambitious space exploration project in history.

Scientists including Stephen Hawking and backers such as internet investor Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg will send “nano craft” deep into space to explore the most remote regions that humans have ever seen, by far.

The hugely ambitious project could reveal deep secrets of the universe and will allow people to photograph one of the most likely places to hold life on other worlds.

Professor Hawking said at the event: "What makes us unique is transcending our limits. Gravity pins us to the ground, but I just flew to America.

"How do we transcend these limits? With our minds and our machines.

"The limit that confronts us now is the great void between us and the stars. But now we can transcend it, with light beams, light sails, and the lightest spacecraft ever built. Today we commit to this next great leap into the cosmos, because we are human and our nature is to fly.”

The Starshot Project hopes to get the tiny robots out to the Alpha Centauri star system, 25 trillion miles away. Getting there through normal means would take 30,000 years – but the new project hopes that using the tiny rockets will allow them to get there in just 20.