Timeline October 2012

Events in October 2012 7

• 2012 AlexNet — deep learning revolution begins on Nvidia GPUs At the ImageNet competition in October 2012, Alex Krizhevsky's AlexNet neural network — trained on two Nvidia GTX 580 GPUs — achieves a top-5 error rate of 15.3%, dramatically better than any previous approach. The result triggers the deep learning revolution. Every major AI research lab immediately adopts Nvidia GPUs. Jensen Huang later calls this moment 'the big bang' of the AI era. Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem, built patiently since 2006, has no serious competitor.
• 2012 Hugo Chavez re-elected President of Venezuela Fourth term win amid battle with cancer Hugo Chavez won re-election to a fourth term as Venezuela's president, defeating opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. Chavez was already suffering from the cancer that would kill him the following year.
• 2012 Malala Yousafzai shot by the Taliban Pakistani schoolgirl targeted for advocating girls' education Taliban gunmen shot 15-year-old education activist Malala Yousafzai on her school bus in Pakistan's Swat Valley. She survived after emergency treatment in the UK and went on to become a global symbol for girls' education, later winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 2012 Felix Baumgartner's stratospheric skydive Red Bull Stratos jump breaks the sound barrier Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped from a balloon capsule at over 128,000 feet above New Mexico, becoming the first skydiver to break the sound barrier during freefall. The jump was livestreamed to millions of viewers worldwide.
• 2012 Hurricane Sandy strikes the US East Coast One of the costliest storms in US history Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey, causing catastrophic flooding across the northeastern United States and killing over 100 people. It caused an estimated $70 billion in damage and knocked out power to millions.
• 2012 Microsoft releases Windows 8 Major redesign introduces touch-first interface Microsoft launched Windows 8, featuring a radically redesigned tile-based "Metro" interface aimed at tablets as well as PCs. The dramatic departure from the traditional desktop drew mixed reactions from longtime users.
• 2012 Skyfall — Daniel Craig The franchise's 50th anniversary film is also the finest Bond film ever made by most critical assessments. Sam Mendes directs; Roger Deakins shoots in luminous widescreen; Adele performs the theme. The villain Silva (Javier Bardem) is the franchise's most fully realised antagonist. The ending — Bond returning to his Scottish roots at Skyfall Lodge — is genuinely moving. Budget: $200 million. Box office: $1.1 billion.