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Home Hotel, Casino & Club News John Pinette Brings His Stand-Up Act to The Orleans Showroom
Hotel, Casino & Club News
John Pinette Brings His Stand-Up Act to The Orleans Showroom
Comedic mainstay John Pinette will bring his stand-up routine to The Orleans Showroom March 30 and 31, at 8 p.m. each evening.
Pinette, a former American Comedy Awards Stand-up Comedian of the Year, received his big break in 1991 when he was asked to tour with the legendary Frank Sinatra. Since then, Pinette has starred as Edna Turnblad in the hit Broadway musical "Hairspray," opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the movie "Duets," alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Junior," and with John Travolta in "The Punisher."
On the small screen, Pinette has guest-starred on numerous television shows, including "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," "ALF," "Seinfeld" and "Vinnie & Bobby."
In January 2007, his Comedy Central stand-up special and DVD, "I'm Starvin," was released as a follow-up to his successful CD, "Show Me The Buffet." His most recent one-hour Comedy Central special, "John Pinette: Still Hungry," premiered in July 2011 and is available on DVD.
Showtime each evening is 8 p.m. Tickets start at $29.95, plus tax and convenience fees, and can be purchased at any Coast Casinos Box Office, by calling 702.365.7075, or visiting www.orleanscasino.com.
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Category: Based on a true story
Posted on January 9, 2020 at 5:26 pm
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for thematic content including some racial epithets
Profanity: Strong language including n-word and other racist terms
Alcohol/ Drugs: Social drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness: References to violent crimes, non-explicit depiction of an execution
Date Released to Theaters: January 10, 2020
Copyright Warner Brothers 2019
The third 2019 awards season story based on a real-life lawyer stars producer Michael B. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Legacy Museum (sometimes referred to as the Lynching Museum) and National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The movie shows him as a young graduate of Harvard Law School who moved to the small town where Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. Like Lee's Atticus Finch, Stevenson defends those who were unfairly accused. He established the Equal Justice Initiative. The only other staff was a local woman named Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). Stevenson began helping men on death row at no cost.
The local community, especially law enforcement, did not like having old cases re-opened and weaknesses of evidence and exposed. The hostility and obstruction seemed insurmountable. But Stevenson was undaunted. Unlike most heroic lawyers in movies (and real life), this story does not have family members complaining that he is working too hard or a love interest who feels neglected. Stevenson does not lose his temper or feel like giving up. The great gift of this movie is what sometimes, if you are not watching carefully, may make it seem like its pilot light is turned down too low. This movie does have some rousing moments (and some sad ones) but it does not follow the usual courtroom underdog stories that make the intricacies of the judicial system follow the beats of a feel-good sports story.
Jordan is that rare performer who is a superb actor and a full-on movie star. After his electrifying appearance in "Black Panther," he shows his range as a lawyer whose only superpowers are his integrity and his constant courtesy toward everyone he deals with. client, friend, and foe. The quiet power of the respect he shows to his clients is critical to gaining their trust and to restoring their sense of dignity in a system that has done its best to take it from them. And it is wisely given as much weight here as any revelation of evidence or legal right left out of the original proceedings.
Director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton also treats Stevenson's clients with respect, with an outstanding performance by Jamie Foxx as Stevenson's first significant client. It's a quieter role than we have seen him in for a while, and his subtle work here is extraordinary, telling us the whole history of a man who has never been able to expect fairness for himself or his family. Rob Morgan plays another prisoner, performed with heartwrenching simplicity and delicacy to bring home to us what brought Stevenson to devote his life to this cause.
Parents should know that this movie concerns men on death row and abuses of the justice system. It includes some strong language, including racist epithets, and references to sexual assault and violent crime an a non-explicit depiction of an execution.
Family discussion: Why was it important for Stevenson to address his clients and their families as Mr. and Mrs.? What kept him from giving up?
If you like this, try: Bryan Stevenson's book and TED Talk, and documentary
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MPAA Rating: Rated R for language including some sexual references, and brief bloody images
Alcohol/ Drugs: Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness: Bombing, explosions, characters injured and killed, brief disturbing images
Diversity Issues: Portrayal of female professional using sex to manipulate men
Date Released to Theaters: December 14, 2019
Erik Erikson said that at each stage of life we have a choice between growth, learning, and compassion and fear, immaturity, and self-absorption. The final choice he posed was for old age, when people have to choose between ego integrity (satisfaction and completeness at the end of life, a sense of having made a difference) or despair (being lost, lacking a sense of purpose). (I highly recommend "Everybody Rides the Carousel," an animated film from John and Faith Hubley, illustrating Erikson's theories.) Two big end-of-the-year releases by two men, one in his 70's, the other almost 90, seem to come down on different sides.
Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman" is a movie by old men about what it is to be old, to be looking back on the choices you've made and the consequences they have had. The characters in the film, based on real people and their sometimes questionable stories, committed brutal crimes. The movie never excuses their behavior, but it portrays them in a complex, humane, elegiac manner.
89-year-old Clint Eastwood has made "Richard Jewell," also based on a true story, this one about a man who was accused of a crime he did not commit. Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) was pudgy and his social skills were uneven. He was fascinated with order and authority and wanted very much to be a police officer. He lived with his mother and he had a lot of guns ("This is Georgia," he shrugs.) He fit the profile and was an easy target in a city desperate to keep the international athletes, IOC officials, and media confident that everything was under control.
One of three films this month about real-life heroic lawyers who fought near-insurmountable odds to bring justice (the other two are "Dark Waters" and "Just Mercy"), this could have been a heartwarming story, but Eastwood's cranky "get off my lawn" perspective cannot resist overdoing it as though he was talking to an empty chair. Instead of a movie about a guy who was the victim of the FBI under pressure to find a culprit and the media frantic to find a story. Eastwood is so sure we will not be able to figure out who the bad guys are that he all but has them wear signs.
It isn't just this FBI agent who is wrong; it's the government. And it isn't this reporter or this newspaper that is wrong; it's the media. It is not enough that the reporter's first reaction on hearing that there has been a bombing is to hope that the bomber is story-worthy. Eastwood has to make her trade sex for information. (She is dead now, but her newspaper has demanded that the movie make clear it is not an accurate representation.) Our hero, meaning the lawyer, played by the always-great Sam Rockwell, has a bumper sticker in his office that says, "I fear government more than I fear terrorism." JUST IN CASE WE DON'T GET THE POINT.
It's a shame because the story has an even more important lesson in this era of social media, citizen "journalists" and milkshake ducks. But the shrill tone of the film gets in the way, especially in its portrayal of the reporter as not just irresponsible about the facts but willing to trade sex for a story. Pro tip: if you are going to make a movie about how terrible it is that the media exaggerates and lies, try not to do that in the movie itself.
Parents should know that this movie includes very strong language and a bombing with some brief disturbing images. Characters drink alcohol and a woman use sex to get information.
Family discussion: Why was Richard Jewell a suspect? Why did Watson believe him?
If you like this, try: "Sully" and "American Sniper" from the same director
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MPAA Rating: Rated R for sexual material and language throughout
Profanity: Very strong and crude language
Violence/ Scariness: Sexual pressure and harassment
Copyright 2019 Lionsgate
The word "bombshell" works both ways as the title of this film based on the true story of the #metoo moment that rocked the powerful leadership of Fox News and brought down its visionary founder Roger Ailes. "Bombshell" means a very attractive woman (check out the Jean Harlow movie of the same name, about a gorgeous movie star, and the documentary of the same name, about Hedy Lamar). And "bombshell" also means a shocking piece of news. Both are equally apt.
Those who watched "The Loudest Voice in the Room" on Showtime know that Ailes transformed the news media by creating a network that had two important innovations: gorgeous women in revealing clothes delivering news stories slanted toward white people who think their victimhood has been overlooked. As an executive puts it in this film, "You have to adopt the mentality of an Irish street cop. The world is a bad place. People are lazy morons. Minorities are criminals. Sex is sick, but interesting. Ask yourself, 'What would scare my grandmother, or p— off my grandfather?' And that's a Fox story."
The story is almost operatic in scope and drama and director Jay Roach and screenwriter Charles Randolph ("The Big Short") hit the tone just right, the heightened urgency of the newsroom, the millions of small and devastatingly large compromises at the top of the media food chain.
The performances are sizzling. Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is a fading star at FOX, relegated to off-peak programs. (I could not help thinking of this performance as a bookend with Kidman's "To Die For," with Kidman as a woman who was willing to do anything, including sexual favors and murder, to get a job on TV news.) Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) is a rising star, and as this movie begins, she is horrified to find herself in the middle of a story as then-candidate Donald Trump makes ugly and crude accusations because she surprised him by asking him to comment on some of his insults to women ("You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals") in an on-air interview. Margot Robbie plays Kayla, a fictional character based on the ambitious lower-level staff and what those who asked Ailes for on-camera opportunities were expected to do to show their "loyalty."
Some early critics of the film object to the women being portrayed as feminist heroines. But they are not portrayed as feminist heroines; on the contrary. They're not fighting courageously for justice like Norma Rae or Erin Brockovich. They are carefully calibrating how much abuse, how many humiliations, how much indignity they are willing to trade for the professional opportunities they want, even when it means ignoring abuse of other women. Answer: a lot. Ultimately, there is a limit, though, and watching each character locate that line is what makes this movie smart and engrossing. For Carlson, it is being fired. For Kayla, it is a painful realization after the fact, and after someone else has taken the almost unthinkably daunting step of going first. And the stakes are clear. "Once you go public, no one will hire you," Carlson is told. Her post-lawsuit career has focused on sexual harassment issues either because she now recognizes the importance of the issue or because she cannot get any other job. The week of the film's release she wrote an op-ed in The New York Times calling on Fox to withdraw the non-disclosure agreement she had to sign in order to settle her case. It's unlikely, but if they do, maybe we'll get another movie out of it.
The focus here is on Kelly. It is one thing to burn your bridges after you have been fired and have nothing to lose, but it is entirely another for a woman near the top of her profession who says, "I'm not a feminist; I'm a lawyer," who does not want to be the story, who is in cutthroat competition with the other beautiful blondes and not one to raise a fist and proclaim that sisterhood is powerful. What will it take to get her to speak out and what price will she pay for saying something? Kelly is a complicated character and the way her dilemma is presented here is complicated and nuanced, more directed toward nods of recognition than standing ovations. Her career has been rocky (except for financially) since her decision to acknowledge the abuse, which makes this a cautionary tale that does not make the prospect of feminist heroine-ing look very appealing.
What is even more fascinating here is the setting. Is Fox a news organization as it has traditionally been understood? We get glimpses of other Fox personalities, including Bill O'Reilly, who left Fox following his own #metoo abuses. The way the organization responds to Carlson's claims — handing out "Team Roger" t-shirts before any investigation even though it is generally known why there's a lock on his door and a separate entrance to his office — says something about whether "loyalty" is more important than the truth, to them and to us.
Parents should know that this film is based on the real life #metoo upheavals at FOX News, with explicit discussions and some depiction of sexual harassment, abuse, and predation, and very strong language.
Family discussion: Why did the three women respond differently? How has coming forward affected their careers? What is the best way to prevent abuse by people in power?
If you like this, try: "The Loudest Voice" miniseries and "The Hunting Ground"
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MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some peril and thematic elements
Profanity: Some mild language
Violence/ Scariness: Extended peril, character sacrifices himself to save another
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie (though the real-life character played by Felicity Jones was male)
Date Released to Theaters: December 6, 2019
Science fiction giant Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." "The Aeronauts," based on the true story of early adventurers in meteorology and flight, exists at exactly that point in the middle. The "Theory of Everything" stars Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne play balloon pilot Amelia Wren and scientist James Glaisher, and for most of the movie they are up in the sky, marveling at sights and atmospheric conditions no humans have ever experienced before — or trying to survive them.
When they are in the air, it is gorgeous, exciting, and great fun. The visuals are spectacular, and sound designer Andy Kennedy and his team get a special shout-out for the superb audio effects, the exquisite silence, the creaking of the balloon basket, the clinks of the instrumentation. The never-ending series of life-or-death challenges are staged with such urgent vitality we almost feel that we are in the basket with them.
For most of the scenes on the ground, including a number of flashbacks, well, the screenplay never quite slips the surly bonds of earth. It is much better when they are up in the sky, battling the elements.
Wren and her husband piloted balloons until he was killed on one of their flights. Glaisher was a scientist who insisted that weather could be predicted with the help of meteorological data, despite the scorn of the scientific community and lack of support from his father, who is struggling with dementia. Glaisher is finally able to get the money for the balloon and persuades Wren to be the pilot.
Wren is highly theatrical, and Jones is utterly captivating in an early scene as she plays to the crowd, as savvy about showmanship as she is about flying. It is a lot of fun to see the actress who has often been given more subdued or internal characters do everything — even cartwheels — to charm the crowd. She may appear to be light-hearted and flamboyant, but it is all precisely orchestrated and calculated. She knows what it takes to get the balloon in the air is not just the equipment and fuel but the other fuel, money.
Redmayne's character is more like the shy, bookish type we've seen him play before. But it is fun to see his growing appreciation for both Wren and the adventure.
Those of us who pull down the shade on our airplane windows so we can watch movies on our laptops should take a moment to look outside and imagine what it was like to be the first human beings who saw — and heard — the inside of a cloud. "The Aeronauts" is best at conveying the thrill of that discovery, or, rather, series of discoveries, and the courage and ingenuity that went into getting up there and getting back down as close to safely as possible. It should inspire the audience not just to look out at the clouds but to dream of their own adventures.
NOTE: Rolling Stone did a fact-check to compare the movie to the real story.
Parents should know that this movie includes extended peril with a lot of suspense and some disturbing images. A character sacrifices his life to save someone else.
Family discussion: Why did Amelia change her mind about taking James up in the balloon? Who is most like James and Amelia today?
If you like this, try: "The Theory of Everything" also starring Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne, "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" and read the book that inspired the film, Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air
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MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for thematic content, some disturbing images and strong language
Profanity: Strong language
Violence/ Scariness: Theme of toxic poisoning of a community with some grisly and graphic images
Diversity Issues: None
Mark Ruffalo stars as "Robert Bilott" in director Todd Haynes' DARK WATERS, a Focus Features release. Credit : Mary Cybulski / Focus Features Copyright 2019
Imagine "Erin Brockovich" without the sizzle of the outspoken, miniskirted single mom with the biker boyfriend, and you've got "Dark Waters," with Mark Ruffalo (who also produced) as real-life lawyer Rob Bilott, a lawyer who represented corporate polluters until a West Virginia farmer showed him what the chemicals were doing to his community. The movie is based on a New York Times article called The Lawyer Who Became Dupont's Worst Nightmare by Nathanial Rich.
Bilott is pretty much the opposite of Erin Brockovich, a quiet, dedicated family man, so stable he is almost inert, who is comfortable representing corporations and thinks — not entirely wrongly — that he is one of the good guys because he is representing them in negotiations with EPA to use taxpayer-funded Superfund money to clean up toxic chemicals that are leeching into the ground and water.
After eight years of working on those cases, he gets a surprise visit from his grandmother's neighbor, a farmer named Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), who speaks with a near-indecipherable West Virginia accent but who is very upset because his animals have weirdly mutated organs and keep dying early. Oh, and his brother died, too, Bilott turns him down, but then, because of his grandmother, he agrees to look into it. He thinks it will be one and done. He'll write a letter, work his contacts, and get some money to compensate Tennant, then go back to his nice partners and his nice office and his nice life, including Anne Hathaway as his wife who has the usual thankless task for a wife in these films of telling him he is working too hard and neglecting his family and his health.
I love movies about courageous lawyers fighting The Man; movies like that are part of the reason I became a lawyer in the first place. But it is no secret that while fiery courtroom battles are wonderfully dramatic, especially if there are many opportunities to yell "I object!" and even more especially if the cross-examination is so devastating that the bad guy actually confesses. But law — even in court — is not actually like that, and in translating this story to the screen, they made a few mistakes.
First, the legal issues themselves are complicated and arcane. Unless you are a lawyer you don't want to and don't need to know why Bilott ends up representing different clients about halfway through, but for the purposes of dramatic storytelling it is confusing and distracting. The same goes for why the chemical in question, used in the creation of the wildly popular no-stick Teflon cookware, was not covered by EPA regulations concerning its production and disposal.
Most significantly, though, Ruffalo and director Todd Haynes have stripped away a significant proportion of what makes their work distinctive in what looks like a mistaken opinion that style is not serious. Haynes, whose early film "Safe" was a provocative, stylish, and very serious drama about chemical exposure, should know that what he can bring to a film like this will only make it more compelling. The same goes for Ruffalo, who has turned the pilot light down low on his considerable charm as a performer. That may work in court; it is not effective on screen.
This is an important story and worth seeing. Its most powerful moment comes near the end, not in the courtroom but in a gas station (check the credits for that actor's name.) More of that and the movie could have and should have been better.
Parents should know that this film has some very disturbing images showing the consequences of exposure to toxic chemicals, including mutations of humans and animals and some strong language.
Family discussion: What made Bilott change his mind about helping Tennant? Whose job is it to prevent this kind of damage and why wasn't it done?
If you like this, try: "Erin Brockovich," "A Civil Action," and "Promised Land"
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News Ministry of Education
TAM condemns Education Ministry's decision to reassign principal accused of sexual harassment to another school
By Mohamed Fathih Abdul Muhsin
July 15, 2021 , 11:05
Malé, Maldives – The Teachers' Association of Maldives (TAM) and Public Interest Law Center (PILC) on Thursday, has expressed concern over the Education Ministry decision on a sexual harassment case against principal of Izzuddin School.
After an investigation from the relevant committee of the Education Ministry, the committee came to the conclusion that the principal is guilty of sexually harrassing 6 teachers at the school. The Ministry changed the principal to another, higher level school. The teachers who submitted the complaint have also been changed to another school, without any consultation.
Teachers' Association of Maldives released a statement saying that they are deeply concerned by the decision of the ministry. The association stated that they highly convict the decision from the ministry to promote the principal to a higher position whilst a case of sexual harrasment has been proven against him.
The association added that the ministry who is responsible for the victims, has treated them unjustly and has violated the law on sexual harrasment. TAM called out the ministry to overturn their current decision on the case and prioritize the victims rather than promoting the alleged.
Public Interest Law Center (PILC) also released a statement, expressing similar concerns on the issue. The teachers who submitted the complaint to the ministry were legally represented by PILC. They stated that the victims have not been informed of any action taken and that the alleged principal has been changed to a higher school. PILC stated that they believe that the action taken by the ministry is more of a promotion, rather than a punishment.
PILC also stated that the employees who submitted the complaints have also been transferred to another school, while the authority previously wrote to Ministry of Education and Civil Service Comission requesting not to do so.
Quoting the law on sexual harrasment, PILC stated that the law calls for the job if a witness or victim if sexual harrasment to be not affected by such a a case investigation. The law also stated that the employer must work in a way such that no further harm is done to the victim.
PILC stated that the ministry decision to transfer the teacher without their consent was unjust and that such decisions may incite fear among others, making them reluctant to submit such complaints in the future.
Sexually harassed Izzuddin teachers are now being threatened: Teachers' Association
Izzuddin teachers reassigned after management review: Education Ministry
Even if foreign teachers are not in Maldives, online classes will continue
Police investigate "India Out" graffiti on Funadhoo School wall


Model inference is often managed in a production ecosystem using primarily Java/Scala tools and frameworks. This release seeks to alleviate the need for software engineers to write custom MXNet wrappers to fit their production environment.
Real-time Inference is often performed and deployed on popular web frameworks such as Tomcat, Netty, Jetty, etc., all of which use Java.
Batch Inference is often performed on big data platforms such as Spark using Scala or Java.
* Build a new set of APIs that are Java friendly, compatible with Java 7+, are easy to use for inference.
* Lower the barrier to entry of consuming MXNet for production use cases.
More details can be found at the [Java Inference API document](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/MXNet+Java+Inference+API).
* Efficient tensor/matrix computation across multiple devices, including multiple CPUs, GPUs and distributed server nodes.
* Flexible manipulation of symbolic to composite for construction of state-of-the-art deep learning models.
* Models may want to use more dynamic data structures, such as lists or dictionaries.
It's natural to express dynamic models in frameworks with an imperative programming interface (e.g., Gluon, Pytorch, TensorFlow Eager). In this kind of interface, developers can use Python control flows, or NDArrays with any shape at any moment, or use Python lists and dictionaries to store data as they want. The problem of this approach is that it highly dependent on the originating front-end programming language (mainly Python). A model implemented in one language can only run in the same language.
A common use case is that machine learning scientists want to develop their models in Python, whereas engineers who deploy the models usually have to use a different "production" language (e.g., Java or C). Gluon tries to close the gap between the model development and production deployment. Machine learning scientists design and implement their models in Python with the imperative interface, and then Gluon converts the implementations from imperative to symbolic by invoking `hybridize()` for model exporting.
The goal of this project is to enhance Gluon to turn a dynamic neural network into a static computation graph. The dynamic control flows are expressed by control flow operators with Gluon hybridization, and these are exported for deployment.
SVRG stands for Stochastic Variance Reduced Gradient, which was first introduced in the paper [Accelerating Stochastic Gradient Descent using Predicative Variance Reduction in 2013](https://papers.nips.cc/paper/4937-accelerating-stochastic-gradient-descent-using-predictive-variance-reduction.pdf). It is an optimization technique that complements SGD.
SGD is known for large scale optimization, but it suffers from slow convergence asymptotically due to the inherent variance. SGD approximates the full gradient using a small batch of samples which introduces variance. In order to converge faster, SGD often needs to start with a smaller learning rate.
SVRG remedies the slow convergence problem by keeping a version of the estimated weights that is close to the optimal parameters and maintains the average of the full gradient over the full pass of data. The average of the full gradients of all data is calculated w.r.t to parameters of last mth epochs. It has provable guarantees for strongly convex smooth functions; a detailed proof can be found in section 3 of the [paper](https://papers.nips.cc/paper/4937-accelerating-stochastic-gradient-descent-using-predictive-variance-reduction.pdf). SVRG uses a different update rule than SGD: gradients w.r.t current parameters minus gradients w.r.t parameters from the last mth epoch, plus the average of gradients over all data.
* Ability to use relatively large learning rate compared to SGD, which leads to faster convergence.
TVM , MKLDNN and nGraph use customized data formats. Interaction between these backends with MXNet requires data format conversion.
Integration with these backends should happen in the granularity of subgraphs instead of in the granularity of operators. To fuse operators, it's obvious that we need to divide a graph into subgraphs so that the operators in a subgraph can be fused into a single operator. To handle customized data formats, we should partition a computation graph into subgraphs as well. Each subgraph contains only TVM, MKLDNN or nGraph operators. In this way, MXNet converts data formats only when entering such a subgraph, and the operators inside a subgraph handle format conversion themselves if necessary. This makes interaction of TVM and MKLDNN with MXNet much easier. Neither the MXNet executor nor the MXNet operators need to deal with customized data formats. Even though invoking these libraries from MXNet requires similar steps, the partitioning rule and the subgraph execution of these backends can be different. As such, we define the following interface for backends to customize graph partitioning and subgraph execution inside an operator. More details can be found at PR 12157 and [Subgraph API](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Unified+integration+with+external+backend+libraries).
* Users have to track the MXNet objects manually and remember to call `dispose`. This is not Java idiomatic and not user friendly. Quoting a user: "this feels like I am writing C++ code which I stopped ages ago".
* Leads to memory leaks if `dispose` is not called.
* Many objects in MXNet-Scala are managed in native memory, needing to use `dispose` on them as well.
* Bloated code with `dispose()` methods.
* Hard to debug memory-leaks.
* Provide MXNet JVM users automated memory management that can release native memory when there are no references to JVM objects.
Note: This is an experimental feature and has known problems - see (https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/13341). Please help to contribute to improve the robustness of the feature.
Two advanced features, graph optimization (operator fusion) and reduced-precision (INT8) computation, are introduced to MKLDNN backend in this release ((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/12530), (https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/13297), (https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/13260)).
These features significantly boost the inference performance on CPU (up to 4X) for a broad range of deep learning topologies. Currently, this feature is only available for inference on platforms with [supported Intel CPUs](https://github.com/intel/mkl-dnnsystem-requirements).
MKLDNN backend takes advantage of MXNet subgraph to implement the most of possible operator fusions for inference, such as Convolution + ReLU, Batch Normalization folding, etc. When using mxnet-mkl package, users can easily enable this feature by setting export MXNET_SUBGRAPH_BACKEND=MKLDNN.
Performance of reduced-precision (INT8) computation is also dramatically improved after the graph optimization feature is applied on CPU Platforms. Various models are supported and can benefit from reduced-precision computation, including symbolic models, Gluon models and even custom models. Users can run most of the pre-trained models with only a few lines of commands and a new quantization script imagenet_gen_qsym_mkldnn.py. The observed accuracy loss is less than 0.5% for popular CNN networks, like ResNet-50, Inception-BN, MobileNet, etc.
Simple bugfix addressing an out-of-bounds memory read.
This fixes an buffer overflow detected by ASAN.
1. With the gluon imperative style, cudnnFind() is called during forward(), and so might have its timings perturbed by other GPU activity (including potentially other cudnnFind() calls).
2. With some cuda drivers versions, care is needed to ensure that the large I/O and workspace cudaMallocs() performed by cudnnFind() are immediately released and available to MXNet.
3. cudnnFind() makes both conv I/O and workspace allocations that must be covered by the GPU global memory headroom defined by MXNET_GPU_MEM_POOL_RESERVE. Per issue 12662, large convolutions can result in out-of-memory errors, even when MXNet's storage allocator has free memory in its pool.
1. Consistent algo choice for a given convolution type in a model, both for instances in the same GPU and in other GPUs in a multi-GPU training setting.
2. Consistent algo choice from run to run, based on eliminating sources of interference of the cudnnFind() timing process.
3. Consistent model global memory footprint, both because of the consistent algo choice (algo's can have markedly different workspace requirements) and changes to MXNet's use of cudaMalloc.
4. Increased training performance based on being able to consistently run with models that approach the GPU's full global memory footprint.
5. Adds a unittest for and solves issue 12662.
Fix a memleak reported locally by ASAN during a normal inference test.
Fixes multi_worker data loader when record file is used. The MXRecordIO instance needs to require a new file handler after fork to be safely manipulated simultaneously.
This fix also safely voids the previous temporary fixes 12093 11370.
This fixes 12783, by assigning all nodes in hybrid_forward a unique name. Some operations were in fact performed without attaching the appropriate (time) prefix to the name, which makes serialized graphs non-deserializable.
Fix 12470. With this change, outs shape can be inferred correctly.
In this PR, we infer the type of the symbol being imported and create the Symbol Block Parameters with that inferred type.
This PR fixes broken links on the website.
This PR manually specifies members of the IO module so that the docs will render as expected. This is workaround in the docs to deal with a bug introduced in the Python code/structure since v1.3.0. See the comments for more info.
This PR also fixes another issue that may or may not be related. Cross references to same-named entities like name, shape, or type are confusing Sphinx and it seems to just link to whatever it last dealt with that has the same name, and not the current module. To fix this you have to be very specific. Don't use type, use np.type if that's what you want. Otherwise you might end up with mxnet.kvstore.KVStore.type. This is a known Sphinx issue, so it might be something we have to deal with for the time being.
This is important for any future modules - that they recognize this issue and make efforts to map the params and other elements.
This PR adds or updates the docs for the infer_range feature.
Some of the CUDNN convolution algorithms are non-deterministic (see issue 11341). This PR adds an env variable to enforce determinism in the convolution operators. If set to true, only deterministic CUDNN algorithms will be used. If no deterministic algorithm is available, MXNet will error out.
- In this release, Gluon RNN layers such as `gluon.rnn.RNN`, `gluon.rnn.LSTM`, `gluon.rnn.GRU` becomes `HybridBlock`s as part of [gluon.rnn improvements project](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/projects/11) (11482).
- Now many dynamic networks that are based on Gluon RNN layers can now be completely hybridized, exported, and used in the inference APIs in other language bindings such as R, Scala, etc.
- Added Debugging functionality: Result check ((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/12069)) and Backend switch ((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/12058)).
- Updated pre-trained models provide state-of-the-art performance on all resnetv1, resnetv2, and vgg16, vgg19, vgg16_bn, vgg19_bn models (11327 11860 11830).
- Checkout examples and API documentation [here](http://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/api/clojure/index.html).
- Gluon now supports Synchronized Batch Normalization (11502).
- This enables stable training on large-scale networks with high memory consumption such as FCN for image segmentation.
- Gluon HybridBlock now supports hybridization with sparse operators ((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11306)).
- This is the first step towards optimizing dynamic neural networks with variable computation graphs, by adding symbolic and imperative control flow operators. [Proposal](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Optimize+dynamic+neural+network+models+with+control+flow+operators).
- New operators introduced: foreach((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11531)), while_loop((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11566)), cond((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11760)).
- Symbol.api and NDArray.api would bring new set of functions that have complete definition for all arguments.
- Please see this [Type safe API design document](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Scala+Type-safe+API+Design+Doc) for more details.
- MXNet now supports a new memory pool type for GPU memory (11041).
- Unlike the default memory pool requires exact size match to reuse released memory chunks, this new memory pool uses exponential-linear rounding so that similar sized memory chunks can all be reused, which is more suitable for all the workloads with dynamic-shape inputs and outputs. Set environment variable `MXNET_GPU_MEM_POOL_TYPE=Round` to enable.
- This features uses trees to perform the Reduce and Broadcast. It uses the idea of minimum spanning trees to do a binary tree Reduce communication pattern to improve it. This topology aware approach reduces the existing limitations for single machine communication shown by mehods like parameter server and NCCL ring reduction. It is an experimental feature ((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11591)).
- Paper followed for implementation: [Optimal message scheduling for aggregation](https://www.sysml.cc/doc/178.pdf).
- Set environment variable `MXNET_KVSTORE_USETREE=1` to enable.
- With this feature, now MXNet models can be exported to ONNX format((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11213)). Currently, MXNet supports ONNX v1.2.1. [API documentation](http://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/api/python/contrib/onnx.html).
- Checkout this [tutorial](http://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/tutorials/onnx/export_mxnet_to_onnx.html) which shows how to use MXNet to ONNX exporter APIs. ONNX protobuf so that those models can be imported in other frameworks for inference.
- [TensorRT](https://developer.nvidia.com/tensorrt) provides significant acceleration of model inference on NVIDIA GPUs compared to running the full graph in MxNet using unfused GPU operators. In addition to faster fp32 inference, TensorRT optimizes fp16 inference, and is capable of int8 inference (provided the quantization steps are performed). Besides increasing throughput, TensorRT significantly reduces inference latency, especially for small batches.
- Currently, its in contrib package.
- Fixed 130 flaky tests on CI. Tracked progress of the project [here](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/projects/9).
- This tool ((https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11626)) helps in ensuring consistency and sanity while performing inference on the latest version of MXNet using models trained on older versions of MXNet.
- This tool will help in detecting issues earlier in the development cycle which break backwards compatibility on MXNet and would contribute towards ensuring a healthy and stable release of MXNet.
Maintenance - Integrated testing for "the Straight Dope"
- ["Deep Learning - The Straight Dope"](http://gluon.mxnet.io) is a deep learning book based on Apache MXNet Gluon that are contributed by many Gluon users.
- Now the testing of this book is integrated in the nightly tests.
- Implemented new [Scala Inference APIs](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/MXNetScalaInferenceAPI) which offer an easy-to-use, Scala Idiomatic and thread-safe high level APIs for performing predictions with deep learning models trained with MXNet (9678). Implemented a new ImageClassifier class which provides APIs for classification tasks on a Java BufferedImage using a pre-trained model you provide (10054). Implemented a new ObjectDetector class which provides APIs for object and boundary detections on a Java BufferedImage using a pre-trained model you provide (10229).
- Implemented a new ONNX module in MXNet which offers an easy to use API to import ONNX models into MXNet's symbolic interface (9963). Checkout the [example](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/blob/master/example/onnx/super_resolution.py) on how you could use this [API](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/ONNX-MXNet+API+Design) to import ONNX models and perform inference on MXNet. Currently, the ONNX-MXNet Import module is still experimental. Please use it with caution.
- Implemented model quantization by adopting the [TensorFlow approach](https://www.tensorflow.org/performance/quantization) with calibration by borrowing the idea from Nvidia's [TensorRT](http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/presentation/s7310-8-bit-inference-with-tensorrt.pdf). The focus of this work is on keeping quantized models (ConvNets for now) inference accuracy loss under control when compared to their corresponding FP32 models. Please see the [example](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/tree/master/example/quantization) on how to quantize a FP32 model with or without calibration (9552). Currently, the Quantization support is still experimental. Please use it with caution.
- MXNet now integrates with Intel MKL-DNN to accelerate neural network operators: Convolution, Deconvolution, FullyConnected, Pooling, Batch Normalization, Activation, LRN, Softmax, as well as some common operators: sum and concat (9677). This integration allows NDArray to contain data with MKL-DNN layouts and reduces data layout conversion to get the maximal performance from MKL-DNN. Currently, the MKL-DNN integration is still experimental. Please use it with caution.
- Implemented [Exception Handling Support for Operators](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Improved+exception+handling+in+MXNet) in MXNet. MXNet now transports backend C++ exceptions to the different language front-ends and prevents crashes when exceptions are thrown during operator execution (9681).
- Added support for distributed mixed precision training with FP16. It supports storing of master copy of weights in float32 with the multi_precision mode of optimizers (10183). Improved speed of float16 operations on x86 CPU by 8 times through F16C instruction set. Added support for more operators to work with FP16 inputs (10125, 10078, 10169). Added a tutorial on using mixed precision with FP16 (10391).
- Enhanced built-in profiler to support native Intel:registered: VTune:tm: Amplifier objects such as Task, Frame, Event, Counter and Marker from both C++ and Python -- which is also visible in the Chrome tracing view(8972). Added Runtime tracking of symbolic and imperative operators as well as memory and API calls. Added Tracking and dumping of aggregate profiling data. Profiler also no longer affects runtime performance when not in use.
- Changed Namespace for MXNet scala from `ml.dmlc.mxnet` to `org.apache.mxnet` (10284).
- Changed API for the Pooling operator from `mxnet.symbol.Pooling(data=None, global_pool=_Null, cudnn_off=_Null, kernel=_Null, pool_type=_Null, pooling_convention=_Null, stride=_Null, pad=_Null, name=None, attr=None, out=None, **kwargs)` to  `mxnet.symbol.Pooling(data=None,  kernel=_Null, pool_type=_Null, global_pool=_Null, cudnn_off=_Null, pooling_convention=_Null, stride=_Null, pad=_Null, name=None, attr=None, out=None, **kwargs)`. This is a breaking change when kwargs are not provided since the new api expects the arguments starting from `global_pool` at the fourth position instead of the second position. (10000).
- Fixed `cudnn_conv` and `cudnn_deconv` deadlock (10392).
- Fixed a race condition in `io.LibSVMIter` when batch size is large (10124).
- Fixed a race condition in converting data layouts in MKL-DNN (9862).
- Fixed MKL-DNN sigmoid/softrelu issue (10336).
- Fixed incorrect indices generated by device row sparse pull (9887).
- Fixed cast storage support for same stypes (10400).
- Fixed uncaught exception for bucketing module when symbol name not specified (10094).
- Fixed regression output layers (9848).
- Fixed crash with `mx.nd.ones` (10014).
- Fixed `sample_multinomial` crash when `get_prob=True` (10413).
- Fixed buggy type inference in correlation (10135).
- Fixed race condition for `CPUSharedStorageManager->Free` and launched workers at iter init stage to avoid frequent relaunch (10096).
- Fixed DLTensor Conversion for int64 (10083).
- Fixed ndarray assignment issues (10022, 9981, 10468).
- Fixed `print_summary` bug in visualization module (9492).
- Fixed shape mismatch in accuracy metrics (10446).
- Fixed random samplers from uniform and random distributions in R bindings (10450).
- Fixed a bug that was causing training metrics to be printed as NaN sometimes (10437).
- Fixed a crash with non positive reps for tile ops (10417).
- On average, after the MKL-DNN change, the inference speed of MXNet + MKLDNN outperforms MXNet + OpenBLAS by a factor of 32, outperforms MXNet + MKLML by 82% and outperforms MXNet + MKLML with the experimental flag by 8%. The experiments were run for the image classifcation example, for different networks and different batch sizes.
- Improved sparse SGD, sparse AdaGrad and sparse Adam optimizer speed on GPU by 30x (9561, 10312, 10293, 10062).
- `Block.save_params` now match parameters according to model structure instead of names to avoid prefix mismatching problems during saving and loading (10511).
- Added an optional argument `ctx` to `mx.random.seed`. Seeding with `ctx` option produces random number sequence independent of device id. (10367).
- Added copy flag for astype (10347).
- Added context parameter to Scala Infer API - ImageClassifier and ObjectDetector (10252).
- Added axes support for dropout in gluon (10032).
- Added default `ctx` to cpu for `gluon.Block.load_params` (10160).
- Added support for variable sequence length in gluon.RecurrentCell (9934).
- Added convenience fluent method for squeeze op (9734).
- Made `array.reshape` compatible with numpy (9790).
- Added axis support and gradient for L2norm (9740).
- Added support for multi-GPU training with `row_sparse` weights using `device` KVStore (9987).
- Added `Module.prepare` API for multi-GPU and multi-machine training with row_sparse weight (10285).
- Added `deterministic` option for `contrib.SparseEmbedding` operator (9846).
- Added `sparse.broadcast_mul` and `sparse.broadcast_div` with CSRNDArray and 1-D dense NDArray on CPU (10208).
- Added sparse support for Custom Operator (10374).
- Added Sparse feature for Perl (9988).
- Added `force_deterministic` option for sparse embedding (9882).
- Added `sparse.where` with condition being csr ndarray (9481).
- Added constant parameter for gluon (9893).
- Added Squeeze Op (9700).
- Added multi-proposal operator (CPU version) and fixed bug in multi-proposal operator (GPU version) (9939).
- Added in Large-Batch SGD with a warmup, and a LARS startegy (8918).
- Added Language Modelling datasets and Sampler (9514).
- Added instance norm and reflection padding to Gluon (7938).
- Added micro-averaging strategy for F1 metric (9777).
- Added Softsign Activation Function (9851).
- Added eye operator, for default storage type (9770).
- Added TVM bridge support to JIT NDArray Function by TVM (9880).
- Added float16 support for correlation operator and L2Normalization operator (10125, 10078).
- Added random shuffle implementation for NDArray (10048).
- Added load from buffer functions for CPP package (10261).
- Added embedding learning example for Gluon (9165).
- Added tutorial on how to use data augmenters (10055).
- Added tutorial for Data Augmentation with Masks (10178).
- Added LSTNet example (9512).
- Added MobileNetV2 example (9614).
- Added tutorial for Gluon Datasets and DataLoaders (10251).
- Added Language model with Google's billion words dataset (10025).
- Added example for custom operator using RTC (9870).
- Improved image classification examples (9799, 9633).
- Added reshape predictor function to c_predict_api (9984).
- Added guide for implementing sparse ops (10081).
- Added naming tutorial for gluon blocks and parameters (10511).
- MXNet crash when built with `USE_GPERFTOOLS = 1` (8968).
- [DevGuide.md](https://github.com/google/googletest/blob/ec44c6c1675c25b9827aacd08c02433cccde7780/googlemock/docs/DevGuide.md) in the 3rdparty submodule googletest licensed under CC-BY-2.5.
- Incompatibility in the behavior of MXNet Convolution operator for certain unsupported use cases: Raises an exception when MKLDNN is enabled, fails silently when it is not.
- MXNet convolution generates wrong results for 1-element strides (10689).
- [Tutorial on fine-tuning an ONNX model](https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/blob/v1.2.0/docs/tutorials/onnx/fine_tuning_gluon.md) fails when using cpu context.
- CMake build ignores the `USE_MKLDNN` flag and doesn't build with MKLDNN support even with `-DUSE_MKLDNN=1`. To workaround the issue please see: 10801.
- Linking the dmlc-core library fails with CMake build when building with `USE_OPENMP=OFF`. To workaround the issue, please use the updated CMakeLists in dmlc-core unit tests directory: https://github.com/dmlc/dmlc-core/pull/396. You can also workaround the issue by using make instead of cmake when building with `USE_OPENMP=OFF`.
- Fixed I/O multiprocessing for too many open file handles (8904), race condition (8995), deadlock (9126).
- Fixed image IO integration with OpenCV 3.3 (8757).
- Fixed Gluon block printing (8956).
- Enhanced the performance of `sparse.dot` operator.
- MXNet now automatically set OpenMP to use all available CPU cores to maximize CPU utilization when `NUM_OMP_THREADS` is not set.
- Unary and binary operators now avoid using OpenMP on small arrays if using OpenMP actually hurts performance due to multithreading overhead.
- Significantly improved performance of `broadcast_add`, `broadcast_mul`, etc on CPU.
- Added bulk execution to imperative mode. You can control segment size with `mxnet.engine.bulk`. As a result, the speed of Gluon in hybrid mode is improved, especially on small networks and multiple GPUs.
- Improved speed for `ctypes` invocation from Python frontend.
- Speed up multi-GPU and distributed training by compressing communication of gradients. This is especially effective when training networks with large fully-connected layers. In Gluon this can be activated with `compression_params` in Trainer.
- Use `kvstore='nccl'` for (in some cases) faster training on multiple GPUs.
- Significantly faster than kvstore='device' when batch size is small.
- It is recommended to set environment variable `NCCL_LAUNCH_MODE` to `PARALLEL` when using NCCL version 2.1 or newer.
- if key is a list type, only a list of integers is supported, e.g. `key=[1, 2]` is supported, while not for `key=[[1, 2]]`.
- Ellipsis (...) and np.newaxis are not supported.
- `Boolean` array indexing is not supported.
- Performance optimizations discussed above.
- Added support for loading data in parallel with multiple processes to `gluon.data.DataLoader`. The number of workers can be set with `num_worker`. Does not support windows yet.
- Added Block.cast to support networks with different data types, e.g. `float16`.
- Added Lambda block for wrapping a user defined function as a block.
- Generalized `gluon.data.ArrayDataset` to support arbitrary number of arrays.
- MXNet now compiles and runs on ARMv6, ARMv7, ARMv64 including Raspberry Pi devices. See https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/tree/master/docker_multiarch for more information.
- MXNet now compiles and runs on NVIDIA Jetson TX2 boards with GPU acceleration.
- You can install the python MXNet package on a Jetson board by running - `$ pip install mxnet-jetson-tx2`.
- Added more sparse operators: `contrib.SparseEmbedding`, `sparse.sum` and `sparse.mean`.
- Added `asscipy()` for easier conversion to scipy.
- Added `check_format()` for sparse ndarrays to check if the array format is valid.
- Fixed a[-1] indexing doesn't work on `NDArray`.
- Fixed `expand_dims` if axis < 0.
- Fixed a bug that causes topk to produce incorrect result on large arrays.
- Improved numerical precision of unary and binary operators for `float64` data.
- Fixed derivatives of log2 and log10. They used to be the same with log.
- Fixed a bug that causes MXNet to hang after fork. Note that you still cannot use GPU in child processes after fork due to limitations of CUDA.
- Fixed a bug that causes `CustomOp` to fail when using auxiliary states.
- Fixed a security bug that is causing MXNet to listen on all available interfaces when running training in distributed mode.
- Added a security best practices document under FAQ section.
- Fixed License Headers including restoring copyright attributions.
- Links for viewing source.
- Added GPU support for the `syevd` operator which ensures that there is GPU support for all linalg-operators.
- Bugfix for `syevd` on CPU such that it works for `float32`.
- Fixed API call when `OMP_NUM_THREADS` environment variable is set.
- Fixed bug related to passing `dtype` to `array()`.
- Fixed some minor bugs for sparse distributed training.
- Fixed a bug on `Slice` accessing uninitialized memory in `param.begin` in the file `matrix_op-inl.h`.
- Fixed a bug that caused `autograd` to crash on some networks.
- Added full support for NVIDIA Volta GPU Architecture and CUDA 9. Training CNNs is up to 3.5x faster than Pascal when using float16 precision.
- Enabled JIT compilation. Autograd and Gluon hybridize now use less memory and has faster speed. Performance is almost the same with old symbolic style code.
- Improved ImageRecordIO image loading performance and added indexed RecordIO support.
- Added better openmp thread management to improve CPU performance.
- Added enhancements to the Gluon package, a high-level interface designed to be easy to use while keeping most of the flexibility of low level API. Gluon supports both imperative and symbolic programming, making it easy to train complex models imperatively with minimal impact on performance. Neural networks (and other machine learning models) can be defined and trained with `gluon.nn` and `gluon.rnn` packages.
- Added new loss functions - `SigmoidBinaryCrossEntropyLoss`, `CTCLoss`, `HuberLoss`, `HingeLoss`, `SquaredHingeLoss`, `LogisticLoss`, `TripletLoss`.
- `gluon.Trainer` now allows reading and setting learning rate with `trainer.learning_rate` property.
- Added API `HybridBlock.export` for exporting gluon models to MXNet format.
- Convolutional recurrent network cells for RNN, LSTM and GRU.
- Added enhancements to `autograd` package, which enables automatic differentiation of NDArray operations.
- `autograd.Function` allows defining both forward and backward computation for custom operators.
- Added `mx.autograd.grad` and experimental second order gradient support (most operators don't support second order gradient yet).
- Autograd now supports cross-device graphs. Use `x.copyto(mx.gpu(i))` and `x.copyto(mx.cpu())` to do computation on multiple devices.
- Added support for sparse matrices.
- Added limited cpu support for two sparse formats in `Symbol` and `NDArray` - `CSRNDArray` and `RowSparseNDArray`.
- Added a sparse dot product operator and many element-wise sparse operators.
- Added a data iterator for sparse data input - `LibSVMIter`.
- Added three optimizers for sparse gradient updates: `Ftrl`, `SGD` and `Adam`.
- Added `push` and `row_sparse_pull` with `RowSparseNDArray` in distributed kvstore.
- Added limited support for fancy indexing, which allows you to very quickly access and modify complicated subsets of an array's values. `x[idx_arr0, idx_arr1, ..., idx_arrn]` is now supported. Features such as combining and slicing are planned for the next release. Checkout master to get a preview.
- Random number generators in `mx.nd.random.*` and `mx.sym.random.*` now support both CPU and GPU.
- `NDArray` and `Symbol` now supports "fluent" methods. You can now use `x.exp()` etc instead of `mx.nd.exp(x)` or `mx.sym.exp(x)`.
- Added `mx.rtc.CudaModule` for writing and running CUDA kernels from python.
- Added `multi_precision` option to optimizer for easier float16 training.
- Better support for IDE auto-completion. IDEs like PyCharm can now correctly parse mxnet operators.
- Operators like `mx.sym.linalg_*` and `mx.sym.random_*` are now moved to `mx.sym.linalg.*` and `mx.sym.random.*`. The old names are still available but deprecated.
- `sample_*` and `random_*` are now merged as `random.*`, which supports both scalar and  `NDArray` distribution parameters.
- Fixed a bug that causes `argsort` operator to fail on large tensors.
- Fixed numerical stability issues when summing large tensors.
- Fixed a bug that causes arange operator to output wrong results for large ranges.
- Improved numerical precision for unary and binary operators on `float64` inputs.
- Added `CachedOp`. You can now cache the operators that's called frequently with the same set of arguments to reduce overhead.
- Added sample_multinomial for sampling from multinomial distributions.
- Added `trunc` operator for rounding towards zero.
- Added linalg_gemm, linalg_potrf, ... operators for lapack support.
- Added verbose option to Initializer for printing out initialization details.
- Added DeformableConvolution to contrib from the Deformable Convolutional Networks paper.
- Added float64 support for dot and batch_dot operator.
- `allow_extra` is added to Module.set_params to ignore extra parameters.
- Added `mod` operator for modulo.
- Added `multi_precision` option to SGD optimizer to improve training with float16. Resnet50 now achieves the same accuracy when trained with float16 and gives 50% speedup on Titan XP.
- ImageRecordIter now stores data in pinned memory to improve GPU memcopy speed.
- Cython interface is fixed. `make cython` and `python setup.py install --with-cython` should install the cython interface and reduce overhead in applications that use imperative/bucketing.
- Fixed various bugs in SSD example.
- Fixed `out` argument not working for `zeros`, `ones`, `full`, etc.
- `expand_dims` now supports backward shape inference.
- Fixed a bug in rnn. BucketingSentenceIter that causes incorrect layout handling on multi-GPU.
- Fixed context mismatch when loading optimizer states.
- Fixed a bug in ReLU activation when using MKL.
- Fixed a few race conditions that causes crashes on shutdown.
- Refactored TShape/TBlob to use int64 dimensions and DLTensor as internal storage. Getting ready for migration to DLPack. As a result TBlob::dev_mask_ and TBlob::stride_ are removed.
- Overhauled documentation for commonly used Python APIs, Installation instructions, Tutorials, HowTos and MXNet Architecture.
- Updated mxnet.io for improved readability.
- Pad operator now support reflection padding.
- Fixed a memory corruption error in threadedengine.
- Added CTC loss layer to contrib package. See mx.contrib.sym.ctc_loss.
- Added new sampling operators for several distributions (normal,uniform,gamma,exponential,negative binomial).
- Added documentation for experimental RNN APIs.
- Bulk segment execution not yet added.
This is the last release before the NNVM refactor.
- MXNet now can use any of the modules from Torch.


text:
Retrograde Orbit – Kristyna Baczynski Explores Themes of Identity, Family, Belonging and Home in Her Unforgettable Debut Graphic Novel
AVAILABLE AT THOUGHT BUBBLE!
At its heart the very best science fiction isn't about alien civilisations, space exploration or future tech, it's work that on a very personal level speaks to us about recognisable realities of the human condition. That's a point I have made a number of times this year at Broken Frontier – perhaps to the point of tedium – but one that will be underlined again today as we look at Kristyna Baczynski's Retrograde Orbit, one of three major releases (the others being Katriona Chapman's Follow Me In and Tillie Walden's On a Sunbeam) that Avery Hill Publishing are releasing at this year's Thought Bubble.
For some, no doubt, there will be a sense of incredulity in my noting that Retrograde Orbit is Kristyna Baczynski's first graphic novel. With multiple British Comic Awards nominations and an Eisner Award nomination, Baczynski is a stalwart fixture of UK indie comics whose self-published comics range from the carefully crafted storytelling of Hand Me Down to the travelogue autobio 87,000 Steps. She's also been a contributor to a number of anthologies like Tiny Pencil, Off Life and Blank Slate's jam graphic novel Nelson. Quite a back catalogue then but Retrograde Orbit is her first full-length book.
Set in a solar system at once both alien and yet strangely familiar (a population of diverse extraterrestrials who are nevertheless recognisable for their anthropomorphised animal likenesses means its society is one step away from our reality and yet tantalisingly close enough to ensure our immediate empathy with the characters) its main characters comprise three generations of the same clan – protagonist Flint, her mother Dolores and grandmother Baba. Living on the mining world Tisa, Flint's family were originally inhabitants of the planet Doma which has now been abandoned after a nuclear catastrophe.
But Doma's lure overshadows Flint's life as she begins the journey from childhood to adulthood and becomes obsessed with that planet's significance. Apprenticed at the mineworks her sense of displacement grows as the years pass, leading her to question her identity and look to rediscover her roots. One momentous decision will change her life and the lives of those closest to her forever.
Despite its sci-fi trappings Retrograde Orbit is a graphic novel that explores universal themes of family, how we define ourselves, where we come from and who we are. Baczynski presents Flint's stories in a series of chapters that provide us with vignettes of her continuing quest to understand her identity at key points in her life, jumping the years from school days to teenage years through to her first job and desire to strike out on her own. It's a need that begins with wistful classroom romanticising about Doma and grows into a committed search for answers about its history and culture; one that will take a radical turn when evidence surfaces that Doma may not be as deserted as previously believed…
Those jumps in time take that "reading between the panels" element of comics into different interpretive ground as we fill in the time between chapters for ourselves as the intensity of her fixation on Doma grows. As we are invited into these snapshot moments of Flint's formative years, Baczynski is unafraid to present a central character who is layered and complex; one who retains our empathy throughout even though the dividing line between her passion and determination on the one hand, and her obsession and obliviousness to the feelings of others on the other, can be a fine one indeed.
Baczynski's intricately assembled pages, carefully considered monochromatic colour choices to represent each chapter's mood, and gorgeous sense of design are, of course, key elements in communicating Flint's story with an intuitive subtlety. She also imbues her cast with the most expressive body language which, again, enhances characterisation and emphasises Retrograde Orbit's recurring motifs; all the more pronounced for the book's pseudo-anthropomorphic elements.
Retrograde Orbit is a graphic novel, then, that individual readers may connect with on very different but always inter-related levels. It's a journey of self-discovery, a visual essay that asks us to question notions of identity and belonging, and a narrative that underlines that the concept of "home" has a broad spectrum of definitions. Most notably, though, it's a delicately crafted character study with a beautifully realised central theme about finding our place in the world. Poignant, touching and unforgettable. it's arguably Kristyna Baczynski's greatest achievement in the medium to date.
For more on the work of Kristyna Baczynski visit her site here and follow her on Twitter here. You can see her at Table 47 in the Originals Marquee at Thought Bubble. You can also order Retrograde Orbit online from Avery Hill Publishing here.
Retrograde Orbit launches at Thought Bubble 2018 on Friday September 21st at Travelling Man. More details here. There's also a London launch event at Gosh! Comics on Friday September 28th. Full information here.
Tags: AHP 2018ahp miceavery hill publishingkristyna baczynskiretrograde orbitthought bubble 2018wtbf AHP all
Staff Picks for April 18, 2018 – Charley's War, The Bridge, Tank Girl, Dirty Rotten Comics and More!
A City Inside – Tillie Walden Secures Her Place as One of the Leading Voices in Comics Today
Staff Picks for September 18, 2019 – Internet Crusader, Rat Time, kuš! comics, Steeple and More!
Metroland #4 – Miller and Scheele's Contemporary Fantasy Mixes Music and Time Travel in a Revelatory Finale to the First Arc


text:
Q: Running php code inside a node.js socket server script I am running a normal TCP socket in javascript and uses node to execute. Before I send a response back to the client, I want to validate the data with some some php (mysql) code.
How can I execute this code inside this javascript file?  All similar questions in STACKOVERFLOW asks about this code in HTML. (which is okay and I understand that part), But  this is a normal javascript file (executed in node).  The javascript code is below and I've marked the validation function call.
var net = require('net');

var HOST = '192.168.0.6';
var PORT = 8765;

net.createServer(function(sock) {

    console.log('CONNECTED: ' + sock.remoteAddress +':'+ sock.remotePort);

    sock.on('data', function(data) {
        var output;
        var validScan;

        //This is the function call to a php file
        **validScan = validateScanTag(data);**

        console.log('DATA ' + sock.remoteAddress + ': ' + data);
        sock.write(validScan);

    });

    // Closing this instance of socket
    sock.on('close', function(data) {
        console.log('CLOSED: ' + sock.remoteAddress +' '+ sock.remotePort);
    });

}).listen(PORT, HOST);

console.log('Server listening on ' + HOST +':'+ PORT);

The validateScanTag executes a line lke :
$.post('getperiod.php', {hours:hrs, minutes:mins, seconds:secs, ddd:day},

But this dont work.  How can I call this 'geteriod.php' file from a javascript file?

A: I'm pretty sure the problem itself is well worth rethinking (for example, port your mysql code from php to node) but here is my solution:
var net = require('net');
var PORT = 8765;
var Lazy=require('lazy');
var spawn = require('child_process').spawn;

// php code runs as a server in external process

var validator = spawn('php', ['validator.php']);

net.createServer(function(sock) {

    console.log('CONNECTED: ' + sock.remoteAddress +':'+ sock.remotePort);

    // on 'data' handler is not enough to read input line by line
    // you need to buffer data, use some kind of state machine or one of available stream parsers. I use lazy here: npm install lazy

    // write each line to php validation code
    new Lazy(sock).lines.forEach(function(line) {
        console.log('DATA ' + sock.remoteAddress + ': ' + line.toString());
        validator.stdin.write(line);
        validator.stdin.write('\n');
    });

    // read validation result line by line from validator process
    new Lazy(validator.stdout).lines.forEach(function(line) {
        console.log('Validation result:' + line.toString()) // line is Buffer object here, hence toString
    });

    validator.stdout.pipe(process.stdout);

    // Closing this instance of socket
    sock.on('close', function() {
        console.log('CLOSED');
    });

}).listen(PORT);

validator.php should read from stdin and write to stdout
<?

function validatescanTag($l) {
    // put your validation code here
    return $l . '!!!!';
}

$stdin = fopen('php://stdin', 'r');

do {
  $line = fgets($stdin);
  print validateScanTag($line);
} while(1);

?>

Another option is to use fastcgi protocol to communicate node <-> php or dnode rpc. Or just use http and run php from nginx/apache (or even node-php)

A: An approach to give a more generic answer for clarification and "getting you on the boots":
As far as I understand you're trying to run your php script using a http post request invoked by the node.js server.
You probably first have to become aware of the fact that running server-side JavaScript normally has different motivation and possibilities as well as impacts on your architecture than running JS inside a browser - at least in a classical "jQuery sense".
As stated in your comment you expect jQuery to work seamlessly within server-side node.js. That doesn't work as the comment-posted ReferenceError: $ is not defined shows you. There is no server-side jQuery available in your node.js stack working out-of-the-box (possibilities of using jQuery server-side should be discussed separately and is another subject).
Nevertheless you're obviously looking for a way to re-use your PHP script which already handles your mysql data connection and handling by utilizing it server-side. Doing this using http there are possibilites like shown in this stackoverflow post or in the http.request section of the node.js documentation. If your php script resides on the same server (or better runtime environment) as your node.js is running you may also directly execute the php script it by spawning it as a child process with the php standalone (command line) utility.
Last but not least: Yes, there are some ways (npm modules, ORM layers) for connecting mysql directly with your node.js app. But that's another complex subject and is discussed at other places.
I hope that helped in a way to avoid mixing up things that shouldn't be mixed up.

A: There is a PHP extension embedding Chrome's V8 engine in PHP.

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Plumbing Installations: Go Pro Or Say No - Mark Lindsay and Son Plumbing & Heating, Inc.
Installing a sink is a project many home improvement centers will suggest you can do yourself – usually through a short video with an acoustic guitar soundtrack that shows everything fitting together perfectly on the first turn of the wrench.
What they don't show you is the follow-up video six months later, when your sink is leaking, your water pressure has slowed to a trickle, and you have a mold problem.
Like any home improvement work, installing a sink (or any other plumbing fixture) is more complicated in the real world – where pipes are old, walls are imperfect, and the laws of physics apply – than in the world of a neatly edited DIY video.
That's why when it comes to adding or replacing plumbing fixtures in your kitchen or bathroom, paying for professional installation is always a smart investment.
Your new kitchen sink or shower should be a home improvement, not a cause of frustration! At Mark Lindsay Plumbing, we'll make sure your installation is done right the first time – and that it stays right for years to come.
For plumbing installation or emergency repairs in your New Jersey home, trust the pros at Mark Lindsay & Son! Contact us today for a FREE, no obligation estimate on your project!


MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. (AP) ? Whipping up trouble before ever reaching land, Hurricane Irene zeroed in Friday for a catastrophic run up the Eastern Seaboard. More than 2 million people were told to move to safer places, and New York City ordered its entire network of subways shut down for the first time because of a natural disaster.
MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. (AP) — Whipping up trouble before ever reaching land, Hurricane Irene zeroed in Friday for a catastrophic run up the Eastern Seaboard. More than 2 million people were told to move to safer places, and New York City ordered its entire network of subways shut down for the first time because of a natural disaster.
As the storm's outermost bands of wind and rain began to lash the Outer Banks of North Carolina, authorities in points farther north begged people to get out of harm's way. The hurricane lost some strength but still packed winds of almost 100 mph, and officials in the Northeast, not used to tropical weather, feared it could wreak devastation.
"We could be open tonight for business, but there's a very fine line between doing the right thing and putting our staff at risk," said Alex Heidenberger, owner of Mango Mike's restaurant in Bethany Beach, who expects to lose $40,000 to $50,000 in business. "It's not so much we're worried about the storm coming tonight, but we want to give them a chance to get out of town and get their affairs in order."


A simple method for cooking all dark meat grouse, like prairie chickens, spruce grouse or sharpies.
Since I started Hunter Angler Gardener Cook in 2007, I have posted more than 700 recipes. And while I still intend to post recipes going forward, I plan on writing more about techniques you can use with the wild foods you bring home. Armed with these, you can make your own recipes.
Cooking wild game is an exercise in dealing with variability. Every animal is different, and to bring out the best in your wild game you must come to terms with it.


Teachers and Refuge Recovery – Engage!
(April 7, 2018) Dave asked that we consider the relationship(s) Refuge as an organization wanted to maintain with Dharma Teachers, particularly Teachers who were paid for their participation in Refuge-sponsored events. This will be added to the agenda for the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Board.
(May 12, 2018) The draft bylaws were submitted by the committee (Jean, Rosy, and Don). Don explained that much of the language was either required of non-profits by the IRS or had been previously adopted by the Board, and these sections were highlighted in the draft sent to Board members.
Daniel moved adoption, Rosy seconded. Joseph moved to amend the proposed by-laws by deleting the section on solicited funds, asking us to decide whether Refuge is fully self- supporting or not. Jean reminded us that the Guiding Principle suggesting self-support was in reference to Refuge Groups and did not apply to the Board. Daniel also reminded the Board that this conformed to the recommendations of the committee that was formed to recommend action by the Board on guiding principles. Motion was not seconded.
Joseph also asked that we delete Article VI, Section F, "Teachers," which contained no recommended language pending Board discussion. A number of members stated they were opposed to having bylaws mention "teachers" at all, both those who wished to leave it up to local groups and those who wished to exclude dharma teachers from Refuge at all. Joseph moved, and Brent seconded that the section be deleted. Board adopted, with Don dissenting.
Jean called for a vote, and the Board unanimously adopted the by-laws as amended to exclude VI(F).
By-laws as adopted will be published and accessible to Refuge membership.
Don presented the interim report. It contained three recommendations: first taking no immediate action regarding the specific grievances of which the Board has been on notice; second, to adopt policy language regarding dharma teachers and their use by Refuge Recovery; and third to eliminate the position of President from the Board. After discussion, members of the committee withdrew the third suggestion and no action was taken on eliminating the position of President.
Further discussion involved the use of Dharma Teachers in Refuge. The Board by consensus took no action on this recommendation, but instead moved to establish an ad-hoc committee to report to the Board at its next meeting recommendations regarding this issue. Finally, the Board adopted the first recommendation of the committee.


Visit our political blog to see pictures from the McNairy County Tax Tea Party!
Last night David set the trap near the pond. Something killed his last duck and he wanted to make sure that nothing got the geese. When he checked the trap this morning there was an opossum in it!
It hissed at us when we got close.
Later when he looked at it this is what he saw!
There were about 7 babies that had come out of her pouch!
Our wonderful neighbors who gave us all the apples last year let us pick peaches from their trees this week!
They are so delicious! Emily Deborah We were busy yesterday putting the peaches up. Cutting up peaches for fried pies. Our grandmother, Mama Flo, came to help us! Peeling and slicing peaches Sarah making peach pie filling David and Sarah made some wonderful peach tea It is such a pretty color Freezing peach slices. (We freeze them first on a tray so they won't stick together when we bag them.) Emily making jam We made two batches of peach jam Boiling the peels to make peach jelly Melissa making pie crusts Mama Flo and Rebekah peeling peaches Fried pie Peach jelly The difference in the color of the jam and jelly was interesting to us.
Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Cullifer, for the peaches!!!
Yesterday our church had a picnic at our house.
The Green Beans Are Ripe!


Awesome metal flint match lighter that is extra safe!!! Even though we want to prevent all fires, we know that some of them are essential (as long as they are carefully controlled). This tool will help you start your fires with safety! Great for camping, hiking, and for any emergency! Support Fire Prevention Week with this FREE Safety Fire Starter Tool!
Raise Awareness for Fire Prevention Week!!!


focuser knobs found on most telescopes.
Replaced the cheap plastic knobs on my Orion 8" XTi Dob and it certainly made a difference. They are a work of art! Beautifully machined knobs and a great company to do business with, customer service was the best. Thanks guys.
Nicely machined . . . looks good on any scope and enables more precise focus adjustments.


Best Buy – The electronics retailer earned an adjusted 82 cents per share for the first quarter, 8 cents a share above estimates, with revenue also exceeding forecasts. Best Buy reported a comparable store sales increase of 7.1 percent, well above the consensus Thomson Reuters forecast of a 3.0 percent increase.
Medtronic – The medical device maker's quarterly numbers came in 3 cents above estimates at an adjusted $1.42 per share, with revenue also above Street forecasts. Medtronic benefited from higher demand for its heart-related devices.
Hormel – The food producer fell a penny a share shy of estimates, with quarterly earnings of 44 cents per share. Revenue was slightly shy of forecasts, as well. Hormel noted higher freight and commodity costs as factors during the quarter, but adds that the quarter did see record profit and that it is maintaining its full-year forecast.
McKesson – The drug distributor fell 7 cents a share short of estimates, with adjusted quarterly profit of $3.49 per share. Revenue exceeded forecasts, however, and McKesson's board authorized an additional $4 billion stock buyback.
Diageo – Diageo has begun an auction of its U.S.-focused spirit brands, according to Sky News. Those brands include Myers's Rum and Goldschlager.
21st Century Fox – Fox is being urged by activist investor Chris Hohn to engage with Comcast, if the NBCUniversal and CNBC parent does make a formal offer for Fox assets that is superior to the deal Fox struck to sell those assets to Walt Disney. Hohn disclosed a 7.4 percent stake in Fox and expressed his view in a letter to Rupert Murdoch that was seen by the Wall Street Journal.
Ford, General Motors – U.S. auto stocks could get a boost after the Trump administration launched a national security probe into car and truck imports. The probe could lead to new tariffs on imported vehicles.
L Brands – L Brands reported quarterly profit of 17 cents per share, beating estimates by a penny a share. The Victoria's Secret parent's revenue also beat forecasts, however the company issued weaker-than-expected current-quarter earnings guidance.
Williams-Sonoma – Williams-Sonoma beat estimates by 9 cents a share, with quarterly profit of 67 cents per share, with revenue above forecasts, as well. The home furnishings retailer also raised its full-year outlook.
Procter & Gamble – The consumer products company said it would continue investing in Russian plants in the coming years, despite increasing risks due to deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations.
Deutsche Bank – Deutsche Bank will cut more than 7,000 jobs worldwide, as the bank's new CEO seeks to cut expenses and restore profitability at Germany's largest bank.
Johnson & Johnson – J&J and its suppliers were hit with a $21.7 million verdict in a case involving a woman who said she developed cancer after being exposed to asbestos in J&J's baby powder product. J&J was assessed 67 percent of the total compensatory damages, with the possible punitive damages still to be determined by the jury.
KKR – The private-equity firm is in talks to buy privately held BMC Software for about $10 billion, according to the New York Post. Private-equity firms Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital took BMC private for $6.9 billion in 2013. The paper also said KKR continues to work with hospital operator HCA to bid more than $10 billion for Envision Healthcare.
Kroger – Kroger is buying Home Chef, the largest privately held provider of meal kits in the U.S. The supermarket chain will pay $200 million up front, and up to $700 million depending on certain performance targets.
NetApp – NetApp beat estimates by 4 cents a share, with quarterly profit of $1.05 per share. The cloud data company's revenue also topped forecasts.
Darden Restaurants – Oppenheimer added the parent of Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze, and other restaurant chains to its "Top Picks" list, noting an attractive valuation and the potential for a sizable earnings beat for fiscal 2019.


The web site was based in 1995 by science author Dan Hogan. 10. Manajer penanda untuk menyimpan dan mengelola link ke berita favorit Anda untuk referensi di masa mendatang. The assumption stems from the fundamental Taoist philosophy of Yin and Yang, the backbone of Chinese language medical science. SciTechDaily: Home of the perfect science and expertise information since 1998. Dapatkan Science News dari hanya topik-topik yang Anda pilih.
"By taking paired samples, we've got larger insight into the setting that the cats live in. Moreover the cats in the examine spent the vast majority of their time indoors and due to this fact air and dirt in the residence is anticipated to contribute greater than the outdoor atmosphere", says Jana Weiss on the Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry, Stockholm College.
I have been reading a majority of the articles from Science Daily for fairly a few years. See today's front and back pages, obtain the newspaper, order back points and use the historic Every day Express newspaper archive. "Science Information Every day" makes use of fully automated algorithms to display the most well-liked information stories. An engineer can find the brain's zone that creates seizures in report time – one hour reasonably than the typical ten days.
Sebuah aplikasi ilmu di mana selalu ada sesuatu yang menarik untuk dibaca untuk setiap orang. Science Daily is up to date as soon as per day with articles from news releases which were submitted by analysis establishments, equivalent to universities, together with articles from the Science Daily staff. Dapatkan untuk mengetahui tentang penemuan ilmu pengetahuan terbaru di berbagai bidang ilmu pengetahuan dan tetap up to date.
Users have the option to customize their information feed according to the subjects they need to seem so you possibly can simply tap into the app and be greeted by stories you are more likely to be excited by. Articles might be tagged for what you thought of them, badges and factors can be earned for studying, they are often saved to read later and so they can be shared with others.


Russell Wilson had a deal with Nike that expired in 2015 and the majority of people thought he was going to eventually sign a new deal with Under Armour. Today Nike made sure they kept the young quarterback on their own roster as Russell himself announced a long term deal on twitter.
No word on what type of money is involved yet but I am sure that info will come soon. Russell can be a cash cow for the swoosh for years to come given his age and early success on the field. Have to wonder though long term how his career will go after the legion of boom is no more and more of the onus is on him.
Time will tell. In the mean time congrats on the deal!


If you are moving and want to park a removal truck on the road, you must apply for a roadside permit. You need to make an application to the Office for Public Order.
We advise that you submit your application at least two weeks before you start moving so that everything goes to schedule. The fees vary depending on the type and duration of use.


text:
Biden heads to Japan after warning on North Korea threat
byAFP
in News, World News
President Joe Biden flies Sunday to Japan for the second leg of a trip intended to reinforce US leadership across Asia in the face of a rising China and dangerously unpredictable, nuclear-armed North Korea.
US President Joe Biden speaks to the media next to Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun at a hotel in Seoul on May 22, 2022. AFP
Biden is leaving South Korea, where he joined newly elected President Yoon Suk-yeol for a series of meetings, including discussing expanded military exercises to counter Kim Jong Un's sabre rattling.
As officials from both countries warned that Kim could raise tensions with a nuclear weapon test while Biden is in the region, the US president said the democratic allies must deepen ties.
At a joint press conference with Yoon, Biden cited a global "competition between democracies and autocracies" and said the Asia-Pacific region is a key battleground.
"We talked in some length about the need for us to make this larger than just the United States, Japan, and Korea, but the entire Pacific and the South Pacific and Indo-Pacific. I think this is an opportunity," Biden said.
While China is the main US rival in that struggle, Biden illustrated the acute challenge from Russia when he signed a $40 billion aid bill late Saturday to help Ukraine fight the invasion by Moscow's forces.
The bill, passed earlier by Congress, was flown to Seoul so that Biden could make it law without having to wait for his return to Washington late next Tuesday.
Before leaving South Korea, Biden was meeting with the chairman of Hyundai to celebrate a decision by the auto giant to invest $5.5 billion in an electric vehicle plant in the southern US state of Georgia.
He was also meeting with US and South Korean troops together with Yoon, a schedule that a senior White House official said was able to "reflect the truly integrated nature" of the countries' economic and military alliance.
In Japan, Biden will meet with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Emperor Naruhito on Monday ahead of Tuesday's Quad summit, bringing together the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States.
Also on Monday, Biden will unveil a major new US initiative for regional trade, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity.
North Korea threat
Biden and Yoon said in a statement Saturday that "considering the evolving threat" from North Korea, they "agree to initiate discussions to expand the scope and scale of combined military exercises and training on and around the Korean peninsula".
The possible beefing up of joint US-South Korean military exercises comes in response to North Korea's blitz of sanctions-busting weapons tests this year, as fears grow another missile launch may be imminent.
Elected on a strongly pro-US message, Yoon said he and Biden "discussed whether we'd need to come up with various types of joint drills to prepare for a nuclear attack".
He also specified the need for "fighter jets and missiles in a departure from the past when we only thought about the nuclear umbrella for deterrence".
Any build-up of forces or expansion of US-South Korea joint military exercises would likely enrage Pyongyang, which views the joint drills as rehearsals for invasion.
Meanwhile, Biden and Yoon extended an offer of help to Pyongyang, which has recently announced it is in the midst of a Covid-19 outbreak — a rare admission of internal troubles.
The US-South Korea statement said the two presidents "express concern over the recent Covid-19 outbreak" and "are willing to work with the international community to provide assistance" to North Korea to help fight the virus.
On Sunday, North Korean state media said 2.6 million people had been sick with "fever" with 67 deaths — which they claimed was a fatality rate of just 0.003 percent, despite an unvaccinated population where malnutrition is widespread.
Biden, while adding that he would not exclude a meeting with Kim if he were "sincere", indicated the difficulty of dealing with the unpredictable dictator.
"We've offered vaccines, not only to North Korea but to China as well and we're prepared to do that immediately," Biden said at a press conference with Yoon. "We've got no response."
Tags: Joe BidenKim Jong UnNorth KoreaYoon Suk-yeol
byMaricel Cruz
Insists on drug war probe on its own, Duterte says ICC can do its worst The Philippines will not yield...
byCharles Dantes
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. discussed at least seven priority measures – including the ratification of a regional trade pact, the...
Washington has confirmed the visit of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III to South Korea and the Philippines next week aimed...


text:
Divorce Attorney Home » Divorce Articles » Gay couples face hardship getting a divorce in some states | Disability Case Review.com
Gay couples face hardship getting a divorce in some states
It seems that gay couples, like heterosexual couples, are not immune to the difficulties of married life and many of them are fighting for the right to have get a divorce, even in states that don't recognize their marriage.
Battles for the right to divorce are being waged in states such as Mississippi, one of the America's most conservative states. Couples are now hoping that they can force Mississippi to recognize the same-sex marriage for the purpose of granting the divorce.
Many gay couples went to states, which recognize same-sex marriage to get married, but are unwilling or unable to go back to those states for a divorce, which could involve physically moving to the state to establish residency before being allowed to file for divorce.
Although the topic of gay divorce isn't discussed as much as gay marriage, couples wanting to divorce, argue that their lack of ability to go to the local courthouse and file for divorce is "very disruptive" and an enormous waste of time.
Opponents of gay marriage argue that citizens of each state have the right to establish marriage laws, and if a gay couple had to leave the state to get married than they should have understood that if the marriage did not last they might also have to leave the state to have the arrangement terminated.
Opponents of gay marriage
Although opposing gay marriage is not politically correct, there are strong arguments against it. Opponents of gay marriage argue that marriage has traditionally been a covenant between a man and a woman for the perpetuation of the human race and for raising children. Opponents of same-sex marriage argue it violates the relationship rooted in human nature and thus governed by natural law. It also denies a child either a father and a mother, thus ignoring a child's best interests.
Finally, a question that homosexuals have failed to address, if marriage is redefined as simply a union of "people who love each other" what stops it from eventually being defined as any arrangement between individuals including those defined by incest, pedophilia, or polygamy.
Proponents of gay marriage
There are various reasons why others support gay marriage. Most notably is the idea that if two people love each other they should have the right to marry and denying them the ability to marry is discrimination. Proponents also claim that homosexual marriage does not hurt anyone and could benefit some couples, allowing them joint ownership of property and the ability to make medical decisions for their spouse.
Others argue that marriage could encourage homosexuals to give up what is termed "high risk" sexual lifestyles and adopt strong family values. Finally, proponents argue it would allow for the same financial benefits that apply to man-woman marriages.
But until this issue is settled throughout the United States, gay couples who have married but now live in states who do not recognize their marriage, will have to fight out their battles in court.


Destination Trail – Tasmania. Specialized rider Troy Brosnan makes me want to pack my bags and go ride flowy Tazzie trails. Wow.
XTERRA Milwaukee was one of my favourite XTERRAs of all time. Right in the middle of the city build by beer loving Germans, and stunning, rough and ready bike & run courses.
This year was insanely hot and humid – you can see I'm glowing like a ripe tomato, with top rolled up to get more ventilation. To manage the heat exhausted athletes at the finish, the city parked a huge double decker city bus with Aircon running flat out to cool cooked athletes down.


text:
#ifndef ADCMEASUREMENTS_H_
#define ADCMEASUREMENTS_H_

void init_adc ();

uint32_t measure_temperature_sensor (volatile uint16_t supplyVoltage);

uint16_t measure_internal_temperature ();

uint16_t measure_supply_voltage(void);

void init_adc ();

#endif /* ADCMEASUREMENTS_H_ */

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