For Job Seekers: allwhere has been informed of fraudulent job postings being shared for positions at our company. Please take note that allwhere will never ask job seekers for payment as part of the application or interview process. If you become suspicious of a potential scam, please report the job posting right away. Thank you. allwhere is a people-first company that empowers teams to stay productive and engaged — wherever they may be. We work with companies to implement holistic remote work solutions, manage the full lifecycle of equipment, and provide world-class onboarding, engagement, retention, and wellness programs, all while lowering costs.

allwhere

Hi everyone! My name is Michil Androsov and this is the second article in my series on the history of , where I offer an inside look at the creation of our unicorn company from the perspective of a simple developer. The first article is available . In it, I talked about how I joined the company, how we expanded the development team, and how we went international. inDrive here This article will cover the middle period of my career at inDrive—from about 2016 to 2020. At the time, the company was beginning to stand on its own two feet and rapidly develop in all kinds of new directions, which I'll discuss in more detail below. The Business After our first successful launches outside of Yakutsk, we were finally starting to recognize the power of our business idea. We began to wonder, "What if we really manage to take over the planet?" After all, living far up north, , you always feel quite separate from the rest of the world. It seems like everything's happening so far away, which actually gives us a pretty unique perspective. And at the time, all of our work with inDrive felt almost like a game to me. deep in Siberia Over this period, the company began to launch extensively. When we'd start operations in a new country, we might launch dozens of cities within a single month. We expanded beyond Russia and launched in Kazakhstan, where—despite a variety of obstacles—we quickly became the country's №1 ride-hailing service. To this day, Kazakhstan remains one of our top markets. When launching in a new city, we adopted a strategy of " ". As our CEO would say, if a city was ready for our service, it should be able to ignite from the smallest of sparks. So, if the grass in one city wasn't dry enough, we wouldn't try to soak it in gasoline. Instead, we'd just move on to the next one. This helped us expand quickly without spending too much money. burning dry grass In fact, a number of cities simply launched on their own. People would hear about this great new service, called inDrive, in a neighboring city. They'd download the app for themselves, and the city would launch without us. There were even a few self-launched cities that took off without any investment on our part. Of course, not all launches were a success. I remember our first back in 2018. We made all the preparations, recruited drivers, and advertised our service. At first, everything seemed to be working out, and our numbers were growing day by day. USA launch We were pleasantly surprised. Was it really that easy to launch in one of the world's largest markets? After all, if you can make it in the US, you can make it anywhere—at least, that's what I thought. But our joy quickly became disappointment: We were faced with a huge industry of fraudsters cashing out stolen credit cards and using them on our service. So, we decided to scrap our American plans and wait for better days—which finally came in 2023. We launched for the second time in the USA, with much better results. This launch is still ongoing. We are currently operating in Miami, and will soon expand to new cities. Looking back, we were being simple and naive. However, we continued to learn from our mistakes and push forward. The Product and Technology We've always believed that our service should be simple and fail-proof, like a . Of course, this has led to accusations that the app isn't "pretty" enough, despite being packed with features. Nokia 3310 In many countries, we had to adapt to local legislation and user needs. That’s why the inDrive app in Almaty might look completely different from the one in New York. Nevertheless, we have been working on making the app "prettier" in all countries over the past years, and I personally think it looks quite modern now. Outside of Russia, inDrive gained a range of new modules, starting with intercity rides and freight delivery, which are now available in countries across the globe. In certain markets, such as Kazakhstan, they are even more popular than our taxi vertical. During this time, our approach to product planning was simple: At the end of every quarter, our CEO would arrive back from his trips to our launch cities, open his laptop, and explain our goals for the upcoming period. Usually, these came from driver and passenger requests. We could have tasks of all different sizes, from introducing card payments to changing the color of the order button. Our CEO played (and continues to play) a crucial role in the development of the company. While he is both an excellent motivator and strategist, he’s also a skilled manager who understands how the product works. Even now, he personally flies to new launch countries, studies the market, conducts customer development, interacts extensively with users, and gathers feedback on the service. On the development side, we quickly realized that our existing code would not be able to support our rapid business growth. Soon, the app would start to lag and decline in quality. So, we decided to rewrite the more "complex" parts of the code. In addition to the PHP monolith, we eventually got ourselves a— —Golang monolith. The entirety of our infrastructure lay on the shoulders of two guys who knew all the inner workings of our enormous machine. If the service ever crashed, they were prepared to turn on their laptops and fix it at any time, day or night. ba-dum-tss We also got our first QA specialist for full-scale testing. This made our lives incredibly easier. Before our QA, we had been spending a lot of time and effort testing new functionality and updates by ourselves, and checking how they interacted with existing versions. Little by little, mobile developers began to join our team, albeit with some difficulty. After all, you needed Apple products to get into iOS development, and those could be difficult to find in Yakutsk. This meant that we struggled to recruit local iOS developers, and our iOS team would sometimes lag behind our Android team when it came to releasing new features. I remember one time in Kazakhstan, when our app was blocked at the government level. I won't get into the details, but to reverse the block, we had to introduce a number of different features, including user instructions, automatic address changes, proxies, and more. In the end, we restored our capabilities in the country and officially reversed the block after a few years. I remember writing to the CTO of a large CIS news site that had also been blocked in Kazakhstan, and asking how he had managed to keep business going. Many of our features were developed through a series of trials and errors—or stumbled upon by chance—although they might seem completely obvious in hindsight. Take our call-free ride-hailing system, for example. If you haven't read the , I'll quickly summarize it here. first article Previously, when an inDrive passenger would create their order, a driver would see their request in the orders feed and call them right away. And this wouldn't be just one driver either; these orders were being sent to anyone nearby. Of course, this led to situations where multiple drivers would see an order and try to call the passenger at once. Typically, the first person to contact the passenger would get the order. Here's where the problem came in: Drivers would click on a ride without reading the order details, and then all try to call the passenger at the same time. So, we created something called a "buffer." When drivers press the order button, there's a short delay, which gives us time to collect all potential offers. This way, drivers don't have to rush, and they have time to read the order details in full. Then, based on the drivers' ratings, the system selects which of them will be able to call the passenger first. This was a significant improvement to our old version. Although the call-free system is now used by practically every ride-hailing app, we actually came up with ours by chance. In 2016, we launched in Yekaterinburg and introduced the "Guardians," who were specially selected drivers that could accept orders that typical drivers couldn't. We would send them special push notifications about exclusive orders. However, we soon realized that these push notifications weren't working very well because they were easy to miss. And that's when we remembered one of our existing features, called "personal orders," which allowed the passenger to simply select the closest driver on the map and send the order straight to them. We decided to use this feature when sending orders to our "Guardians." It took off immediately and worked so well that we then decided to expand it to all drivers. Of course, the personal orders feature might seem obvious now, but we discovered it through a series of trials and errors. The Team Up until 2019, our team was fully made up of Yakutsk locals. At the time, we wanted to help our homeland grow — and the local people along with it. inDrive had always held a strong mission and values. These values resonated with each employee, and we strived to uphold them. This was a period of powerful drive and energy. Every day, I would wake up in a good mood, knowing that my friends and good coffee were waiting for me in the office. That and plenty of interesting work, of course. inDrive was known for being a social company. Our team was young and carefree, which meant we worked hard and played hard. Every year, we'd take a company trip abroad, whether to Egypt, Thailand, Kazakhstan, or somewhere else entirely. Imagine an entire plane of colleagues escaping the –50-degree Celsius weather in Yakutsk to visit sunny +35-degree Thailand! It was great at the time, but unfortunately, these big company trips aren't possible anymore with a workforce of several thousand employees. By 2019, we hit a hiring roadblock. Business was booming, and any professionals in Yakutsk capable of handling the tasks and workload were already working for us. So, we decided to open a development office in Moscow. As the head of the iOS team, I was charged with opening the Moscow branch. We had a lot of flexibility during this time, and employees were free to contribute to the company in any way they saw fit, as long as it benefited the business. I entered a new phase in my life. I moved to Moscow and started the process of opening the new office, from choosing a business center to installing special lights with the company logo. Now that a few years have passed, I can look back at that time fondly. But back then, I would often think: "Why did I do this to myself? Why'd I take on all this renovation work?" Our main problems had to do with the company in charge of the renovation. At one point, they were so behind schedule that I even had to help them install the electrical wiring in the workspaces. I remember one specific evening, when we stayed late to assemble furniture. I could see that my colleagues were tired and depressed, so to lighten the mood, I asked " " At the time (and to this day), Belorusskaya was one of the most expensive areas in Moscow, like Times Square in New York. It was also home to a number of impressive IT offices. Of course, we just laughed and got back to work. Why the long faces? Cheer up! Next year, we're opening an office on Belorusskaya! By the end of 2019, we had our first developers at the Moscow office. Sometimes, it would seem like they were from another planet. During their interviews, they'd say things like, "We work in sprints. I finished all my tasks, then came here" (and it'd only be Thursday afternoon). Or they'd say, "We work three days from home and two days from the office." That was something completely new for me. inDrive was entirely office-based at the time, and everyone was expected to contribute fully. We weren't working with any kind of Kanbans, scrums, story points, or sprints. Conclusion We entered 2020 with a lot of optimism. Our new development office in Moscow had opened, and we were working with a great team. I was living in the capital, business was growing, and investments were on their way! When the company received investments, we would conduct a cashout, meaning employees could sell a small portion of their stock options for real money. Everything seemed to be going our way, like we were living in a movie. Unfortunately, though, this is the point in my story where things get a little darker, like in the Harry Potter movies. Suddenly, we were faced with a huge challenge. In 2020, the world was shut down by the coronavirus. inDrive closed their offices and we started to work from home—something we had always been firmly against. Life took on new rules and we had to quickly find our footing. We developed new processes, took our first online calls, and sent laptops home to new employees. Then, in mid-2020, I became the CTO of inDrive. It was a surprise even for myself. I was placed in charge of 50+ developers, 4 distributed teams, and the two offices in Moscow and Yakutsk. Of course, there were plenty of challenges, which I'll discuss in more detail in my next article. My joke about our office on Belorusskaya quickly became reality. At the end of 2020, we opened an office in one of the best business centers in Moscow, right on Belorusskaya Square, alongside other cool IT companies. P.S.

Building a Unicorn: The inDrive Tech Journey from Local Startup to Global Phenomenon 

ইউনিকর্ন তৈরি করা: স্থানীয় স্টার্টআপ থেকে গ্লোবাল ফেনোমেনন পর্যন্ত ইনড্রাইভ টেক জার্নি

Aufbau eines Einhorns: Die inDrive-Tech-Reise vom lokalen Startup zum globalen Phänomen

Construyendo un unicornio: el viaje tecnológico de inDrive desde una startup local hasta un fenómeno global

Construire une licorne : le parcours technologique d'inDrive, de la startup locale au phénomène mondial

यूनिकॉर्न का निर्माण: स्थानीय स्टार्टअप से वैश्विक घटना तक इनड्राइव टेक यात्रा

ユニコーンの構築: 地元のスタートアップから世界的現象への inDrive テクノロジーの旅

유니콘 만들기: 로컬 스타트업에서 글로벌 현상까지의 inDrive 기술 여정

Construindo um unicórnio: a jornada tecnológica do inDrive, de uma startup local a um fenômeno global

Создание единорога: технологическое путешествие inDrive от локального стартапа к глобальному феномену

Bir Tekboynuz Yaratmak: Yerel Startup'tan Küresel Fenomen'e inDrive Teknoloji Yolculuğu

Xây dựng kỳ lân: Hành trình công nghệ inDrive từ khởi nghiệp địa phương đến hiện tượng toàn cầu

打造独角兽：从本地初创企业到全球现象的 inDrive 技术之旅

If there was a time in history I would have loved to witness firsthand, one of them would have been to visit the World’s Fair, Futurama, and World of Tomorrow back in the 1930s and 40s. The Roaring Twenties, with all its decadence and "fuck you, economy" passion, gave way to a time of unbridled imagination and envisioning future possibilities with no constraints. We hadn’t even harnessed the atom at that point, emerging from one war and economic depression to rebound and reimagine the world around us filled with wonder. So what the f*ck happened to all that? Around the same time as the first set of World’s Fairs kicked off, H.G. Wells coined the term ‘foresight’. As it stands today, it still encompasses what we know as futurology, futurism (not the art form), future studies, and so on. It’s worth looking at the for the full history of how the profession grew from its origins because it moved through phases of imagining the future to providing statistical probabilities of several futures. Wikipedia entry “I began to see the future not as a totally impenetrable realm about which we can know absolutely nothing, but rather as an exciting frontier, offering enormous possibilities but also extraordinary dangers. We cannot possibly know everything that lies ahead, but with effort we can glimpse the possibilities of our future. This weak but incredibly valuable knowledge is critically important if we are to make wise decisions.” — Edward Cornish, founder of the World Future Society One of the biggest modern shapers of foresight and future studies was Edward Cornish—founder of the World Future Society. Back in the 60s and 70s he and the organization were pretty instrumental in helping to formalize a lot of the methods and tools practitioners used, bringing the profession to the no less. Unfortunately, the WFS today is nothing but a website and online forum that can only be described as worse than a subreddit. It holds no cachet or influence anymore and the legacy that Cornish spent decades building was bought out and handed to people who couldn’t future themselves out of a plastic bag. White House . The current WFS owners have sadly razed the Wikipedia entry to the ground to remove its 60-year history. There is some poetic irony in that the World Future Society only exists now in the Wayback Machine However, history lessons aside, something raw disappeared in the modernity of futurology. as the Wiki entry concludes and that is where the magic ends. “Futurists are practitioners of the foresight profession, which seeks to provide organizations and individuals with images of the future to help them prepare for contingencies and to maximize opportunities.” In a relentless pursuit to be accepted as a tool of the corporate and political world, futurists became just another bunch of McKinsey knock-offs, using their methods to ensure that their current employer can hit their KPIs and Quarterly results, or strategize for the next wild card event ( ). It’s now about predicting marketing, social trends, and consumer intents instead of dreaming and extrapolating what could be. which I may add, it seems nobody predicted Covid at all or even helped their corporate employer to prepare for a pandemic This has, unfortunately, become a problem in itself because as it becomes nothing more than trend spotting and extrapolation of percentages and blog posts so too has it attracted an unsavory bunch of charlatans who haven’t spent a single day on a foresight project, study, report, talk and so on. Throw a dart at the LinkedIn community and you’ll spear several hundred in one shot who claim to be Futurist but on checking their background you find they have nothing but Sales Assistants for Boots ( ), Fashion Futurist ( ), Planetary Futurist ( ) to Education Futurist ( ) listed. Retail Futurist Changing Room Assistants at Zara owned a florist ran an online marketing course on LinkedIn And they make more money than the practitioners because they’re not buried under reports and statistics but out there on podcasts and keynotes spitting out whatever listicles they read on a PowerPoint written by a at a creative agency. GPT model More on the GPT thing at the end. Futurism has become a cheap hobby for everyone who just looks up Google Word trends and extrapolates what the hottest thing for next year is going to be. Being a Futurist is like being the new Influencer or Evangelist. It’s a badge that tries to separate itself from the previous generation’s jaded job title that nobody wants anymore because the last mega-trending subject sullied it. It doesn’t take much to be a futurist now, just tweet/x something on a hashtag about your industry, add “AI” or “Spatial Computing” in the sentence, and voila — F U T U R I S T I C. ; you’re an evangelist. You make money selling advisory services explaining what this means for people and companies to take advantage of it and stand at conferences showing people charts like the above and making bold statements about why it will become the norm in 3 years. If you’re talking about a particular subject or trend and it’s already here then this is not foresight it is marketing This nonsense spawned exponentially during the pandemic because, suddenly, the future of work was an easy target. People and execs panicked, and they didn’t know what the fuck was going to happen, so why not ask someone who calls themselves a Futurist who talks about the Future of Work, virtual work meetings, and metaverse workplaces? They’ll know how to handle this. And then you have various strains of futurists, all trying to differentiate themselves by inventing something else to appear hip. For context: — someone who can’t tell you about future possibilities but can talk all day long about what’s happening today. Nowist — someone who can’t tell you about future possibilities but can talk all day long about what’s happening tomorrow. Near Futurist — someone who failed to get into Accenture but can talk all day long about strategy. Practical Futurist Shit, even I went by the title at one point to get away from it all. Now I feel like a , a term derived from , a word I found in a book that explained the feeling and lamentation of promised and imagined futures that failed to materialize. Anti-futurist Hauntologist Hauntology So, now even the practicing futurists are ever so subtly removing or tweaking the title from their public profiles because there is little to be gained from the association with the term. And you can’t criticize the profession. That’s bad juju. They’ll hunt you down with pitchforks behind the membership paywalls. You can’t talk about the bad stuff and negative consequences in futurist outlooks openly either because futurism is supposed to be about tripping the light fantastic to utopia whilst you suck on some techno-optimists teat. I was asked several years ago to give an end keynote at an event in Peru on artificial intelligence. Make it happy they said. I didn’t, the realities of extrapolating many different scenarios means you can’t just tell them the fluffy stuff because that doesn’t prepare them for the economic reality — especially in a region that isn’t a typical Westernised first-world clone of Silicon Valley. You are bound to explain everything. This is what separates some futurists from each other. There are those who will only spit the current narrative or positive Valley rhetoric because it will secure more work and make them more appealing to engage with as an influencer for the corporate shilling, and there are those who would rather tell it like it could be, warts and all with no compromise. The very sad part though, is that there is no room for real imagination anymore in this brave new world of future studies. If you take a look at the various narratives across futurology and possibilities of the future they are nowhere near as grandiose or as visionary as one hundred years ago. but now visions are cocooned and constrained by technology and trend spotting and their perception of progress and change. There is nothing from the late 19th and early 20th century that wasn’t imagined for today, just the timelines were always a bit optimistic and funky. You can even find old cartoons of people using video-calling devices drawn in late 1800s. Back then, imagination was unbounded and unconstrained, unfettered by numbers and correlation But now? No-one is imagining, only copying what they’ve read in a Gartner report. Far too many people think that imagination is tied to money or investment or needs an existing technology to back it up. This is the fucking problem now. “I can’t imagine something big or wild because people won’t believe it or invest in it.” Who fucking cares?! We’ve lost the ability to dream better futures because we’ve been conditioned to believe there has to be a pitch deck that accompanies it. Ask a TikTok futurist and you’ll get the usual crap like “we’ll all be wearing augmented reality glasses in the next 5 years” or “AI in healthcare and robotic surgery” or “digital culture in the metaverse”. Even the old guard like Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil have given up trying and regurgitating the same, tired ideas about nano-this and quantum-that. Is there nothing new to imagine in futurism? There is a little glimmer of hope though. There is a method called that combines the past with the present, including interviews with notable science fiction authors to provide the tools needed to “design the future with science fiction” and this is where the real future and direction of futurism lies, in a sense going back to its roots in science fiction and H.G. Wells to imagine bigger possibilities, both good and bad and putting them on display to inspire the public like we did before. Science Fiction Prototyping And no, the abomination that is CES does not count ffs. To combine outrageous imagination with the various methodologies that sit within future studies could offer, oddly enough, potential futures in itself for the profession that is so stuck in the past that it has no real future. , I interviewed a primary school year for a project and what they came up with was more fun, probable, positive and imaginative than those sitting on $500k contracts. Even a school child imagines bigger and brighter visions of the possible and the probable and I should know . But we have lost the drive to put our thoughts out there because the current trend is to shoot anything down that doesn’t remotely feel real or achievable or backed by something you read on Arxiv. And so we end up in this cycle of repeating the same crap over and over but using the latest marketing term to keep the prediction fresh (see the trend above chart above as a reminder) Being a futurist should be more about Gedankenexperimente than statistics So now we near the end of this rant. Didn’t see it coming, did you…not much of a futurist are you, but then again you’re exactly what futurism does need — someone who hasn’t been soiled by the stuffy academia of it all or who doesn’t care about the keynote glamour but is genuinely interested in the agency they possess to not only imagine and inform but shape the future they want to see at the same time. We will have positive and utopian and harmonic visions, protopian visions of an inclusive future, and dystopian visions that lead us to hell. The trick is knowing how to plan and prepare for every one of them and their possibilities and dangers, and to not be afraid to speak about them however harsh. For every dystopian future, there is a positive one to imagine out of it that could occur from a single decision we all possess the power to influence but you must know hell to recognise heaven, and that’s the real power of futurism. So, where have all the futurists gone? We’re still out there. Waiting. You might catch a glimpse of one in the corner of your eye at a conference, but if you turn to look they’ve vanished. Or try to take a photo of one but all that comes back is a blurred photo despite owning a 108MP smartphone camera. I’ll end this piece by stating two things. (1) There are not many futurists I respect anymore but those I do are all women. (2) I scared some people by saying I trained a ChatGPT model for future studies and it was pretty effective once you knew how to use it. And that in itself tells you why we need to go back to the future. Also published here

Will The Real Futurists Please Stand Up?

197 Stories To Learn About Startup Marketing

EASE NOT PEACE.

In this article, we will explore the concept of clustering in machine learning, delving into the different types of clustering and examining various algorithms within the clustering technique. Before delving into the specifics of clustering, let's take a moment to survey the different types of learning in : machine learning Supervised Learning: In supervised learning, models are trained on labeled data, where the term "label" corresponds to the category of the input data. For instance, consider a spam classification system. Here, machine learning models undergo training on both spam and non-spam emails, each tagged with their respective label tags. Tasks such as classification and regression fall within the purview of supervised learning. Unsupervised Learning: Conversely, unsupervised learning stands in contrast to supervised learning, operating without any labeled data. In this approach, models are trained on data devoid of explicit labels. Take, for example, the realm of recommendation systems, which operates on unsupervised learning techniques. Clustering, as a task, falls under the umbrella of unsupervised learning. While other learning types, such as reinforcement learning and semi-supervised learning, exist, they are not the focus of our discussion in this article. Building upon the above explanation, it becomes evident that clustering falls under the domain of unsupervised learning, where the data provided to the model during training is unlabelled. Now that we have a contextual understanding of where the concept of clustering emerges, it's time to delve into the essence of what clustering truly is. What is Clustering? In simple terms, clustering is a technique that involves grouping data based on certain characteristics. These groups of data points are referred to as "clusters." To illustrate this concept, let's explore a small example. Consider the following sentences as a dataset: Cricket is a fun game. Cars are cool machines that help us travel from one place to another. Teams take turns to bat and bowl. Scoring lots of runs makes you a hero in cricket! They have wheels, an engine, and can go really fast on roads. Some cars are big like trucks, and others are small like tiny race cars. By examining the properties and meanings of these sentences, we can group them into two categories: cricket and cars. This grouping aligns with what a clustering algorithm accomplishes during its training process. It captures the context (meaning) of the input data in numerical (vector) form and clusters the data points (vectors) based on their similarity. During inference, the clustering algorithm calculates the similarity between a query vector and the formed clusters (established during training) and assigns the query vector to the closest cluster. We will delve into the specifics of similarity metrics later in this article. How does the Clustering algorithm work? While a brief introduction on how clustering works was provided earlier, let's now delve into the procedural perspective. In the realm of machine learning, various clustering algorithms exist. However, the following procedure is a universal framework applicable to any clustering algorithm in use. Data Preprocessing: In the initial phase, text data undergoes preprocessing techniques like tokenization, lemmatization, and stop-word removal. This step enhances the quality of the data for subsequent analysis. Embedding Generation: Following preprocessing, we proceed to generate embeddings (vectors) for the processed text data. Various approaches exist for this task, ranging from traditional techniques like bag-of-words to more recent advancements such as transformers and language model pre-training. Cluster Formation: During the training of the clustering algorithm, clusters are formed based on the similarity between vectors. Metrics like cosine similarity or Euclidean distance are employed to calculate the similarity between vectors. It is essential for a robust clustering algorithm that intra-cluster distance is minimized while inter-cluster distance is maximized. Assignment of New Data Points: In the inference phase, the clustering algorithm compares a query vector to each cluster and assigns it to the cluster where the similarity score is high or the distance is low. This step ensures that new data points are accurately placed within existing clusters based on their similarity to cluster centroids. Types of Clustering There are different approaches to clustering a group of data points based on the similarity in their vector representation. A few of the techniques are discussed here : Hierarchical clustering Centroids-based Clustering Density-based Clustering Hierarchical clustering Hierarchical clustering is also known as Connectivity-based Clustering, where data points are connected to neighbors based on their relationships (proximity distance) The clusters are represented in a graph-like structure called a Dendrogram. The X-axis of the dendrogram represents the objects that do not merge, while the Y-axis represents the distance at which clusters merge. Similar data objects have minimal distance, falling into the same cluster, while dissimilar data objects are placed farther in the hierarchy. There are two most common types of Hierarchical Clustering: Agglomerative Clustering: Also known as the AGNES algorithm, this type of clustering adopts a bottom-up approach. Initially, all data points are treated as individual clusters, resulting in N clusters. Through an iterative procedure, these N clusters gradually merge with neighbouring clusters based on their similarity. By the end of the iterative process, all the individual clusters are amalgamated into a single large cluster containing N data points. Divisive Clustering: Also known as the DIANA algorithm, divisive clustering takes a top-down approach. All data points start within a single large cluster. Through an iterative process, this massive cluster breaks into sub-clusters and continues until a termination condition is met. This approach contrasts with agglomerative clustering, providing a different perspective on hierarchical clustering methodologies. Centroids-based Clustering This clustering technique, also recognized as Partition-based Clustering, stands out as one of the simplest and most widely utilized methods in the realm of unsupervised learning. The renowned k-means clustering algorithm is a prominent example within this category. In this approach, datasets are partitioned into a predetermined number of clusters, with each vector of values associated with a specific cluster. The process involves comparing a new vector with all cluster centroids and assigning it to the cluster with the minimum distance. This method offers a straightforward yet effective means of organizing data into distinct clusters. Common distance metrics used for calculating cluster distances in this type of clustering technique include Euclidean distance, Manhattan distance, or Minkowski distance. However, a notable limitation of this clustering approach is that the initial number of clusters (k) must be defined beforehand. This requirement can pose a challenge, as determining the optimal value for k may not always be straightforward and may require additional considerations or techniques. Density-based Clustering In contrast to the aforementioned clustering techniques, density-based clustering does not rely on distance metrics but instead considers the density of the data points' distribution. Data points are clustered based on their densities, wherein areas with a high concentration of points are identified as dense clusters, while low-concentration areas are considered separate clusters. Another notable distinction from the previously discussed techniques is the effective handling of outliers by density-based clustering algorithms. Outliers are designated as such, providing a more flexible approach compared to centroid-based clustering, where outliers are compelled to be assigned to one of the predefined clusters. Prominent algorithms in this clustering technique include DBSCAN and OPTICS. These methods showcase the adaptability of density-based clustering in capturing intricate patterns within datasets. Applications of Clustering Let's explore scenarios where clustering becomes a preferred choice over other techniques in machine learning. Below are specific use cases where clustering proves to be highly effective: Unlabelled Data or High Labelling Costs: When the available data is unlabelled, or the cost associated with labeling the data is prohibitively high. Scenario: Clustering is particularly valuable in scenarios where obtaining labeled data is impractical or costly. Significance: Recommendation and Search Engines: Tasks such as recommendation engines and search engines leverage clustering techniques. Scenario: Netflix employs clustering for movie suggestions, demonstrating the practical application of clustering in enhancing user experience and content discovery. Example: Customer Segmentation: In cases where businesses need to segment customers or markets based on the sales of a particular product or service. Scenario: Clustering aids in identifying distinct customer groups, allowing businesses to tailor their strategies based on specific customer characteristics. Significance: Anomaly Detection in Finance and Banking: Detecting outliers and anomalies in financial data within the banking sector. Scenario: Clustering serves as a robust tool for identifying unusual patterns or transactions that deviate from the norm, contributing to enhanced fraud detection and risk management. Significance: Document Classification and Retrieval: Classifying and retrieving documents based on their content. Scenario: Clustering techniques are instrumental in organizing and categorizing large volumes of documents, streamlining the document retrieval process. Significance: Real-Time Problem Solving: Clustering is applied to address various real-time problems. Scenario: The versatility of clustering techniques makes them adaptable to a range of dynamic, real-world challenges, providing effective solutions in diverse contexts. Significance: Conclusion In conclusion, clustering emerges as a versatile tool, particularly in scenarios involving unlabelled data or where labeling proves cost-prohibitive. Its broad utility extends across various domains, including recommendation systems, customer segmentation, anomaly detection, document classification, and real-time problem-solving. For , clustering stands as a valuable asset within their toolkit, offering a powerful means to extract meaningful insights from complex and unlabeled datasets. machine learning practitioners

Introduction to Clustering in Machine Learning: Types, Algorithms, and Applications

India's obsession with and digital marketing scams is indeed exacerbated by the high number of people pretending to be SEO professionals and experts, while in reality, they are nothing more than individuals engaged in SEO reseller programs. SEO These self-proclaimed "experts" are often far from it, and they contribute to the erosion of trust and professionalism in the industry. These so-called SEO professionals often lack the in-depth knowledge and skills required to deliver effective SEO services. They claim expertise in search engine optimization, but, in truth, they are merely middlemen, outsourcing the actual work to others while pocketing a significant margin. They rely on deceptive marketing tactics to portray themselves as experts, taking advantage of the widespread fascination with SEO in India. Who’s to blame? The blame for this situation extends to the agencies that offer these reseller programs. By relying on individuals who are willing to deceive clients about their true capabilities, these agencies become the core of the problem. They often prioritize their own profits over the quality of service they provide, creating a breeding ground for scams and unethical practices. This business model not only perpetuates the deception but also devalues the true expertise that legitimate SEO professionals possess. It's crucial to start to expose and condemn this unethical behavior on both sides—those masquerading as experts and the agencies enabling them. The lack of transparency and accountability in these reseller programs is a major issue, and it is high time the industry and regulatory bodies take action to address this problem. It’s of my own personal opinion the presence of individuals pretending to be SEO experts in India, often engaged in reseller programs, exacerbates the country's obsession with SEO and digital marketing scams. To combat this issue, we must not only scrutinize these pretenders but also hold the agencies offering reseller programs accountable for their part in perpetuating this deceptive culture. The Rise Of Digital Marketing Scams In India You won't believe the audacity of the situation in 2022 - there has been an astronomical 80% rise in the number of fake digital marketing "experts" in India! It's like a plague that has infected the digital landscape, and it's high time we called them out on their dubious practices. Everywhere you turn these days, you're bombarded with self-proclaimed digital marketing gurus who promise to revolutionize your online presence. They dangle the carrot of increased website traffic, more leads, and a sales bonanza right in front of you. But let's not kid ourselves; most of them are nothing but charlatans preying on the unsuspecting. These so-called "experts" are like the snake oil salesmen of the digital age. They talk a big game, but when it comes down to delivering real results, they're about as effective as a screen door on a submarine. It's infuriating how they manipulate their way into the industry, peddling their pseudo-knowledge and empty promises. The rise of digital marketing in India has given birth to a monstrosity that's plaguing businesses everywhere - the surge of fake digital marketing "experts." These self-proclaimed gurus have invaded the market, and it is high time we addressed this menace. Picture this: you're in desperate need of digital marketing expertise. You want to boost your online presence, drive traffic, and generate leads. So, you start hunting for a digital marketing pro. And what do you find? A sea of charlatans who talk the talk but can't walk the walk. They claim to possess digital marketing wizardry but lack the skills and knowledge to back up their lofty assertions. What's fueling this digital deception, you ask? It's the harsh reality of supply and demand. The scarcity of skilled digital resources in India has led to a grotesque imbalance! With genuine experts being as rare as a unicorn, fake digital marketers have seized the opportunity to charge exorbitant prices for their dubious services or provide little to no value. But wait, there's more to this digital marketing nightmare! The problem is compounded by the complete absence of a regulatory body overseeing digital marketing in India. In this Wild West of the online world, virtually anyone can hang their shingle and declare themselves a digital marketing expert. Yes, you read that right – there are no rules, no regulations, and no one to hold these self-proclaimed gurus accountable for their actions. It's the digital marketing equivalent of the lawless frontier. This glaring gap in oversight has allowed these charlatans to run amok, preying on unsuspecting businesses without consequence. It's a free-for-all, where anyone with a computer and a persuasive pitch can don the mantle of a digital marketing "expert." There are no qualifications, no standards, and no quality control. As a result, businesses are left vulnerable, and they're often at the mercy of these self-appointed swindlers. The absence of a regulatory body for digital marketing in India is a glaring loophole that needs to be addressed urgently. We can't continue to let these fake digital marketing people thrive in this lawless environment. I personally demand accountability, standards, and genuine expertise in the world of digital marketing. The Flock To Freelance Platforms - Scam Home Base I absolutely cannot believe the audacity of some of these people flocking to freelancer services like Fiverr and Upwork to conduct digital marketing scams! It's an absolute disgrace, and it tarnishes the reputation of these platforms, as well as the entire digital marketing industry. In fact, I noticed the scams were getting so bad I actually took it upon myself to learn as much of the science of SEO as possible and do everything myself. It’s funny. I actually learned SEO from the scammers themselves (What not do to anyway). Let's talk about the scammers themselves. These charlatans are preying on unsuspecting individuals and businesses who are genuinely looking for help with their digital marketing needs. They promise the moon and the stars, , social media, content marketing, and more. They lure their victims in with cheap prices and promises of quick results. But in reality, they have no clue what they're doing, and their tactics often violate the rules and guidelines of reputable platforms. claiming to be experts in SEO And what's even worse is that many of these scammers get away with it! They use fake credentials, fabricated reviews, and stolen portfolio samples to create an illusion of expertise. People fall for their deceit, only to find out later that their hard-earned money has been wasted on empty promises and ineffective marketing strategies. This not only harms the individuals who've been scammed but also undermines the trust that should exist in these freelancer platforms. But it's not just the scammers who are at fault. It's also the responsibility of these platforms to step up their game and protect their users. They need to implement better vetting processes, stricter review policies, and more comprehensive background checks to filter out the bad actors. The fact that these scammers can continue to operate on these platforms is unacceptable. In the end, this wave of on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork is a stain on the industry and a disservice to honest freelancers and clients alike. digital marketing scams It's time for everyone involved to take responsibility, from the scammers and the platforms to the clients who enable this behavior. The digital marketing world deserves better than this. Genuine professionals and ethical practices in the SEO and digital marketing industry should be championed and celebrated to restore trust and credibility in the field.

India's Obsession With SEO And Digital Marketing Scams 

Is a Career in Game Development Right for You? 

গেম ডেভেলপমেন্টে ক্যারিয়ার কি আপনার জন্য সঠিক?

Ist eine Karriere in der Spieleentwicklung das Richtige für Sie?

¿Es adecuada para usted una carrera en desarrollo de juegos?

Une carrière dans le développement de jeux est-elle faite pour vous ?

क्या गेम डेवलपमेंट में करियर आपके लिए सही है?

ゲーム開発のキャリアはあなたに適していますか?

게임 개발 경력이 당신에게 적합합니까?

Uma carreira em desenvolvimento de jogos é ideal para você?

Подходит ли вам карьера в разработке игр?

Oyun Geliştirmede Kariyer Size Uygun mu?

Nghề phát triển trò chơi có phù hợp với bạn không?

游戏开发职业适合您吗？

Business English: A Practice Book by Rose Buhlig is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE PREPOSITION AND THE CONJUNCTION here THE PREPOSITION AND THE CONJUNCTION **Prepositions
\ It is important in the study of prepositions to observe that there are certain words that are followed by certain prepositions. To change the preposition is to convey a different meaning from the one that the speaker intended, or to convey no meaning at all. A partial list of such words with their appropriate prepositions follows: accompanied with anything having no life accompanied by anything having life acquit of accuse of adapted to a thing adapted for a course, because of one's nature adapted from an author agree to a plan or proposition agree with a person agree upon something that must be decided angry at a thing angry with a person compare with to bring out similar qualities compare to without analyzing comply with confer on meaning to give to confer with meaning to talk to confide in meaning to put faith in confide to meaning to commit to one's keeping conform to correspond to, with a thing, denoting similarity correspond with meaning to write to different from dependent on a person dependent for a thing independent of disappointed in employed at a certain place or salary employed in a certain kind of business employed by a certain person or company enter upon duties enter at a door followed by influence over, upon expect of participate in profit by remonstrate against a thing remonstrate with a person Insert the correct preposition in the following: Exercise 125 I shall comply —— your request. The chairman came upon the platform accompanied —— the speaker. He took a walk accompanied —— his dog. The lecture will be accompanied —— stereopticon views. Strikes are usually accompanied —— riots. The years of prosperity were followed —— years of famine. He was accused —— theft, but was acquitted —— the accusation. She is well adapted —— the position that is open. An electric iron is especially adapted —— summer use. The selection was adapted —— Irving. This cloth is well adapted —— summer clothing because it is very light in weight. I agree —— you that the plan is impracticable. Let us agree now —— a place to spend our summer vacation. That is not a proposition —— which I shall agree. It is silly to be angry —— an inanimate object. Don't be angry —— a person because he tells you your faults. His report corresponds in all respects —- yours. Mr. Giles suggested that you would be glad to have us correspond —— you concerning our new bond issues. I shall confer —— my lawyer. The public has conferred a great honor —— him. One should always profit —— his experiences. The new device is entirely different —— the old. I am employed —— a fairly large salary —— a business that is growing daily. All employees must conform —— the rules. I am confiding —— you because I know that I can trust you. She confided her child —— the care of her brother. She is dependent —— her brother —— support. You can have an influence for good —— him. I have remonstrated —— the change several times. Perhaps he will change his plans if we remonstrate —— him at once. Exercise 126—Prepositions Incorrectly Used Each of the incorrect sentences given below contains an unnecessary preposition. When the meaning of "Where are you going?" is entirely clear, there is nothing gained by saying "Where are you going " Omit such superfluous prepositions. to? Wrong Right 1. I took it off the shelf. of I took it off the shelf. 2. I shall accept your hospitality. of I shall accept your hospitality. 3. Where are you at? Where are you? 4. Where are you going to? Where are you going? 5. It is a building twenty to thirty stories in height. of from It is a building twenty to thirty stories in height. 6. Look out the window. of Look out the window. 7. John copies his father in everything. after John copies his father in everything. 8. I am wondering what I should do. about I am wondering what I should do. 9. I shall consult my lawyer. with I shall consult my lawyer. 10. He sat opposite me. to He sat opposite me. 11. I shall leave later . on I shall leave later. for and to 12. I shall try go. and I shall try go. to for of have 13. I might gone. of I might gone. have The wrong preposition 14. He fell the water. in He fell the water. into 15. She died diphtheria. with She died diphtheria. of 16. Divide the work the four of us. between Divide the work the four of us. among ( may be used in speaking of only two persons or things) Between 17. It will be done of an hour. inside It will be done an hour. within 18. Are you angry me? at Are you angry me? with Preposition must be used 19. It's no use to try. It's no use to try. of 20. My sister stayed home. My sister stayed home. at 21. Why do you act that way? Why do you act that way? in 22. We left the third of June. We left the third of June. on The object of a preposition is always in the objective case. Some people have great difficulty in recognizing that in such expressions as for you and me, the pronoun me is as much the object of the preposition for as the pronoun you. Both words must be in the objective case. It is incorrect to say for you and I. Exercise 127 In the following sentences omit the incorrect italicized form: The invitation is for father and I—me. Every one has finished his work except he—him and I—me. It's a question that you and I—me must decide; it refers to you and I—me alone. Girls like you and she—her should have a good influence over the others. All but you and I—me have left. He did it for you and I—me. No one objected but they—them and we—us. She sat opposite you and I—me. They were sitting near you and I—me. We expect you to return with mother and I—me. He wanted my brother and I—me to go into business with his brother and he—him. Neither she—her nor her sister have I seen for several months. My companion and I—me took up the trail of the bear at once. For some distance it led he—him and I—me over the soft, yielding carpet of moss and pine needles, and the footprints were quite easily made out. He—him and I—me had, of course, to keep a sharp lookout ahead and around for the grizzly. All are going on the excursion except he—him and I—me. He—him and I—me went fishing. The rule applies to we—us all—the manager, they—them who keep books, you, and I—me. She beckoned to my companion and I—me. The letter was to be read by the president or I—me. He did it for the sake of my father and I—me. We study Shakespeare with her sister and she—her. She—her and her sister went to the lecture with my sister and I—me. They sent for she—her and I—me, not you and he—him. The program was arranged by the president and I—me. They found that his father and he—him had already left. Mother is going to buy a birthday present to-day for she—her and I—me. The play is interesting not only to you older people but to we—us younger ones also. They expected the work to be done by she—her and I—me. The dispute between his neighbor and he—him over their lot line was settled by the surveyors this morning. He wants to speak to you and I—me. Than and as are not prepositions but conjunctions. They are used to introduce subordinate clauses. Usually the clause is incomplete, but the omitted part is easily understood from the preceding clause and must be supplied to show the case of the noun or the pronoun that is expressed; as, Exercise 128—Than, as : She is as tall as I am. Right : She is taller than he is. Right : I should invite you rather than her than I should invite her. Right Use the correct one of the italicized pronouns in the following sentences: I'll agree that he is richer than I—me, but riches are not everything. I shall send her rather than he—him. No one felt sorrier than she—her. No one knows more about an automobile than he—him. You are more capable of doing the work than he—him. We were nearer the goal than you or he—him. You finished the work almost as quickly as she—her. She writes fully as well as he—him. The manager said he would rather send me than he—him. I secured a position sooner than she—her. It seems to me that they ought to go rather than we—us. I am surprised that you arrived sooner than they—them. They should have elected him rather than I—me. I am not so well-fitted as he—him to hold the position. You are more popular than he—him. Exercise 129—Correlatives There are certain conjunctions, called , that are used in pairs. They are correlatives both—and as—as, so—as either—or not only—but also neither—nor whether—or so—that such—as Illustrations Both—and He has both skill and energy. Either—or I shall leave either Monday or Tuesday. Neither—nor I can neither sing nor play. So—that It rained so hard that we stayed at home. As—as We shall come as early as we can. So—as She is not so tall as you are. (Used in negative expressions.) Not only—but also We saw not only Mr. Brown but his wife also. Whether—or Whether I return to work or stay at home depends on my mother's health. Such—as We shall buy only such goods as we think we can sell. Be very careful not to use the correlative so as incorrectly for so that. So as is used in negative expressions of comparison; so that is used to express result. : We went early so as we could get good seats. Wrong : We went early so that we could get good seats. Right In the illustrations given above, notice that the correlatives always join two similar or coördinate expressions. It is important that they be placed each immediately before one of the two coördinate expressions. : I neither can sing nor play. Wrong : I can neither sing nor play. Right Recast the following sentences, placing the correlative conjunctions before coordinate expressions: Either you ordered it late or not at all. He said he neither had money nor time. We not only bought the books you wished but the games also. We like the place in which we live both on account of its quietness and its pleasant surroundings. I shall either go to Quebec or Montreal. Either he must spray his trees or expect no fruit. I neither like the appearance of the shop nor the attitude of the clerks. They did it both for the sake of your brother and you. This sample not only is much darker but heavier also. They are barred who neither can read nor write. These conjunctions are correctly used in speaking of two things only. Care must be taken to use or with either and nor with neither. In comparing three or more things use any of them, none of them, or no. Exercise 130—Either—or, Neither—nor In the following sentences use only the correct italicized forms: Neither effort nor—or money was spared in the undertaking. I have considered planting maple, oak, and elm trees, but neither—none of them seems to grow well in this climate. We do not believe in either enduring oppression nor—or killing the oppressor. We believe in arbitration. He has no—neither time, patience, nor—or energy. If you ask me which of the three I prefer, I'll be frank and tell you I like neither—none of them. Three courses will be given in the subject this year; you may take either—any one of them. I had already passed three branch roads, but neither—none of them had looked familiar to me. I hardly think he accepted any—either of the two offers he received. Neither the doctor or—nor his wife was at home. Both the books look shop-worn. I'll take neither—none. Except and without are prepositions, and are used, therefore, to introduce phrases; unless is a conjunction, and is used to introduce a clause. Exercise 131—Except, Without, Unless In the following sentences insert the correct form, giving a reason for your choice: —— you leave at once, you will miss your train. I cannot learn to swim, —— some one teaches me. I cannot learn to swim —— a teacher. No one could do the work —— me. John expects to learn —— studying. John will discover that he cannot win promotion —— he works hard. No one can learn how to spell —— first learning how to observe. No one will learn to spell —— he learns to observe. No one will succeed —— he has energy and patience. No one will succeed —— energy and patience. You cannot succeed in any way —— by seizing each opportunity as it comes. It is impossible to grow beautiful flowers —— the soil is good. Exercise 132—Like, as Like is followed by a noun or pronoun in the objective case. As is a conjunction and introduces a clause, and is therefore followed by a verb. Like is not a conjunction and therefore may not be substituted for as or as if. : I wish I could play like you can. Wrong : I wish I could play as you can. Right Insert the correct word in the following sentences: The picture looks just —— you. I haven't a voice —— my brother's. I cannot sing —— my brother can. He walks just —— you do. I hope you will all enjoy the trip —— I did. For pleasure and exercise I think there is no game —— tennis. He said that the town looked just —— it had when he was a boy. I cut the paper just —— you said I should. He talks —— his father. He has the same sort of drawl —— his father has. She was there —— you said she would be. They worked —— beavers. He looked —— a tramp. To give the stitch the proper twist throw the thread over the needle —— I do. He walks —— he were lame. Exercise 133—As—as, So—as Use as—as in stating equality; use so—as in negative comparisons. You will find the new clerks fully —— courteous as were the old. You will not find the new clerks —— courteous as were the old. Elms do not grow —— well in this climate as do poplars. We did not carry —— much advertising this year as we did last year, and we find that our receipts are smaller. Under our system of individual instruction a student may advance —— rapidly as his ability permits. You are not —— tall as your sister. I do not seem to learn languages —— easily as mathematics. This house is not —— large as the other. He is —— active as he was twenty years ago. He is not —— active as he was twenty years ago. Exercise 134—Miscellaneous Blunders To, Too, Two To is a preposition; too is an adverb, and means excessively or also; two is a numeral adjective. Insert the correct form in each of the following sentences: The —— sisters discovered that it was —— late for the 4:15 train. It is —— dark in that corner; come —— the light. He spends —— much time in dreaming, —— little in working. He would have done better if he had not given —— little heed —— the advice of his —— older brothers. —— more hours were passed in the all —— weary task of waiting. It was —— cold —— stay out more than —— hours. You may go ——, but don't stay —— long. —— stay there for —— weeks would be —— tiresome. The doctor said that the —— men were —— sick —— go home alone, and I thought so ——. About —— hours ago I met Mary who said that she was going —— the country ——. There, Their 11. —— are seven brothers in —— family. —— books are —— on the table. —— is no doubt that —— knowledge of mathematics is greater than —— knowledge of English. Were, Where 14. —— have you been? —— you ever on a farm —— alfalfa is grown? —— —— you when the report was read? I was just —— you ——. Of, Have 18. You should —— read more distinctly. I could —— done the work if I had had more —— the necessary tools. If I had tried harder, I might —— done the work better. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Rose Buhlig (2011). Business English: A Practice Book. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38046/pg38046-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE PREPOSITION AND THE CONJUNCTION

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE RESULTS OF LOVE AND WINE here THE RESULTS OF LOVE AND WINE. Two, three, four, and even five o'clock still found Sir Felix Carbury in bed on that fatal Thursday. More than once or twice his mother crept up to his room, but on each occasion he feigned to be fast asleep and made no reply to her gentle words. But his condition was one which only admits of short snatches of uneasy slumber. From head to foot, he was sick and ill and sore, and could find no comfort anywhere. To lie where he was, trying by absolute quiescence to soothe the agony of his brows and to remember that as long as he lay there he would be safe from attack by the outer world, was all the solace within his reach. Lady Carbury sent the page up to him, and to the page he was awake. The boy brought him tea. He asked for soda and brandy; but there was none to be had, and in his present condition he did not dare to hector about it till it was procured for him. The world surely was now all over to him. He had made arrangements for running away with the great heiress of the day, and had absolutely allowed the young lady to run away without him. The details of their arrangement had been such that she absolutely would start upon her long journey across the ocean before she could find out that he had failed to keep his appointment. Melmotte's hostility would be incurred by the attempt, and hers by the failure. Then he had lost all his money,—and hers. He had induced his poor mother to assist in raising a fund for him,—and even that was gone. He was so cowed that he was afraid even of his mother. And he could remember something, but no details, of some row at the club,—but still with a conviction on his mind that he had made the row. Ah,—when would he summon courage to enter the club again? When could he show himself again anywhere? All the world would know that Marie Melmotte had attempted to run off with him, and that at the last moment he had failed her. What lie could he invent to cover his disgrace? And his clothes! All his things were at the club;—or he thought that they were, not being quite certain whether he had not made some attempt to carry them off to the Railway Station. He had heard of suicide. If ever it could be well that a man should cut his own throat, surely the time had come for him now. But as this idea presented itself to him he simply gathered the clothes around him and tried to sleep. The death of Cato would hardly have for him persuasive charms. Between five and six his mother again came up to him, and when he appeared to sleep, stood with her hand upon his shoulder. There must be some end to this. He must at any rate be fed. She, wretched woman, had been sitting all day,—thinking of it. As regarded her son himself, his condition told his story with sufficient accuracy. What might be the fate of the girl she could not stop to enquire. She had not heard all the details of the proposed scheme; but she had known that Felix had proposed to be at Liverpool on the Wednesday night, and to start on Thursday for New York with the young lady; and with the view of aiding him in his object she had helped him with money. She had bought clothes for him, and had been busy with Hetta for two days preparing for his long journey,—having told some lie to her own daughter as to the cause of her brother's intended journey. He had not gone, but had come, drunk and degraded, back to the house. She had searched his pockets with less scruple than she had ever before felt, and had found his ticket for the vessel and the few sovereigns which were left to him. About him she could read the riddle plainly. He had stayed at his club till he was drunk, and had gambled away all his money. When she had first seen him she had asked herself what further lie she should now tell to her daughter. At breakfast there was instant need for some story. "Mary says that Felix came back this morning, and that he has not gone at all," Hetta exclaimed. The poor woman could not bring herself to expose the vices of the son to her daughter. She could not say that he had stumbled into the house drunk at six o'clock. Hetta no doubt had her own suspicions. "Yes; he has come back," said Lady Carbury, broken-hearted by her troubles. "It was some plan about the Mexican railway I believe, and has broken through. He is very unhappy and not well. I will see to him." After that Hetta had said nothing during the whole day. And now, about an hour before dinner, Lady Carbury was standing by her son's bedside, determined that he should speak to her. "Felix," she said,—"speak to me, Felix.—I know that you are awake." He groaned, and turned himself away from her, burying himself, further under the bedclothes. "You must get up for your dinner. It is near six o'clock." "All right," he said at last. "What is the meaning of this, Felix? You must tell me. It must be told sooner or later. I know you are unhappy. You had better trust your mother." "I am so sick, mother." "You will be better up. What were you doing last night? What has come of it all? Where are your things?" "At the club.—You had better leave me now, and let Sam come up to me." Sam was the page. "I will leave you presently; but, Felix, you must tell me about this. What has been done?" "It hasn't come off." "But how has it not come off?" "I didn't get away. What's the good of asking?" "You said this morning when you came in, that Mr. Melmotte had discovered it." "Did I? Then I suppose he has. Oh, mother, I wish I could die. I don't see what's the use of anything. I won't get up to dinner. I'd rather stay here." "You must have something to eat, Felix." "Sam can bring it me. Do let him get me some brandy and water. I'm so faint and sick with all this that I can hardly bear myself. I can't talk now. If he'll get me a bottle of soda water and some brandy, I'll tell you all about it then." "Where is the money, Felix?" "I paid it for the ticket," said he, with both his hands up to his head. Then his mother again left him with the understanding that he was to be allowed to remain in bed till the next morning; but that he was to give her some further explanation when he had been refreshed and invigorated after his own prescription. The boy went out and got him soda water and brandy, and meat was carried up to him, and then he did succeed for a while in finding oblivion from his misery in sleep. "Is he ill, mamma?" Hetta asked. "Yes, my dear." "Had you not better send for a doctor?" "No, my dear. He will be better to-morrow." "Mamma, I think you would be happier if you would tell me everything." "I can't," said Lady Carbury, bursting out into tears. "Don't ask. What's the good of asking? It is all misery and wretchedness. There is nothing to tell,—except that I am ruined." "Has he done anything, mamma?" "No. What should he have done? How am I to know what he does? He tells me nothing. Don't talk about it any more. Oh, God,—how much better it would be to be childless!" "Oh, mamma, do you mean me?" said Hetta, rushing across the room, and throwing herself close to her mother's side on the sofa. "Mamma, say that you do not mean me." "It concerns you as well as me and him. I wish I were childless." "Oh, mamma, do not be cruel to me! Am I not good to you? Do I not try to be a comfort to you?" "Then marry your cousin, Roger Carbury, who is a good man, and who can protect you. You can, at any rate, find a home for yourself, and a friend for us. You are not like Felix. You do not get drunk and gamble,—because you are a woman. But you are stiff-necked, and will not help me in my trouble." "Shall I marry him, mamma, without loving him?" "Love! Have I been able to love? Do you see much of what you call love around you? Why should you not love him? He is a gentleman, and a good man,—soft-hearted, of a sweet nature, whose life would be one effort to make yours happy. You think that Felix is very bad." "I have never said so." "But ask yourself whether you do not give as much pain, seeing what you could do for us if you would. But it never occurs to you to sacrifice even a fantasy for the advantage of others." Hetta retired from her seat on the sofa, and when her mother again went up-stairs she turned it all over in her mind. Could it be right that she should marry one man when she loved another? Could it be right that she should marry at all, for the sake of doing good to her family? This man, whom she might marry if she would,—who did in truth worship the ground on which she trod,—was, she well knew, all that her mother had said. And he was more than that. Her mother had spoken of his soft heart, and his sweet nature. But Hetta knew also that he was a man of high honour and a noble courage. In such a condition as was hers now he was the very friend whose advice she could have asked,—had he not been the very lover who was desirous of making her his wife. Hetta felt that she could sacrifice much for her mother. Money, if she had it, she could have given, though she left herself penniless. Her time, her inclinations, her very heart's treasure, and, as she thought, her life, she could give. She could doom herself to poverty, and loneliness, and heart-rending regrets for her mother's sake. But she did not know how she could give herself into the arms of a man she did not love. "I don't know what there is to explain," said Felix to his mother. She had asked him why he had not gone to Liverpool, whether he had been interrupted by Melmotte himself, whether news had reached him from Marie that she had been stopped, or whether,—as might have been possible,—Marie had changed her own mind. But he could not bring himself to tell the truth, or any story bordering on the truth. "It didn't come off," he said, "and of course that knocked me off my legs. Well; yes. I did take some champagne when I found how it was. A fellow does get cut up by that kind of thing. Oh, I heard it at the club,—that the whole thing was off. I can't explain anything more. And then I was so mad, I can't tell what I was after. I did get the ticket. There it is. That shows I was in earnest. I spent the £30 in getting it. I suppose the change is there. Don't take it, for I haven't another shilling in the world." Of course he said nothing of Marie's money, or of that which he had himself received from Melmotte. And as his mother had heard nothing of these sums she could not contradict what he said. She got from him no further statement, but she was sure that there was a story to be told which would reach her ears sooner or later. That evening, about nine o'clock, Mr. Broune called in Welbeck Street. He very often did call now, coming up in a cab, staying for a cup of tea, and going back in the same cab to the office of his newspaper. Since Lady Carbury had, so devotedly, abstained from accepting his offer, Mr. Broune had become almost sincerely attached to her. There was certainly between them now more of the intimacy of real friendship than had ever existed in earlier days. He spoke to her more freely about his own affairs, and even she would speak to him with some attempt at truth. There was never between them now even a shade of love-making. She did not look into his eyes, nor did he hold her hand. As for kissing her,—he thought no more of it than of kissing the maid-servant. But he spoke to her of the things that worried him,—the unreasonable exactions of proprietors, and the perilous inaccuracy of contributors. He told her of the exceeding weight upon his shoulders, under which an Atlas would have succumbed. And he told her something too of his triumphs;—how he had had this fellow bowled over in punishment for some contradiction, and that man snuffed out for daring to be an enemy. And he expatiated on his own virtues, his justice and clemency. Ah,—if men and women only knew his good nature and his patriotism;—how he had spared the rod here, how he had made the fortune of a man there, how he had saved the country millions by the steadiness of his adherence to some grand truth! Lady Carbury delighted in all this and repaid him by flattery, and little confidences of her own. Under his teaching she had almost made up her mind to give up Mr. Alf. Of nothing was Mr. Broune more certain than that Mr. Alf was making a fool of himself in regard to the Westminster election and those attacks on Melmotte. "The world of London generally knows what it is about," said Mr. Broune, "and the London world believes Mr. Melmotte to be sound. I don't pretend to say that he has never done anything that he ought not to do. I am not going into his antecedents. But he is a man of wealth, power, and genius, and Alf will get the worst of it." Under such teaching as this, Lady Carbury was almost obliged to give up Mr. Alf. Sometimes they would sit in the front room with Hetta, to whom also Mr. Broune had become attached; but sometimes Lady Carbury would be in her own sanctum. On this evening she received him there, and at once poured forth all her troubles about Felix. On this occasion she told him everything, and almost told him everything truly. He had already heard the story. "The young lady went down to Liverpool, and Sir Felix was not there." "He could not have been there. He has been in bed in this house all day. Did she go?" "So I am told;—and was met at the station by the senior officer of the police at Liverpool, who brought her back to London without letting her go down to the ship at all. She must have thought that her lover was on board;—probably thinks so now. I pity her." "How much worse it would have been, had she been allowed to start," said Lady Carbury. "Yes; that would have been bad. She would have had a sad journey to New York, and a sadder journey back. Has your son told you anything about money?" "What money?" "They say that the girl entrusted him with a large sum which she had taken from her father. If that be so he certainly ought to lose no time in restoring it. It might be done through some friend. I would do it for that matter. If it be so,—to avoid unpleasantness,—it should be sent back at once. It will be for his credit." This Mr. Broune said with a clear intimation of the importance of his advice. It was dreadful to Lady Carbury. She had no money to give back, nor, as she was well aware, had her son. She had heard nothing of any money. What did Mr. Broune mean by a large sum? "That would be dreadful," she said. "Had you not better ask him about it?" Lady Carbury was again in tears. She knew that she could not hope to get a word of truth from her son. "What do you mean by a large sum?" "Two or three hundred pounds, perhaps." "I have not a shilling in the world, Mr. Broune." Then it all came out,—the whole story of her poverty, as it had been brought about by her son's misconduct. She told him every detail of her money affairs from the death of her husband, and his will, up to the present moment. "He is eating you up, Lady Carbury." Lady Carbury thought that she was nearly eaten up already, but she said nothing. "You must put a stop to this." "But how?" "You must rid yourself of him. It is dreadful to say so, but it must be done. You must not see your daughter ruined. Find out what money he got from Miss Melmotte and I will see that it is repaid. That must be done;—and we will then try to get him to go abroad. No;—do not contradict me. We can talk of the money another time. I must be off now, as I have stayed too long. Do as I bid you. Make him tell you, and send me word down to the office. If you could do it early to-morrow, that would be best. God bless you." And so he hurried off. Early on the following morning a letter from Lady Carbury was put into Mr. Broune's hands, giving the story of the money as far as she had been able to extract it from Sir Felix. Sir Felix declared that Mr. Melmotte had owed him £600, and that he had received £250 out of this from Miss Melmotte,—so that there was still a large balance due to him. Lady Carbury went on to say that her son had at last confessed that he had lost this money at play. The story was fairly true; but Lady Carbury in her letter acknowledged that she was not justified in believing it because it was told to her by her son. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Anthony Trollope (2004). The Way We Live Now. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5231/pg5231-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE RESULTS OF LOVE AND WINE

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . MOLLY GIBSON'S CHILDHOOD. here CHAPTER III. MOLLY GIBSON'S CHILDHOOD. Sixteen years before this time, all Hollingford had been disturbed to its foundations by the intelligence that Mr. Hall, the skilful doctor, who had attended them all their days, was going to take a partner. It was no use reasoning to them on the subject; so Mr. Browning the vicar, Mr. Sheepshanks (Lord Cumnor's agent), and Mr. Hall himself, the masculine reasoners of the little society, left off the attempt, feeling that the would prove more silencing to the murmurs than many arguments. Mr. Hall had told his faithful patients that, even with the strongest spectacles, his sight was not to be depended upon; and they might have found out for themselves that his hearing was very defective, although, on this point, he obstinately adhered to his own opinion, and was frequently heard to regret the carelessness of people's communication nowadays, "like writing on blotting-paper, all the words running into each other," he would say. And more than once Mr. Hall had had attacks of a suspicious nature,—"rheumatism" he used to call them, but he prescribed for himself as if they had been gout—which had prevented his immediate attention to imperative summonses. But, blind and deaf, and rheumatic as he might be, he was still Mr. Hall the doctor who could heal all their ailments—unless they died meanwhile—and he had no right to speak of growing old, and taking a partner. Che sarà sarà He went very steadily to work all the same; advertising in medical journals, reading testimonials, sifting character and qualifications; and just when the elderly maiden ladies of Hollingford thought that they had convinced their contemporary that he was as young as ever, he startled them by bringing his new partner, Mr. Gibson, to call upon them, and began "slyly," as these ladies said, to introduce him into practice. And "who was this Mr. Gibson?" they asked, and echo might answer the question, if she liked, for no one else did. No one ever in all his life knew anything more of his antecedents than the Hollingford people might have found out the first day they saw him: that he was tall, grave, rather handsome than otherwise; thin enough to be called "a very genteel figure," in those days, before muscular Christianity had come into vogue; speaking with a slight Scotch accent; and, as one good lady observed, "so very trite in his conversation," by which she meant sarcastic. As to his birth, parentage, and education,—the favourite conjecture of Hollingford society was, that he was the illegitimate son of a Scotch duke, by a Frenchwoman; and the grounds for this conjecture were these:—He spoke with a Scotch accent; therefore, he must be Scotch. He had a very genteel appearance, an elegant figure, and was apt—so his ill-wishers said—to give himself airs; therefore, his father must have been some person of quality; and, that granted, nothing was easier than to run this supposition up all the notes of the scale of the peerage,—baronet, baron, viscount, earl, marquis, duke. Higher they dared not go, though one old lady, acquainted with English history, hazarded the remark, that "she believed that one or two of the Stuarts—hem—had not always been,—ahem—quite correct in their—conduct; and she fancied such—ahem—things ran in families." But, in popular opinion, Mr. Gibson's father always remained a duke; nothing more. Then his mother must have been a Frenchwoman, because his hair was so black; and he was so sallow; and because he had been in Paris. All this might be true, or might not; nobody ever knew, or found out anything more about him than what Mr. Hall told them, namely, that his professional qualifications were as high as his moral character, and that both were far above the average, as Mr. Hall had taken pains to ascertain before introducing him to his patients. The popularity of this world is as transient as its glory, as Mr. Hall found out before the first year of his partnership was over. He had plenty of leisure left to him now to nurse his gout and cherish his eyesight. The younger doctor had carried the day; nearly every one sent for Mr. Gibson. Even at the great houses—even at the Towers, that greatest of all, where Mr. Hall had introduced his new partner with fear and trembling, with untold anxiety as to his behaviour, and the impression he might make on my lord the Earl, and my lady the Countess, Mr. Gibson was received at the end of a twelvemonth with as much welcome respect for his professional skill as Mr. Hall himself had ever been. Nay—and this was a little too much for even the kind old doctor's good temper—Mr. Gibson had even been invited once to dinner at the Towers, to dine with the great Sir Astley, the head of the profession! To be sure, Mr. Hall had been asked as well; but he was laid up just then with his gout (since he had had a partner the rheumatism had been allowed to develope itself), and he had not been able to go. Poor Mr. Hall never quite got over this mortification; after it he allowed himself to become dim of sight and hard of hearing, and kept pretty closely to the house during the two winters that remained of his life. He sent for an orphan grand-niece to keep him company in his old age; he, the woman-contemning old bachelor, became thankful for the cheerful presence of the pretty, bonny Mary Pearson, who was good and sensible, and nothing more. She formed a close friendship with the daughters of the vicar, Mr. Browning, and Mr. Gibson found time to become very intimate with all three. Hollingford speculated much on which young lady would become Mrs. Gibson, and was rather sorry when the talk about possibilities, and the gossip about probabilities, with regard to the handsome young surgeon's marriage, ended in the most natural manner in the world, by his marrying his predecessor's niece. The two Miss Brownings showed no signs of going into a consumption on the occasion, although their looks and manners were carefully watched. On the contrary, they were rather boisterously merry at the wedding, and poor Mrs. Gibson it was that died of consumption, four or five years after her marriage—three years after the death of her great-uncle, and when her only child, Molly, was just three years old. Mr. Gibson did not speak much about the grief at the loss of his wife, which it was supposed that he felt. Indeed, he avoided all demonstrations of sympathy, and got up hastily and left the room when Miss Phœbe Browning first saw him after his loss, and burst into an uncontrollable flood of tears, which threatened to end in hysterics. Miss Browning declared she never could forgive him for his hard-heartedness on that occasion; but a fortnight afterwards she came to very high words with old Mrs. Goodenough, for gasping out her doubts whether Mr. Gibson was a man of deep feeling; judging by the narrowness of his crape hat-band, which ought to have covered his hat, whereas there was at least three inches of beaver to be seen. And, in spite of it all, Miss Browning and Miss Phœbe considered themselves as Mr. Gibson's most intimate friends, in right of their regard for his dead wife, and would fain have taken a quasi-motherly interest in his little girl, had she not been guarded by a watchful dragon in the shape of Betty, her nurse, who was jealous of any interference between her and her charge; and especially resentful and disagreeable towards all those ladies who, by suitable age, rank, or propinquity, she thought capable of "casting sheep's eyes at master." Several years before the opening of this story, Mr. Gibson's position seemed settled for life, both socially and professionally. He was a widower, and likely to remain so; his domestic affections were centred on little Molly, but even to her, in their most private moments, he did not give way to much expression of his feelings; his most caressing appellation for her was "Goosey," and he took a pleasure in bewildering her infant mind with his badinage. He had rather a contempt for demonstrative people, arising from his medical insight into the consequences to health of uncontrolled feeling. He deceived himself into believing that still his reason was lord of all, because he had never fallen into the habit of expression on any other than purely intellectual subjects. Molly, however, had her own intuitions to guide her. Though her papa laughed at her, quizzed her, joked at her, in a way which the Miss Brownings called "really cruel" to each other when they were quite alone, Molly took her little griefs and pleasures, and poured them into her papa's ears, sooner even than into Betty's, that kind-hearted termagant. The child grew to understand her father well, and the two had the most delightful intercourse together—half banter, half seriousness, but altogether confidential friendship. Mr. Gibson kept three servants; Betty, a cook, and a girl who was supposed to be housemaid, but who was under both the elder two, and had a pretty life of it in consequence. Three servants would not have been required if it had not been Mr. Gibson's habit, as it had been Mr. Hall's before him, to take two "pupils" as they were called in the genteel language of Hollingford, "apprentices" as they were in fact—being bound by indentures, and paying a handsome premium to learn their business. They lived in the house, and occupied an uncomfortable, ambiguous, or, as Miss Browning called it with some truth, "amphibious" position. They had their meals with Mr. Gibson and Molly, and were felt to be terribly in the way; Mr. Gibson not being a man who could make conversation, and hating the duty of talking under restraint. Yet something within him made him wince, as if his duties were not rightly performed, when, as the cloth was drawn, the two awkward lads rose up with joyful alacrity, gave him a nod, which was to be interpreted as a bow, knocked against each other in their endeavours to get out of the dining-room quickly; and then might be heard dashing along a passage which led to the surgery, choking with half-suppressed laughter. Yet the annoyance he felt at this dull sense of imperfectly fulfilled duties only made his sarcasms on their inefficiency, or stupidity, or ill manners, more bitter than before. Beyond direct professional instruction, he did not know what to do with the succession of pairs of young men, whose mission seemed to be, to be plagued by their master consciously, and to plague him unconsciously. Once or twice Mr. Gibson had declined taking a fresh pupil, in the hopes of shaking himself free from the incubus, but his reputation as a clever surgeon had spread so rapidly that his fees which he had thought prohibitory, were willingly paid, in order that the young man might make a start in life, with the prestige of having been a pupil of Gibson of Hollingford. But as Molly grew to be a little girl instead of a child, when she was about eight years old, her father perceived the awkwardness of her having her breakfasts and dinners so often alone with the pupils, without his uncertain presence. To do away with this evil, more than for the actual instruction she could give, he engaged a respectable woman, the daughter of a shopkeeper in the town, who had left a destitute family, to come every morning before breakfast, and to stay with Molly till he came home at night; or, if he was detained, until the child's bed-time. "Now, Miss Eyre," said he, summing up his instructions the day before she entered upon her office, "remember this: you are to make good tea for the young men, and see that they have their meals comfortably, and—you are five-and-thirty, I think you said?—try and make them talk,—rationally, I am afraid is beyond your or anybody's power; but make them talk without stammering or giggling. Don't teach Molly too much: she must sew, and read, and write, and do her sums; but I want to keep her a child, and if I find more learning desirable for her, I'll see about giving it to her myself. After all, I'm not sure that reading or writing is necessary. Many a good woman gets married with only a cross instead of her name; it's rather a diluting of mother-wit, to my fancy; but, however, we must yield to the prejudices of society, Miss Eyre, and so you may teach the child to read." Miss Eyre listened in silence, perplexed but determined to be obedient to the directions of the doctor, whose kindness she and her family had good cause to know. She made strong tea; she helped the young men liberally in Mr. Gibson's absence, as well as in his presence, and she found the way to unloosen their tongues, whenever their master was away, by talking to them on trivial subjects in her pleasant homely way. She taught Molly to read and write, but tried honestly to keep her back in every other branch of education. It was only by fighting and struggling hard, that bit by bit Molly persuaded her father to let her have French and drawing lessons. He was always afraid of her becoming too much educated, though he need not have been alarmed; the masters who visited such small country towns as Hollingford forty years ago, were no such great proficients in their arts. Once a week she joined a dancing class in the assembly-room at the principal inn in the town: the "George;" and, being daunted by her father in every intellectual attempt, she read every book that came in her way, almost with as much delight as if it had been forbidden. For his station in life, Mr. Gibson had an unusually good library; the medical portion of it was inaccessible to Molly, being kept in the surgery, but every other book she had either read, or tried to read. Her summer place of study was that seat in the cherry-tree, where she got the green stains on her frock, that have already been mentioned as likely to wear Betty's life out. In spite of this "hidden worm i' th' bud," Betty was to all appearance strong, alert, and flourishing. She was the one crook in Miss Eyre's lot, who was otherwise so happy in having met with a suitable well-paid employment just when she needed it most. But Betty, though agreeing in theory with her master when he told her of the necessity of having a governess for his little daughter, was vehemently opposed to any division of her authority and influence over the child who had been her charge, her plague, and her delight ever since Mrs. Gibson's death. She took up her position as censor of all Miss Eyre's sayings and doings from the very first, and did not for a moment condescend to conceal her disapprobation. In her heart she could not help respecting the patience and painstaking of the good lady,—for a "lady" Miss Eyre was in the best sense of the word, though in Hollingford she only took rank as a shopkeeper's daughter. Yet Betty buzzed about her with the teasing pertinacity of a gnat, always ready to find fault, if not to bite. Miss Eyre's only defence came from the quarter whence it might least have been expected—from her pupil; on whose fancied behalf, as an oppressed little personage, Betty always based her attacks. But very early in the day Molly perceived their injustice, and soon afterwards she began to respect Miss Eyre for her silent endurance of what evidently gave her far more pain than Betty imagined. Mr. Gibson had been a friend in need to her family, so Miss Eyre restrained her complaints, sooner than annoy him. And she had her reward. Betty would offer Molly all sorts of small temptations to neglect Miss Eyre's wishes; Molly steadily resisted, and plodded away at her task of sewing or her difficult sum. Betty made cumbrous jokes at Miss Eyre's expense; Molly looked up with the utmost gravity, as if requesting the explanation of an unintelligible speech; and there is nothing so quenching to a wag as to be asked to translate his jest into plain matter-of-fact English, and to show wherein the point lies. Occasionally Betty lost her temper entirely, and spoke impertinently to Miss Eyre; but when this had been done in Molly's presence, the girl flew out into such a violent passion of words in defence of her silent trembling governess, that even Betty herself was daunted, though she chose to take the child's anger as a good joke, and tried to persuade Miss Eyre herself to join in her amusement. "Bless the child! one 'ud think I was a hungry pussy-cat, and she a hen-sparrow, with her wings all fluttering, and her little eyes aflame, and her beak ready to peck me just because I happened to look near her nest. Nay, child! if thou lik'st to be stifled in a nasty close room, learning things as is of no earthly good when they is learnt, instead o' riding on Job Donkin's hay-cart, it's thy look-out, not mine. She's a little vixen, isn't she?" smiling at Miss Eyre, as she finished her speech. But the poor governess saw no humour in the affair; the comparison of Molly to a hen-sparrow was lost upon her. She was sensitive and conscientious, and knew, from home experience, the evils of an ungovernable temper. So she began to reprove Molly for giving way to her passion, and the child thought it hard to be blamed for what she considered her just anger against Betty. But, after all, these were the small grievances of a very happy childhood. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (2003). Wives and Daughters. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4274/pg4274-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

MOLLY GIBSON'S CHILDHOOD.

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. I’m Juan F. Gonzalez. A former video game nerd, former web developer, and current online writer/content creator. I’m one of those people who have a hard time describing themselves because of the multiple skills and interests they have. In the immortal words of Liam Neeson… I have a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a long career. Now, I use that set of skills to help tech people learn new subjects faster and help tech startups (mostly ) grow by avoiding common pitfalls, solving real problems, and using engaging content to differentiate themselves from the rest. SaaS Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? It’s the of my “viral” tutorial about how to . It’s a topic I got the chance to learn about, and I thought it would be cool to not just keep it for myself but share the goodies with others. 2nd part build an audio transcriber app using OpenAI Whisper and the GPT-3 APIs I think it went viral because it is, to the best of my knowledge, the 1st tech tutorial that is written in 3 acts and told like a fantastic adventure (like Lord of the Rings for example). Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? Interestingly enough, it’s the 1st article that deviated a little from my normal content on this platform. I started writing about . the mistakes that indie builders make and how to avoid them After that one, all other articles have been about demystifying the world of SaaS and helping folks get in and not quit too soon. I’ve ghostwritten for some of your favorite HackerNoon personas as well… SaaS and tech products are my main topics. But I also write for my personal blog and have contributed posts for other websites and communities related to web development & knowledge sharing. Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) My routine has changed over the years. At the start, I woke up very early and wrote for 1 hour straight before starting the day. The next day I would look at it, and delete most of it because of how bland and boring it was. I then moved on to doing it when I had the writing flow going and the posts almost wrote themselves. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen too often so I wrote very few and far in between. Now, my writing routine (regardless if it’s in the morning or the evening) is taking a specific block of time, say 60 to 90 minutes, and creating an outline for the piece with the points I want to cover. Next is racing against the clock putting all the research and info into the page in the different parts of the outline. Once everything is done, in comes the ruthless editing part. And after that is adding the images, gifs, and story/movie references to make everything more fun & engaging. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? I have faced many challenges, but funnily enough none of those have been, “ ” The opposite is true. I don’t know what to write about. I think now the biggest challenge is keeping up the discipline to write for at least an hour a day. Even in those moments when it feels like a slog and I have to check dictionaries and thesaurus to know how to say what I want to say. What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? Call me crazy, but I think online learning needs a real revolution. And I’m talking in the broad sense. When people think about “online education” almost everyone associates it with school or college and people below a certain age. That’s why I’m hoping to create some sort of platform where knowledge workers, solopreneurs, and lifelong learners can acquire new skills through online courses with elements of storytelling and gamification. Minus all the references to traditional education like “lectures”, “quizzes”, “exams”, and “certifications.” Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? Hmm, guilty pleasures… I suppose it’s losing entire evenings every now and then watching YouTube videos about influencer challenges, social experiments, or comedy shows. Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? Well, learning is my favorite hobby. I also like going to the gym and the train often. Doing walks in nature, trips to the countryside, and taking part in old school, “analog” activities are what fills the rest of my waking time. What can the HackerNoon community expect to read from you next? You can expect more content around SaaS products/startups from an everyday perspective. Not only what cool things others are doing but how you can take part in that action. I also want to write about AI but not in an “online influencer” kind of way. It’s more aimed at the curious, privacy-minded, and bootstrapped folks. The idea is to support the underdogs, not the big names that end up doing shady business to grow their profits. I’ve been getting at least 1 article published per week, and I continue to do so for the foreseeable future. What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers? It’s a great platform in general. There’s been a couple of improvements to the editor since I started writing. The quality of the content posted, the vibe, and the nerdy references… all of it is awesome. I only wish I had started writing here sooner and been in touch with the overall community. Thanks for taking time to join our “ ” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Meet the writer To all the aspiring tech (and non-tech) writers out there… take the leap, start writing, and preferably in a platform as cool and as welcoming as HackerNoon. I know how writing can feel very lonely and like a waste of time because no one reads your stuff. But here, it is different. Take some time, even if it’s 1 or 2 hours a week to explore topics you’re interested in, and feed your curiosity. You never know what you’ll find, and it can be the gateway to a new career and new environment. Stay curious, take chances, and keep going. You can succeed where others fail because they quit too soon. See ya!

Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor Juan Gonzalez—Tech Writer & Content Creator

COPPERHOUSE CROSS AND BROUGHTON SPINNIES.

Let's learn about via these 59 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Video /Learn Repo 1. How Cryptocurrency Can Help Deliver High-quality Video to Your Home The article is about how you can use a crypto project to deliver high-quality video to the end consumer faster and cheaper. 2. Ten Important Factors to Consider When Choosing a Streaming Service Things to consider when choosing a streaming service 3. Video Production Could Increase Your Company's Marketing Efforts Video is no longer just one part of your overall marketing plan. It's central to your outreach and campaign aims, particularly your social plan. 4. What is Adaptive Bitrate Streaming? A Brief Intro to ABR Adaptive bitrate streaming, or ABR, is the capability of a video player to adjust the video quality dynamically to match the viewer's network. 5. Beginners can make Money from Video Content Creation- Here's How Master how to make money with videos online with this practical guide for beginners! Monetize your video creation skills and earn extra income for your business 6. How to Use Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) for Your Live Video Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) is an open source video transport protocol that excels at providing stable streaming at relatively low latency. 7. "Do You Think You Know What it Takes to Tell The User It's Their Birthday?" 8. Top 5 Video Chat Apps of 2020 The world has been evolving ever since its inception. There is no doubt that Generation-Z (1997-2012) has witnessed many changes. These changes were related especially with the advancement of science and technology. The concept of video calling dates back to the year 1910, and back then it was termed as video telephony. So, the concept is pretty antiquated, but with time innovation played its part and kept it looking contemporary. Having said that, we’ll now look at the options we have when it comes to video calling. 9. How we Rendered 3 Years of Video Using JavaScript Lumen5's AI-powered technology helps you create video content in minutes. Here's how we rendered 3 years of video using JavaScript in just one year 10. Three Reasons Behind Ludicrous Spending in Streaming Media Netflix spent $16 billion in 2019 on producing and acquiring new content. Amazon pursued its originals journey with $6 billion. Quibi, a yet to launch streaming service raised a billion dollars to create a catalog for millennials. 11. How to Compete with Netflix: Beyond the Streaming Experience Streaming is all about creating a great viewing experience 12. How to Grow your Video Business with Data TV watching used to be a family affair a decade ago, but today in most households, content watching has become a personal activity. 13. Your Own Animated AI Avatar Using Midjourney I created an avatar. I had ChatGPT create a script. ElevenLabs for text into audio and with D-ID for the video 14. How to Implement a Simple Video Calling Feature Using the ZEGOCLOUD Video API This article describes what is the video API? How does the video API ensure smooth transmission of audio and video？ 15. An Underground Interview with John McAfee 13 Months Before his Death John McAfee talks about making more money than God on the Hacker Noon podcast hosted by David Smooke. 16. "cannot build multi-billion $ org unless you are clear on what instinct or organ you are targeting" 17. Next-Level Communication with WebRTC WebRTC has fast become the de facto framework used for building applications to facilitate audio and video communication over the web. 18. What Business Live Videos are People Actually Watching? Live video is changing the way people watch video as a whole and can be used to build your business. Eight out of every 10 people would watch video that is live rather than read a blog post or social media post. This is an important opportunity to showcase your business in a neglected medium for which there is already an established audience. Creating live video for your business isn’t difficult, and chances are you already have everything you need to get started. Why aren’t you live streaming yet? 19. Three Great Alternatives to YouTube for Businesses Ever since Google's YouTube platform took off in the mid-aughts, it has been the go-to destination for web video of all kinds. Today, it hosts entertainment content, instructional content, and no shortage of cat videos. It's also the preferred video platform of digital marketers around the world. 20. WTF is a Codec? Codec comprises an integral part of our lives like the water we drink. They are continuously in action all around us without us realizing it. 21. How to Download Videos from Reddit If you need to download Reddit videos for offline playback , you will need to visit the Viddit portal and get the links there. 22. 6 Ways Emotion AI is Changing the Healthcare Industry Pairing Emotion AI with Live Video calling can bring a dramatic improvement in healthcare delivery whether its doctor-patient communication or mental wellbeing. 23. A Chance for Emerging Video-Sharing Apps: What Happens If TikTok Is Banned in the US? So far, 800 million people worldwide use the TikTok video streaming app for entertainment and connection, and 12.5% of them, 100 million, are Americans. After President Donald Trump said on July 31 that he planned to bar the Chinese-owned social media app from operating in the US, he reversed course, saying he would allow TikTok to keep operating if it were sold to an American owner. Microsoft is one of the companies most likely to buy the app. The possible acquisition will allow the software company to compete with Facebook and Google-owned YouTube and attract a younger audience. 24. Zoom 5.0: Major 5 Security Updates You Need to Know From yoga classes to worldwide webinars, Zoom community has been expanding all around the world after the global lockdown due to COVID-19. 25. 8 Best YouTube Alternatives for Video Creators and Brands If you feel the need to switch and are looking for channels like YouTube, here is our list which is a blend of free and premium platforms 26. Video on Demand: Comparing the Monetization Models The infrastructure needed to stream videos for your website can be very expensive to build and maintain. These are three monetization strategies that get used. 27. WTF is Transcoding? Transcoding is the process of converting audio or video files from one encoding format to another in order to increase the number of compatible target devices. 28. How to set up a Podcast Studio for Live Streaming A summary of the video and audio setup I have honed over the past 18 months. 29. How Technology Shapes the Future of the UK Video Streaming Industry Technology appears to be developing more quickly every day. With innumerable movies, TV shows, and songs being streamed practically every second, streaming has become one of the most widely used digital entertainment technologies not only in the UK but worldwide. 30. 5 Easy Ways to Get Video Testimonials from Your Customers Customers' video testimonials help in creating brand trust, provide more leads & better higher customer retention rate. This post helps in getting testimonials. 31. "Before School, During School,  (and)  Couple Times Each Class" 32. How to Fix VLC Media Player Not Playing MP4 Videos? What Causes the VLC Player Not Playing Video Files Issue? Missing MP4 codecs, outdated version of Windows OS or VLC player, or the MP4 file may be corrupted. 33. How to Resize a Video in 5 Easy Steps Resizing video is changing the dimensions or video clip frame size to fit within certain parameters like upload limit, output size, and other constraints. 34. How to Implement Sound Waves in iOS by Using ZEGOCLOUD SDK This article explains how to achieve the sound wave effect in live broadcast, voice chat, call and other scenarios 35. Why Can't Live Video Be Better? A look at the emerging trends of live video, and how it can look to become improved in today's market. 36. Reasons To Use Custom VOD Platform A growing number of companies are opting for a custom VOD to distribute their video content on their own terms. Should your company make the switch too? 37. How To Nail Video Email Marketing With Seasonal Email Campaigns Ah, so you've decided to use video marketing. A wise choice indeed, seeing as, according to Google, "6 out of 10 people prefer online video platforms to live TV". 38. How To Create An Online TV Channel For Your TV Station? Learn how to create an online TV channel right from scratch and essential things need to start an online tv broadcasting platform. 39. 5 Reasons Why Video Content Is Imperative for Your Website’s Success With the future of video content looking clear, organizations are reimagination reach as it relates to consumer attention. In this world, Video is king. 40. The Best Video Game Music of 2022 A great soundtrack is not only memorable but also enhances the experience of playing. Here are some of the 2022 games with the best music. 41. Why Choosing The Right Video Platform Is Essential For Your Business The amount of video being created today, as opposed to pre-pandemic, has skyrocketed. 42. How to Get Started with Amazon IVS and Amazon Personalize in Retail This blog will walk through a detailed example of how to configure and deploy live streaming and personalization into an ecommerce site. 43. What Is the Right AWS Live Streaming Solution for Your Use Case In July last year, AWS launched Amazon IVS, a managed live streaming platform for creating low latency interactive streaming services. 44. What Holds People Back from Recording a Video at Work and How Guidde Solved It The purpose of Guidde is to help people, like you, record their videos. They may have numerous reasons why they haven’t started yet, and that’s where we come in 45. How AI Can Help You Make Your Videos Amazing AI is taking over the video editing world by transforming the editing process, allowing organizations to cut time, decrease costs, and increase output. 46. Comparing On-Demand Video (VoD) Platforms For Business Use Cases YouTube is the go-to option for streaming on-demand videos (VoD), but it's not the best for business use cases. Learn more about alternative platforms to use. 47. 5 Tips for Becoming an Amazing Youtuber in 2019 Every digital native out there dreamed of becoming a successful YouTuber at least once in life. Maybe you just hope to make a living out of making interesting videos, want to spread your important message, or tell the rest of the world about your passions. Whatever the reason may be, making YouTube videos as a job seems a really cool and fun way to live. And it is, indeed. 48. Making Promotional Videos for Crypto Startups: Types, Strategies, Expectations, and Costs 49. An Intro to Colorspaces and FFmpeg with InVideo The rendering process of a .mp4 video created on InVideo involves piping a sequence of virtual framebuffers, containing the information of each frame. 50. Top Drone Video Editing Software in 2021: Put Your eye in the sky If you are planning to start on your filming-with-drones journey, check out this list of video editing software. Next-level videos need a next-level edit. 51. Clipchamp Gains 5 million Users as Video Creators Surge More people are looking for easy tools to get into video creation and Clipchamp has grown 40% meeting their needs. 52. How to Use Appsmith, Airtable, and Notion to Build a Video Sorting Tool According to Forbes, 82% of content generated this year is likely to be video. 53. 5 Proven Hacks for Crafting Video Content Your Audience Will Love Whether you're just starting with video marketing or looking to take your efforts to the next level, these hacks will up your game. 54. How Video Compression Works: A Deep Dive into AV1 This blog post provides an overview of why video compression is important and will go over some of the tools that are used in AV1: a royalty-free codec 55. How to Set Perfect YouTube Video Dimensions The article tells about video specifications that should be used for YouTube. And how to change the settings of your video if it does not meet YouTube guideline 56. How High-Quality Videos Can Help You to Convert Leads Currently, video markets get about 66 percent more qualified leads every year. if you want to sell a product online, you can’t possible ignore numbers like these. 57. Image Automation and Assisted Video Annotation Learn how assisted video annotation is providing deeper insights into labeled datasets. 58. How to Look and Sound Better in Video Conference Now that we all spend so much time in video conferencing either for work or life, it is critical to make yourself look and sound the best to your colleagues, family and friends. It is not only about self image, but also about having the “real” you projecting the maximum presence remotely. In this article, I would like to introduce a few simple steps to improve your look and sound in video conferencing tools. 59. A Self-supervised Attention Mechanism To Help With Dense Optical Flow Estimation Multi-object Tracking using self-supervised deep learning Thank you for checking out the 59 most read stories about Video on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

59 Stories To Learn About Video

Hello! I am Anna, and since 2020 I have been successfully working as an Android Developer. I mastered Android development from scratch when I was 30+ years old, without having any programming experience before. Before I started learning , I worked for a long time as a personal assistant in various companies, including IT companies. Android development When I worked in IT companies, I had the opportunity to communicate with mobile developers - it was so interesting for me that sometime I began to come to the conclusion that it would be nice to change my career path and become an Android developer. I am now convinced that this was the best choice in my life. My journey into Android development was long and difficult as I didn't have a detailed roadmap to help me along my study way. I had to research a lot of information on the Internet and spend a huge amount of time making some mistakes in my self-learning. Now, looking back, I can say that it would be great if I met a person along the way who could help me put together a detailed roadmap. Therefore, I wrote an actual detailed step-by-step tutorial and want to share it with you. I really hope this tutorial will be useful and help you save time and make your more consistent. I will also share useful resources that I myself have used and continue to use for my learning. path to Android development So, let's assume that you, like me four years ago, have never had any Android development experience. Besides, you’ve no experience in coding at all. Where should you start? Let’s go step by step from scratch to getting your first job offer! Step 1: Set a Deadline First of all, to my way of thinking, it is worth mentioning that it is extremely important to - the date by which you will start looking for a job or the date by which you start your new job. limit the duration of your study period and set a deadline If you are starting to learn programming in 2023 from scratch, I would strongly recommend setting aside at least for self-learning, provided that you study Please don't think that one year is too long in this case. You will have to learn not only programming languages but also a lot of different technologies in order to master Android development, successfully pass the job interview and get your first job offer. a year 5 days a week for at least 4 hours per day. As for me personally, a self-learning period took me a little more than a year. During this time, I mastered Kotlin programming language and the basics of Android development, sent about 100 responses to Android Developer vacancies, participated in 12 job interviews, and received two job offers. Step 2: Create a list of actual Android development technologies Secondly, before you start , This will help you make a clear plan for your self-learning and not waste a lot of time in vain. Please note that Android Development is moving very fast, some technologies are being replaced by others, and it may well be that by the time you get your job, one technology will be replaced by another. developing your Android apps you need to make sure that the technologies you plan to study are still in demand. Of course, not all programming technologies become obsolete after some time. There are basic, fundamental programming concepts that appeared in the middle of the 20th century and are still relevant.  But we cannot ignore the fact that currently, any Android Developer should be very inquisitive and practice constant self-education. Therefore, I consider the constant monitoring of Android Development trends to be an important skill for any Junior Android Developer. It is very useful to constantly read the descriptions of current vacancies on various job search sites and write out requirements that are often repeated. Thus, you can form a list of relevant technologies that need to be studied. Good news: I did this job for you I analyzed many actual Android developer vacancies that have been published on popular job search resources such as www.linkedin.com, www.indeed.com, and others and compiled the following list of needed technologies. I believe that this stack will be relevant in 2023 and with a high probability - in 2024. For your convenience, I divided this technology stack into the following groups: Fundamental programming concepts: OOP principles, SOLID etc. programming language - Kotlin (classes, interfaces, coroutines, multithreading etc.) design patterns - Observer, Factory, Builder etc. architectural patterns - MVP, MVVM, MVI working with network - Retrofit + OkHttp3 working with database - Room working with IDE - Android Studio, Intellij Idea working with layout  - Jetpack Compose, xml, ViewBinding dependency injection - Dagger, Koin unit & ui tests - JUnit, Espresso Android Architecture Components (ViewModel, LiveData etc.) You can use it as a cheat sheet or supplement it later with your own actual search results when you start learning about Android Development. You can also read my about top Android Development Technologies. article Step 3: Start Kotlin learning Yes, you heard right - , not Java. It should be mentioned that Java is still heavily used in Android development. There are projects in companies that have a lot of legacy Java code. However, if you have never studied programming languages ​​before and want to become an Android developer in 2023, I highly recommend starting your study process by learning Kotlin. It is this language that is recommended by Google for Android Development. If necessary, you can learn Java later after you already get your job offer. Kotlin Set up IDE (Intellij Idea), learn programming language basics, and start writing your code as soon as possible. At the same time, I would highly recommend you learn fundamental programming concepts (OOP principles, SOLID, multithreading, etc.). The deeper you understand general programming concepts, the easier it will be for you to move to new technologies. You can download Intellij Idea You can also use to learn Kotlin step by step. I believe that this tutorial is enough to master the basics of Kotlin. by this link. this tutorial Step 4: Learn Git basics, create and set up your Git account - a distributed version control system that you will constantly use in your daily work. It is needed for sharing code with other developers in a team. Git I can safely state that any Junior Android developer needs to master before he gets his first job. For an understanding of this tool, I can recommend the following resource: . basic Git commands dangitgit.com I would highly recommend you create your account on . You can commit and push your pet projects to your remote git repository so that your future employers can see examples of your code. https://github.com/ Step 5: Start writing your Android apps Set up Android Studio - Android Development IDE and start writing your pet projects using the actual Android development technologies I mentioned before. I’d highly recommend this . You can go through this step by step so you will successfully learn Android development basics. During the training, I also recommend that you constantly refer to the official training course created by Google official documentation for Android Development. It should also be mentioned about a book which named . The book explains step by step how to write various simple mobile applications on the current technology stack. I definitely recommend that you read it and rewrite all these applications after the book's author. You can write and run your code step by step, using Android Studio to create apps that integrate with other apps, download and display pictures from the web, store data in databases, and more. “Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (5th Edition)” I suppose that all mentioned resources will give you a very good basic Android development knowledge, teaching you how to create mobile apps that integrate with other apps, download and display images, store data in databases, etc. I also should mention another popular resource that I constantly use in my daily work, of Philipp Lackner. This channel has a lot of useful information: popular Android Development technologies overview, explanations of complex concepts of mobile development, and a series of videos that explain step-by-step how to write Android apps. the YouTube channel Step 5: Find a Mentor I’d highly recommend you find a mentor at an early stage of your study process. A mentor is an experienced mobile engineer who will help you to notice your code mistakes and move faster in your study process. You can skip this step if you think you can successfully master Android development completely on your own. So it’s up to everybody to decide whether study by themselves completely, using popular online courses, videos, and books, or using the help of a mentor. But as for me personally, I think that you should not neglect the help of a mentor. Step 6: Start a job search Create your CV on www.linkedIn.com and other popular job search sites, start monitoring Android developer vacancies, and apply for them. From my way of thinking, it is very important for any junior Android developer to learn how to pass job interviews. You can use the following lifehacks: after each unsuccessful job interview, write down questions that you did not answer and study this topic later. Accordingly, at each subsequent job interview, you will answer better and better and finally get a job offer! Step 7: Get your job offer and start working in a company Additional tips & tricks for Junior Android Developers: Keep a diary of completed tasks. For example: "Today I completed an authorization screen for my Android application" or "Today I learned the MVVM pattern.” This will help you track your learning progress and see results. Practice writing code constantly. Programming is a practical skill. Practice makes perfect. At the same time, try to keep the work-life balance so as not to lose interest in programming. Join a professional community: participate in mobile development meetups, and add Android developers to your contacts on www.linkedIn.com. The wider your circle of professional contacts, the more likely you are to find a dream job. Become an “eternal student.” It is impossible for Android developers to learn one programming language and a limited technology stack and work on it for the next 10+ years. As for me, I have been developing Android applications for about three years, and I can safely state that during this time, This does not mean, of course, that the skills I received earlier are now completely useless. This means that a modern Android developer has to increase such soft skills as an inquisitive mind and the ability to quickly learn new technologies. The stronger these qualities of the Android developer, the more value he has for an employer. the technology stack has changed completely. I hope this tutorial will be useful and help you to get your dream job! Good luck!

How to Became an Android Developer From Scratch in 2023: A Guide From A Pro

Although SaaS is a very popular term, many people still don’t fully understand it. Regardless, we use these software solutions daily. So, here’s an in-depth guide to this blossoming technology. By the end of this article, you should have a comprehensive understanding of SaaS and how it works. TL; DR Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model that involves an application being offered as a product over the Internet for a subscription fee. SaaS differs from conventional software in many ways. For one, you don’t have to download SaaS applications or worry about the computing power needed to run them. Also, you can use them on any device you choose as long as you have your password and an internet connection. There are several types of SaaS applications; they can either be designed for businesses, e.g., Hubspot, or for individual use, e.g., Spotify. However, some SaaS products, like Google Workspace, can be used by both businesses and individuals. SaaS providers utilize various security measures, such as encryption and access control, to safeguard data. Additionally, they adhere to several data regulations to keep sensitive information secure. One of the advantages of SaaS, aside from cost-saving, accessibility, and scalability, is that it can integrate with other existing software applications you use through APIs — protocols that let software programs communicate. However, SaaS has some drawbacks, such as the occasional data breaches and vendor lock-ins, making migrating from one SaaS provider to another difficult. To choose a software provider, you have to consider many factors, in particular, functionality, pricing, and scalability, among other things. What is SaaS? SaaS, an acronym for Software as a Service, is a model that involves delivering applications as products over the internet. It’s quite similar to internet-enabled services such as email or social media, although different. Some examples of SaaS products include Slack, Google Docs, and Zoom. To understand SaaS, you must note that it is a of cloud computing, an internet delivery system. Cloud computing simply means that, as a user, you can access online resources, such as storage space, without having to manage them directly. type Think of it as owning an online safe. If you want to access stored files, all you have to do is open the safe. Only this time, your safe isn’t confined to one place; you can use it virtually anywhere with the password and internet connectivity. How does SaaS work? As aforementioned, SaaS is a type of cloud computing, so it a cloud delivery model. utilizes This means that software providers host, maintain, and secure the applications you use on their servers. But not all software providers have the resources to do these. So, they may contract cloud providers to host their applications in their data centers. How data is secured in SaaS Data safety is very important in SaaS. So, SaaS companies combine several measures to ensure your data is safe and easily retrievable. These means include : Encryption works by when you’re uploading or using it and when it’s in storage. It ensures you’re the only one who can read and access your data. So, even if someone manages to hack your service provider’s firewall, they’ll have a hard time reading your info. Encryption scrambling your data : SaaS providers prioritize access control protocols to ensure that only you can access your data. These protocols include passwords, two-factor authentication, and biometric authentication. Access Controls : SaaS providers regularly back up your data on multiple channels to ensure you can still retrieve your data in worst-case data-loss scenarios. Data backup and recovery : SaaS providers must also specific and strict data regulations when handling your data. These rules differ depending on your location and the kind of information you store online. Compliance follow For instance, SaaS companies must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR) rules when storing data for European citizens, and when handling credit card information, they have to follow Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). How SaaS products communicate with your apps This may sound sketchy, but SaaS products share your info with other web-based software you use. However, they do this with your permission to ensure a seamless flow with your other applications. For instance, Calendly, a meeting-scheduling software, can share your events and appointments with your calendar app. Doing this saves you the stress of documenting them manually. But how exactly do these SaaS products communicate with your other software? They use APIs or Application Programming Interfaces, which are a that define how different software components should interact. set of protocols B2B vs B2C SaaS Like other software models, SaaS is either on a business-to-customer (B2C) delivery system or a (B2B) model. And these models differ in many ways. offered business-to-business B2B SaaS are software applications designed for other businesses, e.g., Hubspot, Salesforce, and Slack. These apps either have a wide range of functionality or only perform singular, complex functions like accounting, project management, or customer relationship management (CRM). Furthermore, B2B applications are advertised differently from B2C SaaS products since they target only organizations, not individuals. They are also always offered on a subscription basis. B2C SaaS, on the other hand, refers to software packages designed for individual customers. They usually have only one function, such as note-taking or task management. While most of these products are offered on a subscription basis, they also have free versions with limited functionality. Some examples include Spotify, Canva, and Dropbox. It’s important to note that some SaaS products, such as Google Workspace and Zoom, are universal, serving both individuals and businesses. Why is SaaS Different from Conventional Software There are several differences between SaaS applications and traditional on-premises you install on your PC. software programs Firstly, you don’t have to worry about the computing requirements to run any SaaS application because software providers handle them. On the other hand, software applications on your PC require storage, maintenance, and updates, all handled by you, to function properly. But while you can access most conventional software programs offline, it’s not the same with SaaS apps because they are delivered over the Internet. However, this also means you can use SaaS applications on different devices without installing them. So if you’re out with your friends, and a work emergency comes up, you can easily use your friend’s PC even if they don’t have the SaaS application installed. Whereas with conventional software, you must buy, download and customize the application to your specifications on every new device. Types of SaaS Solutions SaaS products exist in different categories. One way to classify them is by separating them into . horizontal SaaS or vertical SaaS Horizontal SaaS solutions are universal because you can use them across multiple industries; they include email marketing or accounting software. On the other hand, Vertical SaaS refers to solutions that can only be used in a certain industry, e.g. Vetcove, a SaaS product used in veterinary medicine. SaaS solutions can also be categorized into packaged, collaborative, and management and enabling tools. : Packaged software refers to SaaS solutions ready-made to handle specific functions. They are designed for functions such as accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), or project management, among others. Packaged software : are designed with teamwork in mind. These SaaS products offer real-time communication, document sharing, and live editing features. Some examples include Slack, Google Docs, and Asana. Collaborative software Collaborative SaaS products : Management and enabling tools help organizations manage their IT infrastructure with monitoring, backup and recovery, and security. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform are some examples of such tools. Management and Enabling tools SaaS applications also serve various functions, including customer relationship management (CRM), accounting, project management, and content management. Benefits of SaaS Using SaaS eliminates the hassle of purchasing, installing, and maintaining conventional software programs. It also has other benefits, which include the following. Cost savings You don’t have to worry about the storage space and computing power required to run SaaS apps. Hence, you don’t have to purchase and maintain extra hardware other than your PC, reducing operational costs. Also, budgeting is more predictable with SaaS models, so you know exactly how much to pay for your software service every time. You can also choose to unsubscribe whenever there is no need for those services. Scalability You can upgrade to a higher subscription tier to unlock more benefits when using a SaaS product. These benefits can range from higher storage capacity to more user accounts. You can also downgrade to a lower tier with only the necessary features to save costs. Accessibility and mobility Unlike conventional software, you can access SaaS products with just an internet connection and a computer anywhere in the world. Furthermore, because software is hosted on the cloud, you can switch devices without losing access to your files. Upgrades and maintenance You don’t have to worry about software maintenance and updates when using SaaS products since the software providers handle them. So, things like updates, bug fixes, and security patches, among others, are not your problem. This also helps you eliminate the cost and hassle of having in-house IT teams. Integration with other applications With APIs, SaaS applications can seamlessly integrate with your other software programs and SaaS products you use, especially those from the same provider. This helps you streamline your workflow and avoid unnecessary duplication. Risks and Challenges of SaaS As beneficial as SaaS programs are, they also come with risks and challenges. Let’s take a look at some of them below. Security and data privacy concerns Although most software providers follow strict data privacy regulations, there’s still the risk of losing your information to hackers. Luckily, while occur, they are rare. SaaS data breaches Customization limitations Most SaaS applications do not offer varied customization features, as they are often provided in one-size-fits-all solutions. So, it can be challenging for individuals and businesses with peculiar needs to configure SaaS products to their specifications. While some SaaS products offer APIs to enable customization, it requires additional resources and technical support, increasing operational costs. Data migration challenges , a situation where SaaS brands make switching to another provider or platform difficult or costly, is a common problem. Vendor lock-in Without APIs, moving to another SaaS platform means downloading and uploading your data to your new provider. And if you use SaaS products for your business, this may mean migrating terabytes of data. Choosing the Right SaaS Product Choosing the right SaaS provider can be difficult in a highly varied pool of options. So, here are some useful tips to consider : Choose a software provider with features that align with your requirements. For instance, if you run a marketing agency that manages social media accounts for multiple clients, you should look for a SaaS provider that offers features like social media scheduling, content creation tools, and analytics reporting. Features and functionality : It’s best to pick a SaaS provider whose pricing plans fit your budget. Compare similar products and pick the software solution that offers the best value for money. Pricing : Only some SaaS products have a wide range of vertical scalability. So, it’s best to keep your options limited to providers that can easily scale up or down with the needs of your business. Scalability : As data breaches are no joke, you should consider the software provider’s security measures and compliance certifications, especially if you handle sensitive data. Security and Compliance : Choose a software solution that can integrate with your existing systems and workflows, saving you time and making your workflow productive. Integration : Evaluate your options to see which SaaS product has the best customer support. As SaaS issues can be very technical, you must ensure you can easily access help when needed. Support Conclusion SaaS is the now and future of software applications. In this article, we’ve explored how it works, its types, and the benefits and challenges facing SaaS adoption. Armed with this information, you can make the right decision when choosing your software providers.

What is SaaS? — The Comprehensive Guide You’ve Been Looking For

A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . LAUNCHING THE RAFT here CHAPTER XXVIII - LAUNCHING THE RAFT On the morning of the next day, to my great surprise, I awoke completely restored. I thought a bath would be delightful after my long illness and sufferings. So, soon after rising, I went and plunged into the waters of this new Mediterranean. The bath was cool, fresh and invigorating. I came back to breakfast with an excellent appetite. Hans, our worthy guide, thoroughly understood how to cook such eatables as we were able to provide; he had both fire and water at discretion, so that he was enabled slightly to vary the weary monotony of our ordinary repast. Our morning meal was like a capital English breakfast, with coffee by way of a windup. And never had this delicious beverage been so welcome and refreshing. My uncle had sufficient regard for my state of health not to interrupt me in the enjoyment of the meal, but he was evidently delighted when I had finished. "Now then," said he, "come with me. It is the height of the tide, and I am anxious to study its curious phenomena." "What!"' I cried, rising in astonishment, "did you say the tide, Uncle?" "Certainly I did." "You do not mean to say," I replied, in a tone of respectful doubt, "that the influence of the sun and moon is felt here below." "And pray why not? Are not all bodies influenced by the law of universal attraction? Why should this vast underground sea be exempt from the general law, the rule of the universe? Besides, there is nothing like that which is proved and demonstrated. Despite the great atmospheric pressure down here, you will notice that this inland sea rises and falls with as much regularity as the Atlantic itself." As my uncle spoke, we reached the sandy shore, and saw and heard the waves breaking monotonously on the beach. They were evidently rising. "This is truly the flood," I cried, looking at the water at my feet. "Yes, my excellent nephew," replied my uncle, rubbing his hands with the gusto of a philosopher, "and you see by these several streaks of foam that the tide rises at least ten or twelve feet." "It is indeed marvelous." "By no means," he responded; "on the contrary, it is quite natural." "It may appear so in your eyes, my dear uncle," was my reply, "but all the phenomena of the place appear to me to partake of the marvelous. It is almost impossible to believe that which I see. Who in his wildest dreams could have imagined that, beneath the crust of our earth, there could exist a real ocean, with ebbing and flowing tides, with its changes of winds, and even its storms! I for one should have laughed the suggestion to scorn." "But, Harry, my boy, why not?" inquired my uncle, with a pitying smile; "is there any physical reason in opposition to it?" "Well, if we give up the great theory of the central heat of the earth, I certainly can offer no reasons why anything should be looked upon as impossible." "Then you will own," he added, "that the system of Sir Humphry Davy is wholly justified by what we have seen?" "I allow that it is—and that point once granted, I certainly can see no reason for doubting the existence of seas and other wonders, even countries, in the interior of the globe." "That is so—but of course these varied countries are uninhabited?" "Well, I grant that it is more likely than not: still, I do not see why this sea should not have given shelter to some species of unknown fish." "Hitherto we have not discovered any, and the probabilities are rather against our ever doing so," observed the Professor. I was losing my skepticism in the presence of these wonders. "Well, I am determined to solve the question. It is my intention to try my luck with my fishing line and hook." "Certainly; make the experiment," said my uncle, pleased with my enthusiasm. "While we are about it, it will certainly be only proper to discover all the secrets of this extraordinary region." "But, after all, where are we now?" I asked; "all this time I have quite forgotten to ask you a question, which, doubtless, your philosophical instruments have long since answered." "Well," replied the Professor, "examining the situation from only one point of view, we are now distant three hundred and fifty leagues from Iceland." "So much?" was my exclamation. "I have gone over the matter several times, and am sure not to have made a mistake of five hundred yards," replied my uncle positively. "And as to the direction—are we still going to the southeast?" "Yes, with a western declination of nineteen degrees, forty-two minutes, just as it is above. As for the inclination I have discovered a very curious fact." [2] [3] The declination is the variation of the needle from the true meridian of a place. [2] Inclination is the dip of the magnetic needle with a tendency to incline towards the earth. [3] "What may that be, Uncle? Your information interests me." "Why, that the needle instead of dipping towards the pole as it does on earth, in the northern hemisphere, has an upward tendency." "This proves," I cried, "that the great point of magnetic attraction lies somewhere between the surface of the earth and the spot we have succeeded in reaching." "Exactly, my observant nephew," exclaimed my uncle, elated and delighted, "and it is quite probable that if we succeed in getting toward the polar regions—somewhere near the seventy-third degree of latitude, where Sir James Ross discovered the magnetic pole, we shall behold the needle point directly upward. We have therefore discovered by analogy, that this great centre of attraction is not situated at a very great depth." "Well," said I, rather surprised, "this discovery will astonish experimental philosophers. It was never suspected." "Science, great, mighty and in the end unerring," replied my uncle dogmatically, "science has fallen into many errors—errors which have been fortunate and useful rather than otherwise, for they have been the steppingstones to truth." After some further discussion, I turned to another matter. "Have you any idea of the depth we have reached?" "We are now," continued the Professor, "exactly thirty-five leagues—above a hundred miles—down into the interior of the earth." "So," said I, after measuring the distance on the map, "we are now beneath the Scottish Highlands, and have over our heads the lofty Grampian Hills." "You are quite right," said the Professor, laughing; "it sounds very alarming, the weight being heavy—but the vault which supports this vast mass of earth and rock is solid and safe; the mighty Architect of the Universe has constructed it of solid materials. Man, even in his highest flights of vivid and poetic imagination, never thought of such things! What are the finest arches of our bridges, what the vaulted roofs of our cathedrals, to that mighty dome above us, and beneath which floats an ocean with its storms and calms and tides!" "I admire it all as much as you can, Uncle, and have no fear that our granite sky will fall upon our heads. But now that we have discussed matters of science and discovery, what are your future intentions? Are you not thinking of getting back to the surface of our beautiful earth?" This was said more as a feeler than with any hope of success. "Go back, nephew," cried my uncle in a tone of alarm, "you are not surely thinking of anything so absurd or cowardly. No, my intention is to advance and continue our journey. We have as yet been singularly fortunate, and henceforth I hope we shall be more so." "But," said I, "how are we to cross yonder liquid plain?" "It is not my intention to leap into it head foremost, or even to swim across it, like Leander over the Hellespont. But as oceans are, after all, only great lakes, inasmuch as they are surrounded by land, so does it stand to reason, that this central sea is circumscribed by granite surroundings." "Doubtless," was my natural reply. "Well, then, do you not think that when once we reach the other end, we shall find some means of continuing our journey?" "Probably, but what extent do you allow to this internal ocean?" "Well, I should fancy it to extend about forty or fifty leagues—more or less." "But even supposing this approximation to be a correct one—what then?" I asked. "My dear boy, we have no time for further discussion. We shall embark tomorrow." I looked around with surprise and incredulity. I could see nothing in the shape of boat or vessel. "What!" I cried, "we are about to launch out upon an unknown sea; and where, if I may ask, is the vessel to carry us?" "Well, my dear boy, it will not be exactly what you would call a vessel. For the present we must be content with a good and solid raft." "A raft," I cried, incredulously, "but down here a raft is as impossible of construction as a vessel—and I am at a loss to imagine—" "My good Harry—if you were to listen instead of talking so much, you would hear," said my uncle, waxing a little impatient. "I should hear?" "Yes—certain knocks with the hammer, which Hans is now employing to make the raft. He has been at work for many hours." "Making a raft?" "Yes." "But where has he found trees suitable for such a construction?" "He found the trees all ready to his hand. Come, and you shall see our excellent guide at work." More and more amazed at what I heard and saw, I followed my uncle like one in a dream. After a walk of about a quarter of an hour, I saw Hans at work on the other side of the promontory which formed our natural port. A few minutes more and I was beside him. To my great surprise, on the sandy shore lay a half-finished raft. It was made from beams of a very peculiar wood, and a great number of limbs, joints, boughs, and pieces lay about, sufficient to have constructed a fleet of ships and boats. I turned to my uncle, silent with astonishment and awe. "Where did all this wood come from?" I cried; "what wood is it?" "Well, there is pinewood, fir, and the palms of the northern regions, mineralized by the action of the sea," he replied, sententiously. "Can it be possible?" "Yes," said the learned Professor, "what you see is called fossil wood." "But then," cried I, after reflecting for a moment, "like the lignites, it must be as hard and as heavy as iron, and therefore will certainly not float." "Sometimes that is the case. Many of these woods have become true anthracites, but others again, like those you see before you, have only undergone one phase of fossil transformation. But there is no proof like demonstration," added my uncle, picking one or two of these precious waifs and casting them into the sea. The piece of wood, after having disappeared for a moment, came to the surface, and floated about with the oscillation produced by wind and tide. "Are you convinced?" said my uncle, with a self-satisfied smile. "I am convinced," I cried, "that what I see is incredible." The fact was that my journey into the interior of the earth was rapidly changing all preconceived notions, and day by day preparing me for the marvelous. I should not have been surprised to have seen a fleet of native canoes afloat upon that silent sea. The very next evening, thanks to the industry and ability of Hans, the raft was finished. It was about ten feet long and five feet wide. The beams bound together with stout ropes, were solid and firm, and once launched by our united efforts, the improvised vessel floated tranquilly upon the waters of what the Professor had well named the Central Sea. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2006). A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18857/18857-h/18857-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

LAUNCHING THE RAFT

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE GRECIAN ARCHIPELAGO here CHAPTER VI: THE GRECIAN ARCHIPELAGO The next day, the 12th of February, at the dawn of day, the rose to the surface. I hastened on to the platform. Three miles to the south the dim outline of Pelusium was to be seen. A torrent had carried us from one sea to another. About seven o’clock Ned and Conseil joined me. Nautilus “Well, Sir Naturalist,” said the Canadian, in a slightly jovial tone, “and the Mediterranean?” “We are floating on its surface, friend Ned.” “What!” said Conseil, “this very night.” “Yes, this very night; in a few minutes we have passed this impassable isthmus.” “I do not believe it,” replied the Canadian. “Then you are wrong, Master Land,” I continued; “this low coast which rounds off to the south is the Egyptian coast. And you who have such good eyes, Ned, you can see the jetty of Port Said stretching into the sea.” The Canadian looked attentively. “Certainly you are right, sir, and your Captain is a first-rate man. We are in the Mediterranean. Good! Now, if you please, let us talk of our own little affair, but so that no one hears us.” I saw what the Canadian wanted, and, in any case, I thought it better to let him talk, as he wished it; so we all three went and sat down near the lantern, where we were less exposed to the spray of the blades. “Now, Ned, we listen; what have you to tell us?” “What I have to tell you is very simple. We are in Europe; and before Captain Nemo’s caprices drag us once more to the bottom of the Polar Seas, or lead us into Oceania, I ask to leave the .” Nautilus I wished in no way to shackle the liberty of my companions, but I certainly felt no desire to leave Captain Nemo. Thanks to him, and thanks to his apparatus, I was each day nearer the completion of my submarine studies; and I was rewriting my book of submarine depths in its very element. Should I ever again have such an opportunity of observing the wonders of the ocean? No, certainly not! And I could not bring myself to the idea of abandoning the before the cycle of investigation was accomplished. Nautilus “Friend Ned, answer me frankly, are you tired of being on board? Are you sorry that destiny has thrown us into Captain Nemo’s hands?” The Canadian remained some moments without answering. Then, crossing his arms, he said: “Frankly, I do not regret this journey under the seas. I shall be glad to have made it; but, now that it is made, let us have done with it. That is my idea.” “It will come to an end, Ned.” “Where and when?” “Where I do not know—when I cannot say; or, rather, I suppose it will end when these seas have nothing more to teach us.” “Then what do you hope for?” demanded the Canadian. “That circumstances may occur as well six months hence as now by which we may and ought to profit.” “Oh!” said Ned Land, “and where shall we be in six months, if you please, Sir Naturalist?” “Perhaps in China; you know the is a rapid traveller. It goes through water as swallows through the air, or as an express on the land. It does not fear frequented seas; who can say that it may not beat the coasts of France, England, or America, on which flight may be attempted as advantageously as here.” Nautilus “M. Aronnax,” replied the Canadian, “your arguments are rotten at the foundation. You speak in the future, ‘We shall be there! we shall be here!’ I speak in the present, ‘We are here, and we must profit by it.’” Ned Land’s logic pressed me hard, and I felt myself beaten on that ground. I knew not what argument would now tell in my favour. “Sir,” continued Ned, “let us suppose an impossibility: if Captain Nemo should this day offer you your liberty; would you accept it?” “I do not know,” I answered. “And if,” he added, “the offer made you this day was never to be renewed, would you accept it?” “Friend Ned, this is my answer. Your reasoning is against me. We must not rely on Captain Nemo’s good-will. Common prudence forbids him to set us at liberty. On the other side, prudence bids us profit by the first opportunity to leave the .” Nautilus “Well, M. Aronnax, that is wisely said.” “Only one observation—just one. The occasion must be serious, and our first attempt must succeed; if it fails, we shall never find another, and Captain Nemo will never forgive us.” “All that is true,” replied the Canadian. “But your observation applies equally to all attempts at flight, whether in two years’ time, or in two days’. But the question is still this: If a favourable opportunity presents itself, it must be seized.” “Agreed! And now, Ned, will you tell me what you mean by a favourable opportunity?” “It will be that which, on a dark night, will bring the a short distance from some European coast.” Nautilus “And you will try and save yourself by swimming?” “Yes, if we were near enough to the bank, and if the vessel was floating at the time. Not if the bank was far away, and the boat was under the water.” “And in that case?” “In that case, I should seek to make myself master of the pinnace. I know how it is worked. We must get inside, and the bolts once drawn, we shall come to the surface of the water, without even the pilot, who is in the bows, perceiving our flight.” “Well, Ned, watch for the opportunity; but do not forget that a hitch will ruin us.” “I will not forget, sir.” “And now, Ned, would you like to know what I think of your project?” “Certainly, M. Aronnax.” “Well, I think—I do not say I hope—I think that this favourable opportunity will never present itself.” “Why not?” “Because Captain Nemo cannot hide from himself that we have not given up all hope of regaining our liberty, and he will be on his guard, above all, in the seas and in the sight of European coasts.” “We shall see,” replied Ned Land, shaking his head determinedly. “And now, Ned Land,” I added, “let us stop here. Not another word on the subject. The day that you are ready, come and let us know, and we will follow you. I rely entirely upon you.” Thus ended a conversation which, at no very distant time, led to such grave results. I must say here that facts seemed to confirm my foresight, to the Canadian’s great despair. Did Captain Nemo distrust us in these frequented seas? or did he only wish to hide himself from the numerous vessels, of all nations, which ploughed the Mediterranean? I could not tell; but we were oftener between waters and far from the coast. Or, if the did emerge, nothing was to be seen but the pilot’s cage; and sometimes it went to great depths, for, between the Grecian Archipelago and Asia Minor we could not touch the bottom by more than a thousand fathoms. Nautilus Thus I only knew we were near the Island of Carpathos, one of the Sporades, by Captain Nemo reciting these lines from Virgil: “Est Carpathio Neptuni gurgite vates, Caeruleus Proteus,” as he pointed to a spot on the planisphere. It was indeed the ancient abode of Proteus, the old shepherd of Neptune’s flocks, now the Island of Scarpanto, situated between Rhodes and Crete. I saw nothing but the granite base through the glass panels of the saloon. The next day, the 14th of February, I resolved to employ some hours in studying the fishes of the Archipelago; but for some reason or other the panels remained hermetically sealed. Upon taking the course of the , I found that we were going towards Candia, the ancient Isle of Crete. At the time I embarked on the , the whole of this island had risen in insurrection against the despotism of the Turks. But how the insurgents had fared since that time I was absolutely ignorant, and it was not Captain Nemo, deprived of all land communications, who could tell me. Nautilus Abraham Lincoln I made no allusion to this event when that night I found myself alone with him in the saloon. Besides, he seemed to be taciturn and preoccupied. Then, contrary to his custom, he ordered both panels to be opened, and, going from one to the other, observed the mass of waters attentively. To what end I could not guess; so, on my side, I employed my time in studying the fish passing before my eyes. In the midst of the waters a man appeared, a diver, carrying at his belt a leathern purse. It was not a body abandoned to the waves; it was a living man, swimming with a strong hand, disappearing occasionally to take breath at the surface. I turned towards Captain Nemo, and in an agitated voice exclaimed: “A man shipwrecked! He must be saved at any price!” The Captain did not answer me, but came and leaned against the panel. The man had approached, and, with his face flattened against the glass, was looking at us. To my great amazement, Captain Nemo signed to him. The diver answered with his hand, mounted immediately to the surface of the water, and did not appear again. “Do not be uncomfortable,” said Captain Nemo. “It is Nicholas of Cape Matapan, surnamed Pesca. He is well known in all the Cyclades. A bold diver! water is his element, and he lives more in it than on land, going continually from one island to another, even as far as Crete.” “You know him, Captain?” “Why not, M. Aronnax?” Saying which, Captain Nemo went towards a piece of furniture standing near the left panel of the saloon. Near this piece of furniture, I saw a chest bound with iron, on the cover of which was a copper plate, bearing the cypher of the with its device. Nautilus At that moment, the Captain, without noticing my presence, opened the piece of furniture, a sort of strong box, which held a great many ingots. They were ingots of gold. From whence came this precious metal, which represented an enormous sum? Where did the Captain gather this gold from? and what was he going to do with it? I did not say one word. I looked. Captain Nemo took the ingots one by one, and arranged them methodically in the chest, which he filled entirely. I estimated the contents at more than 4,000 lbs. weight of gold, that is to say, nearly £200,000. The chest was securely fastened, and the Captain wrote an address on the lid, in characters which must have belonged to Modern Greece. This done, Captain Nemo pressed a knob, the wire of which communicated with the quarters of the crew. Four men appeared, and, not without some trouble, pushed the chest out of the saloon. Then I heard them hoisting it up the iron staircase by means of pulleys. At that moment, Captain Nemo turned to me. “And you were saying, sir?” said he. “I was saying nothing, Captain.” “Then, sir, if you will allow me, I will wish you good night.” Whereupon he turned and left the saloon. I returned to my room much troubled, as one may believe. I vainly tried to sleep—I sought the connecting link between the apparition of the diver and the chest filled with gold. Soon, I felt by certain movements of pitching and tossing that the was leaving the depths and returning to the surface. Nautilus Then I heard steps upon the platform; and I knew they were unfastening the pinnace and launching it upon the waves. For one instant it struck the side of the , then all noise ceased. Nautilus Two hours after, the same noise, the same going and coming was renewed; the boat was hoisted on board, replaced in its socket, and the again plunged under the waves. Nautilus So these millions had been transported to their address. To what point of the continent? Who was Captain Nemo’s correspondent? The next day I related to Conseil and the Canadian the events of the night, which had excited my curiosity to the highest degree. My companions were not less surprised than myself. “But where does he take his millions to?” asked Ned Land. To that there was no possible answer. I returned to the saloon after having breakfast and set to work. Till five o’clock in the evening I employed myself in arranging my notes. At that moment—(ought I to attribute it to some peculiar idiosyncrasy)—I felt so great a heat that I was obliged to take off my coat. It was strange, for we were under low latitudes; and even then the , submerged as it was, ought to experience no change of temperature. I looked at the manometer; it showed a depth of sixty feet, to which atmospheric heat could never attain. Nautilus I continued my work, but the temperature rose to such a pitch as to be intolerable. “Could there be fire on board?” I asked myself. I was leaving the saloon, when Captain Nemo entered; he approached the thermometer, consulted it, and, turning to me, said: “Forty-two degrees.” “I have noticed it, Captain,” I replied; “and if it gets much hotter we cannot bear it.” “Oh, sir, it will not get better if we do not wish it.” “You can reduce it as you please, then?” “No; but I can go farther from the stove which produces it.” “It is outward, then!” “Certainly; we are floating in a current of boiling water.” “Is it possible!” I exclaimed. “Look.” The panels opened, and I saw the sea entirely white all round. A sulphurous smoke was curling amid the waves, which boiled like water in a copper. I placed my hand on one of the panes of glass, but the heat was so great that I quickly took it off again. “Where are we?” I asked. “Near the Island of Santorin, sir,” replied the Captain. “I wished to give you a sight of the curious spectacle of a submarine eruption.” “I thought,” said I, “that the formation of these new islands was ended.” “Nothing is ever ended in the volcanic parts of the sea,” replied Captain Nemo; “and the globe is always being worked by subterranean fires. Already, in the nineteenth year of our era, according to Cassiodorus and Pliny, a new island, Theia (the divine), appeared in the very place where these islets have recently been formed. Then they sank under the waves, to rise again in the year 69, when they again subsided. Since that time to our days the Plutonian work has been suspended. But on the 3rd of February, 1866, a new island, which they named George Island, emerged from the midst of the sulphurous vapour near Nea Kamenni, and settled again the 6th of the same month. Seven days after, the 13th of February, the Island of Aphroessa appeared, leaving between Nea Kamenni and itself a canal ten yards broad. I was in these seas when the phenomenon occurred, and I was able therefore to observe all the different phases. The Island of Aphroessa, of round form, measured 300 feet in diameter, and 30 feet in height. It was composed of black and vitreous lava, mixed with fragments of felspar. And lastly, on the 10th of March, a smaller island, called Reka, showed itself near Nea Kamenni, and since then these three have joined together, forming but one and the same island.” “And the canal in which we are at this moment?” I asked. “Here it is,” replied Captain Nemo, showing me a map of the Archipelago. “You see, I have marked the new islands.” I returned to the glass. The was no longer moving, the heat was becoming unbearable. The sea, which till now had been white, was red, owing to the presence of salts of iron. In spite of the ship’s being hermetically sealed, an insupportable smell of sulphur filled the saloon, and the brilliancy of the electricity was entirely extinguished by bright scarlet flames. I was in a bath, I was choking, I was broiled. Nautilus “We can remain no longer in this boiling water,” said I to the Captain. “It would not be prudent,” replied the impassive Captain Nemo. An order was given; the tacked about and left the furnace it could not brave with impunity. A quarter of an hour after we were breathing fresh air on the surface. The thought then struck me that, if Ned Land had chosen this part of the sea for our flight, we should never have come alive out of this sea of fire. Nautilus The next day, the 16th of February, we left the basin which, between Rhodes and Alexandria, is reckoned about 1,500 fathoms in depth, and the , passing some distance from Cerigo, quitted the Grecian Archipelago after having doubled Cape Matapan. Nautilus About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (1994). Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE GRECIAN ARCHIPELAGO

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN CHAPTER VI. A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN A veil might with profit be drawn over the events of the next half-hour. Suffice it to say that no such person as “Inspector Brown” was known to Scotland Yard. The photograph of Jane Finn, which would have been of the utmost value to the police in tracing her, was lost beyond recovery. Once again “Mr. Brown” had triumphed. The immediate result of this set-back was to effect a rapprochement between Julius Hersheimmer and the Young Adventurers. All barriers went down with a crash, and Tommy and Tuppence felt they had known the young American all their lives. They abandoned the discreet reticence of “private inquiry agents,” and revealed to him the whole history of the joint venture, whereat the young man declared himself “tickled to death.” He turned to Tuppence at the close of the narration. “I’ve always had a kind of idea that English girls were just a mite moss-grown. Old-fashioned and sweet, you know, but scared to move round without a footman or a maiden aunt. I guess I’m a bit behind the times!” The upshot of these confidential relations was that Tommy and Tuppence took up their abode forthwith at the Ritz, in order, as Tuppence put it, to keep in touch with Jane Finn’s only living relation. “And put like that,” she added confidentially to Tommy, “nobody could boggle at the expense!” Nobody did, which was the great thing. “And now,” said the young lady on the morning after their installation, “to work!” Mr. Beresford put down the Daily Mail, which he was reading, and applauded with somewhat unnecessary vigour. He was politely requested by his colleague not to be an ass. “Dash it all, Tommy, we’ve got to do something for our money.” Tommy sighed. “Yes, I fear even the dear old Government will not support us at the Ritz in idleness for ever.” “Therefore, as I said before, we must do something.” “Well,” said Tommy, picking up the Daily Mail again, “do it. I shan’t stop you.” “You see,” continued Tuppence. “I’ve been thinking——” She was interrupted by a fresh bout of applause. “It’s all very well for you to sit there being funny, Tommy. It would do you no harm to do a little brain work too.” “My union, Tuppence, my union! It does not permit me to work before 11 a.m.” “Tommy, do you want something thrown at you? It is absolutely essential that we should without delay map out a plan of campaign.” “Hear, hear!” “Well, let’s do it.” Tommy laid his paper finally aside. “There’s something of the simplicity of the truly great mind about you, Tuppence. Fire ahead. I’m listening.” “To begin with,” said Tuppence, “what have we to go upon?” “Absolutely nothing,” said Tommy cheerily. “Wrong!” Tuppence wagged an energetic finger. “We have two distinct clues.” “What are they?” “First clue, we know one of the gang.” “Whittington?” “Yes. I’d recognize him anywhere.” “Hum,” said Tommy doubtfully, “I don’t call that much of a clue. You don’t know where to look for him, and it’s about a thousand to one against your running against him by accident.” “I’m not so sure about that,” replied Tuppence thoughtfully. “I’ve often noticed that once coincidences start happening they go on happening in the most extraordinary way. I dare say it’s some natural law that we haven’t found out. Still, as you say, we can’t rely on that. But there are places in London where simply every one is bound to turn up sooner or later. Piccadilly Circus, for instance. One of my ideas was to take up my stand there every day with a tray of flags.” “What about meals?” inquired the practical Tommy. “How like a man! What does mere food matter?” “That’s all very well. You’ve just had a thundering good breakfast. No one’s got a better appetite than you have, Tuppence, and by tea-time you’d be eating the flags, pins and all. But, honestly, I don’t think much of the idea. Whittington mayn’t be in London at all.” “That’s true. Anyway, I think clue No. 2 is more promising.” “Let’s hear it.” “It’s nothing much. Only a Christian name—Rita. Whittington mentioned it that day.” “Are you proposing a third advertisement: Wanted, female crook, answering to the name of Rita?” “I am not. I propose to reason in a logical manner. That man, Danvers, was shadowed on the way over, wasn’t he? And it’s more likely to have been a woman than a man——” “I don’t see that at all.” “I am absolutely certain that it would be a woman, and a good-looking one,” replied Tuppence calmly. “On these technical points I bow to your decision,” murmured Mr. Beresford. “Now, obviously this woman, whoever she was, was saved.” “How do you make that out?” “If she wasn’t, how would they have known Jane Finn had got the papers?” “Correct. Proceed, O Sherlock!” “Now there’s just a chance, I admit it’s only a chance, that this woman may have been ‘Rita.’” “And if so?” “If so, we’ve got to hunt through the survivors of the Lusitania till we find her.” “Then the first thing is to get a list of the survivors.” “I’ve got it. I wrote a long list of things I wanted to know, and sent it to Mr. Carter. I got his reply this morning, and among other things it encloses the official statement of those saved from the Lusitania. How’s that for clever little Tuppence?” “Full marks for industry, zero for modesty. But the great point is, is there a ‘Rita’ on the list?” “That’s just what I don’t know,” confessed Tuppence. “Don’t know?” “Yes. Look here.” Together they bent over the list. “You see, very few Christian names are given. They’re nearly all Mrs. or Miss.” Tommy nodded. “That complicates matters,” he murmured thoughtfully. Tuppence gave her characteristic “terrier” shake. “Well, we’ve just got to get down to it, that’s all. We’ll start with the London area. Just note down the addresses of any of the females who live in London or roundabout, while I put on my hat.” Five minutes later the young couple emerged into Piccadilly, and a few seconds later a taxi was bearing them to The Laurels, Glendower Road, N.7, the residence of Mrs. Edgar Keith, whose name figured first in a list of seven reposing in Tommy’s pocket-book. The Laurels was a dilapidated house, standing back from the road with a few grimy bushes to support the fiction of a front garden. Tommy paid off the taxi, and accompanied Tuppence to the front door bell. As she was about to ring it, he arrested her hand. “What are you going to say?” “What am I going to say? Why, I shall say—Oh dear, I don’t know. It’s very awkward.” “I thought as much,” said Tommy with satisfaction. “How like a woman! No foresight! Now just stand aside, and see how easily the mere male deals with the situation.” He pressed the bell. Tuppence withdrew to a suitable spot. A slatternly looking servant, with an extremely dirty face and a pair of eyes that did not match, answered the door. Tommy had produced a notebook and pencil. “Good morning,” he said briskly and cheerfully. “From the Hampstead Borough Council. The new Voting Register. Mrs. Edgar Keith lives here, does she not?” “Yaas,” said the servant. “Christian name?” asked Tommy, his pencil poised. “Missus’s? Eleanor Jane.” “Eleanor,” spelt Tommy. “Any sons or daughters over twenty-one?” “Naow.” “Thank you.” Tommy closed the notebook with a brisk snap. “Good morning.” The servant volunteered her first remark: “I thought perhaps as you’d come about the gas,” she observed cryptically, and shut the door. Tommy rejoined his accomplice. “You see, Tuppence,” he observed. “Child’s play to the masculine mind.” “I don’t mind admitting that for once you’ve scored handsomely. I should never have thought of that.” “Good wheeze, wasn’t it? And we can repeat it ad lib.” Lunch-time found the young couple attacking a steak and chips in an obscure hostelry with avidity. They had collected a Gladys Mary and a Marjorie, been baffled by one change of address, and had been forced to listen to a long lecture on universal suffrage from a vivacious American lady whose Christian name had proved to be Sadie. “Ah!” said Tommy, imbibing a long draught of beer, “I feel better. Where’s the next draw?” The notebook lay on the table between them. Tuppence picked it up. “Mrs. Vandemeyer,” she read, “20 South Audley Mansions. Miss Wheeler, 43 Clapington Road, Battersea. She’s a lady’s maid, as far as I remember, so probably won’t be there, and, anyway, she’s not likely.” “Then the Mayfair lady is clearly indicated as the first port of call.” “Tommy, I’m getting discouraged.” “Buck up, old bean. We always knew it was an outside chance. And, anyway, we’re only starting. If we draw a blank in London, there’s a fine tour of England, Ireland and Scotland before us.” “True,” said Tuppence, her flagging spirits reviving. “And all expenses paid! But, oh, Tommy, I do like things to happen quickly. So far, adventure has succeeded adventure, but this morning has been dull as dull.” “You must stifle this longing for vulgar sensation, Tuppence. Remember that if Mr. Brown is all he is reported to be, it’s a wonder that he has not ere now done us to death. That’s a good sentence, quite a literary flavour about it.” “You’re really more conceited than I am—with less excuse! Ahem! But it certainly is queer that Mr. Brown has not yet wreaked vengeance upon us. (You see, I can do it too.) We pass on our way unscathed.” “Perhaps he doesn’t think us worth bothering about,” suggested the young man simply. Tuppence received the remark with great disfavour. “How horrid you are, Tommy. Just as though we didn’t count.” “Sorry, Tuppence. What I meant was that we work like moles in the dark, and that he has no suspicion of our nefarious schemes. Ha ha!” “Ha ha!” echoed Tuppence approvingly, as she rose. South Audley Mansions was an imposing-looking block of flats just off Park Lane. No. 20 was on the second floor. Tommy had by this time the glibness born of practice. He rattled off the formula to the elderly woman, looking more like a housekeeper than a servant, who opened the door to him. “Christian name?” “Margaret.” Tommy spelt it, but the other interrupted him. “No, g u e.” “Oh, Marguerite; French way, I see.” He paused, then plunged boldly. “We had her down as Rita Vandemeyer, but I suppose that’s incorrect?” “She’s mostly called that, sir, but Marguerite’s her name.” “Thank you. That’s all. Good morning.” Hardly able to contain his excitement, Tommy hurried down the stairs. Tuppence was waiting at the angle of the turn. “You heard?” “Yes. Oh, Tommy!” Tommy squeezed her arm sympathetically. “I know, old thing. I feel the same.” “It’s—it’s so lovely to think of things—and then for them really to happen!” cried Tuppence enthusiastically. Her hand was still in Tommy’s. They had reached the entrance hall. There were footsteps on the stairs above them, and voices. Suddenly, to Tommy’s complete surprise, Tuppence dragged him into the little space by the side of the lift where the shadow was deepest. “What the——” “Hush!” Two men came down the stairs and passed out through the entrance. Tuppence’s hand closed tighter on Tommy’s arm. “Quick—follow them. I daren’t. He might recognize me. I don’t know who the other man is, but the bigger of the two was Whittington.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (1998). The Secret Adversary. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1155/pg1155-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

Stories, News & Mentions about ALLWHERE

Allwhere’s Stories on HackerNoon