Application of Machine Learning Methods To Search for Rail Defects (Part 2)

To ensure traffic safety in railway transport, non-destructive inspection of rails is regularly carried out using various approaches and methods. One of the main approaches to determining the operational condition of railway rails is ultrasonic non-destructive testing [1]. Currently, the search for images of rail defects using the received flaw patterns is performed by a human. The successful development of algorithms for searching and classifying data makes it possible to propose the use of machine learning methods to identify rail defects and reduce the workload on humans by creating expert systems.

The complexity of creating such systems is described in [1, 3-6, 22] and is due, on the one hand, to the variety of graphic images obtained during multi-channel ultrasonic inspection of rails, and on the other hand, to the small number of data copies with defects (not balanced). One of the possible ways to create expert systems in this area is an approach based on the decomposition of the complex task of analyzing the entire multichannel defectogram into individual channels or their sets, characterizing individual types of defects. 

Selenium Versus Karate: A Concrete Comparative Approach

In the world of software architecture, which is still in its infancy in absolute terms, change is still rapid and structural. Deep paradigms can be overturned, changing the structure of information systems. As coupling has become a key issue for many information systems, new architectures have emerged, notably SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), followed by Microservices. These two fairly widespread architectures certainly make it
possible to solve coupling problems, but as always there are certain trade-offs to be made. The complexity of testing is one of them.

Like a balanced equation, an information system is an equivalence between a technical expression and a functional expression, and if one changes, we need to be able to guarantee the validity of the equivalence between the two. To attain this, we need to be able to test all parties using tools that can establish this equality. When releasing a new version of a microservice, it’s fairly easy to run unit and even integration tests before and during deployment to validate its internal operation. 

Fine Tuning Vision Transformer for Image Classification in PyTorch

Introduction

In the realm of computer vision, Vision Transformers (ViTs) revolutionized image processing by employing self-attention mechanisms, allowing for a non-sequential analysis of images. ViTs are instrumental in capturing intricate patterns and long-range dependencies, making them invaluable for tasks like image recognition and object detection.

Hugging Face, a hub for cutting-edge machine learning models, offers Vision Transformer models that can be easily downloaded and implemented. However, while Hugging Face documentation provides insight into obtaining image representations using Vision Transformers, it lacks detailed instructions on fine-tuning these models for specific tasks. This gap in information poses a challenge for practitioners eager to utilize ViTs for image classification.

In this article, we bridge this knowledge gap. I will guide you step-by-step through the process of fine-tuning a Vision Transformer model from Hugging Face for image classification in PyTorch. By the end of this guide, you will have a comprehensive understanding of how to harness the full potential of Vision Transformers in your PyTorch-based image classification projects.

Note: All the scripts in this article are executed in a Google Colab notebook.

Installing and Importing Required Libraries

You will need to install the Hugging Face Transformers library to run scripts in this article.

! pip install accelerate -U
! pip install datasets transformers[sentencepiece]

The following script imports the Python libraries and modules required to execute Python codes in this article.


from transformers import ViTModel, ViTFeatureExtractor, ViTModel, AdamW
import torch
import torch.nn as nn
from torch.utils.data import Dataset, DataLoader
from datasets import load_dataset
import pandas as pd
import os
from PIL import Image
import random
import numpy as np
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.metrics import f1_score, classification_report, accuracy_score
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
Importing the datasets

This article guides you through the process of creating a binary classification model. Using facial images as inputs, the model accurately predicts a person's gender. You can download the dataset from Kaggle.

The data directory looks like this:

image_1.png

We will create a Pandas Dataframe that contains three columns:

  1. file_path: contains the file paths of all images with the .jpg extension.
  2. category: specifies the image's folder name, i.e. Female Faces or Male Faces.
  3. class: equals one if the image is in the Male Faces folder and 0 if the image is in the Female Faces director.

This DataFrame helps us quickly retrieve images and corresponding labels for training.

The following script defines the create_image_dataframe() method, which creates the desired Pandas DataFrame.


def create_image_dataframe(data_dir):

    file_paths = []
    categories = []
    classes = []

    for category in os.listdir(data_dir):
        category_path = os.path.join(data_dir, category)
        if os.path.isdir(category_path):
            class_label = 0 if category == r'Female Faces' else 1
            for filename in os.listdir(category_path):
                if filename.endswith('.jpg'):
                    file_paths.append(os.path.join(category_path, filename))
                    categories.append(category)
                    classes.append(class_label)

    data = {
        'file_path': file_paths,
        'category': categories,
        'class': classes
    }

    df = pd.DataFrame(data)
    df = df.sample(frac=1).reset_index(drop=True)
    return df

data_dir = '/content/male-and-female-faces-dataset/Male and Female face dataset'
image_df = create_image_dataframe(data_dir)

print(image_df.shape)
print(image_df.category.value_counts())
image_df.head()

Running the above script returns the following output:

image_2.png

The output shows that the dataset consists of 5172 images, where 2640 images contain male faces, while 2532 images contain female faces. You can also see the resultant Pandas DataFrame.

Creating a PyTorch Dataset For Images

The next step is to create a PyTorch dataset. Though this step is not necessary, it can help you efficiently train your model in batches, which can be crucial, especially if you are training your model on a low-memory system.

Our dataset will consist of image features and corresponding labels. To create image features for Vision Transformer, you can use the ViTFeatureExtractor. This feature extractor takes an image as input and returns pixel values you can pass to Vision Transformer.

The following script imports the feature extractor. Here, the model_checkpoint variable stores the checkpoint for an already trained Vision Transformer. You will use the same checkpoint for creating the model.

Furthermore, the code is configured to utilize the GPU if CUDA is available; otherwise, it defaults to running on the CPU.


model_checkpoint = "google/vit-base-patch16-224-in21k"
image_processor = ViTFeatureExtractor.from_pretrained(model_checkpoint)
device = torch.device('cuda' if torch.cuda.is_available() else 'cpu')

Next, we define a method that converts our Pandas DataFrame to a PyTorch dataset.


class ImageClassificationDataset(Dataset):
    def __init__(self, data_df, image_processor):
        self.data_df = data_df
        self.image_processor = image_processor
        #self.max_length = 256 # set a fixed maximum length

    def __len__(self):
        return len(self.data_df)

    def __getitem__(self, index):

        image_path = self.data_df.iloc[index]['file_path']
        image_val = Image.open(image_path)

        if image_val.mode != 'RGB':
          image_val = image_val.convert('RGB')

        image_encodings = image_processor(image_val, return_tensors="pt")

        labels = self.data_df.iloc[index][['class']].values.astype(np.float32)

        return image_encodings, labels

We will split our data set into train (70%), validation (30%), and test(30%) sets:

train_df, temp_df = train_test_split(image_df, test_size=0.3, random_state=42)

val_df, test_df = train_test_split(temp_df, test_size=0.5, random_state=42)

Finally, we can convert our train_df, test_df, and val_df DataFrames to PyTorch datasets using the following script. To iterate through the datasets in batches, we also create corresponding DataLoader objects with a batch size of 32.

train_dataset = ImageClassificationDataset(train_df, ViTFeatureExtractor)
test_dataset = ImageClassificationDataset(test_df, ViTFeatureExtractor)
val_dataset = ImageClassificationDataset(val_df, ViTFeatureExtractor)

batch_size = 32

train_loader = DataLoader(train_dataset, batch_size=batch_size, shuffle=True)
val_loader = DataLoader(val_dataset, batch_size=batch_size, shuffle=False)
test_loader = DataLoader(test_dataset, batch_size=batch_size, shuffle=False)
Creating a PyTorch Model for Fine-tuning

We are now ready to fine-tune the Vision Transformer model on our dataset. To do so, we will create a model class that accepts the Vision Transformer encoder as a parameter and pass the encoder's output through 5 dense layers. The last dense layer consists of 1 label since we plan to predict a binary value i.e. 0 or 1. The sigmoid function in the final dense layer will return a value between 0 and 1.


class ImageClassifier(nn.Module):
    def __init__(self, num_labels, encoder):
        super(ImageClassifier, self).__init__()
        self.encoder = encoder
        self.classifier = nn.Sequential(
            nn.Linear(self.encoder.config.hidden_size, 500),
            nn.ReLU(),
            nn.Linear(500, 300),
            nn.ReLU(),
            nn.Linear(300, 100),
            nn.ReLU(),
            nn.Linear(100, 50),
            nn.ReLU(),
            nn.Linear(50, num_labels),
            nn.Sigmoid()
        )

    def forward(self, input_values):
        outputs = self.encoder(pixel_values = input_values)
        pooled_output = outputs['last_hidden_state'][:, 0, :]
        logits = self.classifier(pooled_output)
        return logits

After that, we will initialize a Vision Transformer encoder and create an object of the ImageClassifier class. We also specify the number of labels (1 in our case), and the loss function and optimizer.

# Set up the model, optimizer, scheduler, and loss function
num_labels = 1
encoder = ViTModel.from_pretrained("google/vit-base-patch16-224-in21k")
model = ImageClassifier(num_labels, encoder).to(device)
optimizer = AdamW(model.parameters(), lr=0.0001, betas=(0.9, 0.999), eps=1e-08)
criterion = nn.BCELoss()

Subsequently, we define the train() method that accepts the model, train and validation data loaders, the optimizer, criterion (loss function), device, and number of epochs as parameters. The train() method trains the model and prints the loss for each batch.

# Define the training function
def train(model, train_loader, val_loader, optimizer,  criterion, device, num_epochs):

    best_accuracy = 0.0

    for epoch in range(num_epochs):

        model.train()

        for i, batch in enumerate(train_loader):

            image_encodings,  labels = batch
            pixel_values = image_encodings.pixel_values
            pixel_values = pixel_values.squeeze()
            pixel_values = pixel_values.to(device)

            labels = labels.to(device)

            optimizer.zero_grad()

            logits = model(pixel_values)

            loss = criterion(logits, labels)
            loss.backward()

            optimizer.step()

            if (i+1) % 8 == 0:
                print(f'Epoch {epoch+1}/{num_epochs}, Batch {i+1}/{len(train_loader)}, Train Loss: {loss.item() :.4f}')
                train_loss = 0.0

        val_loss, val_accuracy, val_f1, _ , _ = evaluate(model, val_loader, device)

        if val_accuracy > best_accuracy:
            best_accuracy = val_accuracy
            torch.save(model.state_dict(), 'best_model.pt')

        print("========================================================================================")
        print(f'Epoch {epoch+1}/{num_epochs}, Val Loss: {val_loss:.4f}, Val Accuracy: {val_accuracy:.4f}, Val F1: {val_f1:.4f}, Best Accuracy: {best_accuracy:.4f}')
        print("========================================================================================")

The train() method also prints the loss, accuracy, and F-1 score on the validation set using the evaluate() method, which is defined in the following script. Finally, the train() method saves the model with the best accuracy on the validation set.

def evaluate(model, data_loader,  device):

    all_labels = []
    all_preds = []
    total_loss = 0.0

    with torch.no_grad():

        for i, batch in enumerate(data_loader):

          image_encodings,  labels = batch
          pixel_values = image_encodings.pixel_values
          pixel_values = pixel_values.squeeze()
          pixel_values = pixel_values.to(device)

          labels = labels.to(device)

          optimizer.zero_grad()

          logits = model(pixel_values)

          loss = criterion(logits, labels)
          total_loss += loss.item()

          preds = (logits > 0.5).float()
          all_labels.append(labels.cpu().numpy())
          all_preds.append(preds.cpu().numpy())

    all_labels = np.concatenate(all_labels, axis=0)
    all_preds = np.concatenate(all_preds, axis=0)

    loss = total_loss / len(data_loader)
    accuracy = accuracy_score(all_labels, all_preds)
    f1 = f1_score(all_labels, all_preds)
    return loss, accuracy, f1, all_labels, all_preds

I trained the model for two epochs using the following script. It already gives very impressive results.

num_epochs = 2
train(model, train_loader, val_loader, optimizer, criterion, device, num_epochs)

image_3.png

The last step is to evaluate the model on the test set. To do so, you can import the model with the best accuracy, which we saved using training, and pass it to the evaluate() method, along with the test dataset.

state_dict = torch.load('best_model.pt')

# Create a new instance of the model and load the state dictionary
num_labels = 1
model = ImageClassifier(num_labels, encoder).to(device)
model.load_state_dict(state_dict)

_, _, _, all_labels, all_preds = evaluate(model, test_loader, device)


print(classification_report(all_labels, all_preds))
print(accuracy_score(all_labels, all_preds))

image_4.png

The output shows we get 99.87% accuracy on the test set. Impressive?

Conclusion

Training Vision Transformers using PyTorch models can be challenging due to the lack of detailed information in the official documentation. This article provides a step-by-step guide on fine-tuning a Vision Transformer from Hugging Face in PyTorch. Following these instructions, you can create your image classification models using Hugging Face transformers. If you have any feedback or questions, feel free to share them.

AI Boosts Human Performance by Another 40%: Who Will Profit?

AI is shown to significantly increase productivity among top-tier consultants. This performance boost holds the potential to reshape economic power structuresif we're willing to take the reins.

The productivity explosion initiated by AI continues to take shape: A new study spearheaded by researchers from Harvard, Wharton, and MIT has shed fresh light on the impact of generative AI on the productivity of white-collar workers. Utilizing GPT-4, the study observed consultants from the Boston Consulting Group in a series of tasks, discovering a 40% increase in performance across the board. Remarkably, this wasn't a minor uptick among newbieswe are talking about top-tier consultants, often with elite MBA credentials, doing tasks highly related to their everyday work. Harvard's Fabrizio DellAcqua, the lead author, expressed that the findings were genuinely impressive, altering perceptions of how businesses could utilize generative AI for optimal efficiency.

ai-performance-boost.jpg
Performance with and without the help of AI. Image credit: Dell'Acqua et al.

The transformative potential of generative AI in enhancing white-collar productivity is impossible to ignore. This changes everything. Think about the industrial revolution. Mechanization replaced and augmented manual labor, drastically increasing output and changing society forever. Now, we are at the brink of another explosion in productivity, and its transformative potential is mind-blowing, to say the least.

Back in the days of the industrial revolution, the biggest winners were of course those who owned the factories, not the ones clocking in every day. In the same way, as AI makes us more efficient and reshapes our work, we have to ask who gets the bigger slice of this high-tech pie. Is it the companies that put AI to work, or the employees who figure out how to work alongside it?

Being More Productive Doesnt Make You Wealthy

Over the last few decades, there's been a startling disconnect between productivity and compensation. As illustrated by the graph below, from 1971 to 2017, productivity rose significantly, increasing by a factor of 2.5. Yet, during the same period, workers' compensation lagged behind, growing only by a modest factor of 1.15.

productivity-vs-compensation.jpg
Growth in productivity and hourly compensation since 1948. Image credit: wtfhappenedin1971.com

So, even though we're getting more done in less time, it's not like everyone's enjoying a better standard of living. In fact, for a lot of folks, life's gotten tougher. Inflation, recession, and rising unemployment indicate that there might be even harder times ahead. Trusting in AI to suddenly make everyone's life cushier is wishful thinking at best. Odds are, at least in the short term, it will widen the gap between how much we produce and how much we earn. Yet, it's worth considering that AI, as an unexpected wildcard, could also offer new paths to prosperity.

AI Could Be Your Wildcard

The rise of AI might just be the wildcard we didn't know we needed. Sure, it's easy to be cynical and assume that, as with past technological leaps, the rich will get richer while the rest of us hustle harder for less. But let's consider another scenario for a second. Unlike the days when you needed massive capital to buy a steam engine or build a factory, today's tools for innovation are far more accessible. AI has democratized the act of creation to some extent.

Got an app idea that's been stewing in your brain for years? Unlike the past, you don't need to be a coding wizard to make it happen. AI can help you build at least a prototype, even if your coding skills are still a work in progress. It can also help you with marketing, graphic design, and business decisions. In a nutshell, it can give you skills that otherwise would take years to acquire.

Now, I get itsystem requirements for machine learning models, API fees, or even the $20 a month for a ChatGPT subscription can be barriers. In some countries, that's around 10% of the monthly minimum wage. But even with these obstacles, we're talking about a playing field that's more open than ever before. In a way, thanks to AI, we all have an entire workforce at our disposal.

Reshuffling Economic Power

What does all this mean for economic inequality and power structures? Well, more players in the game could lead to a shake-up. While it's still crucial to be realistic about the immediate challenges, AI does offer a glimmer of hope. It's a chance to flatten hierarchies and distribute opportunities in ways we haven't seen before. To seize these new opportunities, everyone has to take the reins into their own hands. So, yes, we might be in for some surprises, and that alone should keep us invested in how this narrative unfolds.

Fencing in Distributed Systems: Twitter’s Approach

Fencing is a crucial technique used in distributed systems to protect shared resources and maintain system stability. It involves isolating problematic nodes or preventing them from accessing shared resources, ensuring data integrity and overall system reliability. In this article, we will explore the concept of fencing in detail, discuss its importance in distributed systems design, and examine a real-world example of how Twitter uses fencing to maintain its service availability and performance.

Understanding Fencing in Distributed Systems

Distributed systems consist of multiple nodes working together to achieve a common goal, such as serving web pages or processing large volumes of data. In such systems, nodes often need to access shared resources, like databases or file storage. However, when a node experiences issues like crashes or malfunctions, it can compromise the entire system, leading to data corruption or loss.

Zero Trust Architecture: Enterprise Infrastructure

Importance of Security in Financial Institutions

Security in financial institutions is of paramount importance due to the highly sensitive nature of the data they handle. These institutions hold vast amounts of personal and financial information of their customers, making them a prime target for cybercriminals. Breaches in security can lead to severe financial loss, reputational damage, and potential legal consequences, making it crucial for financial institutions to invest in robust security measures to protect themselves and their clients.

Overview of Zero Trust Architecture

Zero Trust Architecture is a security framework that operates on the principle of "never trust, always verify." It ensures that every user, device, and application is constantly authenticated and authorized before granting access to sensitive data. This approach eliminates the notion of a trusted network and treats every access request as potentially malicious. By implementing a zero-trust architecture, financial institutions can enhance their security posture and mitigate the risk of unauthorized access or data breaches. It involves implementing multi-factor authentication, encryption, continuous monitoring, and strict access controls to create layers of defense against cyber threats.

Safeguarding Software: The World of Software Piracy Protection Systems

In the digital realm, where lines of code traverse the vast expanses of the internet, software developers find themselves in a constant battle to protect their creations from pirates seeking to exploit their hard work. The arena for this clash is the software piracy protection system — a sophisticated digital guardian that aims to ensure that the fruits of developers' labor are enjoyed by legitimate users and not pilfered by unauthorized ones.

Understanding Software Piracy Protection

Software piracy protection is the virtual fortress erected around a piece of software to prevent unauthorized access, distribution, and usage. Its primary objective is to strike a balance between allowing legitimate users seamless access to the software and thwarting the efforts of those who seek to circumvent payment or licensing.

Performance Optimization for Multi-Layered Cloud Native AWS Application

Cloud-native application development in AWS often requires complex, layered architecture with synchronous and asynchronous interactions between multiple components, e.g., API Gateway, Microservices, Serverless Functions, and system of record integration. Performance engineering requires analysis of the performance and resiliency of each component level and the interactions between these. While there is guidance available at the technical implementation of components, e.g., for AWS API Gateway, Lambda functions, etc., it still mandates understanding and applying end-to-end best practices for achieving the required performance requirements at the overall component architecture level. This article attempts to provide some fine-grained mechanisms to improve the performance of a complex cloud-native architecture flow curated from the on-ground experience and lessons learned from real projects deployed on production.

Problem Statement

The mission-critical applications often have stringent nonfunctional requirements for concurrency in the form of transactions per second (henceforth called “tps”). A proven mechanism to validate the concurrency requirement is to conduct performance testing.

Unveiling the Secret: Achieving 50K Concurrent User Load Using JMeter With 2.5g RAM Only

Apache JMeter is an open-source, Java-based tool used for load and performance testing of various services, particularly web applications. It supports multiple protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. JMeter can simulate heavy loads on a server to analyze performance under different conditions. It offers both GUI and non-GUI modes for test configuration and can display test results in various formats. JMeter also supports distributed testing, enabling it to handle multiple test threads simultaneously. Its functionality can be extended through plugins, making it a versatile and widely used tool in performance testing.

JMeter stands out from other testing tools due to its exceptional concurrency model, which governs how it executes requests in parallel. The concurrency model of JMeter relies on Thread Pools, widely recognized as the standard method for parallel processing in Java and several other programming languages. However, as with any advantage, there comes a significant trade-off: the resource-intensive nature of JMeter’s concurrency model.

Optimizing Machine Learning Models with DEHB: A Comprehensive Guide Using XGBoost and Python

Machine learning models often involve a complex interplay of hyperparameters, which significantly affect their performance. Selecting the right combination of hyperparameters is a crucial step in building robust and accurate models. Traditional methods like grid search and random search are popular but can be inefficient and time-consuming. Distributed Evolutionary Hyperparameter Tuning (DEHB) is an advanced technique that offers several advantages, making it a compelling choice for hyperparameter optimization tasks. In this article, we will delve into DEHB using the popular XGBoost algorithm and provide Python code examples for each step of the process.

Why Hyperparameter Tuning Is Important

Hyperparameter tuning plays a pivotal role in the machine learning model development process for several reasons:

JavaScript’s Secret Weapon: Unraveling the Mysteries of Proxies

In the vast universe of JavaScript, certain features stand out not just for their functionality but for the paradigm shifts they introduce. One such feature is the Proxy object. At its core, a Proxy offers a way to customize behavior for fundamental operations on objects. Think of it as a middleman, sitting between your code and an object, intercepting and potentially altering how the object is interacted with. This offers unprecedented control, allowing developers to define custom behaviors for operations like reading a property, assigning a value, or even determining if a property exists. Beyond just the mechanics, the real allure of Proxies lies in their potential applications, from data validation and property watching to more advanced patterns like object virtualization. As we delve deeper into Proxies, we'll unravel the layers of possibilities they open up, redefining the boundaries of what we once thought JavaScript could achieve.

Section 1: The Basics of Proxies

1.1 What Exactly Is a Proxy?

In the realm of JavaScript, the Proxy object is akin to a protective shield or an intercessor that wraps around another object, which we refer to as the "target." This wrapping allows the Proxy to intercept and control various fundamental operations executed on the target object. It's like having a guardian that oversees how we interact with our data, giving us the power to redefine or customize these interactions.

Leveraging the Potential: The Superiority of Third-Party Tools in Multi-Cloud CSPM

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is an exquisite facet of the realm of IT security tools, meticulously designed to address the intricate intricacies of cloud compliance risks and potential misconfigurations. To identify potential deficiencies in security policies, the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) system diligently monitors the cloud infrastructure on an ongoing basis.

Multi-Cloud Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) pertains to the diligent observation and assurance of the security stance across diverse cloud environments. In the realm of organizational evolution, as the adoption of multi-cloud strategies gains momentum, it becomes imperative to embrace the art of effective Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). This art form holds the key to safeguarding the sanctity of sensitive data and applications, ensuring their imperviousness to any potential security breaches. This article delves into an in-depth understanding of Third-Party Tools and elucidates the superiority of utilizing such tools for Multi-Cloud CSPM.

Loading Vector Data Into Cassandra in Parallel Using Ray

This blog will delve into the nuances of combining the prowess of DataStax Astra with the power of Ray and is a companion to this demo on GitHub. We’ll explore the step-by-step procedure, the pitfalls to avoid, and the advantages this dynamic duo brings to the table. Whether you’re a data engineer, a developer looking to optimize your workflows, or just a tech enthusiast curious about the latest in data solutions, this guide promises insights aplenty. Soon, you’ll be able to use Cassandra 5 in place of AstraDB in this demo — but for a quick start, AstraDB is a great way to get started with a vector-search-compliant Cassandra database!

Introduction

Vector search is a technology that works by turning data that we are interested in into numerical representations of locations in a coordinate system. A database that holds and operates on vectors is called a vector store. This functionality is coming to Cassandra 5.0, which will be released soon. To preview this functionality, we can make use of DataStax Astra. Similar items have their vector locations close to each other in this space. That way, we can take some items and find items similar to them. In this case, we have bits of text that are embedded. Embedding takes text into a machine-learning model that returns vectors that represent the data. You can almost think about embedding and translating data from real text into vectors. 

Security Best Practices for ReactJS in Web App Development

In today's digital age, web applications have become an integral part of our lives. From online banking to social media and e-commerce, we rely on web apps for a multitude of tasks. With the increasing complexity and sophistication of web applications, security has become a paramount concern for developers, businesses, and users alike. One of the most popular frontend libraries used for building web applications is ReactJS. However, like any other technology, ReactJS is not immune to security vulnerabilities. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the best security practices for ReactJS in web app development, ensuring that your applications are robust and resilient against potential threats.

Understanding ReactJS

Before diving into the security best practices, let's briefly understand what ReactJS is and why it's so popular for web development.

Improving Sentiment Score Accuracy With FinBERT and Embracing SOLID Principles

In a previous lab titled “Building News Sentiment and Stock Price Performance Analysis NLP Application With Python,” I briefly touched upon the concept of algorithmic trading using automated market news sentiment analysis and its correlation with stock price performance. Market movements, especially in the short term, are often influenced by investors’’ sentiment. One of the main components of sentiment analysis trading strategies is the algorithmic computation of a sentiment score from raw text and then incorporating the sentiment score into the trading strategy. The more accurate the sentiment score, the better the likelihood of algorithmic trading predicting potential stock price movements.

In that previous lab, I used the vaderSentiment library. This time, I’ve decided to explore another NLP contender, the FinBERT NLP algorithm, and compare it against Vader's sentiment score accuracy with the intent of improving trading strategy returns.

How to Rasterize PDFs in Java

Incorporating a method for converting vector PDFs to raster PDFs in any file upload/download application is a great way to expand its utility. This will make it possible for users to share or download smaller and more secure versions of their PDFs on command — a process that particularly benefits signed contracts and invoices, confidential reports, and other such sensitive materials.

Further down the page, I've provided a free-to-use API solution to help make this conversion in Java. Before we proceed, however, let's first understand the nature of the operation.

Efficiently Creating and Managing Views in SQL

As a developer, have you ever faced challenges finding a specific piece of information in a large set of SQL code? Or have you repeatedly created the same query for different reports? These are common problems that developers often encounter when working with SQL.

SQL views solve these issues by enabling developers to simplify intricate queries and create reusable templates for frequently used queries. However, creating and managing views can be difficult, particularly for beginners.