text:
\section{Introduction}

Evolution Strategies (ESs) are optimization methods originally inspired by mutation of organic beings and designed to establish ``a reward-based system, to increase the probability of those changes, which lead to improvements of quality of the system'' \citep{Rastrigin1963}.
Going far beyond their biologically inspired roots, they have been developed into state-of-the-art zeroth order search methods \citep{hansen2015evolution}.
Evolution Strategies \citep{1973RechenbergEvolutionsstrategie} consider an objective function $f: {\rm I\hspace{-0.50ex}R}^{n} \mapsto {\rm I\hspace{-0.50ex}R}, \vc{x} \mapsto f(\vc{x})$ to be minimized by sampling $i \in \{1,\dots,\lambda\}$ candidate solutions at iteration $t$ as
\begin{equation}
\label{sampling1}
  \vc{x}^{(t)}_i \leftarrow \vc{y}^{(t)} + \sigma^{(t)} \cdot {\mathcal N}  \hspace{-0.13em}\left({\ma{0},{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }^{(t)}}\right),
\end{equation}
where $\vc{y}^{(t)}$ is the current estimate of the optimum, $ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} ^{(t)} \in {\rm I\hspace{-0.50ex}R}^{n \times n}$ is a covariance matrix initialized to the identity matrix $ \ensuremath{\ma{I}} $, and $\sigma^{(t)}$ is a scaling factor for the mutation step, often referred to as the global step size.
Both $\vc{y}^{(t)}$ and $\sigma^{(t)}$ are to be adapted or \emph{learned} over time in Evolution Strategies. Modern ESs such as the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) also include the adaptation of $ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} ^{(t)}$ \citep{hansen1996adapting,2003HansenCMA} to the shape of the local landscape, resembling second order methods. Recent theoretical studies of ES and CMA-ES from the prospective of information geometry \citep{wierstra2014natural, akimoto2010bidirectional, 2017OllivierIGO, beyer2014convergence}, connecting the method to natural gradient learning, have made significant progress in understanding the principles underpinning the state-of-the-art performance of the algorithm~\citep{2009HansenBBOBcomparing31algo}.
The variety of algorithms  \citep{hansen2015evolution} derived from and inspired by the theoretical studies helped to notice that the core component of CMA-ES, the covariance matrix itself (and covariance matrix square root operations) can be removed from the algorithm without any loss of performance~\citep{beyer2017simplify}.%
\footnote{Of course, the transformation matrix needed for sampling the multivariate Gaussian is kept, enabling variable metric optimization.}
The final algorithm called Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (MA-ES ~\citep{beyer2017simplify}) is conceptually simpler and involves only matrix-matrix and matrix-vector operations, which, however, lead to $\mathcal{O}\big(n^3/\log(n)\big)$ time complexity per sample (here, we show its $\mathcal{O}\big(n^2\big)$ implementation), and $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ space complexity.

In machine learning, ESs are mainly used for direct policy search in reinforcement learning \citep{gomez2008accelerated, heidrich2009hoeffding, stulp2013robot, salimans2017evolution}, hyperparameter tuning in supervised learning,
e.g., for Support Vector Machines \citep{glasmachers2008uncertainty,igel2011evolutionary} and Deep Neural Networks \citep{loshchilov2016cma}. With the steadily increasing dimensionality of real-world optimization problems, the new challenges of large-scale black-box optimization become more pronounced for CMA-ES and MA-ES due to their $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ complexity.
To address them, a number of large-scale CMA-ES variants has been proposed   \citep{knight2007reducing,ros2008simple,sun2011linear,akimoto2014comparison,loshchilov2017lm,akimoto2016online} including the Limited-Memory CMA-ES (LM-CMA-ES  \citep{loshchilov2017lm}) that matches the performance of quasi-Newton methods such as L-BFGS \citep{1970ShannoBFGS} when dealing with large-scale black-box problems at a moderate cost of $O(n\log(n))$ time and space complexity.

In this work, we combine the best of two worlds: inspired by LM-CMA-ES we present the Limited-Memory Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (LM-MA-ES), which matches state-of-the-art results while reducing the time and space complexity of MA-ES to $O(n\log(n))$ per sample.

\section{Variable Metric Evolution Strategies: CMA-ES and MA-ES}

Our discussion on variable metric ESs is based on Algorithm \ref{ALLALGOS}, which highlights the similarities and differences between CMA-ES, MA-ES, and the proposed LM-MA-ES.

The sampling of the $\lambda$ candidate solutions in CMA-ES is described by eq.~\eqref{sampling1} and involves a matrix-vector product between a matrix $\sqrt{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }$ and a vector $\vc{z}_i$ sampled from the $n$-dimensional standard normal distribution. This operation (see line \ref{CMAdi} in Algorithm \ref{ALLALGOS}) requires $\sqrt{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }$ to be stored (hence, the quadratic in $n$ space cost) and the matrix-vector multiplication to be performed (hence, the quadratic in $n$ time cost). The resulting vector $\vc{d}_i$ represents a direction of the so-called mutation operation. The $i$-th candidate solution is obtained by changing (mutating) the current estimate of the optimum $\vc{y}$ by $\vc{d}_i$ multiplied by the global mutation step-size $\sigma$ (line~\ref{GenerateEnd}). The rationale behind parameterizing the sampling distribution by ${\mathcal N}  \hspace{-0.13em}\left({\vc{y}},\sigma^2{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }\right)$ and not just ${\mathcal N}  \hspace{-0.13em}\left({\vc{y}},{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }\right)$, i.e., decoupling ${ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }$ and $\sigma$, lies in the observation that
 $\sigma$ can be learned more quickly and more robustly than ${ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }$ and its adaptation alone enables linear convergence on scale-invariant problems \citep{jaegerskupper2005rigorous}.

ESs are invariant to rank-preserving / strictly monotonic transformations of $f$-values because all operations are based on ranks of evaluated solutions. The estimate of the optimum $\vc{y}$ is updated by a weighted sum of mutation steps taken by the top ranked $\mu$ out $\lambda$ solutions (line~\ref{ComputeNewMean}). The recent analysis  \citep{akimoto2017quality} demonstrated that the optimal recombination weights $\vc{w}$ for Sphere function (see Table~1) are independent of the Hessian matrix, and hence optimal for all convex quadratic functions.

The currently most commonly applied adaptation rule for the step size is the cumulative step-size adaptation (CSA) mechanism~\citep{2001HansenCMA}. It is based on the length of an evolution path $\vc{p}_{\sigma}$, an exponentially fading record of recent most successful steps $\vc{z}_{i:\lambda}$ (see line \ref{SigmaPathUpdate}). If the path becomes too long (the expected path length of a Gaussian random walk can be approximated by $\sqrt{n}$ when $n$ is large), indicating that recent steps tend to move into the same direction, then the step size is increased. On the contrary, a too short path indicating oscillations due to overjumping the optimum results in a reduction of the step size. Rigorous analysis of CSA with and without cumulation is given in \citep{BH14}.

The seminal CMA-ES algorithm \citep{hansen1996adapting,2003HansenCMA} introduced adaptation of the covariance matrix, which renders the algorithm invariant to linear transformations of the search space (achieved in practice after an initial adaptation phase) and hence enables a fast convergence rate independent of the conditioning of the problem, resembling second order methods. The covariance matrix is adapted towards a weighted maximum likelihood estimate of the $\mu$ most successful samples (rank-$\mu$ update) with learning rate $c_{\mu}$ and a second evolution path (rank-$1$ update) with learning rate $c_1$ (see line \ref{cmaCupdate}); this update has an alternative interpretation as a stochastic gradient step on the information geometric manifold forming the algorithm's state space  \citep{akimoto2010bidirectional,2017OllivierIGO}. While the default hyperparameter values of CMA-ES given in Algorithm \ref{ALLALGOS} are known to be robust, their optimal values can be adapted online during the optimization process attempting to provide an additional level of invariance \citep{loshchilov2014maximum}.

Most  implementations of CMA-ES consider eigendecomposition procedures of $\mathcal{O}(n^3)$ time complexity per call to obtain $\sqrt{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }$ from $ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} $ only every $n/\lambda$ iterations (see line \ref{CMAdi}) to achieve amortized $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ time complexity per sampled solution. Numerical stability of the $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ update can be ensured by maintaining a triangular Cholesky factor~\citep{krause2016cma}.

The recently proposed Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (MA-ES) greatly simplifies CMA-ES by avoiding the construction of the covariance matrix $ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} $. Instead it maintains only a transformation matrix $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} $ representing $\sqrt{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} }$. After removing the approximate redundancy of $\vc{p}_{\sigma}$ and $\vc{p}_{c}$, $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} $ can be updated multiplicatively (line~\ref{MAupdate}). Matrix multiplication is an $\mathcal{O}(n^3)$ operation, therefore we propose to replace the multiplicative update at iteration $t$ by the equivalent additive update
\begin{equation}
\label{MAsampling12}
 \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t+1)} \leftarrow \left(1 - \frac{c_{1}}{2} - \frac{c_{\mu}}{2}\right)  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)} + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \vc{d}^{(t)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma})^T + \frac{c_{\mu}}{2} \sum_{i=1}^{\mu} w_i \vc{d}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda}(\vc{z}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda})^T,
\end{equation}
which achieves $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ time cost thanks to precomputing $\vc{d}^{(t)}_{\sigma}= \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)} \vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma}$ and reusing $\vc{d}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda}$ vectors. The resulting algorithm is referred to as \emph{fast MA-ES}.

\begin{algorithm}[tb!]
\caption{\cmatext{CMA-ES}, \maestext{MA-ES} and \lmmatext{LM-MA-ES}}
\label{ALLALGOS}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\STATE{\textbf{given} $n \in \mathbb{N}_+$, $\lambda = 4 + \lfloor 3 \ln \, n  \rfloor $, $\mu =  \lfloor \lambda/2   \rfloor $,
											$w_i = \frac{ \ln(\mu + \frac{1}{2}) - \ln\,i}{ \sum^{\mu}_{j=1}(\ln(\mu + \frac{1}{2})-\ln\,j)} \; \mstr{for} \; i=1, \ldots, \mu$,
											$\mu_w = \frac{1}{\sum^{\mu}_{i=1} w^2_i}$,
						$\cma{c_{\sigma} = \frac{\mu_w + 2}{n+\mu_w+5}, c_{c} = \frac{4}{n + 4}, c_1 = \frac{2}{(n+1.3)^2 +\mu_w}, c_{\mu} = \mstr{min}\left(1-c_1, \frac{2(\mu_w -2 + 1/{\mu_w})}{(n+2)^2+\mu_w}\right)}$,

											\lmma{m = 4 + \lfloor 3 \ln \, n  \rfloor, c_{\sigma} = \frac{2 \lambda}{n}, c_{d,i} = \frac{1}{1.5^{i-1} n},  c_{c,i} = \frac{\lambda}{ 4^{i-1} n} \; \mstr{for} \; i=1, \ldots, m}
											} \label{MAEScmaGiven}
\STATE{\textbf{initialize} $t \leftarrow 0, \vc{y}^{(t=0)} \in {\rm I\hspace{-0.50ex}R}^{n}, \sigma^{(t=0)} > 0, \vc{p}^{(t=0)}_{\sigma} = \ma{0}$, \cma{\vc{p}^{(t=0)}_{c} = \ma{0},  \ensuremath{\ma{C}} ^{(t=0)} =  \ensuremath{\ma{I}} }, \maes{ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t=0)} =  \ensuremath{\ma{I}} }, \lmma{\vc{m}^{(t=0)}_i \in {\rm I\hspace{-0.50ex}R}^{n }, \vc{m}^{(t=0)}_{i} = \ma{0} \; \mstr{for} \; i=1, \ldots, m}}
\REPEAT
  \FOR{$i \leftarrow 1,\ldots,\lambda$} \label{MAGenerateBegin}
				\STATE{$\vc{z}^{(t)}_i \leftarrow {{\mathcal N}  \hspace{-0.13em}\left({\ma{0}, \ensuremath{\ma{I}} \,}\right)}$}
				\STATE{$\vc{d}^{(t)}_i \leftarrow \vc{z}^{(t)}_i$}
                \STATE{\cmatext{\textbf{if} $t \mod \frac{n}{\lambda} = 0$ \textbf{then} $\vc{ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} }^{(t)} \leftarrow \sqrt{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} ^{(t)}}$ \textbf{else} $\vc{ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} }^{(t)} \leftarrow\vc{ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} }^{(t-1)}$}} \label{CMAdi} \COMMENT{CMA-ES}

				\STATE{\maes{\vc{d}^{(t)}_i \leftarrow  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)} \; \vc{d}^{(t)}_i}} \COMMENT{CMA-ES and MA-ES}

				\STATE{\lmmatext{\textbf{for} $j \leftarrow	 1,\ldots,\mstr{min}(t,m) \; \textbf{do}$}} \label{LMloop1}	\COMMENT{LM-MA-ES}
				\STATE{$\;\;\;\;$ \lmma{\vc{d}^{(t)}_i \leftarrow (1 - c_{d,j}) \vc{d}^{(t)}_i + c_{d,j} \vc{m}^{(t)}_{j}\left((\vc{m}^{(t)}_{j})^T \vc{d}^{(t)}_i  \right)}}		 \label{LMloop2}	\COMMENT{LM-MA-ES}
			\STATE{ $\vc{f}^{(t)}_i \leftarrow f(\vc{y}^{(t)} + \sigma^{(t)} \vc{d}^{(t)}_i)$} \label{GenerateEnd}
  \ENDFOR
	\STATE{ $ \vc{y}^{(t+1)} \leftarrow  \vc{y}^{(t)} + \sigma^{(t)} \sum_{i=1}^{\mu} w_i \vc{d}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda} \;$} \COMMENT{the symbol $i:\lambda$ denotes $i$-th best sample on $f$} \label{ComputeNewMean}
	\STATE{ $ \vc{p}^{(t+1)}_{\sigma} \leftarrow (1 - c_{\sigma}) \vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma} + \sqrt{\mu_w c_{\sigma}(2-c_{\sigma})} \sum_{i=1}^{\mu} w_i \vc{z}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda} $} \label{SigmaPathUpdate}
	\STATE{ \cma{\vc{p}^{(t+1)}_{c} \leftarrow (1 - c_{c}) \vc{p}^{(t)}_{c} + \sqrt{\mu_w c_{c}(2-c_{c})} \sum_{i=1}^{\mu} w_i \vc{d}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda} }} \COMMENT{CMA-ES}

\STATE{ \cma{ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} ^{(t+1)} \leftarrow (1 - c_1 - c_{\mu})  \ensuremath{\ma{C}} ^{(t)} +
						c_1 \vc{p}_c ({\vc{p}^{(t)}_c})^T +
						c_{\mu} \sum^{\mu}_{i=1} w_i \vc{d}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda} (\vc{d}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda})^T }}		\label{cmaCupdate} \COMMENT{CMA-ES}
	\STATE{ \maes{  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t+1)} \leftarrow  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)} \left[  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \left(\vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma})^T -  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  \right) + \frac{c_{\mu}}{2} \left(\sum_{i=1}^{\mu} w_i \vc{z}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda}(\vc{z}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda})^T -  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  \right) \right]} } \COMMENT{MA-ES} \label{MAupdate}
    \STATE{\lmmatext{\textbf{for} $i \leftarrow 1,\ldots,m$\; \textbf{do}}} \label{LMMAupdate1} \COMMENT{LM-MA-ES}
    \STATE{$\;\;\;\;$ \lmma{\vc{m}^{(t+1)}_i \leftarrow (1-c_{c,i})\vc{m}^{(t)}_i + \sqrt{\mu_w c_{c,i}(2-c_{c,i})}  \sum_{j=1}^{\mu} w_j \vc{z}^{(t)}_{j:\lambda}}} \label{LMMAupdate2} \COMMENT{LM-MA-ES}

	\STATE{ $ \sigma^{(t+1)} \leftarrow \sigma^{(t)} \cdot \mstr{exp}
	          \left[ \frac{c_{\sigma}}{2} \left(  \frac{\left\| \vc{p}^{(t+1)}_{\sigma} \right\|^2}{ n} - 1  \right) \right] $} \label{MAStepSizeUpdate}
  \STATE{ $ t \leftarrow t + 1$}
\UNTIL{ \textit{stopping criterion is met} }
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}

\section{The Limited-Memory Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy}
\label{secLMMAES}

A number of methods was proposed to reduce the space and time complexity per sample from $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ to $\mathcal{O}(n)$ or at least $\mathcal{O}\big(n\log(n)\big)$ while still modeling the most relevant aspects of the full covariance matrix. Simple approaches like \citep{ros2008simple} restrict the covariance matrix to its diagonal, while more elaborate methods use a low-rank approach \citep{sun2011linear,loshchilov2017lm}. Both approaches can be combined~\citep{akimoto2014comparison}.
Inspired by the Limited-Memory CMA-ES \citep{loshchilov2017lm} which in turn is inspired by the L-BFGS method \citep{liu1989limited}, we show how to scale up MA-ES to high-dimensional problems. The derivation given below is based on the multiplicative update, the final result for the additive update \eqref{MAsampling12} is equivalent when  $\vc{d}^{(t)}_{\sigma}$ is not stored but reconstructed as $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)} \vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma}$.
At iteration $t$, the main update equation of MA-ES reads
\begin{equation}
\label{Mupdate}
 \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t+1)} \leftarrow  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)} \left[  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \left(\vc{p}^{(t+1)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(t+1)}_{\sigma})^T -  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  \right) + \frac{c_{\mu}}{2} \left(\sum_{i=1}^{\mu} \vc{w}_i \vc{z}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda}(\vc{z}^{(t)}_{i:\lambda})^T -  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  \right) \right],
\end{equation}
where $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)}$ is adapted multiplicatively based on the rank-one update weighted by
$\frac{c_{1}}{2}
and the rank-$\mu$ update weighted by
$\frac{c_{\mu}}{2}$,
starting from $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t=0)} = \ensuremath{\ma{I}}$.
By omitting the rank-$\mu$ update for the sake of simplicity (i.e., by setting $c_{\mu}=0$),
we obtain
\begin{equation}
\label{MupdateT1}
 \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(1)} \leftarrow  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \left(\vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma})^T -  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  \right)  = \left(1 - \frac{c_{1}}{2} \right)  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma})^T
\end{equation}
The sampling procedure of the $i$-th solution $\vc{x}^{(1)}_i$ follows
\begin{equation}
\label{ST1}
\vc{x}^{(1)}_i \leftarrow \vc{y}^{(1)} + \sigma^{(1)} \vc{d}^{(1)}_i = \vc{y}^{(1)} + \sigma^{(1)}  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(1)} \vc{z}^{(1)}_i,
\end{equation}
where $\vc{z}_i^{(1)} \sim {{\mathcal N}  \hspace{-0.13em}\left({\ma{0}, \ensuremath{\ma{I}} \,}\right)}$.
One can rewrite $\vc{d}_i^{(1)} =  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(1)} \vc{z}_i^{(1)}$ based on equation~\eqref{MupdateT1} as
\begin{equation}
\label{SamplingT1}
\vc{d}_i^{(1)}= \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(1)} \vc{z}^{(1)}_i = \left( \left(1 - \frac{c_{1}}{2}\right)  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma})^T\right) \vc{z}_i^{(1)} =
\vc{z}^{(1)}_i \left(1 - \frac{c_{1}}{2}\right) + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma} \left((\vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma})^T \vc{z}^{(1)}_i\right)
\end{equation}

Importantly, $\left((\vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma})^T \vc{z}^{(1)}\right)$ is a scalar (see line \ref{LMloop2} in Algorithm \ref{ALLALGOS})  and thus equation~\eqref{SamplingT1} does not require $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(1)}$ to be stored in memory.
One generally obtains
\begin{equation}
\label{SamplingTt}
\vc{d}^{(t)}_i  =  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)} \vc{z}_i^{(t)} =  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t-1)} \ma{P}^{(t)} \vc{z}_i^{(t)}
=  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t-1)}
\underbrace{\left( \left(1 - \frac{c_{1}}{2}\right)  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma})^T\right)}_{:=\ma{P}^{(t)}}  \vc{z}_i^{(t)}
\end{equation}
leading to a sequence of products
\begin{eqnarray}
\label{dti}
\vc{d}^{(t)}_i
 & \!\!\!=\!\!\! & \left( \left(1 - \frac{c_{1}}{2}\right)  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(1)}_{\sigma})^T\right)  \cdot \ldots
 \nonumber \\
 & & \ldots \cdot
 \left( \left(1 - \frac{c_{1}}{2}\right)  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \vc{p}^{(t-1)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(t-1)}_{\sigma})^T\right) \cdot \left( \left(1 - \frac{c_{1}}{2}\right)  \ensuremath{\ma{I}}  + \frac{c_{1}}{2} \vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma}(\vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma})^T\right)  \vc{z}_i^{(t)}
\end{eqnarray}
which is to be treated from right to left. Thus, the sampling procedure for $\vc{d}^{(t)}_i =  \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)} \vc{z}_i^{(t)}$ does neither require matrix-matrix-product operations nor does it require the storage of $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)}\in {\rm I\hspace{-0.50ex}R}^{n \times n}$, but can be performed based on $t$ vectors $\vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma}$ used to construct $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} ^{(t)}$. However, this is efficient only for $t \ll n$. Therefore, in order to reduce the cost of the sampling procedure, equation~\eqref{dti} must be \emph{approximated} in one way or another by artificially limiting the number $m$ of supporting $\vc{p}^{(t)}_{\sigma}$ vectors such that $m \ll n$. In this work we pick $m \in \mathcal{O}(\log(n))$.

LM-CMA-ES\citep{loshchilov2017lm} addresses a similar problem of compactly representing the covariance matrix with $m \in \mathcal{O}\big(\log(n)\big)$ direction vectors: instead of considering the last $m$ vectors, it samples them in a certain temporal distance in terms of iterations $t$.
The same approach works for LM-MA-ES (see section 1 and Algorithm 1 in the supplementary material). However, the rather complicated procedure of ensuring a temporal distance between $\vc{p}_{\sigma}$ vectors can be simplified by considering different time horizons of their update. This procedure is a viable alternative since $\vc{p}_{\sigma}$ itself is anyway incrementally updated with  $\sum_{i=1}^{\mu} w_i \vc{z}_{i:\lambda}$. Thus, instead of a full transformation matrix $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}}  \in {\rm I\hspace{-0.50ex}R}^{n \times n}$, LM-MA-ES maintains $m \in \mathcal{O}\big(\log(n)\big)$ vectors $\vc{m}_i$ (see lines \ref{LMMAupdate1}-\ref{LMMAupdate2} in Algorithm \ref{ALLALGOS}), modeling the deviation of the transformation matrix from the identity as a rank-$m$ matrix. The learning rates $c_{c,i}$ and $c_{d,i}$ for applying and updating the vectors $\vc{m}_i$ are chosen to be exponentially decaying, hence the $\vc{m}_i$ are fading records of mean update steps on exponentially differing time scales. This is in contrast to CMA-ES and MA-ES, which update their matrices $ \ensuremath{\ma{C}} $ and $ \ensuremath{\ma{M}} $ only with two different learning rates for the rank-1 and rank-$\mu$ updates, and hence operate on a single time scale. LM-MA-ES learns some directions very quickly, while others are kept more stable. This can be advantageous in particular in high dimensions where learning rates are generally small due to the sub-linear sample size.

The proposed LM-MA-ES method features all invariance properties of modern ESs, namely invariance to translation and rotation, as well as invariance to strictly monotonic (rank-preserving) transformations of objective values.

\section{Experimental validation}
\label{secExperiments}

\newcommand{$f_{Sphere}$}{$f_{Sphere}$}
\newcommand{$f_{Rosen}$}{$f_{Rosen}$}
\newcommand{$f_{Cigar}$}{$f_{Cigar}$}
\newcommand{$f_{Discus}$}{$f_{Discus}$}
\newcommand{$f_{Elli}$}{$f_{Elli}$}
\newcommand{$f_{DiffPow}$}{$f_{DiffPow}$}
\newcommand{$f_{RotRosen}$}{$f_{RotRosen}$}
\newcommand{$f_{RotCigar}$}{$f_{RotCigar}$}
\newcommand{$f_{RotDiscus}$}{$f_{RotDiscus}$}
\newcommand{$f_{RotElli}$}{$f_{RotElli}$}
\newcommand{$f_{RotDiffPow}$}{$f_{RotDiffPow}$}

With our experimental evaluation we aim to answer the following questions:
\begin{compactitem}
\item
	How does LM-MA-ES compare to MA-ES, i.e., what is the effect of modeling only a $\mathcal{O}(\log(n))$ dimensional subspace?
\item
	How does LM-MA-ES compare to other algorithms designed for high-dimensional black-box optimization?
\item
	Is LM-MA-ES suitable for solving problems in machine learning?
\end{compactitem}
To answer these questions, we investigate the performance on standard benchmark problems of varying dimension, and we generate adversarial inputs for a random forest classifier.

\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
  \begin{minipage}[b]{0.64\textwidth}
    \scriptsize
    \begin{tabular}{ll}
      \hline
Name & Function $f(\vc{x})$\\
\hline
Sphere & $\sum_{i=1}^n \vc{x}^{2}_{i}$ \\ [0.10cm]
Ellipsoid &$\sum_{i=1}^n 10^{6{\frac{i-1}{n-1}}} \vc{x}^{2}_{i}$ \\ [0.10cm]
Rosenbrock & $\sum_{i=1}^{n-1}\left(100 \cdot (\vc{x}^{2}_{i}-x_{i+1})^{2}+(x_{i}-1)^{2}\right)$ \\[0.10cm]
Discus & $10^6\vc{x}^2_1 + \sum_{i=2}^n \vc{x}^{2}_{i}$ \\[0.10cm]
Cigar & $\vc{x}^2_1 + 10^6\sum_{i=2}^n \vc{x}^{2}_{i}$ \\[0.10cm]
Different Powers & $\sum_{i=1}^n \left|\vc{x}_i\right|^{2+4(i-1)/(n-1)}$ \\[0.10cm]
\hline
      \end{tabular}
      \captionof{table}{\label{table:TableFunc} Test functions used in this study.}
    \end{minipage}

    \begin{minipage}[b]{0.35\textwidth}
    \centering
   \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{time}
    \captionof{figure}{\label{fig:runtime} Internal algorithm cost.}
  \end{minipage}
\end{minipage}

\subsection{Performance on Benchmark Problems}

We experimentally validate the proposed LM-MA-ES algorithm on large-scale variants ($n \in \{128, 256, \ldots, 8192\}$) of well established benchmark problems \citep{2009FinckBBOB2009setup} (see Table~1). Starting from the initial region $[-5, 5]^n$ containing the optimum with initial step size $\sigma = 3$ we optimize until reaching the (rather exact) target precision of $f_{tar}=10^{-10}$.

All hyperparameters of LM-MA-ES and MA-ES are given in Algorithm \ref{ALLALGOS}.
We use LM-CMA-ES \citep{loshchilov2017lm}, VD-CMA-ES \citep{akimoto2014comparison} and the active ($\mu/\mu_{w},\lambda$)-CMA-ES \citep{2010HansenBBOBActiveCMA,2006ArnoldActiveCMA} (aCMA-ES, known to be up to 2 times more efficient than the default CMA-ES) as baselines. The source code of LM-MA-ES is available
in the supplementary material.

LM-MA-ES does not show performance degradation when applied to translated and rotated test functions (see also Figure 1 in the supplementary material).
Figure~\ref{fig:runtime} shows the effect of the $\mathcal{O}\big(n\log(n)\big)$ scaling of the runtime per sample as compared to $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ of fast-MA-ES (in the following denoted as MA-ES), measured for implementations of the algorithms in plain C.

\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{lmma_vs_ma}
\end{center}
\caption{
\label{fig:limited-vs-full}
Runtime in number of function evaluations (rows 1--2) and seconds (rows 3--4) of LM-MA-ES in 128 to 8192 dimensions and fast MA-ES in 128 to 1024 dimensions on six standard benchmark problems.
}
\end{figure}

The much better internal scaling is of value only if the algorithm does not pay a too high price in terms of an increased number of function evaluations required to reach $f_{tar}$. Therefore we test LM-MA-ES against MA-ES with full rank transformation matrix. Figure~\ref{fig:limited-vs-full} shows that LM-MA-ES performs surprisingly well: in many cases it is actually faster and this tends to happen more often for larger $n$. LM-MA-ES is always faster in terms of wall clock time, in some cases by a factor of 100.

Figure \ref{fig:algorithm-comparison} shows that LM-MA-ES scales favorably compared to LM-CMA-ES achieving better scaling on the Rosenbrock and Discus functions, but a worse scaling on Cigar. The latter result might be due to an improper setting of the hyperparameters, a problem that can most probably be fixed with the technique proposed in \citep{loshchilov2014maximum}. VD-CMA is not able to solve some rotated functions efficiently due to the restrictions on the covariance matrix that the algorithm assumes \citep{akimoto2014comparison,loshchilov2017lm}.

\begin{figure}%
\includegraphics[width=0.33\textwidth]{sphere.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.33\textwidth]{rotelli.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.33\textwidth]{rosen.pdf}\\
\includegraphics[width=0.33\textwidth]{rotdiscus.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.33\textwidth]{cigar.pdf}
\includegraphics[width=0.33\textwidth]{sumpow.pdf}
\caption{
\label{fig:algorithm-comparison}
Median number of function evaluations (out of 5 runs) required to achieve a target objective function value of $f_{tar}=10^{-10}$. The results of VD-CMA-ES are shown only on  functions where the algorithm succeeded achieving $f_{tar}$.
Some results for CMA-ES and MA-ES are missing due to their extremely long runtimes (note that the vertical axis shows function evaluations, not runtime).}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Adversarial Inputs}

Several standard classifiers like the $k$-nearest-neighbor predictor (without distance-based weights), decision trees, and random forests are not differentiable with respect to their inputs. The predictions are piecewise constant and hence trivially piecewise differentiable, however, the gradient is zero and hence uninformative. This is a significant complication when generating adversarial inputs \citep{szegedy2013intriguing} for such classifiers, a problem for which only rather weak attacks exist \citep{kantchelian2016evasion,xu2016automatically}. We compare MA-ES and LM-MA-ES on this task. To this end we train a random forest consisting of 1000 trees on the MNIST data set (784 dimensional input, 10 classes, 60,000 training points, 10,000 test points). It achieves a test error of $97.21\%$, which is clearly worse than the results obtained with convolutional neural networks, however, the predictor is highly non-trivial in the sense of being far from guessing performance. Let $h$ denote the random forest predictor, let $\vc{x}_0$ denote a correctly classified test point (of which we have 9721), and let ${y}_0$ denote the corresponding label. For an input $\vc{x}$, the random forest predictor outputs a probability vector $h(\vc{x}) \in \mathbb{R}^{10}$. We create an adversarial version of $(\vc{x}_0, {y}_0$) by minimizing the objective function
\begin{align}
	\label{eq:fitness}
	f(\vc{x}) = \begin{cases}
			h(\vc{x})_{{y}_0} - \max\{(h(\vc{x})_i \,|\, i \not= y_0\} & \text{if $\vc{x}$ is classified as ${y}_0$} \\
            \frac{-1}{\|\vc{x} - \vc{x}_0\|} & \text{otherwise}
		\end{cases}
\end{align}
starting from $\vc{x} = \vc{x}_0$ with initial step size $\sigma = 1$, where an MNIST digit is encoded as a vector $\vc{x} \in \mathbb{R}^{784}$, with gray values in the interval $[0, 255]$.
The case distinction encodes a preference for wrongly classified points: correctly classified points have a positive value, wrongly classified points have a (better) negative value. For positive values the incentive is to reduce the difference between the fraction of trees voting for the correct label $\vc{y}_0$ and the strongest alternative. For a wrongly classified point the continuous trend moves the point back as close as possible to the original image, in terms of Euclidean distance. Note that due to invariance under rank-preserving transformations, the second term is exactly equivalent to minimization of the distance between $\vc{x}$ and~$\vc{x}_0$.

\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{.5\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.16\textwidth]{original.png}~~\includegraphics[width=0.16\textwidth]{difference.png}~~\includegraphics[width=0.16\textwidth]{adversarial.png}
\caption{
\label{figure:MNIST}
Original image (left) and corresponding adversarial image (right), created through a run of LM-MA-ES. The images are visually indistinguishable. The (boosted) difference image is shown in the center; mid gray corresponds to a difference of zero.\vspace*{-1.0em}
}
\end{wrapfigure}

Each of the 9721 optimization runs was restricted to a very low budget of 1000 objective function evaluations. This seems reasonable from a security perspective, since querying the classifier too frequently renders a remote attack inefficient.
We used the sklearn implementation of the random forest \citep{scikit-learn} and implementations of MA-ES and LM-MA-ES based on numpy. The overall experiment takes about two hours for LM-MA-ES and about 7 hours for MA-ES on a laptop. The optimizers managed to turn 6152 (MA-ES) and 6321 (LM-MA-ES) images into wrongly classified inputs. In all cases, they were visually indistinguishable from the original test inputs (see Figure~\ref{figure:MNIST}).
The surprisingly high rate of about 65\% of correctly classified test inputs that were successfully turned into adversarial versions demonstrates that random forests can be highly unstable and rather easy to fool by an adversarial.

From an optimization point of view, LM-MA-ES performed clearly better than plain MA-ES. It ran about 3.5 times faster and even produced better results: in 7171 cases LM-MA-ES reached a lower objective value, while MA-ES was better in only 2550 out of 9721 cases. This is also reflected by the larger number of cases in which an adversarial input was found (6321 vs.\ 6152, see above).

Optimization progress over time is plotted in Figure~\ref{figure:progress} for four subsets of runs of varying difficulty. In all cases, LM-MA-ES is slightly faster. Significant differences can be observed only for the easiest problems, where MA-ES fails to improve the solution, presumably due to the small budget of objective function evaluations. In a control experiment we verified that the performance of MA-ES is only insignificantly improved compares to a simple ES without matrix adaptation, which is restricted to the adaptation of the global step size.

The better quality of the results given the same number of objective function evaluations can be explained by the low-rank structure of the LM-MA-ES steps. Adapting a full $784 \times 784$ transformation matrix with only 1000 function evaluations is a hopeless undertaking, while the top $23 = \lfloor 4 + 3 \log(784) \rfloor$ directions are much easier to adapt. This difference allows LM-MA-ES to use learning rates that are up to several orders of magnitude larger than for MA-ES, resulting in faster adaptation to the problem at hand.
From the difference image in Figure~\ref{figure:MNIST} we clearly see a bright blob, indicating that LM-MA-ES has identified a subspace with a meaningful interpretation for the problem at hand. In contrast, the plain ES without matrix adaptation applies only white noise distortions, and this is also what's encoded by the initial search distribution of MA-ES and LM-MA-ES.

\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{.5\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{progress}
\caption{\label{figure:progress}
Progress over 1000 function evaluations (44 iterations) of LM-MA-ES and MA-ES on the task of generating adversarial inputs. The figure shows four objective function curves corresponding to equation~\eqref{eq:fitness} for each algorithm, referring to medians over 100 runs each. The 9721 problems were sorted by their initial objective value. We consider problems 0 to 99 (the 100 simplest problems), problems 1000 to 1099, 2000 to 2099, and 5000 to 5099.\vspace*{-2em}}
\end{wrapfigure}

Returning to our initial questions we conclude that LM-MA-ES successfully marries the simplicity of the update mechanisms of MA-ES with the graceful scaling of large-scale optimizers like LM-CMA-ES to large~$n$. LM-MA-ES is competitive with MA-ES in terms of the required number of objective function evaluations, while reducing the algorithm internal cost per sample considerably from $\mathcal{O}\big(n^2\big)$ down to $\mathcal{O}\big(n \log(n) \big)$. Taken together this yields in significant speed-ups for high-dimensional problems. By applying our algorithm to the problem of generating adversarial inputs for a random forest classifier, we demonstrate the value of LM-MA-ES for this domain, and uncover a surprising vulnerability of random forests with respect to the existence of adversarial inputs.

\section{Conclusion}

The recently proposed Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy is a simpler variant of the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy. We showed that the $O(n^2)$ time and space complexity of MA-ES, which is prohibiting for large $n$, can be reduced to $O\big(n\log(n)\big)$ adopting the approach used in~\citep{loshchilov2017lm}. The proposed Limited-Memory Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy matches the state-of-the-art results on large-scale optimization problems while being algorithmically simpler than LM-CMA-ES.

Future work should investigate to which extent the inclusion of the rank-$\mu$ update can improve the performance.
The learning rates of LM-MA-ES can be optimized online as it is commonly done in self-adaptive evolutionary algorithms \citep{beyer2001self} or based on the maximum-likelihood principle~\citep{loshchilov2014maximum}.

A promising venue for LM-MA-ES would be to accelerate Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) for training deep neural networks by replacing the evolution path vectors by momentum vectors based on noisy batch gradients. The method could potentially represent an alternative to L-BFGS and numerous SGD variants with adaptive learning rates.

\bibliographystyle{plain}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


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Independence community comes together to get holiday display up after severe storms
by: Tia Johnson
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — Strong winds and a thunderstorm almost ruined a Christmas tradition in Independence, Missouri, but the community came together to perform a holiday miracle.
Saturday night was the first day the Crysler Lights were up and running after Wednesday night.
"We came through and saw the Halloween lights a couple of months ago and the show that they've done has been really spectacular," Chris Hayes, who went to look at the lights, said.
Several cars were parked across the street to watch and listen to the tradition.
The storm tore through the holiday set up and damaged several props and wires, but this was not the case a few days ago.
"We heard about the storm a couple of nights ago and we were very devastated," Hayes said
Owner of the Crysler Lights, Dallas Rose, said he had to repair everything but had the community's help doing it.
"I think it's cool that the community kind of came together and helped put the lights back up," Tonya Cloe, who went to look at the lights, said.
Read more local, state and national news on FOX4
Rose said the community helped raise $1,800 to help put everything back together.
A mega tree is still missing but they didn't want to let that stop the Christmas fun because not even the Grinch disguised as mother nature could stop this tradition for families.
"I think it's pretty awesome that people can do that for each other," Hunter Chaney, who went to look at the lights, said. "Some people don't have a lot so they can come here and look at the lights and stuff."
Kansas City Chiefs / 35 seconds ago
Community / 5 mins ago


A BOLLYWOOD-style ball in aid of the Chiltern Centre for disabled children in Henley raised more than £10,000.
The black-tie event, held at the town hall on Friday, began with a drinks reception in the council chamber before a dinner in the Queen Elizabeth II hall.
The 120 diners took part in a raffle, a fund-raising game, a silent auction and a live auction presided over by TV antiques expert Jonty Hearnden. Lots included afternoon tea at Phyllis Court Club in Henley, a personal tour of West Ilsley Stables, near Newbury, and having your name written into a book written by novelist Giovanna Fletcher.
The money raised from the event will go towards the running costs of the centre, off Greys Road.
The event was sponsored by Newtown Car Services, Mercers Law and Laithwaites Wines and supported by the Spice Merchant restaurant, Clique Booths and Lovibonds Brewery.


Mid April, that Japanese maple explodes first with leaves and the giant oak trees follow its little footsteps a few weeks later. It all happens at once. Most years no one sees it. One day there are no leaves. Next day a million leaves. The grass greens. There's a hammock sometimes to nap in and those darn squirrels are at the bird feeders at all hours. In the distance there, beyond the road, there used to be four solitary homes, also covered in green. They were also hard to see, hiding, blending in as if they belonged there. In this old photo, the roofline of one juts out from under the greenery. But while the blooming of the front yard appears to occur overnight, the disappearing of old homes, rentals, the removal of all that vegetation, and the building of new roads, new lines for water, sewer, gas, and electricity, and thirty-two new houses, these things take years, so that, without photographic evidence, it is hard to remember or imagine how different things used to be in those greener, quieter days.


A family business manufacturing specialist electronic components has been operating a small self-administered scheme with Rowanmoor Pensions for over 25 years.
The SSAS was originally established with mother and father as sole members and trustees to build a retirement fund while retaining the valuable ability to access their funds for legitimate business purposes. Indeed, at various times, the funds within the SSAS have been used to acquire and hold both freehold and leasehold commercial property and make loans back to the company to help fund capital projects.
Father reached age 75 some while before A-Dayand the trustees bought him an annuity, which he continues to receive today.
After A-Day, mother too reached 75. Under the standard terms available from a Rowanmoor Pensions SSAS at the time, the trustees were able to offer her annuity purchase, scheme pension or alternatively secured pension. Mother declined the annuity option and the aggregate (up to 82 per cent) tax charge on any death benefits paid as a lump sum under Asp, was equally unattractive.
Accordingly, it was agreed that the trustees would grant mother a scheme pension on her 75th birthday at a level that was actuarially calculated. This scheme pension incorporated an allowance for widower's pension and a guaranteed minimum 10-year payment period. Crucially, for reasons that become apparent later, the fund supporting this scheme pension remained an asset of the SSAS under the trustees' control.
Today, the scheme membership comprises mother and her son Martin, who now runs the business. Both are trustees of the scheme. While father is no longer formally associated with the scheme, he continues to take a keen interest in both the scheme affairs and in the business he founded.
Martin is building up a pension fund of his own in the SSAS and while, during his 10 years as MD, the use of the fund assets to acquire commercial premises has been actively considered, to date, no project has come to fruition.
As part of the business's expansion into a different area of manufacturing, a significant piece of plant will be required – a specialist lathe at a cost of around £100,000. While the company could afford to fund this purchase out of cashflow or with some direct bank borrowing, Rowanmoor Pensions has been working with Martin to consider how the pension scheme might be able to assist with this purchase.
Before A-Day, it was perfectly acceptable for trustees to use funds directly to acquire plant and machinery and lease it back to the company.
However, to do so post-A-Day results in the trustees acquiring tangible, moveable property, which is subject to a tax charge. Instead, we have resorted to the age-old and time-honoured method of making a loanback from the scheme to the company.
SSAS funds have been used to acquire and hold both freehold and leasehold commercial property and make loans back to the company to help fund capital projectsdemonstrably commercial, with loan and capital repay-able in equal instalments over the loan term, which cannot exceed five years.
The terms of the loan, therefore, are certainly no worse than those available from their own bankers, who, not surprisingly, expect the company to jump through hoops before making funds available. In this instance, because the company is paying a significant cash dep-osit towards the lathe purchase, the piece of plant itself is being used as security for the loan.
If the scheme's total value comprised only Martin's share of the fund, the amount required would be marginally in excess of the 50 per cent of net asset value maximum loan.
However, since mother's share of the fund has been retained by the trustees to pay her scheme pension, it also counts towards the total net asset value of the scheme. In aggregate, the total scheme value exceeds double the loanback capital required.
Mother's share of the fund will remain untouched, professionally managed by a professional private client portfolio manager while Martin is able to use the bulk of his share of the scheme assets to fund a project which he and the board consider to be a major building block for the future prosperity of the business. Furthermore, because the company is buying the lathe, they will have full access to all capital allowances available.
In the run-up to A-Day in 2006, and indeed since, many commentators suggested that SSAS was effectively dead. This case study demonstrates that this is not the case. SSAS continue to offer owners of trading businesses, who wish to pool pension fund resources and retain access to them for legitimate business purposes, considerable advantages.


text:
GOLF CERTIFICATION COURSES
BOOKS AND APPARELL
A trip to Ireland
by visualwebz | Aug 8, 2019 | Blog, Reviews, Travel Reviews |
A trip to Ireland – why the Emerald Isle offers, tourists, golfers, visitors and whiskey aficionados a visit full of exploration, superb scenery, phenomenal golf courses and fun-filled pubs!
"Céad Míle Fáilt"
(A Hundred Thousand Welcomes!)
Ireland Golf outdid itself in 2019.
This was the year that Irish golf took center stage. Not only did an Irishman, Shane Lowry, win The 148th British Open, but Royal Portrush, the site of the championship, received compliments from both the players and the attendees.
The R&A did an outstanding job in not only preparing the course, a "real proper links", but all the ancillary infrastructure — player friendly and definitely visitor friendly. 237,000 tickets were sold and probably another 100,000 were needed.
Portrush putting green.
The Open shop was stocked to the rafters and the merchandize flew out of the store as though they were giving everything away for free.
A trip to the Emerald Isle, whether for a golf trip, a vacation, or a whiskey experience, is definitely a bucket list item. The pace of life is remarkably sedate and Irish welcomes really are as warm as the legend suggests. The "greenness" of Ireland is everywhere you travel.
Ireland is famous for having a third of the world's links courses, making devotees of seaside golf chomping at the bit.
As for whiskey lovers and enthusiasts, there are more than 30 whiskey distilleries spread across Eire. The "water of life" has been distilled in Ireland since the sixth century and with the iconic distilleries of Jameson's, Tullamore, Bushmills and D.E.W. beckoning, there is no better time to explore the island's whiskey story. Also take time to visit Glendalough, Clonakilty and Echlinvilole to sample a new generation of whiskey makers.
As for golfing, Ireland has iconic venues such as Ballybunion, Portmarnock, Royal County Down and Lahinch as their standard bearers, but there are so many more outstanding courses that most golfers have never experienced. A review of 6 courses follows that merit your consideration and a visit in your future travel plans.
This is the course that Padraig Harrington won the Irish PGA in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Rory McIlroy won the Irish Amateur in 2006 and where Tiger set the links record at 67.Be familiar with the first rule of Irish golf: Ignore the weather forecast! Showers are predicted every day, but I was lucky to have a total of just 5 hours of rain over the six courses I played during 7 days of golf. By being a seaside links, the wind, of course, does blow often. Be prepared to learn how to hit shots that stay below the wind and have patience to only hit a shot in between gusts, if possible. As locals like to say, "The weather is as dry as the locals' humor".
Ireland's west side, also referred to as the Wild Atlantic Way, the world's longest defined coastal touring route, holds some terrific seaside courses that are half as expensive and twice as much fun as better-known venues — and you don't need to call a year in advance for a tee time. This is the Ireland that existed before Ballybunion became the Pebble Beach of Europe. In fact, the western coast of Ireland can lay claim to the finest array of links courses in the world (sorry, Bandon Dunes and St. Andrews).
The Wild Atlantic Way includes magnificent beaches, cliffs, bays and surfing seas stretching from remote Malin and the northern headlands to near sub-tropical waters and gardens ending in tranquil Kinsale Harbour in the south. It is a must to explore!
And along the way it enables and enhances some of the world's greatest links golf!
Without any fear of contradiction, playing The European Club was the highlight of my trip!
The European Club is just 30 minutes south of Dublin.
Not only is the European Club ranked in the World's Top-100 Golf Courses, but its owner and designer, Pat Ruddy, the "Master of the Links", is in my Top 100 most interesting, magnanimous and fascinating people in golf, whom I have been fortunate enough to meet and spend time with in their company.
Golf Magazine USA ranked The European Club in their World Top 100 Golf Courses list in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015.
Pat Ruddy is synonymous with Irish golf — from his personal collection of over 6,500 golf books, to his exceptional golf design skills. Many courses around Ireland have some sort of a Pat Ruddy touch. He is a walking encyclopedia of every aspect of links style golf courses.
Golf Magazine, in collaboration with ten other international golf magazines, nominated the course in their The 500 Greatest Golf Holes in the World, wherein
three holes are from the links of The European Club.
The par-4 seventh, measuring 470-yards, was named as one of the Worlds 100 Best Holes.
The par-5 thirteenth and par-3 fourteenth were named amongst the Worlds 500 Best Holes.
On a broader scale, nine of the Top-40 Golf Courses in Ireland, per Golf Digest, have been designed or substantially redesigned by Pat Ruddy and nine of his venues are listed in the Top-100 Golf Courses in Great Britain & Ireland.
Of all the courses I have played in Ireland on my two trips there, The European Club, on the County Wicklow coastline, about 30 miles from Dublin is, by far, my favorite. This is a course I could play every day. The flow of the course is its USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Every hole follows a natural progression and that of marvelous and thoughtful design.
The European Club is extremely challenging off the back tees and views of the infamous railway-sleeper lined bunkers only add to the difficulty. Caveat: Offline hits are prejudicial to say the least, but the saving grace is that the beach is in play on the back nine!
The course boasts 20 holes (two additional par threes) and that back nine will live long in my memory with holes like 11, 12, 15 and 17 utterly captivating.
The restaurant food is above par and the service exemplary.
Depending on the time of year, green fees range from €120 (November 1 to March 31) to €225 (April 1 to October 31 with July 1 – July 31 at €250).
http://www.theeuropeanclub.com
County Sligo (Rosses Pt) Golf Course
18 holes, par 71, 6609 yards. Links.
This is an awesome golf course! It is often referred to as the "Grand Dame" of Northwest Ireland golf courses. I daresay that if this course was located elsewhere, other than northwest Ireland, it would join the ranks of "must play" a la Ballybunion or Lahinch, as County Sligo is widely regarded as one of the greatest championship links courses in Ireland.
The 125-year old course is located in the picturesque village of Rosses Point and known locally as 'The Point'. The original 9-hole course, founded in 1894, is now a world class 27-hole complex with modern facilities and a spacious clubhouse.
The west side of the course is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean. The view to the north is dominated by Benbulben; an impressive glacier cut rock formation bearing a strong resemblance to Cape Town's Table Mountain. The east has great views of the Dartary Mountains, while the south vista is completed by Knocknarea.
The traditional links layout was designed by Harry Colt who was reputed to have been influenced by the layout of St Andrews Old Course in his creation of County Sligo. Colt utilized the natural contours of the dune-covered landscape, rather than moving large amounts of earth during its design. On the fairways you'll play from crisp turf, while the undulating greens are defended by plenty of deep sand traps. The end result is a course filled with dramatic flowing fairways, elevated tees, and raised plateau greens.
The 7th, 8th and 14th holes are all stunning, due to the crossing of Mahon's Burn – a meandering stream awaiting any miss-hit shots!
County Sligo, in my opinion, serves the best fish and chips that I have tasted in Ireland!
Rates are between €115 and €205 depending on the time of year and hour of play.
www.countysligogolfclub.ie
I highly recommend the Radisson Blu Hotel in Rosses Point, County Sligo as the best place to stay. It is modern, with great rooms and food service, especially at the bar.
Tel: 00353 71 914 0008. www.radissonblu.com/en/hotel-sligo
Narin & Portnoo Golf Course, Portnoo, County Donegal, Ireland
The Narin & Portnoo Golf Club was formed as a 9-hole course in 1930, until it was extended to the full 18 in 1965. Many regard this to be one of the most natural courses of all time, but it hasn't quite received the recognition it deserves. Maybe this is because of its remote location.
Liam McDevitt is the new owner. Liam is from Donegal, but now based in New York.
McDevitt instituted a major redesign of the course and refurbishment of the clubhouse.
Gil Hanse of the United States did an exemplary job of turning this truly spectacular setting into a true test of pure links golf.
Golfers playing Narin & Portnoo Golf Course will need all their skills to effectuate a range of different shots. With the course's tight doglegs, cavernous terrain, raised greens and twisting fairways, players will need to have their wits about them if they're looking to score well.
The signature par three is played over a gorge onto a two-tiered green where making par is anything but easy. If you're looking to play a simple, old-fashioned and rewarding links course, then Narin & Portnoo is the place for your golf vacation.
Rates are €60 during off season and €120 normally. Caddies are available, as are carts (buggies).
ww.narinandportnoolinks.com
Donegal Golf Club, Murvagh, County Donegal, Ireland
Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Donegal Bay and a designated Special Area of Conservation, it is one of the longest golf courses in Europe, measuring a massive 7,453 yards from the championship tees.
Donegal Golf Course was originally designed by Eddie Hackett, a legend of Irish golf course architecture and is often referred to as the Muirfield of Ireland. This links course is built on a promontory of 182 acres that extends out into the Atlantic Ocean. The course, built on land of geological significance, was inhabited in past centuries, and the earliest of Irish maps indicate this.
The original clubhouse was a caravan, to be replaced some months later, by a railway carriage. In 1976, a new clubhouse was built. We had lunch in the clubhouse and the food at the restaurant was terrific!
The course, a par 73 for both men and women, consists of five Par 5's, four Par 3's and nine Par 4's, stretching over 7400 yards from the tips, with five regulation tees from each hole, plus a beginner tee.
Over the years the course has been re-molded by the "Master of Links design", Pat Ruddy, with Pat still dropping by to lend his expertise to the club and help it continuously evolve.
The outside loop plays along the dunes and the ocean, providing stunning views of the surrounding area. The inner loop is more protected, however, the constantly changing sea breeze provides a continuing test for both pro and amateur golfer. Despite its length, the course is an easy walk, broken up by the outstanding views, wildlife and display of fauna and flora that continues to change and evolve throughout the year.
Darren Clarke, the 2011 Open Champion and member of the Course, states that Donegal Golf Club is "one of my favorite courses in the world".
Donegal is an easy walk and a welcome break from the roller coaster dunes found on other links courses. The panoramic views of Donegal Bay and the surrounding countryside are sensational and the peninsula itself is steeped in local and ancient history.
One of my many favorite holes during my visit was Hole 5 – Valley of Tears – 196 yards.
With no fairway, this par 3 is certainly a challenge. Aim at the bunker back left from the tee. Fail to carry the valley, and you are left with a testing shot from an extremely deep bunker. The bowl shape of the green is forgiving, feeding the ball toward the pin, if it is placed kindly, This hole gives up more holes-in-one here than any other hole on the course, but just hit your best shot of the day to the green and walk on.
Green Fees November – March April & October May – September
18 Holes €50 €100 €130
www.donegalgolfclub.ie
Cruit Island Golf Club, Kincasslagh, County Donegal, Ireland
18 Holes, Par 68, Length 5141 yards
Roughly 40 minutes farther north from Portnoo on the Donegal Coast lies a golf course that has been described as simply one of the greatest 9-hole courses on earth. The course is set on the edge of the wild and rugged Atlantic Ocean — next stop America! You will savor unrestricted panoramic views that will take your breath away, especially its iconic 6th hole hitting over the Atlantic Ocean onto the green on the cliff edge.
The views afforded by Cruit Island are outstanding, on a par with world favorites such as Pebble Beach, Old Head, Kingsbarn in Scotland, Pinnacle Point in South Africa, and Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand. Cruit Island is a true natural 9-hole links course where every shot must be methodically thought out.
Cruit Island Golf Club (pronounced "Crutch" Island), is purely and simply a must visit. Place it on your bucket list.
What's so great about the course is that you can play there for about one tenth of the cost of the aforementioned "name" courses!
Rates are €35 per person!
www.cruitislandgolflclub.com
Concra Wood Golf Club, Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan
18 Holes, Par 72, 6635 yards
This was one of the nicest courses I got to play. So different from the true links courses, yet overall most enjoyable in all aspects such as setting, views, flow, operations staff and FUN to play. Concra Wood is a beautiful and evocative setting for a golf course.
The golf course was designed by two of Ireland's golfing legends: Christy O'Connor Junior and Senior.
Overlooking Lough Muckno, a lake, the shape and flow of the golf course are perfectly complemented by the drumlins that roll across the countryside. The wooded landscape tilts down into Lough Muckno. The views are spectacular, stretching across the Monaghan Drumlins to the Cooley and Mourne Mountains to the east, and the Slieve Gullion and Mullyash Mountains to the north. And all the while you are surrounded by the lake and its scattering of islands, including Black Island, Otter Island, Crane Island and White Island. It is a unique setting that golfers, fishermen and walkers will love.
This easy rhythm adds to the beauty of the course and its challenges, and it will inspire every golfer who chooses to play here. Woods and trees stretch their way elegantly around the course and between holes to give Concra Wood a truly natural touch.
This challenging course! It is a tough walk and accurate driving will help your score and prevent the loss of many golf balls in the water or gorse. There are plenty of hills between tees and on some holes. I suggest a cart. The course has a great club house with outstanding food and drink.
Rates range from €50 to €85
www.concrawood.ie
Ireland is a great country for its outstanding scenery, friendly citizens, plentiful whiskey and some of the best golf I have ever experienced. I look forward to my third visit to Ireland in the not too distant future.
A special word of thanks go to my hosts, Rory Mathews of Fáilte Ireland and Bernard McMullan of Tourism Ireland.
Barry Lotz, J.D., Ph.D. is the director of the Professional Golf Teachers Association of America. Visit www/facebook.com/PGTAA to see all the latest mental strategies and equipment reviews. He is a member of the Golf Writers Association of America and serves both as a Consultant and Mediator to the golf industry. He is also the author of numerous books, including "333 Best Web Sites for Golfers" and his previous book, "How to Build Business Relationships through Golf", updated for 2011, is still in the Top Ten Golf Business Book's best seller list. His latest book, "The Right Mind for Golf", is now in its 7th reprint is available on Amazon and at the Torrey Pines golf course
He can be reached at drlotz@cbsgolf.net
PGTAA
PGTAA Endorsed Products
PGTAA (Professional Golf Teachers Association of America)
Titleist Introduces Next Generation Tour Soft Golf Ball – Real Performance with Responsive Feel
2020 Tour Soft Delivers More Distance, Improved Short-Game Performance With New Alignment Sidestamp
The largest core ever produced by Titleist golf ball engineers drives longer distance and better short game performance in the new Titleist Tour Soft, available beginning Jan. 22 in golf shops worldwide.
The Titlest Tour Soft was first introduced two years ago, utilizing new material and process technologies to deliver the best performance in its category – offering a superior combination of soft compression feel, very fast speed for commanding distance and excellent short game spin and control.
For golfers who prefer a softer-feeling golf ball, the new 2020 Tour Soft improves upon its prior generation with real performance advancements to help them play better:
• Titleist's largest golf ball core is now even larger, delivering faster ball speeds for category-leading distance off the tee.
• The larger core size required engineers to make Tour Soft's high-performance 4CE grafted cover system even thinner, producing increased short game spin around the green.
• Enhanced aerodynamics – a new spherically-tiled 342 cuboctahedron dimple design – provides a more penetrating ball flight.
• Doubling as an alignment aid, the new Tour Soft "T" side stamp provides golfers the option for easy alignment on the tee or green.
"Golfers wanting to play a softer-feeling ball shouldn't have to sacrifice yards off the tee or control into the green. We know they have real golf to play and their ball has to be much more than just soft," said Michael Mahoney, Vice President, Titleist Golf Ball Marketing. "The new generation of Tour Soft continues to show what's possible in a lower compression design. Our engineers have developed a longer, all-around better performing golf ball that maintains the soft and responsive feel that golfers love about this product."
The new Tour Soft, offered in both white and high-optic yellow, is manufactured by Titleist associates at Titleist's owned-and-operated Ball Plant 2 in North Dartmouth, Mass., ensuring the most consistent performance and quality in every dozen and every ball.
NEW ALIGNMENT STAMP
Tour Soft's side stamp has been redesigned and integrated into a new alignment aid feature for 2020. The alignment stamp – resembling a "T" shape – makes it easier for golfers to line up their Tour Soft on the green or tee, without having to mark lines on the ball.
"When we began offering alignment aid stamps through our My Titleist customizer (on Titleist.com) in February of 2018, they instantly became the most popular options among golfers choosing to add custom logos to their golf ball," said Michael Fish, Titleist Golf Ball Product Manager. "Our research and testing with Tour Soft golfers showed an overwhelming preference for using an enhanced alignment stamp and they put this 'T' mark at the top of their list."
2020 TOUR SOFT PERFORMANCE & TECHNOLOGY
The new Titleist Tour Soft is engineered to provide golfers with better performance for their game, delivering responsive soft feel, commanding distance and excellent short-game performance through the following key technologies:
• Reformulated, Larger and Faster Core – the largest of any Titleist golf ball – delivers longer distance and responsive feel.
• Thinner 4CE Grafted Cover – developed using ultra-thin TCU process technology – generates more greenside spin for better control into and around the green.
• Spherically-Tiled 342 Cuboctahedron Dimple Design provides a more penetrating and consistent ball flight.
The new Titleist Tour Soft available in golf shops worldwide beginning Jan. 22. MAP $34.99.The ... See MoreSee Less
Titleist Introduces Next Generation Tour Soft Golf Ball – Real Performance with Responsive Feel - Titleist (news)
mediacenter.titleist.com
FAIRHAVEN, Mass. (Jan. 15, 2020) – The largest core ever produced by Titleist golf ball engineers drives longer distance and better short game performance in the new Titleist Tour Soft, available be...
Titleist Introduces New Scotty Cameron Special Select Putters
New Tour-Inspired Blade and Mid-Mallet Designs Provide Pure Performance, Solid Milled Feel.
The new Scotty Cameron Special Select putter line blends timeless designs with modern craftsmanship to deliver pure tour-validated performance in eight new blade and mid-mallet setups precision milled in the USA.
Available Jan. 24 in North American golf shops (and March 27 worldwide), Special Select putters are inspired by the classic, solid milled designs that Master Putter Maker Scotty Cameron has crafted for tour players around the world – featuring sleeker putter head profiles with thinner and flatter toplines, refined neck configurations, soft tri-soles, and performance balanced weighting.
Each Special Select putter has been completely reworked, including Scotty's classic Newport, Newport 2 and Newport 2.5 blade styles. A refined Del Mar joins the new Fastback 1.5, Squareback 2, Flowback 5 and Flowback 5.5 mid-mallet models.
QUOTING SCOTTY CAMERON
"I'm always inspired by the putters that result from working directly with the best players in the world," Cameron said. "With Special Select, I wanted to get back to the pure-milled shapes and faces that I've been crafting for tour players for over two decades now. We've brought those designs into the modern era with new setups, necks, faces, grips, and weights. Every aspect of every putter has been redone. When it all came together, it was pretty special."
SPECIAL SELECT PERFORMANCE & TECHNOLOGY
Special Select putters are meticulously crafted to provide pure performance and feel through the following key features:
• TOUR-INSPIRED SHAPES: Sleeker putter head profiles with thinner, flatter toplines deliver confidence-inspiring looks preferred by tour professionals.
• SOLID MILLED STAINLESS STEEL CONSTRUCTION: Every Special Select is milled in the United States from a block of solid 303 stainless steel for legendary performance and playability with a consistent sound and soft feel.
• SOFT TRI-SOLE DESIGN: Special Select blade models are milled with a tour-inspired soft tri-sole design. This self-soling feature promotes a proper setup at address while providing a stable, aesthetically pleasing view of the topline from the moment the putter is placed on the green.
• PERFORMANCE BALANCED WEIGHTING: New performance balanced weighting expands on the use of Scotty's interchangeable, customizable sole weights to tune the performance and feel of putters at all lengths. By directing more weight to the heel and toe, the sweet spot is enlarged and stability is enhanced back and through the stroke without compromising feel or each model's unique toe flow properties. The blades come equipped with new tungsten sole weights, which allow for ultra-sleek, tour-validated shapes with larger sweet spots. The mid-mallets employ stainless steel sole weights for optimal balance and weight distribution.
• REFINED NECK CONFIGURATIONS: Each Special Select putter neck style has been revamped based on an intense and deliberate study in neck configurations. Newport, Newport 2 and Squareback 2 feature a slightly shorter plumbing neck for medium toe flow, with a newly-defined socket radius subtly repositioned with onset to provide clearer visibility of the leading edge at address. The Newport 2.5 and Fastback 1.5 each have a refined, toe flow-promoting small slant neck, while the rounded Flowback 5.5 comes with a new slantback neck for similar strokes. The heel-shafted Del Mar's flow neck is designed for maximum toe flow. The GOLO-inspired Flowback 5 limits toe flow with a more traditional mid-bend, shaft-over-spud setup.
SPECIAL SELECT MODELS
The Special Select line offers golfers the choice of three blade models and five mid-mallet options developed for every stroke style.
• Newport, Newport 2, Newport 2.5 models feature an insert-free, solid milled 303 stainless steel putter head with performance balanced tungsten sole weighting for a larger sweet spot and increased stability. Flatter and thinner toplines, milled flange sight lines, soft tri-soles and redesigned plumbing (Newport, Newport 2) and small slant (Newport 2.5) neck styles round out these timeless blade designs.
• A classic name returns with the new Special Select Del Mar in an updated heel-shafted, compact mallet model. Precision milled from solid 303 stainless steel, the new Del Mar features refined concave flange contours and a narrower, flatter topline for a player-preferred look at address, and customizable stainless steel sole weights. A left-handed Del Mar is also available.
• New Special Select Fastback 1.5, Squareback 2, Flowback 5 and Flowback 5.5 mid-mallet putters combine 6061 aircraft aluminum sole plates for optimal weight distribution with solid milled faces and interchangeable stainless steel sole weights. Each has a specific neck style – Fastback 1.5 (small slant), Squareback 2 (plumbing), Flowback (mid-bend shaft-over-spud) and Flowback 5.5 (slantback) – to facilitate better leading-edge visibility from address, as well as desired toe flow properties.
Each Special Select putter is accessorized with a new Pistolini Plus grip in cement gray with distinctive white lettering that retains the Pistolini shape with a slightly built up lower hand profile. This new grip complements an elegantly embroidered, red abrasion-resistant Special Select headcover with superior wear characteristics.
REFINED AESTHETICS
Scotty gave the Special Select line's raw stainless steel finish a unique bead blast for a radiant yet glare resistant appearance. Additionally, Scotty's signature three red dot pattern on the back cavity has a new look. Each dot has been milled with a recessed circular channel, polished and then hand-painted with cherry red translucent paint, creating a striking new "cherry rings" feature.
Special Select putters will be available Jan. 24 in North America and March 27 worldwide through Titleist authorized golf shops. MAP $399. ... See MoreSee Less
Lamkin Celebrates 95th Anniversary by Offering Free Grips to All Golfers via 'Upgrade with Lamkin' Program
Lamkin, one of the leading manufacturers of premium golf grips – is celebrating its 95th anniversary by offering one FREE swinging grip, including installation, to all golfers through the "Upgrade with Lamkin" program, beginning February 1 and running throughout 2020.
To celebrate Lamkin's 95th anniversary and the "Upgrade with Lamkin" program (also known as Regrip America for the trade) the company has launched a brand new website and a digital swinging grip fitting system. Golfers select their preferences among five variables (weather conditions, swing speed, preference for feel, tack, and traction) and the Lamkin AI algorithm suggests 3 grips from the 2020 line up that players should explore.
www.lamkingrips.com/upgrade ... See MoreSee Less
Upgrade | Lamkin Golf Grips - The Best Golf Grips for Your Game
www.lamkingrips.com
UPGRADE WITH LAMKIN FEEL #ALLTHEFEELS. TRUSTED BY MILLIONS OF GOLFERS. GET YOUR FREE GRIP TODAY. If you want to know when the Regrip America 2020 program is live, subscribe to our list. "The Upgrade...
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Phone: 760.335.0600 | Viber: 760.574.7676
Toll Free: 1.888.90PGTAA
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The Institute of Directors has said that the Eurozone must use the window of opportunity that an extension of the €60 billion-a-month stimulus package has created to embed ongoing structural reforms, particularly market flexibility, boost competitiveness and deliver a longer-term solution to create more sustainable growth. James Sproule, Chief Economist at the IoD, also warned that while UK exporters may feel the pinch of a depreciating euro, Mark Carney must still act to start normalising monetary policy here.
"Mario Draghi has bought the Eurozone precious time by extending the ECB's €60 billion-a-month bond-buying programme until March 2017. This is a stimulus package which the block clearly needs. On its own, however, money from the central bank will do little to address the Eurozone's underlying rigidity which has led to its chronic growth problems. The Eurozone clearly needs broad and deep structural reform of both labour and product markets, but this takes time. An extra dose of quantitative easing must be used to embed ongoing structural reforms, not put off hard decisions.
"Today's decision could have implications for businesses in Britain. It's likely the euro will gradually weaken through 2016, while the pound will strengthen, leading to a potential squeeze on British exporters. Goods and services will become more expensive for European customers, while most businesses will face fresh competition from firms on the continent that will undoubtedly benefit from a weak euro. Businesses in the UK are not going to become uncompetitive overnight, though they will need to pay even more attention to raising productivity and watching their margins for the foreseeable future.


text:
Aug. 24, 2002 / 10:01 PM
Haas withdraws from TD Waterhouse
COMMACK, N.Y., Aug. 24 (UPI) -- Top-seeded Tommy Haas of Germany was forced to withdraw Saturday night in what had been scheduled to be a semifinal meeting with Thailand's Paradorn Srichaphan at the TD Waterhouse Cup.
The defending champion experienced spasms in his left arm during a 15-minute practice session Saturday afternoon and was advised to withdraw by tournament physician Dr. David Dines. Haas suffered the injury by overcompensating for shoulder tendinitis.
"At the beginning of the week, I didn't know if I would be able to play, but it shows how much I like to compete," Haas said. "I'm icing it, having ultrasound and taking anti-inflammatories, but it's still a little swollen. I'm doing everything to get better, so hopefully it will be right for next week."
Srichaphan advanced to his second straight ATP final after reaching the title match last week in Washington. He will meet seventh seed Juan Ignacio Chela of Argentina in the final.
Chela outlasted fifth-seeded Spaniard Alex Corretja, 6-2, 2-6, 6-4, in Saturday's other semifinal.
Srichaphan has won nine of his last 10 matches but still has not won an ATP title.
"I've been playing a lot since last week and this is good for me to rest and get ready for the final," he said. "It's like a day off for me. The last couple of months I've been playing consistently and being patient. I've been working hard off the court, as well."
Srichaphan has lost both finals in which he has competed this year. He fell to Argentina's Guillermo Canas at Chennai, India during the opening week of the season.
Chela, who turns 23 next week, defeated Corretja for the third time this year. He also won meetings at the Scottsdale and Indian Wells hardcourt events.
"I think it's better for me to play him on hard court. I feel more comfortable against him on this surface," Chela said. "At the beginning of the match, he didn't look focused, but then he started to play better. I dropped my service twice in the second set and, after the set, I was a little worried."
Chela, who entered the year with a 24-31 career record, reached his third final this season. He won the claycourt event at Amersfoort.
Juan Ignacio Chela
Sports News // 10 hours ago
Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Tennis great Chris Evert, winner of 18 Grand Slam singles titles, has revealed she is suffering from stage 1 ovarian cancer.
NFL // 1 day ago
Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Just a few days removed from their national title win over the Alabama Crimson Tide, Georgia Bulldogs defensive stars Nakobe Dean, Travon Walker and Lewis Cine all declared for the 2022 NFL Draft on Friday.
Jan. 14 (UPI) -- New England Patriots starting left tackle Isaiah Wynn will miss Saturday's AFC wild-card game against the Buffalo Bills because of ankle and hip injuries, the team announced.
Sports News // 1 day ago
College football: Iowa Hawkeyes extend coach Kirk Ferentz through 2029 season
Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Iowa Hawkeyes head football coach Kirk Ferentz was rewarded with a contract extension through the 2029 season, the school announced Friday.
Sports News // 2 days ago
Djokovic's appeal of canceled visa moves to higher court ahead of Australian Open
Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Tennis star Novak Djokovic's ongoing fight to compete in the Australian Open despite being unvaccinated for COVID-19 moved to a higher court Saturday as the top-ranked player appealed the second cancellation of his visa.
NBA // 1 day ago
Washington Wizards head coach Wes Unseld Jr. enters COVID-19 protocols
Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Washington Wizards head coach Wes Unseld Jr. has entered the NBA's COVID-19 protocols.
Dubai Carnival kicks off with racing toward Saudi Cup, World Cup
Jan. 14 (UPI) -- The Dubai World Cup Carnival kicks off its eight-week run Friday with racing that will identify candidates for the $20 million Saudi Cup, the World Cup itself and other major races.
MIAMI, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Wild-card NFL playoff games top the weekend sports schedule. First-round 2022 Australian Open tennis matches, a PGA Tour tournament and NHL, NBA and college basketball regular-season games also air Friday through Sunday.
NHL // 2 days ago
NHL unveils rosters for 2022 All-Star Game; Sidney Crosby, Brad Marchand omitted
Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The NHL revealed its rosters for the 2022 All-Star Game in Las Vegas, with Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin and Edmonton Oilers teammates Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl headlining the list of participants.
NBA // 2 days ago
Detroit Pistons void Bol Bol trade with Denver Nuggets after failed physical
Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The trade agreement between the Denver Nuggets and Detroit Pistons involving Bol Bol was voided after the 7-foot-2 center failed his physical with the Pistons.


First you need a "sensor" in JMRI for every turnout you would like to lock. The system name for the "internal sensor" can be anything, IS01 or IS9009, not important. What matters is the "username", it has to start with "LCL", then the board's NodeNumber, like "1001" and then the turnout number on the board in 2 digits, like "01", so "LCL100104" is the 4th turnout on the board with number 1001.
This sensor will disallow the user at the board to press the button on it when the sensor you just created is ACTIVE. So on your display panel, use an icon, like a red lock, to indicate the ACTIVE or locked state. And then a green, unlocked icon for the INACTIVE or unlocked state.
Once you have all the LCL sensors in, or has finished all the changes to them, you need to run the "CANLocalControl_version.py" jython script (version=1.2 as of 2013.01.11) to attached listeners to each of the sensors so that, when you change its state, it can send the needed CAN messages on the bus.
Usually we add a "route" in the Route Table for this, so that you don't forget at start-up to deploy the Local Control part. Side note: Every board that has this local control implemented will have ALL its turnouts in the UNLOCK state on every power up...which allows you to change turnouts as soon as you turn the system on and do not have to wait for the computer and JMRI to launch to throw turnouts...so beware, a small power outage, and all your towns are unlocked again!
Once you have an LCL sensor for each turnout, and you don't need to display them all on the Panel, you can create a route to group them into towns or other collections and when the route is run, it will lock every "sensor" selected in the route and one created to unlock them again will do the opposite. It is also easy to create a Logix that would activate or inactivate groups or LCL sensors, all triggered by another button, sensor or event.


text:
Q: Get string between tag from a string I'm not very familiar with Regex so I'm asking it here.
I've a string like this:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN:A Sirius Swimwear Collection
N:Collection;A;Sirius Swimwear;;
TEL;TYPE=HOME:22448
TEL;TYPE=CELL:52316
ADR:;Taylors Road;;;;;
ORG:Norfolk Phone Book
END:VCARD
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN:A Walk in the Wild
N:Wild;A;Walk in the;;
TEL;TYPE=HOME:22502
item1.TEL:23205
item1.X-ABLabel:Facsimile
ADR:;Grassy Road;;;;;
ORG:Norfolk Phone Book
END:VCARD
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN:AATA Orn Tours
N:Tours;AATA;Orn;;
TEL;TYPE=HOME:23611
TEL;TYPE=CELL:50755
ADR:;Bookings;;;;;
ORG:Norfolk Phone Book
END:VCARD
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN:Aatuti Art
N:Art;Aatuti;;;
TEL;TYPE=HOME:23669
ADR:;The Village;;;;;
ORG:Norfolk Phone Book
END:VCARD
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN:ABC Hobby Centre
N:Centre;ABC;Hobby;;
TEL;TYPE=HOME:22139
ADR:;Taylors Road;;;;;
ORG:Norfolk Phone Book
END:VCARD
(...)

For those familiar with, it is a bunch of VCards and I want to get a VCard one by one from the String. So, I want to split it up in multiple Strings. I want to split with the BEGIN:VCARD and END:VCARD tags
End up with:
vcard1 = "BEGIN:VCARD
    VERSION:3.0
    FN:A Sirius Swimwear Collection
    N:Collection;A;Sirius Swimwear;;
    TEL;TYPE=HOME:22448
    TEL;TYPE=CELL:52316
    ADR:;Taylors Road;;;;;
    ORG:Norfolk Phone Book
    END:VCARD";

vcard2 = "BEGIN:VCARD
    VERSION:3.0
    FN:A Walk in the Wild
    N:Wild;A;Walk in the;;
    TEL;TYPE=HOME:22502
    item1.TEL:23205
    item1.X-ABLabel:Facsimile
    ADR:;Grassy Road;;;;;
    ORG:Norfolk Phone Book
    END:VCARD";

vcard3 = "BEGIN:VCARD
    VERSION:3.0
    FN:AATA Orn Tours
    N:Tours;AATA;Orn;;
    TEL;TYPE=HOME:23611
    TEL;TYPE=CELL:50755
    ADR:;Bookings;;;;;
    ORG:Norfolk Phone Book
    END:VCARD";

Honestly, I just need the right regex pattern as the cycles I'm able to do them.
This is in JAVA (For Android).
EDIT
This is what I've tried so far to no success:
if(vcard.contains("VERSION:"))
        {
            Log.d(TAG, "Creating the patterns");
            Pattern p = Pattern.compile("BEGIN:VCARD(.*)END:VCARD");

            Matcher m = p.matcher(vcard);

            if (m.find())
            {

                Log.d(TAG, "Find: " + m.group(1));

            }
            Log.d(TAG, "Not found anything");

A: You can use Pattern.DOTALL with your regex. It means In dotall mode, the expression dot(.) matches any character, including a line terminator and it will help you to match pattern from multiple lines.
String input = "__YOUR__VCARDS__";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(BEGIN:VCARD.*?END:VCARD)", Pattern.DOTALL);
Matcher m = pattern.matcher(input);
while (m.find()) {
    System.out.println(m.group(1));
}

A: You should try ez-vcard.  It's a Java vCard library that works on Android.
Disclaimer: I am the author ;)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: TypeError: 'set' object is not subscriptable my flask application gives a 'set' error I have been coding a RSS feed web app  but currently am having an error that I cant figure out;  this is my code :
import feedparser

from flask import Flask
from flask import render_template

app = Flask(__name__)

RSS = {"http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml",
   "http://rss.iol.io/iol/news", "http://feeds.foxnews.com/foxnews/latest", "http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss"}
#error occurs here

@app.route("/")
@app.route("/<publication>")
def get_news(publication="bbc"):
    #ERROR OCCURS HERE
    feed = feedparser.parse(RSS[publication])
    first_article = feed['entries'][0]

    return render_template("home.html",
                       title=first_article.get("title"),
                       published=first_article.get("publication"),
                       summary=first_article.get("summary"))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(debug=True, port=5000)

I get my error at these two lines
    feed = feedparser.parse(RSS[publication])
    first_article = feed['entries'][0]

can't figure out the actual error

A: As Iron Fist comments, it seems that you are defining a set and using it as dictionary. It's difficult to be sure, but for what I see in the code, RSS should actually be a dictionary, using the name of the feeder as key. So:
RSS = {"bbc":"http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml",
       "iol":"http://rss.iol.io/iol/news",
       "foxnews":"http://feeds.foxnews.com/foxnews/latest",
       "cnn":"http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss"}

A: As Iron Fist points out, RSS is a set (which aren't subscriptable), although it looks as though you're trying to use it as a dictionary. Based on the default value you use for get_news, I'm hazarding a guess that you want something like this:
RSS = {"bbc": "http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml",
       "iol": "http://rss.iol.io/iol/news",
       "fox": "http://feeds.foxnews.com/foxnews/latest",
       "cnn": "http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss"}


text:
Smart & Stylish | flydubai Rolls Out New Uniform
July 8, 2017 by amin.lalani@tcbworkplace.com Leave a Comment
DUBAI: As it enters its ninth year of operation, flydubai has announced the roll out of a new smart and stylish new uniform for its cabin crew.
The new uniform will be worn by more than 2,500 uniformed staff across the flydubai network; including pilots, cabin crew, training, engineering and maintenance staff as well as members of staff at the airport and flydubai Travel Shops.
This is the carrier's first uniform redesign since its first flight took to the sky on June 1, 2009. The roll out of this new look is scheduled to coincide with the introduction of the airline's first Boeing 737 MAX 8, which will join the flydubai fleet later this year.
Flydubai has teamed up with A. Ronai LLC., a Dubai based hospitality supplier, to create the new look for the carrier: one that exudes the spirit of the brand but also meets the operational and practical demands of the roles our uniformed staff perform every day.
"The line 'Look good. Feel better. Perform best.' captures the essence of the new uniform", said Jilly Sims, senior vice president of Inflight Service at flydubai, and continued: "The design takes into consideration the various working environments of the flydubai staff including varied climates, cultural and religious sensitivities, durability and practicality, versatility, cost-efficiency, as well as security, health and safety regulations."
Commenting on the design elements of the new uniform, Laura Newman, senior manager Brand Strategy, who worked on the launch project, said: "Flydubai staff, especially the customer-facing employees, are our ambassadors and the very embodiment of our brand and its values, and as such, they are an important point of brand engagement with our passengers on the ground and in the air. When we started working on the new uniform, we were clear that we are not only looking to make a fashion statement but to come up with a design that represents who we are as a company: Dynamic, Efficient, Reliable and Human."
Commenting on the launch of the new uniform, Ghaith Al Ghaith, Chief Executive Officer at flydubai, said: "Flydubai has evolved continuously since its inception; we've continued to push boundaries and change the way people travel around the region."
"Our desire to meet the varying travel needs of our passengers with affordable, reliable travel services still lies at the heart of our proposition; however, we have come a long way from being a start-up airline and this maturity needs to be reflected through multiple touchpoints across the airline, undoubtedly the uniform is the most visible of all," added Al Ghaith.


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Q: Hudson - java.io.IOException: Failed to mkdirs: I haven't been able to find a lot of information with regards to Hudson and this issue. I'm trying to build/run my selenium test cases using Hudson. Here's the steps I took

*

*Created a new job

*Set custom workspace to /home/selenium/qa/automation

*Added build step "Invoke Ant"

*Added Target "run" to Targets

*Added build.xml to Build File field.

*Tried to execute job but it exits with the following error:

Started by user anonymous
java.io.IOException: Failed to mkdirs: /home/selenium/qa/automation
...
...

I figure it's some permissions problem but I just can't figure it out. In /etc/sysconfig/hudson the user to run as is "hudson", should this user be the selenium user instead?
Also, I added the custom workspace because initially Hudson couldn't find the build.xml file. I would get a "Unable to find build script at", I'm not sure if also permissions related.
These are the directory permissions:
drwxrwxr-x 10 selenium selenium 4096 Jan 29 17:18 automation

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

A: You have Hudson running as 'hudson', but your workspace is owned by the user 'selenium'.  This is an issue as "other" doesn't have write permissions to that directory.
You can chown <directory> hudson:hudson to change the owner, or you can add write permission with chmod 777, as right now it looks to be at 775 (no write permission for "other").

A: Ultimately I ended up changing the HUDSON_USER to my selenium user and giving permissions to /var/lib/hudson and /var/log/hudson to the selenium user.


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Home Victories
Since its inception in 2005, Open Rights Group has earned a reputation for a long list of victories in defence of our civil liberties in the digital age.
We campaign to change laws to protect our digital rights.
Our mission is to protect our digital privacy and free speech online and to campaign against Government surveillance.
We fight to make the internet more free and just.
Our victories speak for themselves.
Help us win
Join the movement to protect our digital rights.
NHSX scraps centralised model for Covid-19 app
In a huge win for digital privacy, in June 2020 the UK Government scrapped plans to use a centralised model for its Covid-19 tracker app, opting for the decentralised model long advocated by Open Rights Group (ORG).
Government drops risky age verification plan
Open Rights Group (ORG) has been warning about major privacy risks in plans for age checks on adult websites since they were proposed in the Digital Economy Act 2017.
Free expression online
Digital censorship averted as UK shelves Copyright Directive
Nearly a year after passage of the EU Copyright Directive, which opened the door to automated upload filters that damage free speech, the UK Government decided not to implement it.
Mass Surveillance
Court Rules UK Mass Surveillance Programme Unlawful
In 2013, following Edward Snowden's disclosure of information about major national mass surveillance programmes, the Open Rights Group teamed up with Privacy International, English PEN, and Dr Constanze Kurz, a German computer scientist, to mount a legal challenge against the UK Government's mass surveillance of the internet.
Victory on Supreme Court web blocking judgement
Open Rights Group intervened in a legal challenge in which French jeweller Cartier sought court injunctions ordering ISPs to block websites which sell counterfeit Cartier products.
Court of Appeal rules surveillance data should be restricted
In January 2018, the Court of Appeal delivered judgment in a case regarding the Government's "Snooper's Charter" provisions, found in the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014, and in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
ORG Scotland Launched
Our members told us there were specific Scottish concerns over digital rights that we couldn't address properly from London.
Winning the right to parody
July 2014 Reform of outdated copyright laws has been a major campaign focus for ORG from day one.
Exposing online censorship
With the Blocked project we did groundbreaking research on the impact of web filters.
Announcing the Department of Dirty
With a professional comedy video highlighting what happens when you just want to look for classic Spotted Dick, we raised awareness of the problems caused by filtering the Internet in the UK.
Winning Human Rights Campaigner of the Year
In 2012, our succesful campaigning against the Snoopers' Charter was recognised when we won the Liberty award for Human Rights Campaigner of the Year, jointly awarded with 38 Degrees.
Victory against ACTA!
April 2012 ACTA was an international treaty which would have imposed extraordinary constraints on fundamental values such as free speech and the right to privacy.
Challenging the Digital Economy Act
From 2010 – 2011 we fought against a law which proposed disconnecting whole households from the Internet on the basis of allegations of copyright infringement.
Changing the law on tracking
In 2008 BT, Virgin and TalkTalk signed up to a new technology called Phorm, tracking users' online habits to target them with ads.
Creating the first ORGCon
In 2010 we launched our national digital rights conference, ORGCon, attracting over 400 people.
Exterma-knit: Defending creativity
May 2008 – July 2008 ORG spearheaded resistance in the media, when BBC lawyers tried to shut down a knitting blogger who shared her Doctor Who cuddly Daleks and Ood designs on her site.
Data and Democracy
Preventing online voting fraud
Concerned about the risk of fraud in electronic voting, one of our early campaigns was deploying volunteer teams of technical experts in 2007 and 2008 to produce analyses of the e-voting systems used in both trial and live elections.


106: Nick Nguyen lost by fall in the 1st period.
120: Zak Kalafut lost by fall in the 1st period.
126: Lane Warner lost by fall in the 3rd period.
132: Luke VanBooven lost by fall in the 2nd period.
138: Alex Macedo lost by fall in the 2nd period.
145: Dylan Dossett lost by fall in the 2nd period.
152: Jackson Mocca lost by fall in the 1st period.
182: Luke Barger lost by fall in the 2nd period.
285: Jacob Goodin lost by fall in the 1st period.
The Wildcats will be in action next on Friday, December 7 and Saturday, December 8 at a tournament at Lee's Summit North High School in Missouri.


In the almost five years Michael Slininger has been a member of the the Robbinsville Police Department, he's made quite a name for himself around town.
Groundbreakings are rarely much more than a photo op, but Robbinsville Township officials found more than the usual reasons to celebrate one such event recently.
Miry Run Country Club was condemned by Robbinsville Township last month. The township plans "passive recreation" for the land.
Robbinsville Township last night filed paperwork in New Jersey Superior Court to seize ownership of nearly 160 acres of Miry Run Country Club.
Robbinsville High School's marching band, Raven Regiment, was used to being overshadowed by other clubs and sports, but that all changed in October.
If there are any doubters about Robbinsville High School hiring the right man to be its new athletic director, they only need to listen to some of the folks who will be working under Tom Brettell.
The work of Tunisian-American artist Alia Bensliman integrates and contrasts the Eastern experiences of her native North Africa with the peculiarly American impressions of her married life in New Jersey.
The Robbinsville Clean Team, an action-based monthly initiative to clean up the town, urges residents to get in on the fun.