I're read it, and it's nonsense. You don't seem to appreciate that you can't believe everything you read. Just because some blogger said it, doesn't mean it's true. Unless perhaps you think Obama really wasn't born in Amercica. Karl Rove really is a lizard from another planet in a man-suit. The twin towers was an inside job, and a plane never hit the Pentagon.
Personally, I view the stuff like G+ suggesting people involved in previous searches just part of the service that Google is providing. I don't use it, but I can easily see how others could. It's not much different from the ability that Facebook has to suggest people based on various criteria, and I've never seen anybody get up in arms about that.
I use both. Or at least I did till I deleted my Google account yesterday. Facebook has never spooked me out for spying the way Google+ did. With Facebook it's obvious and acceptable. It's using information from within Facebook. They recommend possible friends because you have a number of friends in common. I can't remember having been recommended a friend that hasn't been a friend of a friend. Maybe they up the probability if you went to the same school, or like the same things, I don't know. But that all seems fair.
Google+ are doing it by spying on your web habits when you are not on Google sites. That is completely unacceptable.
It may be that you just haven't experienced that uncanny moment yet. As I said I too used to be happy with Google a while ago. But when you have your own moment of realising that Google knows something about you that they shouldn't, you might change your mind, just as I did.
It all comes down to personal taste., and the price we are wiling to pay for Google's services. You have reached the point where you're no longer willing to pay their asking price, and that's fine. I guess I'm still OK with the price I'm paying. Another year from now... who knows.
I think that's exactly it. You haven't experienced that uncanny moment of realising that Google knows something about you that they shouldn't. When it happens, you might well change your mind, just as I did.
However, I still think you're deluding yourself about the changes in Google. There are no changes; they've just gotten better at what they do. And that is to consolidate all the various bits of information you choose to give them, compile it, and use it as part of their services that you are consuming.
Soon after that, it was discovered that Google was using a slightly different trick to get around Firefox security settings. And IE was allowing to do the same thing without tricks.
They are spying on you when you're on sites other than Google's own, even if you set your browser up to be secure and not allow that. You might not have known that up to now, but it is the case.
And I'm not some security nut. Ordinarily I'm on your side thinking that people on Slashdot are ridiculously overreacting on privacy issues. This one surprised me.
However, you can't predict where peak oil is or even predict exactly how much oil we have. The very notion that you would think this guy in the 50s would be able to predict that peak oil would be hit in the 70s is idiotic.
And yet it's a fact that he did. What's idiotic is your refusal to accept facts that you don't like.
Do you WANT peak oil? because my experience with doomsayers is that they LIKE the idea of the apocalypse. They've got a big throbbing hard on for doom. I don't. I want us to get out of this and I think we can.
If dreams were ponies. It's interesting how you are describing a mirror image of yourself.
Go away and read. And keep your opinions until you know something about the topic.
No. The implicit agreement between Google and you is that they will show ads down the right hand side of the results page,relating to the particular search term you put in on that occasion. And if you click on them, Google earns money from the advertiser. That's the way Google did business for years.
Say for example I had a passing interest in vasectomies. Or abortions. Maybe it's been in the news. Maybe it's related to a friend. Or maybe maybe I'm at that moment considering one or the other. It's OK for Google to advertise specialist clinics next to the search results on those topics.
It's not OK for them to show me adverts of those clinics for the next 18 months. That is an invasion of my privacy.
Similar implicit agreements for contemporaneous advertising applies with Gmail, YouTube, Blogger etc.
I first became aware of Google's current spyware nature about a month ago. I'd got a Google+ account, Google was suggesting people that might be my friends. Included were a couple of people to whom I'm only related by the fact that for years I've occasionally visited their blog, from a bookmark, not a search. Blogs that weren't hosted by Google's Blogger service. To my knowledge I'd never searched for them, or if I had it was years ago. They weren't friends of friends. etc. Clearly Google were using some trick with analytics, cookies or some combination to profile me, and make tenous connections from my browsing activity. Browsing activity that wasn't actually on any of Google's own sites.
I don't want it, and I consider it stalking. Thus I'm severing my contacts with what I now consider to be an abusive company.
A few years ago I would never have thought possible. I used to consider Google one of the good guys, and was considering buying shares. But something's gone badly wrong. I now hope everything goes wrong for them and they go bankrupt.
So you knew about bricking before it was mainstream?
No, it was mainstream then. I just have a personal reference for remembering a particular year when it was commonly used, and that year was a long time before the iPhone.
Nah, but I'd tend to believe Tesla themselves, when they state that the battery needs to be replaced because the car's owner let it fully discharge. Which they did. Not only once, but several times already. Follow the many links in this thread.
Tesla have not stated anything of the sort. And "the many links in the thread" are just people reblogging the same sensationalist garbage. RTF 2nd link in the summary.
No they don't. I've recharged and powered up laptops which have not been used for years. They still work fine. And the Tesla Roadster uses laptop batteries.
Litium-ion CELLS, if they had a resistance put across them so they completely drained would be damaged. But batteries have power management systems that that cut off supply long before they are drained. Of course cells have internal drain, but it's so low that you're talking years and probably a couple of decades before that completely drains a cell.
Tesla themselves have pointed out the story is false. The blogger got his facts wrong. A blogger being wrong - why is anyone surprised by that?
And the original article is obviously wrong. Read the second one.
The Tesla roadster uses laptop batteries. Are laptops bricked if you leave them unplugged for a few weeks? No, of course not.
Now theoretically, if you removed the battery management system, and directly drained the cells, then chemically you would damage the cells. But that's one of the fundamental purposes of the battery management system (in your laptop battery and in the Tesla.) Power drain is cut off from the cells well before they are completely drained.
Tesla themselves point out the mistakes in the blogs claims. And there are no such "bricks". From the description given they just need recharging, and the battery management system resetting. Of course it's possible that they are faulty cars, and need servicing. Cars do get faults. But there is no design flaw, whereby a Tesla Roadster left without power for a few weeks needs a complete replacement of it's batteries. It's just bollocks.
Without cookies it can't remember me at all. It doesn't know sent those search terms. (An IP address doesn't identify me or even my computer. Only the router I happen to be connected to at the time.)
I don't expect Google to store a preference of mine for them not to spy on me. I expect them not to spy on me unless I give them permission. And by closing my account, my intention is to withdraw all such permissions, implicit or implied.
And if you'd been following recent news, you'd know that Google has been doing an end-run around security policies in Firefox and Safari in order to do this. They are actually causing browser developers to look to changing how they implement standards in order to stop Google spying.
Google are now essentially a spyware company. Their "do no evil" promise is now a sad joke.
which is why Tesla requires owners to shell out $40,000 to REPLACE a completely discharged battery.
It's bunk. If the battery pack is completely discharges, tow it to a charger, plug it in and wait. Then reset the battery management system, and you;re good to go.
What kind of cretin believes that a discharged rechargeable battery requires replacement?
My dear chap, I've been following the peak oil story for years. I've read a few books on the topic. The things you are raising are those things you find out the first day that you hear about peak oil theory and start Googling.
Nothing will reverse that as all the easy oil has already been taken. Once upon a time they just has to drill a hole in Texas and oil would gush out. All the US oil now is hard. Deep sea, fracking, oil shale etc.
And most other oil producing nations have also passed their peak. For example my country, the UK with it's North Sea oil, passed it's peak in 1999.
You are of course aware of the huge oil projects started recently on private land in the US right?... The higher the price goes on oil... the more these projects are going to explode...
"The higher the price goes". There you are. You said it yourself, but didn't realise the implications. The price only goes up in real terms because the supply (production) has gone down. Extracting oil from these difficult sources are what happens on the way down the curve, after the peak.
This is all fully part of peak oil theory, it's not an argument against it.
Newt Gingrich can't talk his way out of peak oil. He probably doesn't even believe it. He just wants what every politician wants. Votes.
The oil industry generally don't admit to peak oil because they don't want governments and people to turn to alternatives, or be more frugal. The more demand for oil there is, the more profits they make.
The US military on the other hand has to live in the real world, where their ability to do their job relies on huge amounts of oil. And they have openly and a number of years accepted peak oil as a fact and shaped policy accordingly. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply
The thing about the military is that they are pretty much immune to the lies of politicians and big industry. They have access to all the top level information themselves.
Still, I know from other economic topics we've been talking about here that facts don't really matter to you, so I don't expect to change your mind on this one either. But do yourself a favour: read up on this topic. And don't just google. Pick up an actual book or two. Don't just read for talking points for arguments, read for you. This topic, more then any other, is going to affect your life over the next few decades.
Right. I read these instructions and deleted my web history - which also apparently had the effect of "suspesding" the collection of more history . And then I thought what the hell, I'm fed up of Google's ever increasing spying on me. I'll delete my account as well.
And now you're telling me that deleting my account will mean they store my web history longer.
That's it. I've completely had it with Google now. After more than a decade I'm looking for a new search engine. Obviously not Bing - Microsoft are a despicable company too, but in different ways.
So, what non-Google and non-Bing based web search is good? Anyone got any recommendations?
I've told you most clearly why the Laffer Curve is bollocks. And I've show that your claims to science are risible. I can do no more. You're religious about it, you're not going to change your mind no matter how clearly it's explained to you.
The claim that you've managed to convince 5 others on slashdot of your crank economic theories just underlines your complete state of delusion.
Same difference people have been claiming peak oil since 1920 and their predicted dates come and go while we laugh.
No, peak oil theory dates from 1956. Peak oil fo rthe US was predicted in the US for between 1965 and 1970 and it actually happened in the early 1970s. Oil oil production has fallen ever since.
Exactly the same has been predicted in the prediction validated in many other countries since.
The oil is going to keep flowing... making a fool of everyone that said otherwise decades ago.
Peak oil doesn't predict oil will ever stop flowing. Just that production comes to a peak and falls afterwards. And that fall will bring huge grow in prices, and worldwide economic turmoil.
Have you even noticed the world oil prices in recent years. And the fact that we're in global economic turmoil. Do you ever get the feeling that you don;t really know what's going on, and that your news sources are not telling you what's really going on? You should.
If you don't know that global peak oil is happening round about now, then no other opinion you have on economics is worth anything at all.
As to your citation, that graph doesn't make any sense. Are you sure that's an actual graph of something?
Yes, i's a parody of the Laffer Curve. It reveals that the assumption it is a smooth curve with a single maxima is naive guesswork, not born out by any data.
Ah right. So what you're saying is that Keynesianism only works if stuffs been blown up. Any other cause of recession is obviously completely different.
and the money to rebuild came from an external source.
It was borrowed just as money for government investment in recession is today.
Here's a word to the wise, basing any economic theory on a single data point is stupid. WW2 happened once.
War didn't stop with WWII. There's not been a year without war since. Many countries have had to rebuild themselves after war. There's loads of data points.
As to Keynesian theory, it requires money be pumped into NEW activity with NEW workers. If you pay the OLD people to do the SAME thing... its not keynesian.... it's just pissing stimulus money down the drain.
Well there I agree. The so called stimulus money is just giving more money to the people that fucked it up in the first place. And who profited from fucking it up. Money should be spent on building capital infrastructure, and directly employing people to do it. Not given to banks, on the vague notion that they might lend it to people who might create some jobs.
Not a Malthusian. Malthus didn't have a clue about Peak oil.
And the part about meat is just the repercussions of China and India becoming more wealthy. Huge countries. At the moment their diet is mostly vegetarian. They eat very little red meat compared with the west. As they become more wealthy they'll want to consume more meat. Meat uses an awful lot more resources to produce than crops. Meat prices are largely fungible on the world markets. And supply and demand will mean prices are going to soar in the not too distant future.
Malthusianism is about the limits of population growth. I'm talking about price rises due to limited resources of consumables.
I could point out the cult status of the cornucopian, and their unscientific belief that resources are infinite.
Slashdot Mirror
Good luck decoding barcodes from images in real time with Javascript.
I're read it, and it's nonsense. You don't seem to appreciate that you can't believe everything you read. Just because some blogger said it, doesn't mean it's true. Unless perhaps you think Obama really wasn't born in Amercica. Karl Rove really is a lizard from another planet in a man-suit. The twin towers was an inside job, and a plane never hit the Pentagon.
Personally, I view the stuff like G+ suggesting people involved in previous searches just part of the service that Google is providing. I don't use it, but I can easily see how others could. It's not much different from the ability that Facebook has to suggest people based on various criteria, and I've never seen anybody get up in arms about that.
I use both. Or at least I did till I deleted my Google account yesterday. Facebook has never spooked me out for spying the way Google+ did. With Facebook it's obvious and acceptable. It's using information from within Facebook. They recommend possible friends because you have a number of friends in common. I can't remember having been recommended a friend that hasn't been a friend of a friend. Maybe they up the probability if you went to the same school, or like the same things, I don't know. But that all seems fair.
Google+ are doing it by spying on your web habits when you are not on Google sites. That is completely unacceptable.
It may be that you just haven't experienced that uncanny moment yet. As I said I too used to be happy with Google a while ago. But when you have your own moment of realising that Google knows something about you that they shouldn't, you might change your mind, just as I did.
It all comes down to personal taste., and the price we are wiling to pay for Google's services. You have reached the point where you're no longer willing to pay their asking price, and that's fine. I guess I'm still OK with the price I'm paying. Another year from now... who knows.
I think that's exactly it. You haven't experienced that uncanny moment of realising that Google knows something about you that they shouldn't. When it happens, you might well change your mind, just as I did.
However, I still think you're deluding yourself about the changes in Google. There are no changes; they've just gotten better at what they do. And that is to consolidate all the various bits of information you choose to give them, compile it, and use it as part of their services that you are consuming.
No, you're wrong. I know from personal experience, I spotted it a few weeks ago. Then a few days ago this:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225380456599176.html
Soon after that, it was discovered that Google was using a slightly different trick to get around Firefox security settings. And IE was allowing to do the same thing without tricks.
They are spying on you when you're on sites other than Google's own, even if you set your browser up to be secure and not allow that. You might not have known that up to now, but it is the case.
And I'm not some security nut. Ordinarily I'm on your side thinking that people on Slashdot are ridiculously overreacting on privacy issues. This one surprised me.
What kind of cheap shit are you buying?
The Tesla battery pack is good for 15 years. That's longer than the average life span of a car these days.
However, you can't predict where peak oil is or even predict exactly how much oil we have. The very notion that you would think this guy in the 50s would be able to predict that peak oil would be hit in the 70s is idiotic.
And yet it's a fact that he did. What's idiotic is your refusal to accept facts that you don't like.
Do you WANT peak oil? because my experience with doomsayers is that they LIKE the idea of the apocalypse. They've got a big throbbing hard on for doom. I don't. I want us to get out of this and I think we can.
If dreams were ponies. It's interesting how you are describing a mirror image of yourself.
Go away and read. And keep your opinions until you know something about the topic.
No. The implicit agreement between Google and you is that they will show ads down the right hand side of the results page,relating to the particular search term you put in on that occasion. And if you click on them, Google earns money from the advertiser. That's the way Google did business for years.
Say for example I had a passing interest in vasectomies. Or abortions. Maybe it's been in the news. Maybe it's related to a friend. Or maybe maybe I'm at that moment considering one or the other. It's OK for Google to advertise specialist clinics next to the search results on those topics.
It's not OK for them to show me adverts of those clinics for the next 18 months. That is an invasion of my privacy.
Similar implicit agreements for contemporaneous advertising applies with Gmail, YouTube, Blogger etc.
I first became aware of Google's current spyware nature about a month ago. I'd got a Google+ account, Google was suggesting people that might be my friends. Included were a couple of people to whom I'm only related by the fact that for years I've occasionally visited their blog, from a bookmark, not a search. Blogs that weren't hosted by Google's Blogger service. To my knowledge I'd never searched for them, or if I had it was years ago. They weren't friends of friends. etc. Clearly Google were using some trick with analytics, cookies or some combination to profile me, and make tenous connections from my browsing activity. Browsing activity that wasn't actually on any of Google's own sites.
I don't want it, and I consider it stalking. Thus I'm severing my contacts with what I now consider to be an abusive company.
A few years ago I would never have thought possible. I used to consider Google one of the good guys, and was considering buying shares. But something's gone badly wrong. I now hope everything goes wrong for them and they go bankrupt.
So you knew about bricking before it was mainstream?
No, it was mainstream then. I just have a personal reference for remembering a particular year when it was commonly used, and that year was a long time before the iPhone.
Nah, but I'd tend to believe Tesla themselves, when they state that the battery needs to be replaced because the car's owner let it fully discharge. Which they did. Not only once, but several times already. Follow the many links in this thread.
Tesla have not stated anything of the sort. And "the many links in the thread" are just people reblogging the same sensationalist garbage. RTF 2nd link in the summary.
No they don't. I've recharged and powered up laptops which have not been used for years. They still work fine. And the Tesla Roadster uses laptop batteries.
Litium-ion CELLS, if they had a resistance put across them so they completely drained would be damaged. But batteries have power management systems that that cut off supply long before they are drained. Of course cells have internal drain, but it's so low that you're talking years and probably a couple of decades before that completely drains a cell.
Tesla themselves have pointed out the story is false. The blogger got his facts wrong. A blogger being wrong - why is anyone surprised by that?
And the original article is obviously wrong. Read the second one.
The Tesla roadster uses laptop batteries. Are laptops bricked if you leave them unplugged for a few weeks? No, of course not.
Now theoretically, if you removed the battery management system, and directly drained the cells, then chemically you would damage the cells. But that's one of the fundamental purposes of the battery management system (in your laptop battery and in the Tesla.) Power drain is cut off from the cells well before they are completely drained.
Tesla themselves point out the mistakes in the blogs claims. And there are no such "bricks". From the description given they just need recharging, and the battery management system resetting. Of course it's possible that they are faulty cars, and need servicing. Cars do get faults. But there is no design flaw, whereby a Tesla Roadster left without power for a few weeks needs a complete replacement of it's batteries. It's just bollocks.
Without cookies it can't remember me at all. It doesn't know sent those search terms. (An IP address doesn't identify me or even my computer. Only the router I happen to be connected to at the time.)
I don't expect Google to store a preference of mine for them not to spy on me. I expect them not to spy on me unless I give them permission. And by closing my account, my intention is to withdraw all such permissions, implicit or implied.
And if you'd been following recent news, you'd know that Google has been doing an end-run around security policies in Firefox and Safari in order to do this. They are actually causing browser developers to look to changing how they implement standards in order to stop Google spying.
Google are now essentially a spyware company. Their "do no evil" promise is now a sad joke.
Amazing how the Apple haters manage to bring up the iPhone in every topic. Must be some OCD thing.
We were using the terms "bricked" and "brick" at Symbian back in 1999. And I'm sure it wasn't a new term them. That was a long time before Apple.
Those are the only possible explanations for a $40,000 bill, and neither look good.
The other explanation is that the blogger is full of shit. Apply Occam's Razor how you will...
Recovery vehicles that take the car completely off the road are not rare. And cost rather less than $40,000 to hire.
Was the whistleblower hallucinating that?
Many bloggers are full of shit. News at 11.
You really believe that a fully discharged rechargable battery needs replacement, just because a blogger said so? You're an idiot.
which is why Tesla requires owners to shell out $40,000 to REPLACE a completely discharged battery.
It's bunk. If the battery pack is completely discharges, tow it to a charger, plug it in and wait. Then reset the battery management system, and you;re good to go.
What kind of cretin believes that a discharged rechargeable battery requires replacement?
CellBatteryBattery Pack.
The battery pack is tolerant to a failed cell or battery.
My dear chap, I've been following the peak oil story for years. I've read a few books on the topic. The things you are raising are those things you find out the first day that you hear about peak oil theory and start Googling.
The US passed it's peak oil production in 1970. Just as predicted.
http://truecostblog.com/2009/07/14/is-peak-oil-real-a-list-of-countries-past-peak/
Nothing will reverse that as all the easy oil has already been taken. Once upon a time they just has to drill a hole in Texas and oil would gush out. All the US oil now is hard. Deep sea, fracking, oil shale etc.
And most other oil producing nations have also passed their peak. For example my country, the UK with it's North Sea oil, passed it's peak in 1999.
You are of course aware of the huge oil projects started recently on private land in the US right?... The higher the price goes on oil... the more these projects are going to explode...
"The higher the price goes". There you are. You said it yourself, but didn't realise the implications. The price only goes up in real terms because the supply (production) has gone down. Extracting oil from these difficult sources are what happens on the way down the curve, after the peak.
This is all fully part of peak oil theory, it's not an argument against it.
Newt Gingrich can't talk his way out of peak oil. He probably doesn't even believe it. He just wants what every politician wants. Votes.
The oil industry generally don't admit to peak oil because they don't want governments and people to turn to alternatives, or be more frugal. The more demand for oil there is, the more profits they make.
The US military on the other hand has to live in the real world, where their ability to do their job relies on huge amounts of oil. And they have openly and a number of years accepted peak oil as a fact and shaped policy accordingly.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply
The thing about the military is that they are pretty much immune to the lies of politicians and big industry. They have access to all the top level information themselves.
Still, I know from other economic topics we've been talking about here that facts don't really matter to you, so I don't expect to change your mind on this one either. But do yourself a favour: read up on this topic. And don't just google. Pick up an actual book or two. Don't just read for talking points for arguments, read for you. This topic, more then any other, is going to affect your life over the next few decades.
Right. I read these instructions and deleted my web history - which also apparently had the effect of "suspesding" the collection of more history . And then I thought what the hell, I'm fed up of Google's ever increasing spying on me. I'll delete my account as well.
And now you're telling me that deleting my account will mean they store my web history longer.
That's it. I've completely had it with Google now. After more than a decade I'm looking for a new search engine. Obviously not Bing - Microsoft are a despicable company too, but in different ways.
So, what non-Google and non-Bing based web search is good? Anyone got any recommendations?
I've told you most clearly why the Laffer Curve is bollocks. And I've show that your claims to science are risible. I can do no more. You're religious about it, you're not going to change your mind no matter how clearly it's explained to you.
The claim that you've managed to convince 5 others on slashdot of your crank economic theories just underlines your complete state of delusion.
You're a crank.
Same difference people have been claiming peak oil since 1920 and their predicted dates come and go while we laugh.
No, peak oil theory dates from 1956. Peak oil fo rthe US was predicted in the US for between 1965 and 1970 and it actually happened in the early 1970s. Oil oil production has fallen ever since.
Exactly the same has been predicted in the prediction validated in many other countries since.
The oil is going to keep flowing... making a fool of everyone that said otherwise decades ago.
Peak oil doesn't predict oil will ever stop flowing. Just that production comes to a peak and falls afterwards. And that fall will bring huge grow in prices, and worldwide economic turmoil.
Have you even noticed the world oil prices in recent years. And the fact that we're in global economic turmoil. Do you ever get the feeling that you don;t really know what's going on, and that your news sources are not telling you what's really going on? You should.
If you don't know that global peak oil is happening round about now, then no other opinion you have on economics is worth anything at all.
As to your citation, that graph doesn't make any sense. Are you sure that's an actual graph of something?
Yes, i's a parody of the Laffer Curve. It reveals that the assumption it is a smooth curve with a single maxima is naive guesswork, not born out by any data.
England was bombed out after WW2
Ah right. So what you're saying is that Keynesianism only works if stuffs been blown up. Any other cause of recession is obviously completely different.
and the money to rebuild came from an external source.
It was borrowed just as money for government investment in recession is today.
Here's a word to the wise, basing any economic theory on a single data point is stupid. WW2 happened once.
War didn't stop with WWII. There's not been a year without war since. Many countries have had to rebuild themselves after war. There's loads of data points.
As to Keynesian theory, it requires money be pumped into NEW activity with NEW workers.
If you pay the OLD people to do the SAME thing... its not keynesian.... it's just pissing stimulus money down the drain.
Well there I agree. The so called stimulus money is just giving more money to the people that fucked it up in the first place. And who profited from fucking it up. Money should be spent on building capital infrastructure, and directly employing people to do it. Not given to banks, on the vague notion that they might lend it to people who might create some jobs.
Not a Malthusian. Malthus didn't have a clue about Peak oil.
And the part about meat is just the repercussions of China and India becoming more wealthy. Huge countries. At the moment their diet is mostly vegetarian. They eat very little red meat compared with the west. As they become more wealthy they'll want to consume more meat. Meat uses an awful lot more resources to produce than crops. Meat prices are largely fungible on the world markets. And supply and demand will mean prices are going to soar in the not too distant future.
Malthusianism is about the limits of population growth. I'm talking about price rises due to limited resources of consumables.
I could point out the cult status of the cornucopian, and their unscientific belief that resources are infinite.
War crimes are international law, not US law.
I shouldn't get too smug about being the world's largest superpower, and believing yourselves above the law. China is in the ascendant.