Challenging common assumptions in the unsupervised learning of disentangled representations

Challenging common assumptions in the unsupervised learning of disentangled representations Locatello et al., ICML’19

Today’s paper choice won a best paper award at ICML’19. The ‘common assumptions’ that the paper challenges seem to be: “unsupervised learning of disentangled representations is possible, and useful!”

The key idea behind the unsupervised learning of disentangled representations is that real-world data is generated by a few explanatory factors of variation which can be recovered by unsupervised learning algorithms. In this paper, we provide a sober look at recent progress in the field and challenge some common assumptions.

What exactly is a ‘disentangled representation’ and why might we want one?

Put the ‘disentangled’ part to one side for a moment, and let’s start out by revisiting what we mean by a representation. Given a real-world observation \mathbf{x} (e.g. of an image or video), a representation r(\mathbf{x}) is a transformation of \mathbf{x} (typically to a lower dimensional space in order to be useful) that somehow preserves the salient information in the \mathbf{x} so that we can still use r(\mathbf{x}) to extract useful information about the input (e.g. for building classifiers). As a trivial example, suppose we had real world observations consisting of 1000 points sampled from a Continue reading

Server hardware makers shift production out of China

The supply chain of vendors that build servers and network communication devices is accelerating its shift of production out of China to Taiwan and North America, along with other nations not subject to the trade war between the U.S. and China.Last May, the Trump Administration levied tariffs on a number of imported Chinese goods, computer components among them. The tariffs ranged from 10-25%. Consumers were hit hardest, since they are more price sensitive than IT buyers. PC World said the average laptop price could rise by $120 just for the tariffs.To read this article in full, please click here

SD-WAN Must Tackle the Multidomain Problem

Chris Wade Chris Wade serves as the co-founder and CTO of Itential, a network automation software company focused on simplifying and accelerating the adoption of network automation and transforming network operations practices. SD-WAN (software-defined networking in a wide area network) was originally touted as a way to leverage both private (MPLS) and public (internet) networks to route traffic to the most appropriate network. Over time, SD-WAN has evolved and enabled the acceleration for more innovative services. In an effort to extend SD-WAN into a multicloud reality, SD-WAN 2.0 enhances security and analytics while connecting innovation at the edge with application and cloud concepts. While we have seen tremendous innovation in the cloud ecosystems, network and application domains are adopting similar concepts to build software-centric, programmable networks. Given these applications and networks now span clouds, data centers, WANs, LANs, and edge, the automation of networks should be viewed as a Multidomain problem. Each domain has unique challenges which should be automated locally while providing an end-to-end capability to align with the target network reality. Applications and services are becoming more distributed and require connectivity and policy enforcement across a variety of domains. Whether it is zero-trust security, intelligent network automation, Continue reading

BrandPost: Know the True Business Drivers for SD-WAN

If a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) vendor calls you up and says you need their product because it will help you save money, hang up the phone. Okay, maybe you shouldn’t hang up the phone—but you should at least tell him that he’s selling his product wrong.It’s true that the early conversations about SD-WAN were all about cost savings, and those promised cost savings were to come via replacing MPLS with internet connectivity. To some extent, SD-WAN definitely delivers on this promise. That being said, saving money is not the real business driver for SD-WAN.To read this article in full, please click here

BrandPost: Do-it-Yourself SD-WANs: No Shortage of Complexity

With interest in software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN) heating up, companies are facing a key question: can they implement SD-WAN themselves or do they need a service provider to help?It’s a rather loaded question, with many issues to consider if you elect to go the do-it-yourself (DIY) route. In this post, we’ll examine some of the highest hurdles you’ll have to get over if you decide to DIY; paint a picture of what sort of company may be able to tackle an SD-WAN project; and define who will be better off with a managed service.To read this article in full, please click here

REST API 1. Basics cheat sheet (Ansible, Bash, Postman, and Python) for GET using NetBox and Docker as examples

Hello my friend,

There was a small pause with the blogposts caused by heavy load I had with the ongoing projects. However, I hope you enjoyed watching some videos I have prepared for you with the awesome guests. Today we are going to discuss some details about REST API using Digital Ocean NetBox and Docker as examples.



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Brief description

The REST API was already extensively used in my previous articles about the Data Centre Fabric project such as NetBox integration with the Infrastructure Enabler Stack, monitoring of the network infrastructure using Telegraf/InfluxDB/Grafana or closed-loop automation with Kapacitor. Nevertheless, we haven’t discussed how to work with the REST API itself.

In terms of using the Web applications, there are four main action types forming CRUD abbreviation:

  • C – CREATE is an action type, which creates the entry within the application database.
  • R – READ is an action type, which extract the existing information out of the Continue reading

The Song Remains The Same

RedHat-IBM-Announcement

Now that Red Hat is a part of IBM, some people may wonder about the future of the Ansible project. Here is the good news: the Ansible community strategy has not changed.

As always, we want to make it as easy as possible to work with any projects and communities who want to work with Ansible. With the resources of IBM behind us, we plan to accelerate these efforts. We want to do more integrations with more open source communities and more technologies.

One of the reasons we are excited for the merger is that IBM understands the importance of a broad and diverse community. Search for “Ansible plus <open source project>” and you can find Ansible information, such as playbooks and modules and blog posts and videos and slide decks, intended to make working with that project easier. We have thousands of people attending Ansible meetups and events all over the world. We have millions of downloads. We have had this momentum because we provide users flexibility and freedom. IBM is committed to our independence as a community so that we can continue this work.

We’ve worked hard to be good open source citizens. We value the trust Continue reading

Network Break 243: Zoom Changes Tone On Security Vulnerabilities; Cisco Spends $2.6 Billion For Acacia

Today's Network Break analyzes Zoom's change of course on security vulnerabilities, discusses the reasons behind Cisco's multibillion acquisition of Acacia, examines IBM's closing of its Red Hat purchase, and more tech news.

The post Network Break 243: Zoom Changes Tone On Security Vulnerabilities; Cisco Spends $2.6 Billion For Acacia appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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