Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) Reclaims Its Lead With Video Downloads

NFLX stock is now even more secure thanks to downloadable videos

This morning, Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) announced a brand new feature: subscribers can now download movies and television shows for offline playback. There’s no extra cost for this added functionality, and it’s “included in all plans and available for phones and tablets on Android and iOS.” The Netflix download option isn’t currently available via desktop computer, though. The question is: Will this have a significant effect on Netflix stock?

According to the official announcement, NFLX implemented this change in response to user feedback. Apparently, the demand for downloadable movies and TV shows is quite significant.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Nvidia Corporation (NVDA) Stock Will Get a Boost From IBM

IBM and NVDA can revolutionize deep learning and artificial intelligence

Earlier this week, news surfaced that a new high performance computing system is now available, and it is the culmination of a partnership between two tech industry powerhouses: International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) and Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA).

According to Venture Beat, “A new software toolkit available today called IBM PowerAI is designed to run on the recently announced IBM server built for artificial intelligence that features Nvidia NVLink technology optimized for IBM’s Power Architecture.”

This is potentially a very significant step forward for both IBM and Nvidia stock, as the deep learning arena is still relatively small, yet will certainly be a major factor in the future.

For the uninitiated, non-geek consumer, HPC and deep learning are, in layman’s terms, the use of multiple pieces of high-powered computer hardware components together with software designed to analyze huge amounts of data.

Initially, software teaches the machine — referred to as “machine learning” — how to analyze and interpret the data so, later, it will be able to act independently (e.g., recognizing and understanding spoken words or identifying specific characteristics of an image) without the need for additional instructions.

One of the ultimate goals of die-hard deep learning enthusiasts is to further the development of a true artificial intelligence system.

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

Alphabet Inc (GOOGL) Stock’s New Backbone: Artificial Intelligence

As the AI space evolves, GOOGL is determined to remain on top

Last week, Martin Abadi, a computer scientist and member of the Google Brain Team at Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL), along with David Andersen, an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, published a research paper that describes how artificial intelligence entities “can learn how to perform forms of encryption and decryption, and also how to apply these operations selectively in order to meet confidentiality goals.”

In simpler terms, GOOGL created three separate AI entities and instructed two of them to pass secret messages back and forth while the third attempted to intercept and decode them.

When the encryption was broken, subsequent messages were secured with even more advanced methods.

The truly amazing part of the experiment was that “the networks were not taught anything about encryption before the game began, meaning that the strategies they came up with were entirely original.” That also means Alphabet researchers may never know exactly what kind of encryption methods were being used, and they probably won’t be able to crack it, either.