Sugoi & Yokunai

It's not official (yet) but TSA is allowing flyers at select airports (including PDX) to keep their shoes on during security checks. About time.

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Zuckerberg continues poaching AI experts – this time from the Apple foundational models group. They'll join his Superintelligence team. Being nerdy finally pays.

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Will Trump's new student loan policy make it harder to be a doctor or lawyer? I don't think so. It will shift the loans away from government and into the private sector, where it really belongs. And if you can't demonstrate that you have the potential to succeed, you won't get the loan. And a private lender will not "forgive" the loan, so you'd better make sure you make those payments.

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Nice review of how Mozilla's leadership has been failing the company. Firefox isn't dead, but the user share is steadily decreasing, for sure. I'm still not ready to abandon Firefox for Brave, as long as LibreWolf continues to work.

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Are you the bull or the farmer? Interesting parable, and probably true.

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The NYT wants your ChatGPT history – even the deleted ones. Why should the NYT have access to this? It's none of their business.

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In China, those with congenital deafness due to functional deficiency of the OTOF gene, were able to get restored hearing with just one injection of a gene delivery vector. Paper here.

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Oregon is going to hurt real bad. Specifically hospital and associated healthcare providers. It doesn't have to be that bad, but Oregon refuses to stop supporting non-citizens, and it's causing a drain on the economy that Oregon can't afford.

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A retired PSU professor says that Multnomah County had 4.5x the number of high income earners (> $500,000/yr) from 2014 to 2023. Really? Are you all seeing this? Were there that many new jobs in the county that paid that much? I don't think so. I bet that nearly all those jobs were NGO leadership positions or union leader positions that flourished under the Biden administration. All that COVID stimulus money. This has got to be bogus data.

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People don't like being force-fed AI, but Microsoft is only too happy to force it on people.

OpenAI has hired a forensic psychiatrist to see how ChatGPT is affecting people emotionally.

Microsoft says that if you are experiencing stress from getting laid off, use ChatGPT as your psychiatrist to deal with it. How thoughtful. 

This woman has a job fixing code for companies that decided to use ChatGPT instead of hiring a real software developer. These companies ended up spending more than if they did it right the first time. 

This study says that AI models display only "Potemkin understanding" and don't really know what they're saying. That's good, I suppose. 

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Scientists reverse Parkinson's disease in mice with copper supplements. Apparently there's a mutation in the superoxide dismutase gene, SOD1, that is associated with Parkinson's disease. SOD1 uses a metal, such as copper or zinc as a catalyst. In this case, they administered copper and the disease phenotype improved significantly. But it's not clear if human Parkinson's disease is mediated by the same mutation and disease process.

And a mucolytic (not yet available in the U.S.) called ambroxol, may help ameliorate Parkinon's disease dementia.

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Beware of trusting ZIP files. The file you unzip may not be the file that someone else unzips. Use 7z for compression. It's much better. I use Keka.

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Top 10 most secure phones in 2025. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is on the list. A Samsung phone is on the list, too, amazingly. 

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Several physician organizations are upset the RFK Jr fired the vaccine panel and replaced them with COVID-19 vax skeptics. They are so eager to continue to ruse.

And then this Japanese study just got published, linking the mRNA vax to rapid progression of pancreatic cancer. Gee, don't you think we should stop producing this vax and do some investigating?

And I'm tired of all the panicky news about the new variant.

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The comic Sally Forth ripped off a Calvin and Hobbes plot, and no one noticed at the time. Blatant.

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Comparing calculators. Looks like the iOS calculators can't handle edge cases, whereas Android calculators can. Of course one can use Wolfram Alpha, which is really accurate, and can do a whole lot more. Many iOS calculators can't handle the edge case discussed in the article. The best calculator for casual calculations (because Wolfram's format is too unwieldy) is the HiPER calculator. For now, it's my go-to calculator. Very nice. 

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Incredible video of ball lightning. It looks like a science fiction scene from a Benson and Moorhead film. Why don't I get to see stuff like this?

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This is what the tech world is turning into. Rene Turcios is a vibe coder, and he's been winning hackathon contests, even though he doesn't know how to code.  It's a new world indeed. And someone asks: How Do You Teach Computer Science in the A.I. Era? You must teach the new tools, too, or else your graduates will be behind.

Then you look at Microsoft, laying off a lot of engineers. Is that a wise move? Some would disagree.

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This guy think Geoff Hinton shouldn't have been awarded the Nobel Prize. I don't agree. Hinton came up with a lot of insight surrounded neural networks, and autoencoders, which led to Generative Adversarial Networks. But I do agree that the Nobel Committee should consider other pioneers, too, especially the guys that developed transformers – what a difference that made! But the Nobel Prize only guys to three people at most. That could be a problem, although it's just an arbitrary limitation.

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What to do and what not to do when you wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep easily.

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A 17 girl in the Bahamas proved the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture. Her name is Hannah Cairo. Now THIS is the diversity I favor. Diversity should be something you celebrate when it happens, but not something that you try to manufacture when it doesn't exist.

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Clarifying tech jargon.  A lot of terms are used inaccurately, as their usage has changed the original meanings over time. Here's how to correct that.

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Here's someone who gets it: Portland needs to embrace growth. Nobody is encouraging it. Oregon construction jobs are decreasing. 

That's exactly what's happening.

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A mutation in the FasL gene could explain why humans are more prone to cancer than chimpanzees. The Fas gene is involved with programmed cell death.

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Why is there no life on Mars? It could be the presence of carbonate materials which absorb CO2. Funny that Mars having low CO2 levels is a threat to life, while on Earth activists think that too much CO2 is a threat to life.

The Mauna Loa CO2 atmospheric level tracker will be shut down.  It never made sense to me to put a CO2 tracker on top of a non-extinct volcano that may be spewing out CO2 levels, as well as being on an island with active volcanoes that can emit CO2 itself. It would make more sense for it to be on a remote island with no innate CO2 source. Plenty of islands available northwest of Kauai. 

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There is now evidence that adult brains can form new neurons. This was believed to be the case before, but now there is histologic proof of neuronal precursors.

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Cool. Someone created a LIDAR-guided device that shoots down mosquitos with lasers.

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This is how some stores can track your every move – with Bluetooth beacons. It may be a greater problem with iPhones. Sure, you can turn off Bluetooth, but it's inconvenient to do this every time you enter a store.

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People are reporting the ChatGPT can diagnose illness that elude doctors.  And ChatGPT isn't even the best medical LLM. The problem is that we don't know how accurate these reports are. It's certainly not routine to test for MTHFR mutations, and there are other ways to test for vitamin B12 deficiency. Was that done?

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Happy Independence Day!

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Copper wire thieves are making some street lamps go dark. Some are on highways. Enough with this crap, already!

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Tina Kotek continues to support illegal immigrants' children. Calls them "marginalized students". Why are they marginalized, Tina? Maybe there's a reason?

All Tina knows what to do is spend federal money. Oregon is so dependent on this, that when it runs dry, Oregon is out of options. Tina has never given a thought to, you know, grow Oregon's economy. Make Oregon a place to invest. Instead, businesses are leaving. 

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Another amazing discovery from Chinese scientists: a new "water battery". High energy density, long lifespan, and excellent safety performance – what's there not to love? Let's do it!

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Asian scientists hide prompts in their papers so that AI reviewers give them positive reviews. Hidden prompts in white ink or miniscule size tell LLMs to only say nice things about the research. This should be easily countered; just tell your LLM to ignore what's in the paper.

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AI-generated text found in 14% of all biomedical abstracts last year. This isn't too surprising, since LLMs are good for polishing text. As long as the content is AI-generated, I see nothing wrong with this. LLMs can help to express ideas more clearly. Ketanji Brown-Jackson could have used AI to help her formulate her dissent. Really. I say "no big deal" to this.  

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Palantir is teaming up with Xfinity to allow someone to spy on your movements in your home using WiFi signals. Time to find another ISP.

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Usually, one does not have to worry about overdosing with water-soluble vitamins. But apparently this is not true with vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). Excessive dosing can lead to neurotoxicity. This is ironic because doctors used to prescribe a trial of pyridoxine to treat neurotoxicity. Ironic.

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White male writers are vanishing. I noticed this when browsing for horror fiction, which is my favorite. I love M.R. James, Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, H.P. Lovecraft, August D'Erleth, E.F. Benson, L.T.C. Rolt, Ramsey Campbell and Robert Aickman. But lately, when I visit bookstores, there are very few contemporary horror writers who are men. I think men write better horror than women, as the latter tend to focus on emotions and mental stability issues than supernatural occurrences or ancient mysticism. There is only Stephen King and Laird Barron, and none of these are to my taste. King seems to write about aliens or sick human beings doing crazy things, which Barron does as well. What's going on?

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Oregon is no longer paying for homeless camp cleanup along the freeways. Well guess what kind of hot mess Portland is going to look like now? Portlanders pay higher taxes, and just get crap in return.

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After laying off 9000 workers, Microsoft wants 14,181 H-1B visas. Do you think that's right? What about American tech workers? What is the deal? Are there no enough hire-worthy Americans? Is that what this is all about? Or do they just want cheap Indian labor?

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A short video on Washington state's stupid EV credit program, care of Jay Inslee. The climate change industry is just one big grift.

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How embarrassing and cringe. Maxine Dexter with a group of Dem doctors trying to advocate for Dem policies – and no one pays attention to them.

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AI can detect hidden lung tumor better than doctors. This is not new, and is just one study where a model trained on a dataset beat a test group of doctors. It doesn't mean that it would beat doctors reading CT scans and chest X-rays in other hospitals or clinics. AI isn't that versatile yet. It's only a start.

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Increased sedentary behavior is associated with neurodegeneration and worse cognition in older adults over a 7-year period despite high levels of physical activity. Sounds dire, right? The subjects for this test were those in the legacy and expansion cohorts of the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project (VMAP), and although some of these over 50 subjects had no evidence of baseline cognitive impairment, others were allowed into the study with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). So already we're talking about those more at risk of dementia. It doesn't inquire as to what kind of activities the sedentary cohort were occupied with. Was it just resting and watching TV, or were they reading books, solving problems or engaged in high cognitive skill activities? Remember, this study showed that exercise wasn't enough to prevent dementia. That's why I'm skeptical.

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What a nightmare. Many homes that weren't burned to the ground in the Palisades and Eaton fires are now full of toxic levels of lead, copper, arsenic and beryllium. And what about the fire retardant chemicals? 

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IBM laid off 8000 employees because of AI automation, but hired them back in other positions, because they needed human creativity there. Good news, I suppose, if this isn't just an isolated phenomenon. Will other companies also recognize the need for human creativity? I wouldn't have considered IBM to be a company that needed creativity, to be honest.

Microsoft is laying off more people. Doesn't any division there need some imagination?  😂

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Hey, I'd watch the heck out of this!

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Oh crap. Disney is planning on rebooting the entire Indiana Jones franchise. No doubt to update it with more minority, gay, transgender or girlboss characters. Maybe have Rachel Zegler as Indy's love interest. Leave it alone, Disney. Please.

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The NYT doesn't like that Vinay Prasad recommended against the COVID mRNA vax product. Naturally they quote some pro-vax "experts" who decry this decision. Vinay has guts to do this. I'm glad that someone is finally demanding that we put a stop to the now ineffective and completely unnecessary and potentially deadly jabs. Go Vinay!

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A new interstellar object has been identified zipping through the solar system.  It's moving too fast to be studied. Could be a comet. Hope it's not an alien – we're not ready.

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What?!  Nightmares Linked to Faster Ageing and Premature Mortality. I thought it was just lactose intolerance from cheese. But faster aging? Maybe people have to ask for some prazosin after all.

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Electrical stimulation of the frontal lobes makes you better at math.  Step aside, Terrance Tao, here I come.

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FaceTime in iOS 26 will freeze your call if someone starts undressing. I wonder at what point does it kick in.  It's all to protect children, they say. Yeah, but....

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Rick Beato reviews the first all-AI rock band. Of course, someone was bound to do this someday.

Update (6 July 2025): Here's some background. It was an experiment.

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Has Perplexity peaked? It wasn't too long ago when it seemed that Perplexity was going to kill Google. But now it seems like it waited to long to do something. Others are catching up, and what they do isn't quite as unique anymore. Yeah, they hallucinate and sometimes the references aren't for real, so they haven't really completely solved the LLM problem. Apple might buy them, but maybe not. Then what?

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Cheese might be giving you nightmares. Only if you're lactose intolerant. I'll take my chances.

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Immigration is the only thing propping up California's economy, too. The state depends on cheap labor from illegal immigrants for the farmers and the service industry, as well as cheap labor from H-1B visas for the tech industry. Fake success.

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All Classical Radio is losing their CEO. Suzanne Nance is stepping down.

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The growing mobile universe is killing Microsoft's dominance. User base is shrinking at last. Microsoft doesn't own the mobile world. Funny how they just let Apple and Google dominate that sector. Denmark has already announced they're dumping Microsoft Office suite for LibreOffice and Linux. Beginning of the end?

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Google is investing in fusion energy, hoping it might be ready in five years.  Give or take.

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Someone created a Map of Reddit. It's clear – people love kink.

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Just like DuckDuckGo has bang commands, Anthropic has introduced slash commands for their models.

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AI is having difficulty in pathology classification. Not so easy. It's like the difficulties with radiomics in radiology.  Not that easy. We still need human pathologists.

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Cloudflare is going to stop allowing AI bots to use them to scrape websites for training data. That's fine, but I'm still fuzzy on how they plan to implement a plan to allow AI bots to get through it a fee is paid. How does Cloudflare know who paid the fee. What I don't want is for Cloudflare to start charging for who they will let through the Internet. I don't want them to be a tollbooth. I'd sooner use a different DNS resolver.

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In Portland, you pay higher taxes and fees, and they cut back services in return.  Less this and that. No money for staffing, they say. And then there are shootings downtown, like this one, so you can't even safely visit the city that you pay to support. And the street quality in the city is crappy.

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An AI-engineer out-engineered a human one. Is it any wonder, then, that tech workers complain they are being replaced by AI?

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Another researcher has discovered plasmid DNA sequences in the Pfizer COVID-19 product. They really need to take this crap off the market ASAP. What's stopping them? And why wasn't this acted on when Kevin McKernan first reported it?

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Gas prices will surge this coming week. But on the west coast, it's not really because of Mid-East tensions. It's because of gas tax hikes.

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Already, people are complaining that the minimum wage hike won't be enough. Gee, why can't prices for everything stay the same when they raise minimum wage rates? Why can't Democrats legislate wealth?

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Look at the stuff that Oregon agreed to fund at this last session? So much crap.

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Getting the news from social media really does make you more informed. Sure is better than Oregon Live, that's for sure. They still haven't reported about the Supreme Court and the impact of invalidating all those TROs.

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Microsoft is working on a tool to help doctors solve puzzling diagnostic cases. Seems to be more accurate than other off-the-shelf models. Will it really outperform in the field?

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4.16 billion year old rocks identified in Canada

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Chinese scientists have been able to turn on limited regenerative function in mice.  A great start. Hopefully it will lead to full regenerative abilities.

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Yikes. There is a 4% chance that an asteroid (2024 YR4) will hit the moon in 2032. If so, it could result in serious debris being released and hitting the earth. This is only 7 years from now.

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Congress might block state AI laws for at least ten years. Sam Altman was able to convince Congress that restrictive AI laws would stifle competition and allow China to advance ahead of us. It's an old tactic, but tried and true. And it seems to have been successful. So on we go down the Moloch path.

Sam has recently decided that specialized AI hardware is now worth investing in. Current computers are not optimized for AI. The company has also decided that they're not going to let Meta scarf up their employees without a fight. Competition is good. 

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There's a new VPN, vp.net,  that uses Intel's SGX chip, and they claim that this assures logging privacy. It's brand new, and I'd like to see what others uncover before I jump to this. NordVPN is working OK for now.

Whatever you do, avoid Chinese VPN apps. 

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Six policies that Trump will be able to make serious progress on, now that temporary restraining orders will no longer hamper him.

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Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan-Zuckerberg are closing their Primary School. It's no longer fun to operate anymore. They're bored with it after just nine years. They also claim that there's no finding anymore. Which is strange, as since when was money an obstacle with The Zuck?

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OpenAI's o4-mini can geoguess like a pro. I've been impressed with GPT-4.1 for geolocation.

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Here's another reason not to use Android, Google tools, and WhatsApp. As if there weren't enough reasons.

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Do you have Substack fatigue? I do. So many begging for subscriptions. They add up, and are they worth it? If I can't get what I want, I check out Internet Archive. 

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Oregon can't afford to lose money now, but they've been dinged with a $15.7 million SNAP penalty.  So incompetent, and now they must pay for it. This is why our taxes have to be increased? And Trump's new budget is going to shift more responsibility to states. Oregon is in deep, deep trouble. There's no room for incompetence, but our government is based on DEI hires and appointees. Quality people don't want to move to the state.

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