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Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1931, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . The Exile of Time - Chapter III: Tugh, the Cripple CHAPTER III. Tugh, the Cripple The portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling events which menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now. A maelstrom. A torrent in the midst of which we were caught up like tiny bits of cork and whirled away. But we thought we understood the mystery. We believed we were acting for the best. What we did was no doubt ill-considered; but the human mind is so far from omniscient! And this thing was so strange! Alten said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood. But this thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron monster a Robot. But it does not belong to our age: if it does I have never seen one such as you describe. And traveling through Time—" He smiled down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we can understand—or at least explain—these things as being scientific. And so they have not the terror of the supernatural." Mary was calmer now. She returned his smile. "I realize that; or at least I am trying to realize it." What a level-headed girl was this! I touched her arm. "You are very wonderful—" Alten brushed me away. "Let's try and reduce it to rationality. The cage was—is, I should say, since of course it still exists—that cage is a Time-traveling vehicle. It is traveling back and forth through Time, operated by a Robot. Call it that. A pseudo-human monster fashioned of metal in the guise of a man." Even Alten had to force himself to speak calmly, as he gazed from one to the other of us. "It came, no doubt from some future age, where half-human mechanisms are common, and Time-traveling is known. That cage probably does not travel in Space, but only in Time. In the future—somewhere—the Space of that house on Patton Place may be the laboratory of a famous scientist. And in the past—in the year 1777—that same Space was the garden of Mistress Atwood's home. So much is obvious. But why—" "Why," Larry burst out, "did that iron monster stop in 1777 and abduct this girl?" "And why," I intercepted, "did it stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary. "And it told you it would return?" "Yes." Alten was pondering. "There must be some connection, of course.... Mistress Mary, had you never seen this cage before?" "No." "Nor anything like it? Was anything like that known to your Time?" "No. Oh, I cannot truly say that. Some people believe in phantoms, omens and witchcraft. There was in Salem, in the Massachusetts Colony, not so many years ago—" "I don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling." "There were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with crystals to gaze into the future." "We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more than you do about this thing." I said, "Did you have any enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?" She thought a moment. "No—yes, there was one." She shuddered at the memory. "A man—a cripple—a horribly repulsive man of about one score and ten years. He lives down near the Battery." She paused. "Tell us about him," Larry urged. She nodded. "But what could he have to do with this? He is horribly deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead with goggling eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot in the Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it. But Father likes the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our cause well. He is rich. "But you don't want to hear all this. He—he made love to me, and I repulsed him. There was a scene with Father, and Father had our lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He cursed horribly. He vowed then that some day he—he would have me; and get revenge on Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him for a twelvemonth." We were silent. I chanced to glance at Alten, and a strange look was on his face. He said abruptly, "What is this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?" "Tugh. He is known to all the city as Tugh. Just that. I never heard any Christian name." Alten rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?" "Yes," she affirmed wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?" Alten swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place? Did you happen to notice?" I had, and wondering I told him. "Just a minute," he said. "I want to use the phone." He came back to us in a moment: his face was very solemn. "That house on Patton Place is owned by a man named Tugh! I just called a reporter friend; he remembers a certain case: he confirmed what I thought. Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your Time ever consult doctors, trying to have his crippled body made whole?" "Why, of course he did. I have heard that many times. But his crippled, deformed body cannot be cured." Alten checked Larry and me when we would have broken in with astonished questions. He said: "Don't ask me what it means; I don't know. But I think that this cripple—this Tugh—has lived both in 1777 and 1935, and is traveling between them in this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human master of that Robot." Alten made a vehement gesture. "But we'd better not theorize; it's too fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him. He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body of a young man." Alten was speaking vehemently. My thoughts ran ahead of his words; I could imagine with grewsome fancy so many things. A cripple, traveling to different ages seeking to be cured. Desiring a different body.... Alten was saying, "This fellow Tugh lived alone in that house on Patton Place. He was all you say of him, Mistress Mary. Hideously repulsive. A sinister personality. About thirty years old. "And, in 1932, he got mixed up with a girl who had a somewhat dubious reputation herself. A dancer, a frequenter of night-clubs, as they used to be called. Her name was Doris Johns—something like that. She evidently thought she could get money out of Tugh. Whatever it was, there was a big uproar. The girl had him arrested, saying that he had assaulted her. The police had quite a time with the cripple." Larry and I remembered a few of the details of it now, though neither of us had been in New York at the time. Alten went on: "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine they handled him pretty roughly. In the Magistrate's Court he made another scene, and fought with the court attendants. With ungovernable rage he screamed vituperatives, and was carried kicking, biting and snarling from the court-room. He threatened some wild weird revenge upon all the city officials—even upon the city itself." "Nice sort of chap," Larry commented. But Alten did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for contempt of Court. The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he murdered the girl. "The details are unimportant; but he did it. The police had him trapped in his house; had the house surrounded—this same one on Patton Place—but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably vanished. He was never heard from again." Alten continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never heard from—until to-night. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with the police guarding every exit to that house—well, it's obvious, isn't it? He went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless." Mary Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you. Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him, that he had a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there was a world in the future—he mentioned 1934 or 1935—which he hated. A great city whose people had wronged him; and he was going to bring death to them. Death to them all! I did not heed him. I thought he was demented, raving...." Alten's little clock ticked with tumultuous heartbeat through another silence. The great city around us, even though this was two o'clock in the morning, throbbed with a myriad of blended sounds. A warning! Was the girl from out of the past giving us a warning of coming disaster to this great city? Alten was pacing the floor. "What are we to do—tell the authorities? Take Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that she has come from the year 1777? And that, if we are not careful, there will be an attack upon New York?" "No!" I burst out. I could fancy how we would be received at Police Headquarters if we did that! And our pictures in to-morrow's newspapers. Mary's picture, with a jibing headline ridiculing us. "No," echoed Alten. "I have no intention of doing it. I'm not so foolish as that." He stopped before Mary. "What do you want to do? You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent, level-headed girl. Heaven knows you need to be." "I—I want to get back home," she stammered. A pang shot through me as she said it. A hundred and fifty years to separate us. A vast gulf. An impassible barrier. "That mechanism said it would return!" "Exactly," agreed Alten. An excitement was upon us all. "Exactly what I mean! Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing else I can think of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles." "Just what do you mean?" I demanded. "I mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on Patton Place. Right now! And if that mechanical monster returns, we'll seize it!" Alten, the usually calm, precise man of science, was tensely vehement. "Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll at least have something to show the authorities; there'll be no ridicule then!" Our inescapable destiny was making us plunge so rashly into this mystery! With the excitement and the strange fantasy of it upon us, we thought we were acting for the best. Within a quarter of an hour, armed and with a long overcoat and a scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we took Alten's car and drove to Patton Place. 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. Various. 2009. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, April 1931. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30452/30452-h/30452-h.htm#Page_26 . 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

Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1931:  The Exile of Time - Chapter III

Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here: [LINK TO TABLE OF LINK] CHAPTER XXVII. ATONES FOR THE UNPOLITENESS OF A FORMER CHAPTER; WHICH DESERTED A LADY, MOST UNCEREMONIOUSLY As it would be, by no means, seemly in a humble author to keep so mighty a personage as a beadle waiting, with his back to the fire, and the skirts of his coat gathered up under his arms, until such time as it might suit his pleasure to relieve him; and as it would still less become his station, or his gallantry to involve in the same neglect a lady on whom that beadle had looked with an eye of tenderness and affection, and in whose ear he had whispered sweet words, which, coming from such a quarter, might well thrill the bosom of maid or matron of whatsoever degree; the historian whose pen traces these words—trusting that he knows his place, and that he entertains a becoming reverence for those upon earth to whom high and important authority is delegated—hastens to pay them that respect which their position demands, and to treat them with all that duteous ceremony which their exalted rank, and (by consequence) great virtues, imperatively claim at his hands. Towards this end, indeed, he had purposed to introduce, in this place, a dissertation touching the divine right of beadles, and elucidative of the position, that a beadle can do no wrong: which could not fail to have been both pleasurable and profitable to the right-minded reader but which he is unfortunately compelled, by want of time and space, to postpone to some more convenient and fitting opportunity; on the arrival of which, he will be prepared to show, that a beadle properly constituted: that is to say, a parochial beadle, attached to a parochial workhouse, and attending in his official capacity the parochial church: is, in right and virtue of his office, possessed of all the excellences and best qualities of humanity; and that to none of those excellences, can mere companies’ beadles, or court-of-law beadles, or even chapel-of-ease beadles (save the last, and they in a very lowly and inferior degree), lay the remotest sustainable claim. Mr. Bumble had re-counted the teaspoons, re-weighed the sugar-tongs, made a closer inspection of the milk-pot, and ascertained to a nicety the exact condition of the furniture, down to the very horse-hair seats of the chairs; and had repeated each process full half a dozen times; before he began to think that it was time for Mrs. Corney to return. Thinking begets thinking; as there were no sounds of Mrs. Corney’s approach, it occured to Mr. Bumble that it would be an innocent and virtuous way of spending the time, if he were further to allay his curiousity by a cursory glance at the interior of Mrs. Corney’s chest of drawers. Having listened at the keyhole, to assure himself that nobody was approaching the chamber, Mr. Bumble, beginning at the bottom, proceeded to make himself acquainted with the contents of the three long drawers: which, being filled with various garments of good fashion and texture, carefully preserved between two layers of old newspapers, speckled with dried lavender: seemed to yield him exceeding satisfaction. Arriving, in course of time, at the right-hand corner drawer (in which was the key), and beholding therein a small padlocked box, which, being shaken, gave forth a pleasant sound, as of the chinking of coin, Mr. Bumble returned with a stately walk to the fireplace; and, resuming his old attitude, said, with a grave and determined air, “I’ll do it!” He followed up this remarkable declaration, by shaking his head in a waggish manner for ten minutes, as though he were remonstrating with himself for being such a pleasant dog; and then, he took a view of his legs in profile, with much seeming pleasure and interest. He was still placidly engaged in this latter survey, when Mrs. Corney, hurrying into the room, threw herself, in a breathless state, on a chair by the fireside, and covering her eyes with one hand, placed the other over her heart, and gasped for breath. “Mrs. Corney,” said Mr. Bumble, stooping over the matron, “what is this, ma’am? Has anything happened, ma’am? Pray answer me: I’m on—on—” Mr. Bumble, in his alarm, could not immediately think of the word “tenterhooks,” so he said “broken bottles.” “Oh, Mr. Bumble!” cried the lady, “I have been so dreadfully put out!” “Put out, ma’am!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble; “who has dared to—? I know!” said Mr. Bumble, checking himself, with native majesty, “this is them wicious paupers!” “It’s dreadful to think of!” said the lady, shuddering. “Then don’t think of it, ma’am,” rejoined Mr. Bumble. “I can’t help it,” whimpered the lady. “Then take something, ma’am,” said Mr. Bumble soothingly. “A little of the wine?” “Not for the world!” replied Mrs. Corney. “I couldn’t,—oh! The top shelf in the right-hand corner—oh!” Uttering these words, the good lady pointed, distractedly, to the cupboard, and underwent a convulsion from internal spasms. Mr. Bumble rushed to the closet; and, snatching a pint green-glass bottle from the shelf thus incoherently indicated, filled a tea-cup with its contents, and held it to the lady’s lips. “I’m better now,” said Mrs. Corney, falling back, after drinking half of it. Mr. Bumble raised his eyes piously to the ceiling in thankfulness; and, bringing them down again to the brim of the cup, lifted it to his nose. “Peppermint,” exclaimed Mrs. Corney, in a faint voice, smiling gently on the beadle as she spoke. “Try it! There’s a little—a little something else in it.” Mr. Bumble tasted the medicine with a doubtful look; smacked his lips; took another taste; and put the cup down empty. “It’s very comforting,” said Mrs. Corney. “Very much so indeed, ma’am,” said the beadle. As he spoke, he drew a chair beside the matron, and tenderly inquired what had happened to distress her. “Nothing,” replied Mrs. Corney. “I am a foolish, excitable, weak creetur.” “Not weak, ma’am,” retorted Mr. Bumble, drawing his chair a little closer. “Are you a weak creetur, Mrs. Corney?” “We are all weak creeturs,” said Mrs. Corney, laying down a general principle. “So we are,” said the beadle. Nothing was said on either side, for a minute or two afterwards. By the expiration of that time, Mr. Bumble had illustrated the position by removing his left arm from the back of Mrs. Corney’s chair, where it had previously rested, to Mrs. Corney’s apron-string, round which it gradually became entwined. “We are all weak creeturs,” said Mr. Bumble. Mrs. Corney sighed. “Don’t sigh, Mrs. Corney,” said Mr. Bumble. “I can’t help it,” said Mrs. Corney. And she sighed again. “This is a very comfortable room, ma’am,” said Mr. Bumble looking round. “Another room, and this, ma’am, would be a complete thing.” “It would be too much for one,” murmured the lady. “But not for two, ma’am,” rejoined Mr. Bumble, in soft accents. “Eh, Mrs. Corney?” Mrs. Corney drooped her head, when the beadle said this; the beadle drooped his, to get a view of Mrs. Corney’s face. Mrs. Corney, with great propriety, turned her head away, and released her hand to get at her pocket-handkerchief; but insensibly replaced it in that of Mr. Bumble. “The board allows you coals, don’t they, Mrs. Corney?” inquired the beadle, affectionately pressing her hand. “And candles,” replied Mrs. Corney, slightly returning the pressure. “Coals, candles, and house-rent free,” said Mr. Bumble. “Oh, Mrs. Corney, what an Angel you are!” The lady was not proof against this burst of feeling. She sank into Mr. Bumble’s arms; and that gentleman in his agitation, imprinted a passionate kiss upon her chaste nose. “Such porochial perfection!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble, rapturously. “You know that Mr. Slout is worse to-night, my fascinator?” “Yes,” replied Mrs. Corney, bashfully. “He can’t live a week, the doctor says,” pursued Mr. Bumble. “He is the master of this establishment; his death will cause a wacancy; that wacancy must be filled up. Oh, Mrs. Corney, what a prospect this opens! What a opportunity for a jining of hearts and housekeepings!” Mrs. Corney sobbed. “The little word?” said Mr. Bumble, bending over the bashful beauty. “The one little, little, little word, my blessed Corney?” “Ye—ye—yes!” sighed out the matron. “One more,” pursued the beadle; “compose your darling feelings for only one more. When is it to come off?” Mrs. Corney twice essayed to speak: and twice failed. At length summoning up courage, she threw her arms around Mr. Bumble’s neck, and said, it might be as soon as ever he pleased, and that he was “a irresistible duck.” Matters being thus amicably and satisfactorily arranged, the contract was solemnly ratified in another teacupful of the peppermint mixture; which was rendered the more necessary, by the flutter and agitation of the lady’s spirits. While it was being disposed of, she acquainted Mr. Bumble with the old woman’s decease. “Very good,” said that gentleman, sipping his peppermint; “I’ll call at Sowerberry’s as I go home, and tell him to send to-morrow morning. Was it that as frightened you, love?” “It wasn’t anything particular, dear,” said the lady evasively. “It must have been something, love,” urged Mr. Bumble. “Won’t you tell your own B.?” “Not now,” rejoined the lady; “one of these days. After we’re married, dear.” “After we’re married!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble. “It wasn’t any impudence from any of them male paupers as—” “No, no, love!” interposed the lady, hastily. “If I thought it was,” continued Mr. Bumble; “if I thought as any one of ’em had dared to lift his wulgar eyes to that lovely countenance—” “They wouldn’t have dared to do it, love,” responded the lady. “They had better not!” said Mr. Bumble, clenching his fist. “Let me see any man, porochial or extra-porochial, as would presume to do it; and I can tell him that he wouldn’t do it a second time!” Unembellished by any violence of gesticulation, this might have seemed no very high compliment to the lady’s charms; but, as Mr. Bumble accompanied the threat with many warlike gestures, she was much touched with this proof of his devotion, and protested, with great admiration, that he was indeed a dove. The dove then turned up his coat-collar, and put on his cocked hat; and, having exchanged a long and affectionate embrace with his future partner, once again braved the cold wind of the night: merely pausing, for a few minutes, in the male paupers’ ward, to abuse them a little, with the view of satisfying himself that he could fill the office of workhouse-master with needful acerbity. Assured of his qualifications, Mr. Bumble left the building with a light heart, and bright visions of his future promotion: which served to occupy his mind until he reached the shop of the undertaker. Now, Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry having gone out to tea and supper: and Noah Claypole not being at any time disposed to take upon himself a greater amount of physical exertion than is necessary to a convenient performance of the two functions of eating and drinking, the shop was not closed, although it was past the usual hour of shutting-up. Mr. Bumble tapped with his cane on the counter several times; but, attracting no attention, and beholding a light shining through the glass-window of the little parlour at the back of the shop, he made bold to peep in and see what was going forward; and when he saw what was going forward, he was not a little surprised. The cloth was laid for supper; the table was covered with bread and butter, plates and glasses; a porter-pot and a wine-bottle. At the upper end of the table, Mr. Noah Claypole lolled negligently in an easy-chair, with his legs thrown over one of the arms: an open clasp-knife in one hand, and a mass of buttered bread in the other. Close beside him stood Charlotte, opening oysters from a barrel: which Mr. Claypole condescended to swallow, with remarkable avidity. A more than ordinary redness in the region of the young gentleman’s nose, and a kind of fixed wink in his right eye, denoted that he was in a slight degree intoxicated; these symptoms were confirmed by the intense relish with which he took his oysters, for which nothing but a strong appreciation of their cooling properties, in cases of internal fever, could have sufficiently accounted. “Here’s a delicious fat one, Noah, dear!” said Charlotte; “try him, do; only this one.” “What a delicious thing is a oyster!” remarked Mr. Claypole, after he had swallowed it. “What a pity it is, a number of ’em should ever make you feel uncomfortable; isn’t it, Charlotte?” “It’s quite a cruelty,” said Charlotte. “So it is,” acquiesced Mr. Claypole. “An’t yer fond of oysters?” “Not overmuch,” replied Charlotte. “I like to see you eat ’em, Noah dear, better than eating ’em myself.” “Lor!” said Noah, reflectively; “how queer!” “Have another,” said Charlotte. “Here’s one with such a beautiful, delicate beard!” “I can’t manage any more,” said Noah. “I’m very sorry. Come here, Charlotte, and I’ll kiss yer.” “What!” said Mr. Bumble, bursting into the room. “Say that again, sir.” Charlotte uttered a scream, and hid her face in her apron. Mr. Claypole, without making any further change in his position than suffering his legs to reach the ground, gazed at the beadle in drunken terror. “Say it again, you wile, owdacious fellow!” said Mr. Bumble. “How dare you mention such a thing, sir? And how dare you encourage him, you insolent minx? Kiss her!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble, in strong indignation. “Faugh!” “I didn’t mean to do it!” said Noah, blubbering. “She’s always a-kissing of me, whether I like it, or not.” “Oh, Noah,” cried Charlotte, reproachfully. “Yer are; yer know yer are!” retorted Noah. “She’s always a-doin’ of it, Mr. Bumble, sir; she chucks me under the chin, please, sir; and makes all manner of love!” “Silence!” cried Mr. Bumble, sternly. “Take yourself downstairs, ma’am. Noah, you shut up the shop; say another word till your master comes home, at your peril; and, when he does come home, tell him that Mr. Bumble said he was to send a old woman’s shell after breakfast to-morrow morning. Do you hear sir? Kissing!” cried Mr. Bumble, holding up his hands. “The sin and wickedness of the lower orders in this porochial district is frightful! If Parliament don’t take their abominable courses under consideration, this country’s ruined, and the character of the peasantry gone for ever!” With these words, the beadle strode, with a lofty and gloomy air, from the undertaker’s premises. And now that we have accompanied him so far on his road home, and have made all necessary preparations for the old woman’s funeral, let us set on foot a few inquires after young Oliver Twist, and ascertain whether he be still lying in the ditch where Toby Crackit left him. 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. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved April 2022 from Dickens, Charles,1996. Oliver Twist. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/730/730-h/730-h.htm#chap27 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

Oliver Twist: Chapter XXVII

The blockchain space moves at warp speed, going through rounds of mergers for almost all types of startups. Over the recent years, various projects consolidated as influences shifted and market performance delineated the winners. The deals are both large and small, leading to synergies while reshaping the crypto asset landscape as a whole. In 2020, mergers and acquisitions added new features to already successful business models. As such, we chose three examples of M&A deals in 2020 that reflected trends in the crypto sector. We picked three mergers spanning some of the key areas of the crypto space: Consolidation of older, established players Activity in the distributed app space And a deal underlining the demand for transparent, legal brokerages with a secure portfolio of additional incentives and services Binance and CoinMarketCap Binance, one of the most dynamic crypto exchanges, acquired CoinMarketCap in April 2020. The price information site rose to prominence after the crypto bull run in 2017. As a source of data, CMC faced multiple challenges to achieve accuracy, including the reporting of trading volumes. CMC mapped out the rise in early BTC trading while attempting to balance information on trading volumes. The site also had to rein in the newly created exchanges, which tried to gain prominence by reporting top volumes. Because of the site’s popularity, becoming the top exchange meant immediate exposure. CMC took note of that trend and excluded the reporting of what was considered a dishonest measure of trading activity. This merger signifies the strength of big brand names in crypto trading, recognizable by almost all market participants. It also boosted reporting and changed the tools to bring the most accurate information about blockchains, pricing, and liquidity. “For many, CoinMarketCap is the landing page of our industry, and like Binance, it has built its community around user trust. We plan to empower CoinMarketCap to continue to build innovative, useful products for its users and the global community,” Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance. said Although the acquisition was for an undisclosed sum, estimates see the deal as valued at $400M in various assets. As such, this merger serves as a benchmark for other crypto companies. The next example we chose stems from the lessons learned in the distributed app boom. CWV Foundation and YYeTs The move by CWV Foundation to acquire the YYeTs content app is a synergistic type of acquisition. CWV itself is a complete blockchain infrastructure tailored for speedy and cheap transactions, ready to deploy apps. This acquisition is among the newest in the crypto space, as the deal was announced on October 18, 2020. The potential of YYeTs will be transformed into the CVN project, and the final goal is to develop a content streaming service with blockchain-based functionalities. CWV is betting on the already vivid and loyal community of YYeTs, with high user engagement and elaborate content. “The website has more than 20 million members, 2.65 million independent visitors per day, and 10 million daily views. The website ranks 101 in China and 727 in the world in terms of traffic. It has a high community consensus and active users, Users are extremely sticky and cohesive, so it is most appropriate for us to enter the blockchain,” Zhao Jixing, Founder and CEO of YYeTs CVN. said The merger may attempt to fill a long-empty niche within the crypto space - a highly populated video streaming service. So far, blockchain projects have failed to secure an audience and content production, despite promises of a decentralized content market. The other issue is that the users of distributed apps are still few and far between. The need to own ETH tokens or perform complex operations just to use an app were off-putting to most users. Most distributed apps, which did not supply value, were shut down due to practically having no users. Having a hit application gives a big boost to the tokens of public blockchains. When TRON acquired BitTorrent in 2018, this had both a short-term effect on the market price and a long-term effect on overall exposure and adoption. The main goal of the partnership is to leverage a community of translators to move the YYeTs content to new global markets. Based on community growth, the blockchain underlying the network will be able to reach a distributed network of CPUs, performing some of the programming calculations through a distributed network. Voyager Brokerage and LGO Exchange There is a third type of merger, consolidating the exchanges and brokerages as trading regulations become more transparent and all-encompassing. LGO, an EU-based exchange, will open the doors to the European market for the Voyager crypto broker. The talks of a merger arrived toward the end of October 2020, uniting the two exchanges under the Voyager brand. This merger underlines the mainstream attention on crypto trading, as well as the growing demand for transparent, certified brokerages. Voyager is an OTC-traded public company based in the United States, and will gain a foothold of the Eurozone crypto trading market with the LGO merger. "Voyager has been planning its European expansion for some time and when the opportunity to work with Hugo Renaudin and his team presented itself, we determined it was the right path to increase Voyager's global footprint," said Steve Ehrlich, Co-Founder and CEO of Voyager. "Working with a fully regulated entity has always been our preferred path. Regulation helps to give customers the comfort they need as it ensures the safety and security of their assets." This crypto merger goes beyond changing company brands. The newly created partnership will also merge tokens, awarding a newly minted asset to VGX and LGO token holders. The new token will supersede the older assets, adding decentralized finance features. Those will include voting, staking rewards at 7% interest, cashback on Voyager trading, debit card bonuses, withdrawal fee promotions, and more. The new token is scheduled to trade before the end of 2020. The token swap is expected to revive the fortunes of LGO token owners, as the asset only sees slim trading on the Uniswap exchange. VGX, on the other hand, has gained a Binance listing in addition to several other decentralized exchanges. Today, the crypto space is facing constant inflows of new approaches and new types of assets. Some models have proven successful, while others fade into cautionary tales. Yet other companies see enough promise in the crypto space to achieve synergistic partnerships. So far, mergers have accelerated during Bitcoin bull markets, and 2020 was no exception. New partnerships also mean there are now larger players better prepared for the future of blockchain technology, digital assets, and crypto finance.

M&A Deals in the 2020 Blockchain Space

, we learnt how . We mentioned many things such as Bootloader, Kernel, init process, Zygote, DVM and System server. In the previous article on Android Internals Android OS Starts an application In this post, we’ll take a look at the runtime environment in Android and how it has changed over the years. More specifically, we’ll be having a comparing on multiple factors such as installation time, runtime performance and other optimizations such as app size. ART vs DVM in Android But to understand this, let’s first start with some basics such as what is a Virtual Machine? Stack based vs Register Based architecture of VM and comparing JVM vs DVM. What is a Virtual Machine? Virtual Machine is an abstraction over the native machine backed by the resources of the native machine. It’s job is to convert language specific code to a format compatible to run on the Virtual Machine. enables the same code to be run on multiple platform independent of the underlying hardware. Virtual Machine For example the runs java bytecode and produces same output on multiple platforms. Bytecode produced in windows machine will be able to run on a JVM running in UNIX machine. JVM Note : JVM is not platform independent. It is written in C/C++ and is platform dependent. You’ll always need something to communicate with the underlying architecture. A virtual machine should be able to carry out all the operations of a physical CPU. These include: Compilation of source code into VM specific code.Data Structure to contain operands and instructions.Instruction PointerA Virtual CPU We’ll be looking at the two ways of implementing a : Virtual Machine Stack Based Architecture. Register Based Architecture. Stack Based Architecture Stack is a LIFO data structure, which means what comes in last is computed first. If you’ve taken a class on Computer Architecture, you’d be familiar with how arithmetic operations work in case of Stack Based Architecture. Let’s take an example. Consider the stack given below: Now, in order to compute the sum of the first two operands, the chain of command would be: Pop 20 Pop 7 Add 20 + 7 Push result into stack. Here are the actual CPU instructions: POP 20 POP 7 ADD Note here that for addition of two integers, we’ve generated 3 lines of code. Some Advantages of Stack based architecture: Shorter lengths of instructions. Fast operation as stack pointer immediately points to the next memory location after pop. No explicit memory reference required due to stack pointer. Some Disadvantages of Stack based architecture: Size of the program increases. Register Based Architecture Register is a small place inside the processor which can hold various types of data such as operands, instruction, memory location etc. The length of instruction a register can store, depends upon the architecture of the machine. For example: 64 bit machine has registers which can hold 64 bit instructions. Here is the format of instruction in a MIPS32 register based architecture: Now, if we were to perform the same addition operation as in Stack Based register, it would look something like this: ADD R1, R2, R3 Notice how we complete the operation with a single instruction. This is the main advantage of Register based architecture over Stack based (which took 3). What this instruction essentially means is that, add R2 and R3 and store the result in R1. On an average, register based architecture has to run 47% less instructions than stack based. But the register code is 25% larger than stack code. This knowledge of Stack based architecture and Register based architecture is good to have and will come in handy when we’ll talk about ART vs DVM in android as well as JVM vs DVM in the next section. JVM vs DVM JVM Java Virtual Machine is a virtual machine capable of running the java bytecode independent of the underlying platform. Java bytecode can be run on any machine capable of running JVM. Here is the architecture of JVM: It has a stack based architecture. A stack based architecture is simple to implement and has few assumptions about the underlying hardware. It can be run on machines with lesser registers. JVM is capable of running only .class files. It uses JIT compiler. DVM DVM (Dalvik Virtual Machine) was created by Dan Bornstein and his team, keeping in mind the constraints of a mobile device. It was a purpose specific VM and was strictly created for mobile devices. by David Ehringer that explains the Architecture of Dalvik Virtual Machine. Here is a paper The contrasting points of DVM with JVM are: It uses a register based architecture.DVM is capable of running .dex files produced by converting .class files using a dex tool.It also uses JIT compiler. AOT vs JIT This section is very crucial in understanding the comparison of ART vs DVM in android. The main contrast in ART vs DVM is that ART uses AOT compilation whereas DVM uses JIT compilation. More recently, ART has started using a hybrid of AOT and JIT. We’ll look into that in the later sections. JIT JIT or Just In Time compiler compiles the source code into machine code during runtime. This means that each time your app is run, a part of .dex file is converted dynamically. As the execution goes on, more of the code is compiled and cached. Each file is compiled separately. A JIT compiler can optimize old programs as the JIT compilation process is optimized. This is not true for AOT compilation as source code is compiled beforehand. Adapting to run-time metrics. A JIT-compiler can not only look at the code and the target system, but also at how the code is used. It can instrument the running code, and make decisions about how to optimize according to, for example, what values the method parameters usually happen to have. AOT Compiles the source code before execution. Improves runtime performance. Increased overhead during application install. Cannot perform optimizations such as Runtime profile guided optimizations.AOT compilers can perform complex and advanced code optimizations, which in most cases of JITing will be considered much too costly. So there are the basic differences between JIT and AOT compilation processes. Now with this knowledge in the bank we’re ready to take a look at ART vs DVM in Android. ART vs DVM in Android DVM was designed specifically for mobile devices and was used as a virtual machine for running android apps up until Android 4.4 Kitkat. Programs for Android are written in java and compiled to bytecode. For DVM this bytecode was eventually converted to .dex or .odex (Optimized Dalvik EXecutable ) files. But ever since Android 4.4 Kitkat, DVM was replaced by ART (Android Runtime) which uses AOT compilation unlike DVM which used JIT. ART Uses AOT compilation. Has stricter install-time verification than DVM. AOT uses on device tool to compile .dex files and generates compiled app to be run on the target device. dex2oat Garbage collection is one of the main reasons of a Janky UX, poor responsiveness and ultimately bad reviews. In the dalvik days, GC used to have 2 passes over the heap which led to janky UX. Improved Garbage Collection: This situation is improved in with only one pass over the heap to consolidate the memory. ART processing during the remaining GC pause. Parallelized Collector with lower total GC time for the special case of cleaning up recently-allocated, short-lived objects. Improved garbage collection ergonomics, making concurrent garbage collections more timely, which makes events extremely rare in typical use cases. GC_FOR_ALLOC Compacting GC to reduce background memory usage and fragmentation. Leads to improved performance in app startup as there is no runtime compilation. Other improvements in ART vs Dalvik in Android can be read . here DVM Uses JIT compilation. It leads to slow app startup as the code is JITted each time the app starts. Leads to faster boot time of the device as app’s cache is built at runtime. Space taken by apps running on DVM have lesser memory footprint than those running on ART as ART pre-compiles applications. The constant pool has been modified to use only 32-bit indices to simplify the interpreter. Standard Java bytecode executes 8-bit stack instructions. Local variables must be copied to or from the operand stack by separate instructions. Dalvik instead uses its own 16-bit instruction set that works directly on local variables. Dalvik is “Deprecated” and is no longer used after android 4.4 Kitkat. Here is an image denoting the difference in Architectures of ART vs DVM Conclusion This is the second article in the Let me know what topic you want me to cover next and I’ll be more than happy to write an article on that. Android Internals series ( here's the first ). *Important* Join the AndroidVille SLACK workspace for mobile developers where people share their learnings about everything latest in Tech, especially in Android Development, RxJava, Kotlin, Flutter, and mobile development in general. Click on this link to join the workspace. Like what you read? Don’t forget to share this post on Facebook , Whatsapp , and LinkedIn . You can follow me on LinkedIn , Quora , Twitter , and Instagram where I answer questions related to Mobile Development, especially Android and Flutter .

Android Internals: ART vs DVM deep dive

Survey and Analysis of Smart Contract Quality Assurance: Conclusions, Acknowledgement and References

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Zhipeng Wang, Department of Computing, Imperial College London; (2) Nanqing Dong Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford; (3) Jiahao Sun, Data Science Institute, Imperial College London; (4) William Knottenbelt, Department of Computing, Imperial College London. TABLE OF LINKS Abstract & Introduction Related Work & Preliminaries Methodology Theoretical and Empirical Analysis Results Conclusion & References Conclusion We present a novel and pioneering approach called zkFL, which utilizes ZKPs to ensure a trustworthy aggregation process on the centralized aggregator. Through rigorous theoretical analysis, we establish that zkFL effectively addresses the challenge posed by a malicious aggregator during the model aggregation phase. Moreover, we extend zkFL to a blockchain-based system, significantly reducing the verification burden on the clients. The empirical analysis demonstrates that our design achieves superior levels of security and privacy compared to traditional FL systems while maintaining a favorable training speed for the clients. These results showcase the practical feasibility and potential advantages of zkFL
and its blockchain-based version in real-world applications. Acknowledgments This work was supported in part by the FLock Research Grant. References Diego F Aranha, Emil Madsen Bennedsen, Matteo Campanelli, Chaya Ganesh,
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