Data Today: Dating algorithms, topic models + molecular memory

1. An algorithm changed my romantic life "I’d accidentally left off my search criteria during the auto-browse, and inadvertently discovered an incredibly powerful hack, a way to make the attention pyramid work for me. Over the course of 18 hours, my algorithm—logged in as me—had browsed thousands of active profiles, across all segments of women.” Here’s the accidental online dating hack one grad student discovered. 2. Topic models: Past, present, and future On the O'Reilly Data Show Podcast, David Blei, co-creator of one of the most popular tools in text mining and machine learning, talks about topic models. 3. Like Tinder for spreadsheets What Tinder did for dating, Tableau wants to do for spreadsheets with Elastic, says Dave Story, Tableau's VP of mobile growth. 4. Facebook's AI director on deep learning Lee Gomes interviews Yann LeCun on his quest to make machines smarter and the promise of "convolutional neural networks." In this discussion, Yann explains deep learning in 8 words. 5. Five lucrative tech careers to pursue in 2015 You saw this coming, right? #1 data scientist, #2 data engineer, #4 machine learning engineer. 6. Coming to Spark Summit East? Ben Lorica will be hosting a panel discussion at Spark Summit East March 18-19 in NYC . O'Reilly will also be exhibiting and we'll have a book signing for the book Learning Spark. Stop by and say hi. Sponsored Content Oracle big data discovery: the visual face of Hadoop Empower everyone in your organization to find, explore, transform, discover, and share insights from big data, creating a fundamentally new approach to big data analytics. Watch this webcast to learn how you can get a leg-up on the competition with timely insights from your data. 7. What's better: Electronic or molecular memory? Researchers have stored digital information in the form of DNA, testing the theory on the world's first biological book, which is biodegradable and edible in its DNA form. It's one way to store massive data, but whether it would ever make sense, practically or economically, is hotly debatable—with critics calling it "a silly vanity project" and proponents acknowledging that it’s expensive to make one copy, but cheap to make millions. Call for Speakers Strata + Hadoop World is returning to New York City September 29–October 1, 2015, and the call for presenters is now open. If you have brilliant ideas, practical case studies, or deep technical skills to share, we'd love to hear from you. Deadline for proposals is April 7. Learn more → 8. "Drilling a hole in the windshield" Yahoo Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos squares off with NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers over crypto backdoors. 9. Machine learning classification over encrypted data Here’s an interesting paper by MIT researchers on machine learning classification over encrypted data (via Four Short Links). 50% off Hadoop training videos and ebooks (ends at dawn tomorrow) Our Hadoop Training Flash Sale—50% off new Hadoop training videos and ebooks—ends at 5 am PST tomorrow, March 5. These new titles are ideal for programmers and administrators looking to get more from their systems using higher-level tools and advanced features. See the Hadoop ebooks and videos → 10. Startup Showcase winners reflect industry's maturity The Strata + Hadoop World 2015 Startup Showcase highlighted four important trends in the big data world. 11. Freebie of the week Hadoop Virtualization, a new free report by Courtney Webster, explores deploying Hadoop in a private cloud. Thanks to VMware for sponsoring this free report. Get Hadoop Virtualization free →