Recommenders 0.5.0

Repo structure

• Default branch renamed from master to main #1284 #1278

New dataset and competition support

• Microsoft News dataset (MIND) and Microsoft News Recommendation Challenge #1247 #1236

New algorithms or improvements

• Optimize GPU usage of news recommendation algorithms #1235
• Optimize surprise utilities #1224
• GeoIMC algorithm #1204
• Standard VAE algorithm #1194
• Multinomial VAE algorithm #1194

New utilities or improvements

• Operationalization example for sequential models #1254
• Fix bug with fastai #1288
• Fix bug in affinity matrix #1243
• Fix conflict with MMLSpark version #1230
• Fix negative feedback smapler #1200

New notebooks or improvements

• Update AzureML Designer notebooks #1286 #1253
• KDD2020 tutorial: paper recommendation with Microsoft Academic Graph #1208
• Update o16n notebook for real time scoring #1176
• Reduce verbosity on tensorflow notebooks #1276

Other features

• Upgrade papermill and scrapbook for testing #1271 #1270 #1282 #1289
• Fix tests #1244 #1242 #1226 #1218
• Fix issue with spark installation #1186
• Update python version #1202
• Notice for java dependency #1209
• Reactivate CICD pipelines #1284