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Maria Gurova

The future of local government - 0 views

  • We increasingly live in a world where we don’t have to leave our homes, and when we do, we travel in isolation
  • It is in public space that we encounter a wide variety of people different from ourselves. Public spaces are important because they provide room to negotiate how we will live together in a highly populated environment. Encountering people of different races, classes, ages and abilities on a daily basis has the potential to cultivate a citizenry that is more tolerant of diversit
  • Streets are declining as a form of public space because street life often is perceived – and sometime is – unsafe: thus we frequently retreat indoors, making the streets even less safe
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  • Harford argues that much can be done to make public space safe for children. “I would like to see pedestrian-friendly crossings more frequently on streets. I would like to see the streets be more kid-oriented with wider sidewalks, as well as a more coherent attitude amongst people on the street to be watching out for kids.”
  • in “real life, only from the ordinary adults of the city sidewalks do children learn – if they learn it at all – the first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other.
  • Ronda Howard, a Vancouver senior city planner, notes that when there are greater incentives for people to walk in their neighbourhoods, there are more eyes on the street: thus the streets become safer.
  • Despite the challenges facing parents raising children in the city, different social networks can augment child involvement in public space. Harford says that strong social ties help increase her son’s autonomy in Vancouver
  • When we actively engage with others who are different from us, we have the opportunity to become more sophisticated and tolerant citizens. When we get to know the diverse members of our communities, we create social networks that make our cities safer and more enjoyable. Public spaces are integral to making this happen. These spaces are an antidote to the inward gaze of individualism. We need to reclaim public space and work to expand its boundaries. It’s time for us to leave the house of the self in the background, and go outside
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    how modern public spaces are interconnected with the health and social skills of the future generation. When kids spent less time indoors not only their health become vulnerable, but also their position as future citizens 
Maria Gurova

In The Future, The Whole World Will Be A Classroom | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and... - 1 views

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    please watch the video conversation, but here are my brief takeaways: - There is a shift form institutional structures (corporations, centralized governments, educational establishments) to social structuring - Social Structuring - creating value by aggregating micro contributors by large networks using social tools and technology Key patterns in future of learning are 1. Content comments 2. New Foundations 3. Global Learning arbitrage 4. Embedded and embodied learning 5. Human-software symbiosis 6. Socialstructured work Major shifts in learning: - from episodic to continuous learning - from content conveyors to content curators - from working at one scale to working at up&down the scale - from degrees to reputation metrics - from grades to continuous feedback
al_semenchenko

Smartypants: the fart-filtering future of underwear | Art and design | The Guardian - 0 views

  • The term “enhancing underwear” might summon images of go-go-gadget pants that help you run faster and jump higher, but it actually refers to a new breed of briefs that promise you a bigger bulge. Push-up bras and “butt-lifters” have long been a staple of women’s lingerie aisles, but genital scaffolding has now spread to menswear. Featured in the V&A exhibition, the “Wonderjock” is the work of Australian company AussieBum and aims to do for men’s bits what the Wonderbra did for women’s busts – hoisting them up and thrusting them out.
  • US army researchers have developed smart underwear, with sensors secreted inside elastic waistbands that track heart rate, body temperature and perspiration, and beam the stats back to a central monitor. This “wear-and-forget” sensory system is also designed for stressful training situations, identifying which soldiers remain more balanced, so they can be picked for the harder missions.
  • Underwear is already a common place for smuggling drugs of the illegal variety, but a recent pharmaceutical innovation could soon make putting pills in your pants a legitimate activity. Swiss textile giant Schoeller has developed a fabric that administers drugs to the surface of your skin over time, and thinks the best place to put it is in your undies – as those are the garments you’re least likely to forget to put on.
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  • A more practical innovation comes from British manufacturer Shreddies, which has developed flatulence-filtering underwear, allowing you to “fart with confidence”. Their magic farty pants incorporate a layer of Zorflex, a microporous carbon-based material more commonly used in chemical warfare.
Maria Gurova

Meanwhile in the Future: Everybody Is Reviewed in a Reputation Database - 2 views

  • Recently, an app called Peeple got a whole lot of attention for trying to be the Yelp for Humans
  • But what would it be like if we lived in a world where everything you do is subject to a rating doled out by a combination of machines and other people?
  • Michael Fertik, the founder of Reputation.com and the author of the book The Reputation Economy, talks on the episode about all the ways that brands and companies are already compiling your information into a profile that helps them make decisions about you. Linkedin, AirBnB, Uber, they’re all gathering what Fertik calls your “digital exhaust” to learn more about you
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  • So what makes Peeple different from say AirBnB where you rate your tenants? Jeff Hancock, a professor of communications at Standford, says it comes down to turning your interpersonal relationships into transactions.
  • But in 15 or 20 years, all those reputation systems might be combined. And they might totally dictate your life: what jobs you get, what insurance you’re offered, who you date, where you live
  • Fertik predicts that in just five years, companies won’t post jobs, but rather plug in their desires into a database to find the right person. Jobs will come to you, he says. But part of that selection process will probably include parameters outside someone’s direct qualifications
  • If financial success, personal success, housing, food options, all that is tied into this reputation system, the people who have the understanding and the money to make that reputation system work for them will succeed
Maria Gurova

BBC - Future - Is e-waste an untapped treasure? - 0 views

  • Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem
  • Yet many are realising that the gadgets we chuck away can be ripped apart and transformed into something new – brand new technology, or even art.
  • In 2012, we discarded 48.9 million tonnes of electrical and electronic products. If current trends continue, by 2017, the annual amount of e-waste produced globally will reach 65.4 million tonnes – that’s roughly 20% of the weight of all the people living on Earth.
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  • Using parts and wires from old computers, scanners and photocopiers (some of it for free, but most bought), and an Arduino electronics card as the brain, they managed to put together a working prototype for a few hundred euros (see below).
  • “In Togo, there are many people who can’t have access to computers, because they don’t have money to buy a new computer,” says Allahare. “But we have many computers that are broken and not working. It’s sometimes just a little piece that is spoiled in it. W.Jies can help people get connected, get information, and help kids learn ICT from low-cost computers.”
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    in 2012 china alone produced 11.1 mlm tones of e-waste, what can be considered trash in one part of the world, can indeed become a treasure in the other part of the world
al_semenchenko

Gamasutra - Exploring a future of 'transmogrified reality' game design - 0 views

  • many developers are concerned about the dangers (physical, mental, or cultural) of asking their audiences to strap on a vision-obscuring headset for hours at a time. 
  • Long-time game designer and current Google game design chief Noah Falstein's personal favorite is "transmogrified reality" --  an approach to game design that relies on new 3D-sensing phones and tablets, combined with inexpensive head mounts, to seamlessly integrate the virtual with the real.
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    There are still many challenges for designers to adopt capabilities of VR and be able to deliver compelling product. One of the solutions requires much more than just a VR headset. Noah Falstein presents his concept of "transmogrified reality". An environment filled with various devices that work together to create new user interactions in VR-world that are not just possible, but also convenient.
Maria Gurova

The Movie Theater Of The Future Is All About Big Screens And Big Data - 2 views

  • With huge-flat screen TVs becoming more affordable — and more original TV content being produced — cinemas have to step up their game to keep pace in the arms race with home theaters. That’s why theater chains are coming out with better food, reclining chairs, and more supersized screens like Imax to take full advantage of the special effects in many tentpole blockbusters.
  • The theater, which opens to the public Friday night, now has a lobby that’s part of the show (and soon, a camera-based audience data gathering tool to go with it), and a cinema equipped with the showpiece Barco Escape, which combines three screens in a U-shaped pattern that gives the viewer almost a cockpit-type perspective of the action.
  • “The Maze Runner” and its sequel, “Maze Runner: Scorch Trials,” were the first — and only — two films with scenes optimized for Barco Escape, but with dozens of Imax films coming out every year, there needs to be a much broader pipeline of content to compete with other large format
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  • Hoddick said he wants to develop three additional films this year, then eight in 2017 and then 12 a year after that
  • The Barco Escape costs exhibitors $100,000 with an additional fee per movie.
  • there are currently 21 Barco Escape theaters in the world — 16 in the United States, two each in Europe and China, and one in Mexico.
  • the plan is to have more than 100 by the end of this year, and 1,000 within three to five years. Oh, and they want an additional 1,000 just in China, soon to be the world’s biggest movie market — and one where Imax is in the process of opening hundreds of its own screens
  • Hoddick said while Barco Escape is only for 2D films at this point, he imagines it’s only a matter of time before 3D comes to the platform
  • it’s currently about 4 percent more expensive to produce a movie for Barco Escape, because the work has to happen in post-production, Hoddick said new cameras from manufacturers including Sony that can film in the 7:1 aspect ratio necessary for the medium will slash costs significantly
  • the theater will soon install a camera-based surveillance system to analyze demographics and customize which “lobby dominations” go live — think superhero trailers going up when a crew of high school kids walks in
Maria Gurova

5 | 5 Visions For What Families Will Look Like In 2030 | Co.Exist | ideas + impact - 2 views

  • As more people move into cities, natural resources decline, climate change heats up, and the "sharing economy" continues to pick up steam, our notions of family will continue to shift.
  • five different types of families of the future: the Multi-Gens, the Silver Linings, Ruralites, the Tandem Tribe, and Modular Movers. The firm also work out how different brands might service each family type
  • The Multi-Gens are exactly what they sound like--multiple generations of families living together.
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  • with a "cloud-based family hub" that allows family members to divvy up chores and financial transactions
  • the local Marks & Spencer department store (this is the U.K., after all) has been converted into a combination cafe, store that both shares and rents items, and maker-space outfitted with the requisite 3-D printer
  • The Silver Linings families live in community-centric villages for active older people that offer amenities like yoga and fitness classes
  • The Ruralites are families living in rural areas that live at the cutting edge of technology--using 3-D printers to get replacement parts for household items and "video walls" to communicate with friends and family
  • Dragon Rouge refers to single parents sharing a family home as members of the Tandem Tribe. In this vision, energy and resources are tracked individually and a larger micro-community offers shared resources, including tools and vehicles.
  • Finally, there are the Modular Movers--professionals who hop from one megacity to the other, exploring the world while they work and opting to walk and use bikes whenever possible. Like some of the other family types, this group relies on shared resources and subscription plans.
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    what would families look like in 20 years
Maria Gurova

Research Says Screen Time Can Be Good For Your Kids - Forbes - 0 views

  • Still, most parenting wisdom continues to portray television as an evil mind-rotting demon. The fear of ‘screen time’ is so deeply ingrained in our collective imagination that an irrational opposition between outdoor play and media consumption is taken for granted. Many parents believe the choice is either/or: indoors or out.
  • most storytelling is interactive. We consume most of our media through internet connected devices. And technology is so adept at providing ‘adaptive feedback’ that it proves to be an exceptionally effective teaching tool. In fact, a recent SRI study shows that game based learning can boost cognitive learning for students sitting on the median by 12%.
  • Joint media engagement refers to spontaneous and designed experiences of people using media together, and can happen anywhere and at any time when there are multiple people interacting together with digital and traditional media.
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  • describes the rules and restrictions we put on screen time. Some of these restrictions limit time, other restrictions filter content.
  • Restrictive Mediation
  • Unlimited access to media becomes one of the markers of adulthood.
  • Instructive Mediation describes what happens when we talk to our kids while watching a movie or playing a video game with them. Make it a teaching opportunity
  • Instructive mediation is key for raising kids that are critical thinkers and intelligent adults in a media saturated world–kids who know how to THINK about the media they consume.
  • Social Coviewing is when you watch something with your kids but don’t necessarily talk about it. This is what happens in a movie theater.
  • This is what happens when I watch Phineas and Ferb with my kids.
  • Parallel play is kind of like multitasking. I can be typing on my Chromebook next to my son while he’s playing minecraft. We engage in peripheral conversations, some tangential, and some directly related to the game he is playing.
  • Asymmetrical joint media engagement
  • While interacting with me online, I hope they learn good web etiquette. I’m teaching them lessons about propriety and social media. They see the kinds of things I write in emails and chats.
Anna Dubinina

How robots will reshape the economy (based on U.S. example) - 0 views

  • Few doubt that our future — both immediate and long term — will be heavily impacted by robots
  • A pair of Oxford researchers recently estimated that 47 percent of the total U.S. employment is at risk of being eliminated.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, Mercedes announced it is trading out some of its production robots for human labor — the machines could not keep up with the increasing options for customization
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  • robots in the workplace will likely help reverse this trend.
  • The vast majority of automation technology will not outright replace humans; instead, it will simply make their work more efficient.
  • As the global supply chain matured, market pressures drove American companies to offshore their work to other countries that offered inexpensive labor
  • This is not to say that all white-collar workers should enroll in engineering night classes, but knowing how technology works at a base level will make you better at your job 
  • Employers need to actively promote training programs that empower employees to work more effectively with new tech.
alexbelov

How the internet is disrupting politics - Vox - 0 views

  • But thanks to the internet, that hasn't stopped Bernie Sanders from putting up a serious fight. He was able to leverage his online support to raise $73 million from 1 million donors in 2015 — most of whom gave small amounts. He raised another $20 million in January and $40 million in February, with an average contribution size of $27.
  • But one safe bet is that the media of the future will be even more decentralized than today's media. It will be easier than ever for voters dissatisfied with the status quo to find each other, organize, and back political outsiders willing to champion their concerns.
  • the political process finally feels the full impact of the internet revolution, it will be "more like a phase change than just an incremental shift." The Trump and Sanders campaigns might seem like a dramatic change from the status quo, but the internet's political revolution is just getting started.
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    Political campaigns become decentralised and independent of traditional media and elites. Candidates collect large sums online for their election campaigns, new channels, like social networks, allow them to gain support of the masses. The old media still works but its influence rapidly weakens.
Maria Gurova

Reinventing the company | The Economist - 2 views

  • Across industries, disrupters are reinventing how the business works. Less obvious, and just as important, they are also reinventing what it is to be a company.
  • The rise of big financial institutions (that hold about 70% of the value of America’s stockmarkets) has further weakened the link between the people who nominally own companies and the companies themselves.
  • The number of companies listed on America’s stock exchanges has fallen by half since 1996, partly because of consolidation, but also because talented managers would sooner stay private.
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  • Astute investors like Jorge Paulo Lemann, of 3G Capital, specialise in buying public companies and running them like private ones, with lean staffing and a focus on the long term.
  • But the most interesting alternative to public companies is a new breed of high-potential startups
  • The central difference lies in ownership: whereas nobody is sure who owns public companies, startups go to great lengths to define who owns what.
  • New companies also exploit new technology, which enables them to go global without being big themselves.
  • They can incorporate online for a few hundred dollars, raise money from crowdsourcing sites such as Kickstarter, hire programmers from Upwork, rent computer-processing power from Amazon, find manufacturers on Alibaba, arrange payments systems at Square, and immediately set about conquering the world.
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    The hot and innovative private startups challenge the existing corporate structures used in the public companies. in order to attract and hold the young talent public companies must adapt new organization structures and people management approaches. can private business change the notion of what is a corporation or are they simply not influential enough?
Maria Gurova

Virgin Galactic Wants to Fly You From LA to Tokyo (Through Space, In One Hour) | Mother... - 0 views

  • When Virgin Galactic finally takes its first tourists to space, it'll just be a a stepping stone to what the company's ultimate mission is: Flying people from one place on Earth to another place on Earth, just like any other airline. Except in this version, you'll travel through space and be able to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in an hour.
  • He's discussed creating a supersonic passenger plane himself, but why settle for an incremental change when, if it works, "point-to-point suborbital space transportation" promises to be a complete paradigm shift?
  • Virgin's daring, sometimes insane chairman Richard Branson has long had his eyes on a supersonic commercial airline
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  • The Concorde failed for a lot of reasons, not least of which the fact that it was very, very expensive. So far, hundreds of people  have shelled out $250,000 to take a quick suborbital spaceflight with Virgin Galactic, but are they going to be willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to save 12 hours flying halfway around the world?
Maria Gurova

YouTube's Grand Plan to Make VR Accessible to Everybody | WIRED - 0 views

  • Today, YouTube is unveiling 360-degree virtual reality videos and a virtual movie theater for all YouTube videos, available to anyone with a Google Cardboard headset. The goal is to “democratize virtual reality” and “bring VR to everybody
  • social network is now seeing 8 billion daily video views. Facebook itself recently debuted 360 video. And the social networking giant owns Oculus,
  • But Facebook, its biggest competitor, is rapidly encroaching on YouTube’s turf.
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  • expects that library of content to grow “very rapidly,” especially as the company works with YouTube creators to get more VR content up on the platform
  • According to Variety, these YouTube stars are even more influential among US teens than Hollywood celebrities.
  • The one stumbling block is that not that many people have the equipment to experience VR. Google says some 1 million folks already own the Cardboard viewer
  • it’s convenient that the company is launching these virtual reality features right before The New York Times ships 1.3 million Google Cardboard sets this weekend, as it debuts its new VR documentary, “The Displaced.”
alexbelov

Stae wants to prepare cities for the future | TechCrunch - 0 views

  • innovation is coming from private companies. These companies are starting to have better insights about how a city works compared to local governments.
  • Cities should be collecting all the data these companies are generating — Airbnb, Uber, drone delivery, Google self-driving cars. You can run analytics and look at the efficiency of the city
  • The startup is building a platform so that all the companies can send their data to this platform using an API approach.
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  • Stae is starting with a compliance and payment platform for the sharing economy. Stae wants to create an API that would let Airbnb seamlessly pay (for example) $.75 to the city for a one night stay
  • Boston is the first partner city to test the platform.
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    A NY startup is trying to build a platform that would collect data generated by a city to make the city smarter. The accumulated information will be used for making management decisions data-driven. They will start with providing payment platform to collect local taxes from cervices like Airbnb and Uber. The first city to take part in this experiment is Boston.
al_semenchenko

There Are Some Super Shady Things in Oculus Rift's Terms of Service - 1 views

  • If you create something with the Rift, the Terms of Service say that you surrender all rights to that work and that Oculus can use it whenever it wants
  • Oculus can collect data from you while you’re using the device
  • Furthermore, the information that they collect can be used to directly market products to you
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  • What’s most worrisome here is that the emergence of VR technology opens up an new type of data for companies to mine en masse which can be collected efficiently. The fact that Oculus, the clear leader in the new VR marketplace, is setting this precedent could be dangerous for the future of the technology.
  • the Oculus Rift is a device that is always on (much like Microsoft’s Xbox One Kinect feature) which leads to further concerns about when the information will be collected.
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    Oculus already gathering much more personal data than were possible before, and owns any UGC created with the help of Oculus.
alexbelov

The 10 skills you need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution | World Economic F... - 0 views

  • By 2020, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have brought us advanced robotics and autonomous transport, artificial intelligence and machine learning, advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics. These developments will transform the way we live, and the way we work. Some jobs will disappear, others will grow and jobs that don’t even exist today will become commonplace. What is certain is that the future workforce will need to align its skillset to keep pace.
  • Creativity will become one of the top three skills workers will need.
  • negotiation and flexibility are high on the list of skills
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  • Those working in sales and manufacturing will need new skills, such as technological literacy.
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    Technological change sets new requrements to people as some occupaitons become obsolete and others emerge. Tops skills in the next 5 years are: complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with others, emotional intelligence, judgement and decision making, service orientation, negotiation, cognitive flexibility.
Maria Gurova

How Flexible Hours Can Harm Employees As Much As It Helps Them | Fast Company | Busines... - 0 views

  • Employees love workplace flexibility, and employers should, too, since it's linked with increased productivity and higher job satisfaction.
  • Some new behavioral evidence suggests that some bosses will harbor biases against employees with flexible work schedules without even realizing it.
  • So in the eyes of a boss, a late-arriving worker may be no different from a bad worker
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  • All else being equal, supervisors gave employees with late start times lower performance ratings, as well as lower "conscientiousness" ratings, than workers who arrived early
anna_nelidova

Amazon challenges YouTube by offering uploaders a cut of the ads | The Verge - 1 views

  • Amazon is launching its new Amazon Video Direct service today to let video creators share any content and receive a cut of the revenue.
  • Amazon is offering a variety of ways for creators to earn money, including royalties through streaming by Prime members, and revenue sharing through rentals, purchases, subscriptions, and ad impressions.
  • Amazon has a variety of launch partners, including How Stuff Works, Mattel, The Guardian, and independent titles from Samuel Goldwyn Films.
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  • Amazon Video is still limited by its availability worldwide and how exactly it expands partners in the future.
  • Amazon Video is still only available in the US, Germany, Austria, UK, and Japan.
Maria Gurova

Developed world plays waiting game with mobile payments - FT.com - 0 views

  • High-profile mobile money launches by Apple and Samsung may have caught the headlines
  • But it is the developments in payments systems in supposedly less developed nations in Africa and Asia that point the way to the probable future for wider mobile banking.
  • the reality remains that the mobile phone as a means of payment remains relatively niche even in developed markets.
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  • But analysts anticipate a further shift as more financial services and greater interactivity are added, which is when mobile payments will become mobile banking.
  • In the UK, for example, just 1 per cent
  • the mobile phone is taking on extra roles as a place to keep money safe and move it around, as well as to acquire other financial services from trusted providers.
  • services are quickly expanding to include loan disbursement, bill payment and micro insurance.
  • In the next few years mobile banking apps will become the predominant means to access all routine banking services, from applying for a loan or overdraft increase to letting the bank know you are moving house
  • So while we are working closely with digital giants such as Apple, Samsung and Google to roll out their payment services, we’re also working with the banks to create their own payment functionality embedded within their existing hugely popular banking apps
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    The article is about a shifting consumer behaviour in mobile payments and that it's not driven by developed economies with the established finical systems but rather by the emerging regions, like Africa and Asia 
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