The 57 Lamest Tech Moments of 2010 123
harrymcc writes "When it comes strange blunders, failed dreams, pointless legal wrangling, and other embarrassments, the technology industry had an uncommonly busy 2010. I compiled a list of the most notable examples--including the lost iPhone prototype, the short life of Microsoft's Kin, the end of Google Wave, the McAfee security meltdown, a depressingly long list of lawsuits over mobile patents, and much more."
Welcome to the end of the year... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wake me up in January.
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Agreed. I'll have my own lame end of year slashdot journal some time next week... and it will likely be better written. At least, I hope it will be amusing.
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Damn my lawn is getting bigger...
You accidentally your lawn?
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Might start an interesting discussion here in /. though.
I'll start with the iPad and iPhone 4. The former has a curved back so does not lie flat on a desk and the latter shorts out the antenna when you hold it.
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The time I spent reading that list was one of the lamest tech moments of 2010 for me :/
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Endless Top ### lists with no real substance writen by writers who can neither write nor...
...make use of commas.
Re:Welcome to the end of the year... (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, it's no longer limited to the year-end roundup.
Probably 40% of online "journalism" is now listographies, frequently slide-show based, in order to suck up maximal clicks and spew scripted hoo-ha, delivering almost 100 bytes of actual info per 20 seconds waiting for the fucking page to turn.
It will be that way until advertisers stop falling for the dollars-for-page-views pricing model.
Google Wave not dead yet (Score:3)
Google Wave isn't dead. It just changed its name to Apache Wave.
Re:Google Wave not dead yet (Score:5, Funny)
It's pining for the fjords.
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'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
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Can I be seeing this? A down-mod on the Parrot Sketch?!
Netcraft confirms it. Slashdot is dead. :(
Obligatory under the circumstances (Score:3)
Can I be seeing this? A down-mod on the Parrot Sketch?!
:(
Netcraft confirms it. Slashdot is dead.
No no, it-it's not dead, it's... it's restin'!
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No, that would not be a good thing.
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This isn't EVERY sketch... But "Dead Parrots" and "Holy Grail" are supposed to be as close to we get to SACRED!
Weep for the future. Weep for us all.
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Oh, what sad times are these, when passing ruffians can mod down a post at will. There is a pestilence on this land, nothing is sacred!
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This, is an ex-Google app.
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Did you say... ex Google app?
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Beta Test on the public! (Score:5, Interesting)
HTC says their warrantys don't cover physical damage, what the hell good is it?
Sprint says, pay me a hundred bucks for a refurb fool! So you do, and a week later; rinse and repeat!
It was different when it was software, but hardware being beta tested on the public and they eat the cost!? I'm left with only one thing to say: W T F
Re:Beta Test on the public! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Beta Test on the public! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Beta Test on the public! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been modded down repeatedly for pointing out that the HTC Raphael (AT&T Fuze...) has a known problem with the sliding keyboard, a cable that comes loose. Fixable with tape but they don't do this when they refurb. Then it happens again. Old phone so nobody cares any more but it's just another HTC phone willfully misrepaired and dumped back on customers.
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False. I know I've been modded down by HTC shills or fanboys, and it's only now that other voices are added to my own that it's too difficult to disguise that kind of behavior, Anonymous Dumbfuck.
Re:Beta Test on the public! (Score:4, Interesting)
Much vaunted here on Slashdot, I decided to try it out as an iPhone replacement and thus talked my wife into getting it when her contract came up for renewal in April. Phone felt nice, OS was usable etc etc so I upgraded soon after and retired my iPhone 3G to the junk drawer.
Now, 8 months on, I've been back on my iPhone for 4 months because the N900s software foibles were greater, for me, than the iPhone 3G. My wife has no such luck tho - screen scratched (through use of the stylus), ringer sometimes doesn't work, the keyboard keys have essentially almost entirely flaked off to leave the transparent backing plastic showing.
My wife hates the N900, not because of its poor phone software (or the fact that it cannot do MMS built in) but because the hardware is literally falling apart not even half way into the 18 month contract!
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I know you're probably wary about taking phone advice via Slashdot now, but if you really want a decent Linux-based phone, the Pre is the way to go. It has a better UI than iPhone, true multitasking, a real keyboard, and an 'App Catalog' as well as Linux command-line root access with the blessing of the manufacturer. The internet-aware contacts are awesome-you can send messages via SMS or Jabber/Gchat and the history is shared. Facebook, phone contacts, etc integrate more gracefully than I've ever seen o
How did you scratch it? (Score:2)
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I'm not talking about huge gouges, just small scratches which are visible and cannot be cleaned off.
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Thank you HTC for Alpha testing the HTC EVO on the general public!
It wasn't alpha testing, it was just typical crappy HTC design & construction quality. Complaining about a junky HTC is like complaining that the scroll wheel on a Blackberry doesn't work smoothly. Yeah, they ALL do that (thankfully BB came out with a solid-state scroller finally).
The one phone I had that gave me zero hardware issues long-term was the iPhone 3G. YMMV.
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Hmm... I bought my EVO within an hour of it being released and nothing is breaking on it. I get about a days worth of battery use out of it. Not to say that the battery life is impressive - it is not. I'm sure one can drain it in three hours. Fortunately there is after market battery that is plenty good which I plan to buy.
Breaking the ports by applying force to the plug is probably pretty easy given the leverage. But this is true for just about any plug. I would guess to say that is probably why the larger
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2010 isn't over yet... (Score:2)
(Lame attempt at humor, not trying to troll...)
Re:2010 isn't over yet... (Score:5, Funny)
Some poor /. user might get an iPad from his or her grandmother
Sure beats a self-knitted sweater, formed for a mutant, with asymmetric arm lengths, a hunchback and a hole in the stomach area for the tentacle.
And yes, I speak from experience.
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I'm sorry about the other deformities, but a tentacle in the stomach area sounds kind of cool, how did you get that?
He didn't get the tentacle, just the hole in the sweater.
Re:2010 isn't over yet... (Score:4, Funny)
As an asymmetrically limbed hunchback with a torso tentacled person who likes to save on electricity by keeping the heat down, I must respectfully disagree.
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I for one ... actually, never mind.
How's the bell tower these days?
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I'm an asymmetrically limbed hunchback with a torso tentacled person who likes to save on electricity by keeping the heat down, you insensitive clod!
That's what you should have said.
Re:2010 isn't over yet... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm an asymmetrically limbed hunchback with a torso tentacled person who likes to save on electricity by keeping the heat down, you insensitive clod!
FTFY
FTFY
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Sure beats a self-knitted sweater, formed for a mutant, with asymmetric arm lengths, a hunchback and a hole in the stomach area for the tentacle.
And yes, I speak from experience.
Damn. There are gifts that say "I wish you'd been a boy/girl", and then there's this.
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Sure beats a self-knitted sweater, formed for a mutant, with asymmetric arm lengths, a hunchback and a hole in the stomach area for the tentacle.
And yes, I speak from experience.
Man, school must have been rough for you.
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At first I read that as a hole for the testicle and wondered why you would want a hole for that in your sweater.
Now a tentacle, absolutely, gotta let that swing free.
Re:2010 isn't over yet... (Score:5, Funny)
I got a Sony HD camcorder as a gift a while back...all good, except it's a Sony, and now I have to buy an ultra-rare Memory Stick to MicroSD adapter...
Reminds me of a funny thread on somethingawful where a software development company was having RMS come over to sign and present some prizes for employees, and the guy was asking for suggestions for prizes.
The first 2 suggestions:
A Windows 7 box
An iPad
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I can just imagine watching RMS's head explode when he had to present either of those items.
I will be smiling all day thinking about that.
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Got an iPad and it works great for me.
Just because you don't think it'd work for you doesn't mean it doesn't have a use or value.
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A 2 seater soft top sports car does less than a minivan, and costs more too, yet shockingly people still buy them... perhaps because they're looking for something the minivan doesn't offer.
It seems you are flabbergasted that people might actually like it as a product for what it does, even if it doesn't fit your personal tastes.
I personally detest gold watches, but people still buy them. This is a fact that does not flabbergast me.
Hmm (Score:1)
Why a list of 57? Did you just keep brainstorming lame moments until you couldn't come up with any more? Or is there some significance to choosing to record 57 specifically.
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Why a list of 57? Did you just keep brainstorming lame moments until you couldn't come up with any more? Or is there some significance to choosing to record 57 specifically.
Because #58 "This lame article about 57 lame tech moments" would have resulted in an endless loop (not to be confused with the endless lameness of the article of 57 lame tech moments).
deselective memory (Score:5, Interesting)
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Lame:
# (slang) unconvincing or unbelievable
He had a really lame excuse for missing the birthday party.
# (slang) failing to be cool, funny, interesting or relevant
He kept telling these extremely lame jokes all night.
The word you're looking for for that would be something like disastrous. I wouldn't call getting your password and info stolen lame.
3D Glasses and an $800 Ipad with no USB (Score:2)
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It's all downhill from here (Score:2, Interesting)
I think we all know what's happening. The technology industry is no longer about technology, it's about bling, brother,
More seriously, we've come full circle with mainframe/cloud and software on phones (javaME)/iPhones. Ideas that don't fly now may fly again in the future but with a different name. I suspect portals will become a lot more important again. A social portal maybe?
Either way, I think the potential value for the web for the general public and our children will be a lot less than it is today. It
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Hopefully next time the Geeks make it even harder and more difficult to understand in the hopes of having a free platform before the retards figure it out. The internet if easier, would have been destroyed by governments even sooner. Thankfully it takes tards a a couple decades to realize how useful a free platform is.... after they are done with it, it's not longer free, or useful, and they move on to break something else.
I for one, think geeks need to stop assisting idiots in using their toys. Lets make i
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Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is the bullies, corporations and the police.
We planted a garden. A wonderful rose garden. And there were people stopping to look at it and say "hey, that's neat!" and we, the good natured fools we are, thought it would be great to open our garden to the public, so they can come in and enjoy it. And hey, who knows, maybe some of them might want to plant a few roses themselves? We can only benefit from it, right?
So we let them in, even showed them how to plant roses. And while they were not really too good gardeners, we handed them a few tools to make the work easier for them. And some of them (ok, a handful of them) actually went and built something nice. Most just wandered about and smelled a few roses. We even built them a few paths they could wander on so they don't accidentally stumble upon that field we built that camo net over, ya know, with our "special spices".
A few came in and trampled all over the roses. We shrugged and grabbed them and threw them out, because we not only know how to plant roses, we also know how to use their thorns to smack those bullies about and give them a wedgie on their way out. We build this garden after all, and we know every plant and every bush here, you can't hide from us! Well, ok, I admit, some of us thought it's fun to make fools out of the idiots that have no idea how to plant roses and snuck into their gardens when they weren't looking (and too stupid to close the door so people can only look but not touch), dyed their roses pink and blue polkadotted, mostly for fun and to ridicule them. It was good natured fun, hey, we did that to each other too and we really had a good laugh!
One cardinal mistake we made is that we built a few paths to the camo net patches, too, because, hey, they're nice folks and wanna have some of the good stuff too, what's the harm in giving them some? Well, there's not really a problem with that, but when the bullies trampled across our fields, they also trampled through the fields of those that can't defend themselves, and these guys started to call for the police. And they eventually stumbled towards our camo net patches and, well, erh... well, they decided that it's a problem, ya know? If we hadn't built paths to them, only we would have found our way to those "special places", through the hedges and the overgrown paths that need machetes to get to. Few policemen had those machetes...
Also along came the corporations who found out that people love to wander in our nice garden and started to built there too. At first, we didn't bother to worry. Like the native americans didn't worry when the first whities came along, we let them settle in our garden. Until suddenly we were told that we can't go to a few places of our garden anymore because that's now off limits. In our own garden! Not to mention that they were crying bloody murder if you went and polkadotted their roses!
And now we're sitting here, in our ever shrinking corner of our once wonderful garden, trampled down by the masses, broken up into lots by corporations with a policemen at every corner making sure you don't plant where you're not supposed to, and of course that you don't try to camo net anything.
If there's any lesson to learn, than that we should not let the masses in next time we build a garden. The seeds will be more expensive, granted, but at least we can grow what we want and keep the harvest.
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*applauds*
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I, for one, welcome our new, garden-analogy-making overlords.
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Blah, blah, blah,...wonderful garden... blah, blah, blah...
Is there a car analogy stuck in here somewhere?
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You nailed it. Everything old is new again.
Bring on the 57 Most Awesome Upcoming Tech Innovations for 2011!!!
#57 The rebranding of WebRings as CloudRings
#56 Etc etc..
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I don't know it's quite as bad as you make out. This isn't the first time the industry's gone full circle, and it probably won't be the last - right now it's a PITA if you're in IT because the current fashion for "cloud-everything" has a tendency to push jobs towards the companies running cloud services - many of whom are running the show from a country with very low labour costs. The PHBs of this world assume the outsourced provider has a whacking great infrastructure with fancy SANs, enormous numbers of
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That, actually, is entirely possible (and IIRC has happened a couple of times).
I can well imagine a scenario where business A is perfectly honest but through sheer bad luck happens to be sharing hardware with the rather less honest business B at a well-known cloud provider. (Why that absurd word? You still have to run your servers as if they were onsite, the only difference is they're virtual servers in some other buggers infrastructure).
Law enforcement storms in with a warrant to take everything which ha
iConji? (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9WeTv4Q-QY
I know it should not even register a blip in the grand scheme of business'ey things. But the whole application of technology on something so uber-stupid shoud be listed among some of the dumbest tech things seen in 2010... me thinks.
It should have been 58... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that way the article could have included itself as number one. Another meandering, poorly written summary of the year.
If you're going to choose an arbitrary number to attach to an end of year list, keep it to ten and focus on the writing. Seriously, 57? I'm reminded of the Jargon File comment about 17 [catb.org] being the "least random number". This is just a blatant excuse to generate ads by breaking up an article; I'm surprised it isn't 57 pages long, in slide show form.
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I think this (and the aforementioned absence of the Gawker breach) suggests they just kept a running list as the year went on, then wrote some copy for it when they were about to go on their holidays, and kicked it out the door.
57... (Score:2)
They wanted to serve it with ketchup.
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A number like 57 just screams out loud 'that's all i've got'. And here's my 12 bucks for the stripper.
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Totally opposite. If there's one thing I hate about top 10 lists, it's when something important is omitted to keep it to 10, or when a few meaningless and unrelated items are added to stretch it to said arbitrary number. If you're making a list about something, make as many items as you need. Don't artificially stretch/condense whatever items just to make some round number. Do justice to whatever topic about which you're talking, then tack on the number when you're done.
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The key thing you said there is "do justice to whatever topic about which you're talking". 10 or 57, I don't think either one of us would argue that this article did justice to the topic. For writing as poor as this, 10 would have been no more arbitrary than 57.
Ballmer is always a contender in the Lamestakes (Score:1)
Although Polaroid naming Lady Gaga as Creative Director is pretty strange.
Either that or it is one of those 1 in a million oddly brilliant ideas.
Time will tell..
Re:Ballmer is always a contender in the Lamestakes (Score:4, Insightful)
Polaroid is a shell of itself. It's just a holding company nowadays that licenses the Polaroid name out to various cheap manufacturers who make random devices under that name. This is why you see crap like Polaroid DVD players and whatnot. There is no Polaroid manufacturing, R&D, or marketing divisions - it just exists to license out the trademark to anyone willing give them a bag of cash.
That's why naming Lady Gaga as a Creative Director is bunkum. You can't have a creative director if the company DOESN'T CREATE ANYTHING.
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Then why are they building things like the Pogo (http://bit.ly/gZyTI6)? Looks much like the old idea of Polaroid to me...
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MBAs are looked down upon because we all know someone who can't find his ass with both hands, a map, two shop lights on tripods, and a complete surveying team, and yet who has an MBA. They're usually on their third or fourth business venture, having killed the last two or three.
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If I am wrong, perhaps you'd like to explain why I am wrong rather than simply stating I'm an idiot. I'm assuming you have an MBA, so I'm sure this will be entertaining.
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Sorry, Drinkypoo, I clicked reply on the wrong person.
Zuckerberg everywhere, all the time (Score:1)
(*) A trip will help his Chinese-language studies, a non-trivial hobby with all he has to do.
Google's Buzz Was Certainly One Of Them (Score:2)
What kind of dumb ass converts someone's private email account into a social networking site, letting strangers in their address book see what they do on the web.....without notice, without permission AND expects that people will like it?
I'd like to add ... (Score:2)
Aleks Krotoski [guardian.co.uk]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/21/austin-heap-haystack-iran [guardian.co.uk] Gregg Kiezer [computerworld.com.au]
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/21/2329249/Windows-7-Memory-Usage-Critic-Outed-As-Fraud [slashdot.org]
Number One Should Have Been... (Score:3, Funny)
The Social Network Was A Good Movie (Score:3)
Surprisingly, "The Social Network" was actually a good movie because of the human drama that it is intertwined into the story. Its not about how a wealthy kid makes even more money but how and possibly why he did it. Whether or not the events actually took place as depicted in this movie is up for debate but it is a hell of a drama that is well made and very entertaining. I won't be surprised if some it gets Oscars for at least the screenplay if not more.
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"The Social Network" was actually a good movie because of the human drama that it is intertwined into the story
So what? There was human drama taking place during the course of my own undergraduate career, but nobody is begging me to sell them the screenplay.
Its not about how a wealthy kid makes even more money but how and possibly why he did it.
Meh. It is only because of the fact that people are familiar with the product that the movie was even made.
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To compensate users for the delay... (Score:1)
Apple has promised that the white iPhone will come with a free copy of the mobile edition of Duke Nukem Forever.
Never understood pulling the plug on Kin (Score:2)
MS only gave the Kin about 6 weeks on the market before pulling the plug. WTF? It was actually a pretty good idea and properly pushed and priced it could have taken over the high-school phone market.
I liked the form factor as well. I wouldn't mind having a phone with that form factor, minus all the social-networking gew-gaws.
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The Kin is actually back on the market, but as a feature phone rather than smart phone. One of the biggest problems with it the first time around was that it required a data plan, but it wasn't a smart phone.
I seriously considered getting the re-issued Kin, because it can use a WiFi network to browse the web and not require the data plan. There's enough free WiFi out there that it seemed like a good plan.
Then I found out it couldn't import my contacts from the Verizon Backup Assistant (or anything else), it
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No, it was doomed to failure.
The main problem was simple: it was a "feature" phone, but required a full smart phone data plan... an extra $30 per month or whatever. That made it, in essence, in competition directly with iPhones and Androids.
Even High School Kids aren't that stupid... at least, the small percentage who's parents would shell out the cash for a smart phone (I have one kid in HS, one in College, neither gets a smart phone).
I think the plug-pulling came from the results: by most accounts, they s
Wave byebye (Score:2)
He's the TV equivalent of the RMS Titanic.
Probably a good methodology to follow if you want a lot of depressive, angry 16 year old girls to take up your product, but not if you want wider success.
Thanks for commenting! (Score:1)
I've read various articles about the BBB loosing it's and/or has lost its legitimacy?
I'm left with only questions:
1) Where is the consumer to turn? Who sticks up for the working man that spends his/her hard earned cash on these products?
2) What the hell happened to accountability!? If no one has the consumers back, what is the consumer to do when they get screwed?
3) Is their something that we as
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