Abstract: A method for deleting obsolete files from a file system is provided. The method includes: receiving a request to delete a reference to a target file in a file system from a file reference data structure, wherein the file reference data structure includes target file names and reference file names; identifying a reference file name in the file reference data structure, wherein the reference file name includes a file name of the target file; deleting a reference file from the file system, wherein the reference file has the identified reference file name; checking whether the file system includes at least one reference file whose file name matches the file name of the target file; if there is no such reference file in the file system: deleting the target file from the file system; and deleting the file name of the target file from the file reference data structure.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for predicting likelihoods of conditions being satisfied using recurrent neural networks. One of the systems is configured to process a temporal sequence comprising a respective input at each of a plurality of time steps and comprises: one or more recurrent neural network layers; one or more logistic regression nodes, wherein each of the logistic regression nodes corresponds to a respective condition from a predetermined set of conditions, and wherein each of the logistic regression nodes is configured to, for each of the plurality of time steps: receive the network internal state for the time step; and process the network internal state for the time step in accordance with current values of a set of parameters of the logistic regression node to generate a future condition score for the corresponding condition for the time step.

Abstract: The relevance of advertisements to a user's interests is improved. In one implementation, the content of a web page is analyzed to determine a list of one or more topics associated with that web page. An advertisement is considered to be relevant to that web page if it is associated with keywords belonging to the list of one or more topics. One or more of these relevant advertisements may be provided for rendering in conjunction with the web page or related web pages.

Abstract: A method of storing data is disclosed. The method is performed on a data storage server having one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors. The data storage server receives a first and second data request, the requests including a first and second range of one or more keys and an associated first and second value respectively. The data storage server identifies one or more overlap points associated with the first range and the second range. For each of the overlap points, the data storage server then creates data items including ranges of keys, the ranges of each data item including one or more keys that are either: (a) the keys between a terminal key of the first or second range and the overlap point, or (b) the keys between two adjacent overlap points.

Abstract: A method of processing a request, performed by a respective server, is provided in which a request is received from a client. After receiving the request, a determination is made as to whether at least a first predefined number of other servers have a task-processing status for the request indicating that the other servers have undertaken performance of a task-processing operation for the request. When less than the first number of other servers in the set of other servers have the task-processing status for the request, a processing-status message is sent to one or more of the servers in the set of other servers indicating that the respective server is performing the task-processing operation. Upon completion of the task-processing, a result of the processing is sent to the client contingent upon a status of the other servers in the set of other servers.

Abstract: An example method for passive compaction of a cache includes determining first metadata associated with first data and second metadata associated with second data. The first metadata includes a first retrieval time, and the second metadata includes a second retrieval time. The example method further includes obtaining a first metadata key including a first unique identifier and obtaining a second metadata key including a second unique identifier. The example method also includes generating a first data key and generating a second data key. The example method further includes writing, at a client device, the first and second data to the cache. Each of the first and second data occupy one or more contiguous blocks of physical memory in the cache, and the first and second data are stored in the cache in an order based on the relative values of the first and second retrieval times.

Abstract: A distributed storage system is provided. The distributed storage system includes multiple front-end servers and zones for managing data for clients. Data within the distributed storage system is associated with a plurality of accounts and divided into a plurality of groups, each group including a plurality of splits, each split being associated with a respective account, and each group having multiple tablets and each tablet managed by a respective tablet server of the distributed storage system. Data associated with different accounts may be replicated within the distributed storage system using different data replication policies. There is no limit to the amount of data for an account by adding new splits to the distributed storage system. In response to a client request for a particular account's data, a front-end server communicates such request to a particular zone that has the client-requested data and returns the client-requested data to the requesting client.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for classifying data objects. One of the methods includes obtaining data that associates each term in a vocabulary of terms with a respective high-dimensional representation of the term; obtaining classification data for a data object, wherein the classification data includes a respective score for each of a plurality of categories, and wherein each of the categories is associated with a respective category label; computing an aggregate high-dimensional representation for the data object from high-dimensional representations for the category labels associated with the categories and the respective scores; identifying a first term in the vocabulary of terms having a high-dimensional representation that is closest to the aggregate high-dimensional representation; and selecting the first term as a category label for the data object.

Abstract: Systems and techniques are disclosed for labeling objects within an image. The objects may be labeled by selecting an option from a plurality of options such that each option is a potential label for the object. An option may have an option score associated with. Additionally, a relation score may be calculated for a first option and a second option corresponding to a second object in an image. The relation score may be based on a frequency, probability, or observance corresponding to the co-occurrence of text associated with the first option and the second option in a text corpus such as the World Wide Web. An option may be selected as a label for an object based on a global score calculated based at least on an option score and relation score associated with the option.

Abstract: An example method for passive compaction of a cache includes determining first metadata associated with first data and second metadata associated with second data. The first metadata includes a first retrieval time, and the second metadata includes a second retrieval time. The example method further includes obtaining a first metadata key including a first unique identifier and obtaining a second metadata key including a second unique identifier. The example method also includes generating a first data key and generating a second data key. The example method further includes writing, at a client device, the first and second data to the cache. Each of the first and second data occupy one or more contiguous blocks of physical memory in the cache, and the first and second data are stored in the cache in an order based on the relative values of the first and second retrieval times.

Abstract: A method of processing a request, performed by a respective server, is provided in which a request is received from a client. After receiving the request, a determination is made as to whether at least a first predefined number of other servers have a task-processing status for the request indicating that the other servers have undertaken performance of a task-processing operation for the request. When less than the first number of other servers in the set of other servers have the task-processing status for the request, a processing-status message is sent to one or more of the servers in the set of other servers indicating that the respective server is performing the task-processing operation. Upon completion of the task-processing, a result of the processing is sent to the client contingent upon a status of the other servers in the set of other servers.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for obtaining a plurality of documents. A respective document in the plurality of documents is associated with a score and each document in the plurality of documents is from a different data structure in a plurality of data structures. Each data structure in the plurality of data structures represents a different portion of a document address space. A first document in the plurality of documents is selected in accordance with the score associated with the first document. The first document has a fingerprint that indicates that the first document has substantially identical content to every other document in the plurality of documents. In accordance with the score, the first document is indexed thereby producing an indexed first document. With respect to the plurality of documents, the indexed first document is included in a document index as representative of each document in the plurality of documents.

Abstract: A system includes: an engaging post identifier for identifying and retrieving engaging posts; an extended network post identifier for identifying extended posts from an extended network; a combining module for creating a combined list of added posts from the engaging post and the extended posts, the combining module generating one or more ranked posts by ranking the list of added posts by relevance to a user; and a user interface module for providing the one or more ranked posts. The disclosure also includes a method for finding and providing engaging posts that includes determining engaging posts; determining extended posts from an extended social network using a social graph of the user; adding the engaging posts and the extended posts to create a combined list of added posts; ranking the added posts by relevance to a user; and providing one or more of the ranked posts.

Abstract: Upon receipt of a document request, a client assistant examines its cache for the document. If not successful, a server searches for the requested document in its cache. If the server copy is still not fresh or not found, the server seeks the document from its host. If the host cannot provide the copy, the server seeks it from a document repository. Certain documents are identified from the document repository as being fresh or stable. Information about each of these identified documents is transmitted to the server which inserts entries into an index if the index does not already contain an entry for the document. If and when this particular document is requested, the document will not be present in the server, however the server will contain an entry directing the server to obtain the document from the document repository rather than the document's web host.

Abstract: A method of storing data is disclosed. The method is performed on a data storage server having one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors. The data storage server receives a first and second data request, the requests including a first and second range of one or more keys and an associated first and second value respectively. The data storage server identifies one or more overlap points associated with the first range and the second range. For each of the overlap points, the data storage server then creates data items including ranges of keys, the ranges of each data item including one or more keys that are either: (a) the keys between a terminal key of the first or second range and the overlap point, or (b) the keys between two adjacent overlap points.

Abstract: A system, computer-readable storage medium storing at least one program, and a computer-implemented method for identifying a storage group in a distributed storage system into which data is to be stored is presented. A data structure including information relating to storage groups in a distributed storage system is maintained, where a respective entry in the data structure for a respective storage group includes placement metrics for the respective storage group. A request to identify a storage group into which data is to be stored is received from a computer system. The data structure is used to determine an identifier for a storage group whose placement metrics satisfy a selection criterion. The identifier for the storage group whose placement metrics satisfy the selection criterion is returned to the computer system.

Abstract: A method for deleting obsolete files from a file system is provided. The method includes: receiving a request to delete a reference to a target file in a file system from a file reference data structure, wherein the file reference data structure includes target file names and reference file names; identifying a reference file name in the file reference data structure, wherein the reference file name includes a file name of the target file; deleting a reference file from the file system, wherein the reference file has the identified reference file name; checking whether the file system includes at least one reference file whose file name matches the file name of the target file; if there is no such reference file in the file system: deleting the target file from the file system; and deleting the file name of the target file from the file reference data structure.

Abstract: A distributed storage system is provided. The distributed storage system includes multiple front-end servers and zones for managing data for clients. Data within the distributed storage system is associated with a plurality of accounts and divided into a plurality of groups, each group including a plurality of splits, each split being associated with a respective account, and each group having multiple tablets and each tablet managed by a respective tablet server of the distributed storage system. Data associated with different accounts may be replicated within the distributed storage system using different data replication policies. There is no limit to the amount of data for an account by adding new splits to the distributed storage system. In response to a client request for a particular account's data, a front-end server communicates such request to a particular zone that has the client-requested data and returns the client-requested data to the requesting client.

Abstract: A multi-stage query processing system and method enables multi-stage query scoring, including “snippet” generation, through incremental document reconstruction facilitated by a multi-tiered mapping scheme. At one or more stages of a multi-stage query processing system a set of relevancy scores are used to select a subset of documents for presentation as an ordered list to a user. The set of relevancy scores can be derived in part from one or more sets of relevancy scores determined in prior stages of the multi-stage query processing system. In some embodiments, the multi-stage query processing system is capable of executing one or more passes on a user query, and using information from each pass to expand the user query for use in a subsequent pass to improve the relevancy of documents in the ordered list.

Abstract: Upon receipt of a document request, a client assistant examines its cache for the document. If not successful, a server searches for the requested document in its cache. If the server copy is still not fresh or not found, the server seeks the document from its host. If the host cannot provide the copy, the server seeks it from a document repository. Certain documents are identified from the document repository as being fresh or stable. Information about each of these identified documents is transmitted to the server which inserts entries into an index if the index does not already contain an entry for the document. If and when this particular document is requested, the document will not be present in the server, however the server will contain an entry directing the server to obtain the document from the document repository rather than the document's web host.