ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, I don't know about the criminals, generally they're not very smart. But I do know about founders and creating something.
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, I think your model is a very, very fair one under normal circumstances. (Such as the Efficient Market Hypothesis.) However, I have very deep theoretical proof that your model is mistaken, and that these founders were in fact leveraging the same opportunity inefficiency that I am.
mircea_popescu: generally, the prisons are full of people who perceived they can't afford to play their chosen game and decided to try and play anyway.
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, also, if my investors don't know of them, i can't leverage their background to get an investment, either.
ninjashogun: that's what they sold
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, fine. AirBNB had to sell Cereal. Yes Cereal. To fund their idea of a C2C ebay of Rentals.
mircea_popescu: ninjashogun you know what the selection fallacy is ?
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, again, this is why I mention that Steve Jobs (a kid who stole $5000 from his best and only friend to start Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (a guy who scammed a map website guy out of $2000 to start facebook), and Larry Page (a poor grad student who had to give $50B away in equity to get an immigrant to code up his Larry Page Rank), also did not have the means to play.They couldn't play. They did anyway.
ninjashogun: But you can't show an investor a mockup, and a bundle of wires, and say, imagine if the latter looked like the former!
asciilifeform: sometimes you just can't play. i, for instance, might like to start a pharma company, but i checked my sofa cushions and there is not $1B to be found therein
ninjashogun: Note that the wireless portion doesn't exist at all. I don't even have a specan (spectrum analyzer). The only eqiupment I developed is with large arduinos, as well as mockups of what it could look like.
asciilifeform: and implied values thereof
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: i know what you'll answer: 'having a day job sucks.' and sure. but then you can pay for hardware, prototype runs, etc. without begging
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, did you already discuss a $7M investment, implying a valuaiton of $15M, with a VC who has recently made a $400M exit in another consumer hardware company?
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: if i were anyone else, i'd swallow this. but i'm doing much the same thing you said you did (hardware startup) but without passing begging hat
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, in startups, on the other hand, it's usual to build an MVP using processes that don't scale, and without spending much money, until financing is secured.
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, at this point I need the loan in order to get to the stage of prototype that the investors need to test (as part of their due dilligence also) and see in close to the final form factor.
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: traditionally, one first secures capital and only then gets on the hook for business obligations (employees, factory floor, etc.)
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, oh, you liken my arrangement here to a mexican factory? Well the problem with that is that this is where the development was being done, not production. We ahve a manufacturing partner lined up actually, production will be in China.
ninjashogun: I was extended this loan (basically) we did up paperwork for it and then I've been trying to collect it for over 5 weeks without luck. I can't get back in contact wiht the person (after exchanging many forms of contact). so so much after how easy it is to get a loan.
asciilifeform: just take one of the loyal men and order him to get temporary job and borrow.
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: so you built the mexican factory prior to, rather than after, securing funding. this is not a fatal mistake
ninjashogun: sorry, I meant to write: without pay for my startup (and now startups) - as I started working on the jobs site one after spending more than a month trying to collect the loan I closed
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, I have no proof of income due to the fact that I have been working without pay for my startups (startup at the moment)
asciilifeform: for the latter, you just need a human with some proof of income
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, yes, rent in a very small room in a very large shared apartment, is $111 (after some clever negotiation from me based on how infrequently the room could be rented out due to its size). This includes all eelectricity bills, the Internet (that I'm using now) hot water, gas, utilities.
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: around here, you only need collateral in the usual sense for a cash loan, but not for 'revolving credit'
ninjashogun: would spend most of the money on can also become collateral.
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, given my high-risk profile what APR would you (personally) extend me on between $7K-$22.5K (amount I take depends on APR) with no collateral except a registered Delaware C-Corp I'm currently full owner of (100%) going to 90% after an investment clears that I've committed to - the company has intellectual property including a patent that is pending and trademark that has been assigned, as well the equipment I
dub: after my house was burgled and an unopened one was used to defraud them :)
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: take one of your loyal men and order him to do it, then
ninjashogun: More to the point, at this point taking the employment you talk of would entail abandoning my team here, all of my work and living arrangements (about $150/month burn rate), as well as somehow moving to an expensive city and working full time there. My startup would cease to exist.
asciilifeform: i'm not the least bit of 'rockefeller' but i shred & throw out 3-4 unsolicited 'platinum' cards in the snailmail every week or so
ninjashogun: I don't have the time to take employment, even temporarily. Two months ago I was invited to give a demo with the working prototype as part of closing a $150K investment. I need to finish it.
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: then why not go to a bank?
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, yes, you are quite mistaken in your understanding that I don't like the paying back part.
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, I'm from the USA but at the moment I'm not living there, I've been working on my proprietary hardware startup in a much lower-income country.
asciilifeform: am i mistaken in my understanding that you don't like the 'paying back' part ?
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: Cause self esteem. Seriously this shit started in the 1980's
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, "then borrow it from whoever". Funny how that goes, isn't it? That loan is how I came into this channel. It doesn't work like that.
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, I am not interested in being involved with the local mob. You seem to consider this a short-term thing, but that's not at all what I stated, is it?
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo "Access to a special education classroom, often called a "self-contained classroom or resource room", is valuable to the student with a disability."
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, I don't know how to turn it into $8.5M. If I did I wouldn't be talking about the next 40 years, would I?
mircea_popescu: they can harp about obscure currency nobody heard about, they still won't bow to bitcoin
mircea_popescu: "We survive on donations averaging about 50 lei. Now is the time we ask. If everyone reading this right now gave 25 lei, our fundraiser would be done within an hour."
asciilifeform: the local mob, if you must
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: if you know how to turn it into 8.5M, then borrow it from whoever
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: One problem is mainstreaming, all the US students get exposed to the special ed curriculum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstreaming_%28education%29
ninjashogun: I don't htink $8.5M is a fortune. if I had that in cash today I wouldn't sit on it, I would do further startups.
mircea_popescu: i wish us schools went back to teaching logic and shit instead of all this self esteem and marketing bs they do
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, fine. Lend me $17,000 now and at some point in my career I will repay you 500x (8.5M). I am 30 now and it has to be in the next 30 years.
ninjashogun: More to the point - for our purposes - you would not have lent the young Steve Jobs $5000 yourself, even if he had to repay 10x the amount, 50x the amount, 100x the amount, ore ven 500x the amount (at any point in the future) All of which would have been in his power.
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, the way I interpret that is that Steve Jobs used the $5000 to start Apple and make his friend a billionaire.
mircea_popescu: now tell me again about "the environment"
ninjashogun: is this about the money jobs didn't share?
ozbot: Breakout (video game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, in a lot of ways it's enshrined into the way MANY people think. Some of it is legal (only accredited investors can be targeted; accredited investors display groupthink). Other parts of it are cultural - a lot of people just feel the same way.
mircea_popescu: here's a little known anecodte, kinda instructive as to the sort of guy jobs was :
mircea_popescu: well so then stop hopping up and down on it
mircea_popescu: dude, you know like a thin sliver of the pudding top.
ninjashogun: if they were two kids doing hte same thing in just about any part of the world, they would have nothing 30 years later.
ninjashogun: To use another example. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built what turned out to be $500B company in very large part on the investment climate in the area.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform yeah them
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, let me put it to you like this. If ughlol were farther along, and actually already convinced 10 engineers at his university to be 'cofounders' for equity totalling 5%, 95% to him (which would show GREAT founder skill) and got some traction. HIs company would still probably die, and those 10 people would leave. Because he is in India.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform remember the hot ukrainian chick ? anna whatever ?
mircea_popescu: you don't understand dood, i read in the guardian that the us caught a bunch of russian spies by displaying a dazzling array of technical superiority.
asciilifeform: thing worked exactly the way alert reader would expect it to.
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, I've lived in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin (a bit) as well as some Eastern European cities. I've been interested in startups in all of them, have worked for one in the first dot-com bubble in the 90's. I can tell the difference between different climates and how people behave in them.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it was 'pki' crapola all the way down
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: in case this isn't obvious, it is trivial to patch a chump's ms-outlook to color a mal-signed message the requisite colour.
ninjashogun: It shows you very clearly the role that VC money plays.
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, the ansewr is very simple. he would not have gotten an investment or interest from peter thiel. Or any VC. And nobody outside of 10,000 people would know the word "facebook".
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, let's walk through it. If Facebook had been the same in every way, except Mark Zuckerberg was transplanted to be an Oxford student instead (same skills, same drive, same ideas) - what would have happened?
asciilifeform: a little like the 'opengpgsmartcard' but more winblowsy
mircea_popescu: well then we can end this conversation right here
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i think it takes hash of something and signs it (with embedded key) then shits it out
mircea_popescu: the vc circus as you represent it has not produced facebook, has not produced google, will never produce anything.
mircea_popescu: ninjashogun none of the examples you cut out of the real world and pasted onto your model as "eventual upper bound results" have anything to do with the model itself.
ninjashogun: The image of a startup is like a duck -calm above the water but paddling like hell underneath.
mircea_popescu: ninjashogun no , it does not. it has nothing to do with anything other than the particular way the usg implements welfare for a certain subset of the youth population.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform what they use that as a sort of cardano ?
ThickAsThieves: i did end up with some with some ATC, but haven't had the chance to keep up with it. it seems without tender loving care it cannot thrive.
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, and more importantly those words allow the problem to be fixed.
mircea_popescu: this isn't the fiat world.
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, well the main problem is that you need to reserve your hardest edge for when you need it the most. I've spend very long hours discussing very deep technical points without calling something "idiotic". It can be broken, wrong, unexpected, totally incompatible, etc. Those words are more specific.
mircea_popescu: anyway, this vapid "half lie" model, and all the cruddy webapps/mobile apps stuff has very little life left in it, even in the fiat world.
asciilifeform: card had mug shot and a serial number (for being taken prisoner, among other things! because contractors can also star in beheading vids.)
mircea_popescu: ninjashogun what's the problem with being called an idiot iyo ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: re: SEC piece: the use of rsa signing is not unknown among u.s. bureaucrats;
ninjashogun: + of the investers, and in some cases the customers who are early adopters and willing to put up with buggy-ass #$#@$
ninjashogun: I agree. The job of a founder is to create a half-lie, and the job of the cofounders and early employees is to add the other half.
ninjashogun: Likewise, I've talked with MANY people associated with YCombinator-backed startups (the most famous incubator) and worked for one.
ninjashogun: There was a story about an MVP with fake buttons that didn't do anything - they just said "Download as Excel File" for example and see who clikced on it to guage interest.
ughlol: Will definitely keep that in mind ninjashogun! Thanks for the introduction here, and sorry that your rep went down.
ninjashogun: if they're not interested you can get a firm no right away without also hearing that you're an idiot.
ninjashogun: just remember not to say enough to make your startup more specific than a category, then you can never receive a "no" and will interest people who can work on it or help you with it.
only: much love ughlol, don't give up the good fight
ughlol: and mircea_popescu, thanks for pointing out that rent-seeking thing.. I think I understand what you mean. :) I'll work on changing the idea and creating a prototype! <3
ninjashogun: just a few include: angellist, kickstarter and indiegogo, sell gold or points, b2b deals or referral fees, there is even crypto stock if you want to raise online funds.
mircea_popescu: or look at the sad history of digg
mircea_popescu: ninjashogun a dubious proposition. look at the recent business insider refinance,
ughlol: maybe other investors?
ninjashogun: however as I mentioned to you there are a TON of sources of interest to you once you have users.
ughlol: maybe then mircea_popescu would be interested! :)
mircea_popescu: i suspect i'm the only clean one here actually.
mircea_popescu: anyway : there isn't a magical word manipulation thing that makes businesses.
mircea_popescu: druggies are the same way.
ughlol: they just dont give a fuck! :D
ninjashogun: they don't really have enough information - never give them enough information to act like an idiot.
ninjashogun: For example, notice if instead of your actual idea you had said, you have an idea for a local app based on a new way of connecting people. Then they can't object. They would sound like idiots, because there is no way that EVERY possible local app is a bad idea.
ughlol: they insult, bit at least I can learn something
ughlol: at least then, Dimsler might think im not just some random scammer
ninjashogun: ughlol, however notice how many of those questoins are addressed if you juts create a business (with no funding) and start getitng users? Then you are already in some sense an experienced (if first-time)founder, as well as having a real track record of shipping code (sometihng benkay was asking about.)
BingoBoingo: benkay: WhatSnatch, the all vag chat network
benkay: ninjashogun: the notion that ughlol is founder material falls on its face when he dances like a monkey in here asking "how ams i even make money guys?"
Dimsler: for the ongoings in africa
ninjashogun: BingoBoingo, but they're often aspies who develop importnat proprietary technology.
Dimsler: the real africa americans
ughlol: mircea_popescu: do you have any suggestions on how I may modify the idea to expand the pie instead of redistribute it?
mircea_popescu: there's nothing more expensive than free.
mircea_popescu: africa is chiefly a shithole today because the west has been dilligently observing a progreamme of giving them "free" shit.
BingoBoingo: benkay: Don't forget the part where generally grad students are physically, emotionally, and morally broken... Or Aspies
mircea_popescu: ninjashogun giving money to people for the reason that they're people never ends well.
ughlol: mircea_popescu: So I would need to create an economic activity that expands the pie
mircea_popescu: ninjashogun you have your answer ready : vcs do exactly that, and they lag the indexes.
ninjashogun: After you do that for 100 years, do you think you produce MORE or LESS net value for the economy than IBM's current value?
ninjashogun: And we did that with not just one graduate student (or pair), but we did it with 10,000 of them - all over the world. Per year. For 100 years.
mircea_popescu: your idea is principally of the second type, and as such it requires the usual trappings of rent seeking (ie, power).
ninjashogun: benkay- here's a way to think about the 'lottery argument'. Do you think it would be a net gain or a net loss for the economy if we took IBM's market cap -- $192.19B -- converted it to cash, and then funded about $200k into a graduate student's new "company" (about the money Google was funded with).
mircea_popescu: yes, well, basically economic activity can be divided in entrepreneurial (which expands the pie) and rent seeking (which redistributes the pie)
Dimsler: well then learn it
mircea_popescu: ughlol do you understand the concept of "rent seeking" ?
ughlol: mircea_popescu: you didn't tell me, you said I need to change the idea. Completely? In what way?
ninjashogun: When you buy a lottery ticket you get less than a dollar on each dollar you spend. (on average). But investments aren't the same.
ninjashogun: benkay - the lottery argument is that it's a net loss. But the whole of the PE (private equity) market is a net gain (for all participants). It's an inflating pie.
benkay: so you want to run the same scam here?
ninjashogun: The net result (the 2 and 20 basis) of VC's working 60-100 hours a week on investment opportunities, proprietary dealflow, networking, term sheets, introductions, everything.... is a return just shy of passive over the counter index investment.
mircea_popescu: so i guess now you can appreciate the luck point.
ninjashogun: However, we do need to keep a few things in mind. Did you know that VC's (private VC's, managing Limited Partners' cash) get a little bit short of the NASDAQ in returns over the 10-year period of their funds?
BingoBoingo: ninjashogun: The fact of the matter is that you can not recharacterize old text as a misrepresentation of a bunch of new text, yet to be released
ninjashogun: Dimsler, did you catch the fact that I posted my whole convo (where I first met him) with ughlol?
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, yes, this is the big defense of trolls. That if it does succeed it's luck, if it fails then obviously it's because it was a dumb idea just as shown by the trolls.
ninjashogun: It was what was on his mind at the time. What you're missing is that it was on his mind due to a pain point (read news about India).
mircea_popescu: ninjashogun i think you perhaps misjudge the quantity of luck involved in facebook becoming facebook.
BingoBoingo: ninjashogun: Based on reading the public conversation in this channel it seems the Rape WHistle app came first and today's social network idea is new.
ninjashogun: Facebook could be called: "A myspace based on a radical idea. You can ONLY register if you have a .edu account! They have literally just blown myspace out of the water by getting AT MOST 0.5% as many users, because at most 0.5% - one in one two hundred - people in the world uses an active .edu account."
mircea_popescu: i don't have a very good impression of either.
ninjashogun: Based on my impression, the same thing could have been said about Twitter or Facebook.
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo may take another secx.
ninjashogun: is the one I'm talking about.
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, I saw your article on ughlol and think it completely misrepresents ughlol's idea and is extremely unfair. As long as it includes no identifying information, it's a simple troll and abuse of your power - which is fine. It will disappear off the Internet and nobody will read it again. However it is in no way accurate based on my conversation with him.
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: Thanks. WOnder how long it will take for the SEC position to align with the reality of MPEx as SRO
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo no it is not. fixed now and ima check the whole stack.,
ughlol: You want me to completely change the idea?
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: Is the timestamp on that last email correct?
mircea_popescu: you don't have the position to promote that particular thing. you need a different idea.
ughlol: mircea_popescu: simple question, if i create a prototype for the app that i want to build, would you even consider investing in it?
ughlol: my bad then
ninjashogun: nobody invests in the idea stage.
ninjashogun: ughlol - access to mirceau (I just read the most recent few lines, haven't been reading scrollback) is, as he correctly states, a VERY good opportunity
Dimsler: mircea_popescu, which post are they talking about
mircea_popescu: very cheeky attitude, "here's the extrusion process we expect everything to go through, we'll just keep repeating it"
mircea_popescu: ThickAsThieves i dun imagine there's any proceeding to be had.
ThickAsThieves: also interested to see how they proceed, knowing you are sharing
ThickAsThieves: very interested to see how they proceed, assuming you'll share
ThickAsThieves: thanks for the post MP
mircea_popescu: you can't try to leverage that into something that otherwise costs a whole lot of money.
mircea_popescu: i'm currently donating my time discussing things with people who otherwise would never get to talk to me, because i believe in some things.
ughlol: Otherwise all your friends - Dimsler, jurov, etc will keep interrupting with their comments.
BingoBoingo: "Asking them to pick up your daughter and throw her over a cliff however is an illegal request."
mircea_popescu: it's not practical to discuss things with me privately. we have no basis for that, and whatever you say is perhaps useful for others, later.
steven-__: what about the log?
ughlol: mircea_popescu: let me know if you have 10minutes to spare.. after that, I'll not bother you.
ughlol: I feel theres nothing wrong in that.
Dimsler: mircea_popescu, tell the troll to leave
mircea_popescu: there we go.
dub: india and nigera are basically the same place
ughlol: Dimsler: Its funny you ask. Because there were repeated statements saying Im Indian. You must be illitereate.
BingoBoingo: ughlol: Have you tried #dogecoin ninjashogun Seemed to find interest there before
ughlol: Dimsler: to try to gather investment ofc.
gribble: Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory | Know Your Meme: <http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory>; Online disinhibition effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect>; Penny Arcade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade>
ughlol: just to appease you, the filthy rich
ughlol: Dimsler: :) You're so full of yourself. Give me your name, and I'll destroy your rep. Only if you have the courage.
Dimsler: scammers trying to scam the scammer
jurov: rape whistle billionaires either
benkay: dude ninjashogun if you say traction around mp he'll probably just kill you and feed you to the harpies
ninjashogun: ughlol - it's the nature of htis channel, I told you
ninjashogun: But he could have the same attitude if he were in San Francisco.
jurov: Dimsler use teh log.. and there was moar yest
ninjashogun: There's just one part of the scrollback that is funny - and that shows he's still a student :)
Dimsler: what the idea
ThickAsThieves: now i'm putting you both on ignore for when you come back in a few weeks with your hands out for some other bullshit
ninjashogun: No, of course you can sit around trying to slander and destroy people's reputations. Thanks for doing the right thing and taking 15 seconds to admit you're wrong though.
Dimsler: the trolls that this channel attracts
ninjashogun: So it's really all the same to me, but I would prefer if you'd do the noble, proper thing and take a few seconds to do that.
ninjashogun: Well given that you have just taken it upon yourself to accuse me of being a scammer with ughlol it's up to you to take about 35 seconds to scroll through that and determine that, in fact, I have just met him, and you're a fucking troll who should either stop trolling and apologize or (obviously) eat shit or die
jurov: yes, on rilema.com some of the top right
jurov: ughlol the people considered it, wrote blog about it and rejected it
ughlol: There might be people interested in investing in such an idea.
ThickAsThieves: but i cant respect you either
ughlol: ThickAsThieves: can I at least discuss the idea?
ThickAsThieves: ...these guys are scamming, sorry
ughlol: BingoBoingo: Tinder was active since 2012, and they dont have much..
ninjashogun: and you can see his face, name, and profile there
ughlol: since the social networking scene is shifting off computers and onto mobile devices.
ninjashogun: In addition I've seen some of his skills in pentesting and security, and think he is the real deal in terms of what he can program. Here is his site, where you can see his photo and full name as well:
ninjashogun: On the downside, he has no access to a venture capital ecosystem.
jurov: oh okay. just go read trilema then.
ninjashogun: Another example I can think of is let's say two people are both open source developres. If they put that, then they'd be notified if they're at the same bar - very cool.
ughlol: jurov: The rape intervention is a part of a much bigger app.
ninjashogun: That is a feature he is interested in adding, has nothing to do with the social network.
jurov: wasn't that the rape stuff?
ninjashogun: so it would work (my words) as an "introduction service" that - if two people both opt in - introduce each other.
ninjashogun: ughlol is working on an extremely interesting social network for real spaces, based on shared interests - for exmaple, at a bar if someone is into the exact same bands as you, then you could both be notified.
jurov: iirc there were some pieces about you both
ninjashogun: I was talking about how many billionaires/millionaires I know as an American (just 1-2 of the former even if we include mirceau) :)
ninjashogun: guys, I'm watching htis channel as actually in talking with ughlol I'm the one who mentioned mirceau as being high-net-worth. he's from India and has access to a much poorer network of investors than some western countries
Dimsler: it doesn't count if they are you minions
BingoBoingo: K pencils at the ready for this data dump
ughlol: mircea_popescu: now, getting straight to the point, do you invest? =P
artifexd: I can state with certainty that Ecuador has rules requiring notrized documentation from the not-present parent for taking a child out of the country. The US doesn't.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform when i crossed there it was like... lolk.
mircea_popescu: i thought that was a major issue in the us because of kidnapping concerns
mircea_popescu: i wonder how many of the internet haxxors ever had a passport made in the first place.
dignork: mircea_popescu, so the only problem he found is that you;re not supposed to smile on photo-id, lol
mircea_popescu: http://fuck-the-cops.biz/old-hax.html << check it out lol.
bitcoinpete: also, was this sarcastic or serious? 01:47:56mircea_popescu:"Being quiet and studious is broadly unknown in a western culture that prizes views, likes and the inane extraversion required to generate them." no see, that's attacking people's self esteem.
mircea_popescu: i get that. hence the pine comment.
asciilifeform: one would need, likely, an instrument built for the purpose to read out the 'bias' on the bits
asciilifeform: actually i admit i've always been curious about ion migration in sram cells, but the literature is mostly silent on the subject.