Tesla Is Facing US Criminal Probe Over Elon Musk Statements (bloomberg.com) 203
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Tesla is under investigation by the Justice Department over public statements made by the company and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. The criminal probe is running alongside a previously reported civil inquiry by securities regulators. Federal prosecutors opened a fraud investigation after Musk tweeted last month that he was contemplating taking Tesla private and had "funding secured" for the deal. The tweet initially sent the company's shares higher. Tesla confirmed it has been contacted by the Justice Department. The investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of California follows a subpoena issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking information from the electric-car maker about Musk's plans to go private, which he has since abandoned. Tesla said in a statement following Bloomberg's report: "Last month, following Elon's announcement that he was considering taking the company private, Tesla received a voluntary request for documents from the DOJ and has been cooperative in responding to it. We have not received a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process. We respect the DOJ's desire to get information about this and believe that the matter should be quickly resolved as they review the information they have received."
Elon, don't make announcements while high (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a simple rule. Many people follow it and avoid being investigated by the DOJ.
Re:Elon, don't make announcements while high (Score:5, Funny)
It's a simple rule. Many people follow it and avoid being investigated by the DOJ.
I think Musk should counter by citing blatant racism, as he is indeed an African-American.
Re:"Nazi faggot makes joke, other nazis impressed" (Score:4, Interesting)
Sadly they were brutally raped to death by large black inmates in Federal prison just like Trump, the end.
Having actually been to Africa, Musk is more of an "African American" than almost every American black person.
If they deny him African-American status because he is white, that would be discrimination based on skin color which should be illegal.
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"Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured."
420, just a coincidence, eh. He was stoned as a motherfucker
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I don't buy that. His reaction to being offered marihuana didn't look like 'seasoned user', more like 'total beginner'. When you work 120 hours/wk, you don't need drugs to make dumb statements. The fatigue alone is more than enough.
As for $420, he said '420 has better karma than 419' which I found an obvious reference to 419 scams.
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For those of you who don't get it.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Elon, don't make announcements while high (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty sure he made this statement before going on Joe Rogan's podcast. Also if you'd listened you'd know that he took one puff and said he didn't like Marijuana because it stopped him from getting things done.
If YOU had listened, you'd know that regardless of how little he inhaled, the dude was either high out of his mind or just out of his mind.
He was going on about "love is the answer" and other vapid, meaningless shit.
Before that video, I had never subjected myself to listening to anything the clown has to say for more than a few seconds. If he's like this all the time than he's a complete and total nutjob. If he was like that just that once, than he was mentally incapacitated in some way.
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He was going on about "love is the answer" and other vapid, meaningless shit.
Maybe he is just a big fan of Todd Rundgren [youtube.com]? Aww, who am I kidding - NO ONE is a fan of Todd Rundgren...
don't make /. comments while simplistic and trite (Score:5, Informative)
Actually if he were smoking marijuana he'd probably be able to de-stress and get needed rest, get better control of his emotions. It would be a strong net positive in his case compared to his stress-meth lashing out on Twitter.
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FTFY
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More importantly, don't make announcements that are false. He said he had funding secured. He didn't, and he knew he didn't.
Martha Stewart went to prison for less than this.
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Martha Stewart went to prison for less than this.
It really changed her too. I hear she mostly hangs out with rappers now.
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http://i.imgur.com/WakwIpH.png [imgur.com]
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Funding secured is such a wobbly statement, it really depends upon the definition of the word secured outside of legal documents. That they are pursuing the case, tends to indicate they were, cough, cough, paid to. The name and connections of the lead instigator would be interesting to have. Generally speaking, if someone publicly sought clarification of the comment and based the clarification around much more legally demanding requirements, then he would be in trouble but empty statements are empty until l
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Just do it on Slash Dot as an Anonymous Coward?
Said the Anonymous Coward.
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When did twitter become the equivalent of a PR release to a financial magazine?
People should be able to say dumb shit or post speculative ideas on twitter, it should be given as much importance as somebody tweeting about what they are having for lunch.
A person who makes changes to their investments based on an idle thought seen on twitter should be laughed at. They don't need the protection of the law, they need an experienced financial adviser to tell them that it's just a social media service with a sill
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When did twitter become the equivalent of a PR release to a financial magazine?
How about "when the CEO of a company reveals plans for that company"? Doesn't really matter what medium the announcement is made on does it?
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I thought that was the entire purpose of Twitter...
sad... (Score:2, Insightful)
the promise of clean(er) vehicle emissions does not need him fucking it up. there has been enough hate on battery tech without this douche making it worse.
why doesn't the board just fire him or something... just focus on the business.
Re: sad... (Score:1)
It doesn't matter if his company lives are fails electric vehicle technology is here to stay. Existed way before Tesla and it will exist long after. how many steam powered cars are you all driving these days?
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It doesn't matter if his company lives are fails electric vehicle technology is here to stay. Existed way before Tesla and it will exist long after. how many steam powered cars are you all driving these days?
Burn coal
Create steam
Turn turbine
Generate electricity
Charge electric vehicle
Drive to work
Shitpost on slashdot with retardisms like "how many steam powered cars are you all driving these days?"
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Burn coal
[...]
Shitpost on slashdot with retardisms
Surely, pretending that coal is the only way electricity can be made, is also a form of shitposting? Deliberately ignoring the entire other half of the equation (the societal shift away from fossil fuels as an energy source, Trump notwithstanding) in order to "win" an argument on Slashdot definitely qualifies as a retardism (as does using words like "retardism", of which I am hereby twice guilty)
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You're the one pretending. Look at the percentage of power generated by coal / fossil fuels TODAY.
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What about the cloudy nights?
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ride a bike
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Is that the "Model y"?
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Because none of these exist:
Nuclear reactors
Hydroelectric dams
Wind turbines
Geothermal power
pumped hydro storage
grid-scale battery storage
home battery storage + solar (which Tesla sells)
Don't be an idiot.
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Not really. Tesla has a queue of orders for a car they don't produce - the $35k model 3. For the expensive models,k the wait times are due to bad sales logistics and to Tesla producing 84% lemons, which need extensive fixing after production.
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Yeah, because they'd never want to use all that oil money to hedge against the inevitable.
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I don't think even he can destroy what he's already contributed towards the cleaner vehicle emissions industry. He proved out what most people thought ridiculous.
He survived the market crash while critics said electric cars:
-can never compete on range
-can never compete on cost
-can never compete on performance
-can never compete with filling at a gas station
-can never be cool
Just look at the other largely "sad" contributions to the electric car industry if you think he can simply be replaced as easily as you
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Tesla fans love to talk about gross margin - and completely ignore the mandatory costs such as sales and general administration costs REQUIRED to make those sales (yeah, we sold 40K cars! We're not going to count the cost of sales people, or showrooms, or delivery of vehicles in those costs - just the money coming in and the cost of the build of the car!)
Or even servicing the debt (even if just interest) on the money borrowed to make those cars. Never mind they borrowed billions of dollars to make those v
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personally i don't care much about TSLA as a business, and Elon not at all.
i liked their original roadster, but it was way out of my range back in the day.
what TSLA has done, is moved the needle on battery tech. without TSLA pushing the buttons, chances are battery powered vehicles would not be a priority of all manufacturers at all. not just the car business, but rather also pushed for better battery tech.
credit where credit is due, heck i consider TSLA basically a giant gofundme campaign, a lot of people
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This is just a takedown by Big Oil, the Saudis, and the "shorts" Rei
No, this is the SEC doing it's job, opening a criminal probe into Musk. Tesla will face a class action suit for this little tweet too.
The problem here is Musk has a *responsibility* to be both truthful AND he must make announcements that have a material bearing on the stock price though proper channels, which is NOT Twitter. So if he was just goofing around on Twitter, says something stupid that is untrue but has anything to do with the stock or could possibly be inside information, it was criminal misle
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IANAL, but I can see Musk's lawyer arguing that for Tesla and Musk that Twitter is more universal and instantaneous than Bloomburg or PR Newswire for making market-moving announcements. Of course, that would leave him with the problem of whether or not the announcement so made was true...
I tole you (Score:3)
I'm not one to say I told you so, but everybody made fun of me a few weeks ago when I said that Elon was going to face some serious consequences for his phony tweet about taking Tesla public.
https://youtu.be/lTXoA-QTbJw [youtu.be]
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That's okay, I'm keeping a list of all the predictions you make to throw in your face when they turn out to be wrong.
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Considering the events we are watching unfold before the world, I can say definitively that it doesn't always work for TWEETUS.
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I'm not one to say I told you so, but everybody made fun of me a few weeks ago when I said that Elon was going to face some serious consequences for his phony tweet about taking Tesla public.
https://youtu.be/lTXoA-QTbJw [youtu.be]
You also thought that Hillary would win, and that Trump was racist. Your "predictions" are no better than coin tossing.
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No, and yes. Your memory isn't so good.
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No, I one (sic) two. Hillary lost and Trump's a racist. I also predicted that Cody Wilson, the guy who owns Defense Distributed, and who thought it would be clever to release the plans for a 3D printed gun, was a pedophile, and he's just been arrested for assaulting an underage girl he met online.
So that makes me three for three.
https://gizmodo.com/3d-printed... [gizmodo.com]
https://www.newsweek.com/3d-gu... [newsweek.com]
Julian Assange is a rapist (Score:2)
Cody Wilson — accused of having sex with a young prostitute who registered on SugarDaddySomething.com [statesman.com] — is just as much a "pedophile", as Julian Assange — accused of deliberately ripping a condom in an otherwise consensual encounter [theguardian.com] — is a rapist.
In addition to the actual accusations being far from from what's normally associated with the terms used ("assault", "rape"), both m
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You are correct. Cody Wilson is a pedophile who has now been charged with sexually assaulting an underage girl, and Julian Assange is a rapist who has been ducking charges and hiding out from authorities for going on a decade now rather than just facing his accuser.
It all fits. You're making my case for me.
By "really a liberal", I assume you mean "Classical Liberal" which is how right-wing jackoffs, white supremacists and neo-nazis refer to themselves these days. Fuck no. W
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Wow, not even the "allegedly" fig leaf, much less the quaint concept of "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law". If the government accuses someone of rape, they must be rapist...
Yes, you are — and always have been — an Authoritarian. Just as the Nazis you hate with such passion — must be an Uncanny Valley [wikipedia.org] thing for you and yours...
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I didn't realize Slashdot was a court of law.
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Professor, you are making even less sense than usual. Slashdot is not a court of law.
The stated principle, however, that everyone is innocent until proven guilty is universal. Or ought to be...
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In the real world, parents need to make all sorts of decisions without adhering to the rules of evidence. If your daughter comes home and says a 17 year-old boy tried to rape her and held his hand over her mouth, you would quite rightly pick up the baseball bat you keep by the door and go have a talk with him. You don't wait until a court convicts him, nor do you do DNA tests on your daughter.
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I don't know, what you are talking about — but I do know, it is neither about Codi Wilson, nor Julian Assange.
I take your attempt to change topic as an admission of losing the previous one. No, I'm not taking the bait — none of this has anything to do with Tesla... Remember to logout.
So, not only are you willing to sheepishly believe anything a go
Who doesn't think they have funding? (Score:1)
Tesla at this point is exceeding production goals, and still has strong demand - stronger still now that Google is infecting many automobiles [slashdot.org].
Remember at the time there was a huge block purchase by an investor in Saudi Arabia, there are probably a number of investors very interested in taking Tesla private given the future they have not just with cars, but with many things solar and battery related...
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Because they already admitted they did not have funding and are no longer pursuing the transaction?
Yes but those efforts were lacking (Score:2)
AND in the last two weeks both Audi and Mercedes have announced luxury Full Electric models
Slower than a Tesla. No battery technology company behind it. No existing nationwide supercharger infrastructure.
What they have done is validated Tesla's market while being only a vague threat.
Meanwhile Tesla has ramped up to producing 8000 cars a week... Tesla has figured out scale, do you seriously think the large car makers can crack full electric luxury autos as rapidly? They are missing some really huge comp
Re: Who doesn't think they have funding? (Score:1)
I applaud Teslas accomplishments and the main one is showing EVs can work with todays battery technology. But moving forward I think Chevy is rolling out the EV properly with the Bolt. It doesnt have funky styling and it operates just like a regular car. More or less. The majority going forward want a $25k EV that doesnâ(TM)t make a statement but just gets them to work and home. Tesla has to do this. The high end EV market will be dominated by Mercedes and Porsche in the near future.
Repercussions (Score:2)
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World war I stated from a sandwich... (Score:2)
World war III will start with a tweet.
(yes I know the sandwich thing is a myth)
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World war III will start with a tweet.
(yes I know the sandwich thing is a myth)
The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was feeling a bit peckish, realized he had forgotten to pack something to eat, so he ordered the chauffeur to retrace the parade route back to get a sandwich....
The Franco Prussian war really did start with a tweet.
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World war III will start with a tweet.
They wish. That would really take the focus off the Mueller investigation.
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a movie about Elon Musk? (Score:2)
No rule of law left (Score:1)
How is Musk able to keep a clearance and do business with the gov't after blatantly and publicly violating federal law? US is a lawless country for anyone with a billion stashed. I see no reason average people should obey any federal law, given what we've seen over the last 15 years.
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Obeying the law and having a clearance are only vaguely related. A clearance is essentially a certification of the Governments ability to trust a person to keep a secret. Drug use poses a threat to a clearance in a few ways. First, when a person is high they might be more readily influenced to share information they shouldn't. Second, because drug use is against Federal Law, and generally prohibited as a term of employment it can be used for blackmail material. Third, there is the liability concern when an
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Well, the first reason would be that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing...
In other words (Score:2)
he should have taken it private earlier.
Tesla showed what a no compromise EV would be like (Score:3, Insightful)
He was prescient enough to see a Moore's law for batteries, with a 7 year period for power density and price. His prediction is coming exactly. He was charismatic enough to persuade enough VCs to fund a company that can make a no-compromise EV, not some compliance vehicle. But the company is stable now. The production hell has been debugged out. Now they are going through the delivery hell, and are talking about parts and repairs etc like a regular car company. At this point Elon is hurting more than helping Tesla.
Tesla Model 3 is the fifth best selling car by volume and the number one car by revenue in August.
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It is unfortunate Musk gets the company into trouble.
But has he? What is currently underway is a probe. Not a prosecution, not a judgement, but a probe. It's like you getting yourself in trouble because I decide to sue you for the comment you just made. It could happen, but let's face it you won't be in trouble as a result.
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There are thousands of model 3s wasting away in dirt fields in California and around the country.
Pics or it didn't happen.
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You mean Elon hasn't invented a way to teleport the car from the factory in Fremont directly to the buyer's driveway anywhere in the world?
That looks a whole lot like logistics lots where cars are taken off trains, and loaded onto trucks for delivery.
OH NO HERE'S A LOT FULL OF CARS [google.com] AT THE PORT OF PORTLAND! HYUNDAI MUST BE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS BECAUSE THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF CARS SITTING THERE!
Seriously, if this is the best you've got, just give up.
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Technically a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is an EV the same as any other EV. The fuel cell is the battery.
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Thank you for that reminder. I remember watching the documentary "Who killed the electric car?" which explained the CARB situation. So where is that EV1 research now? Time to dust-off those old manuals, or spin-off another company to bring it back.
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EV1 used batteries that are way behind the state of the art now (lead-acid with 16 kWh, later NiMH with 25 kWh capacity). To get enough range, it used high-tech, expensive manufacturing to get a low weight and low Cd, and it had only 2 seats.
GM might be able to reuse the motor and its electronics, but they didn't do that for the Bolt (has a 150 kW motor where EV1 had 100 kW). And speaking of the Bolt: GM went with a from-scratch design for the Bolt rather than digging up their EV1 archive. That should say s
Re:Tesla is irrelevant to EVs (Score:5, Interesting)
These are not ZEV credit market numbers. These are what a no-compromise EV can do. There is no special technology or patents with Tesla. All it needs is a will to let the ICEV sales by cannibalized by the EV divisions, the traditional car makers can all make cars like the Tesla.
Tesla is not selling Model 3 in negative gross margin and survives by ZEV credits. Three independent tear downs estimated positive gross margin for both the high end Model 3 above 50K and for the low end 35 K model. The most negative report came from UBS, that first gagged Monroe who did the teardown with a law suite, conceded 50 K model 3 has a gross margin of 9000$, then switched to net margin while talking about the 35 K version, while giving the impression it is still talking about gross margin. The German teardown priced it 28K per unit for the 50K car at 10,000 cars a week. Monroe admitted he is going eat crow and estimated 18% gross margin for the model 3.
Tesla is NOT selling cars at a loss hoping to sell ZEV credits.
I don't think there is a big conspiracy against Tesla, but it is an unfortunate confluence of click bait journalism, negative stories about Musk having better ratings play etc. And Musk shooting his mouth off and smoking pot on tv helps them a lot too.
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The pre-orders distort the sales figures for the Model 3. We shall see how it does when the years of backlog are cleared. I'm sure it will sell well, but not as well as it is now.
Tesla definitely helped popularize the concept of EVs and demonstrate that with big batteries and decent charging range wasn't an issue. But they are mostly a US thing, and a lot of progress has been made by other manufacturers, especially in Europe and China.
Nissan was the first to market with affordable, practical EVs, and rolled
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Come on, Tesla Model 3 is the fifth best selling car by units and the number 1 selling car by revenue in August.
Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity.
Sure they made less than Honda or Toyota, but Honda and Toyota made money from their sales.
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I take it you didn’t read anything past his first paragraph?
Tesla has a real problem with "haters", regardless (Score:2)
I don't think it would matter if Elon Musk cured cancer tomorrow. There's a group of people out there who truly despise what the guy is accomplishing, because they don't want to see things change from cars running on gasoline and working the way they've always worked.
I would agree that it's not one big conspiracy, so much as several groups with anti-Tesla agendas for different reasons.
You've got, on one hand, the stereotypical blue-collar auto mechanic who always works on his own vehicles and makes a livin
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Depending on the month in question, it's postulated that Tesla held back deliveries at the end of June in order to push the tax credit phase-out to 1Q2019. If the numbers quoted above are for June, then that could be your 2k cars.
Otherwise, it's the thing where cars are produced, but the revenue isn't booked until delivery accepted by the buyer. It's conceivable that they have 2,000 on trains, trucks, and in parking spots at any given time awaiting delivery. Every car company does. Most have far more th
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Solandri with a vested solar competitor to Tesla is bagging on them? How bizarre!?!
Maybe GM should have did what Tesla did according to your story, or were they too stupid? Why would they do that?
There is a reason TESLA has a waiting list a mile long and GM doesn’t, one of them is making something Hong people want and one was throwing forth a mastubatorial project at best.
Tesla did something no legislation could do, make people actually want a full EV.
I hate Tesla as much as the nest shorting fool but
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Now only if the company you're trying to "cripple" could control the output of their factories.
Oh wait, they can. And do.