Vue lecture

OpenAI May Have Accidentally Left a Trail to Astra’s “Mewfour” Codename

OpenAI’s Astra story just got more interesting. A previously circulating internal codename, “mewfour,” appears to have resurfaced in an unexpected place: OpenAI’s public Codex repository. The timing is what makes the discovery particularly intriguing. According to the evidence behind the claim, OpenAI removed references to “mewfour” from 52 pull requests on August 7, only about […]

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Windows 11’s Big Taskbar and Start Menu Upgrade Could Finally Arrive for Everyone

Microsoft appears to be getting ready to roll out one of the most welcome Windows 11 interface updates in years. After months of testing with Windows Insiders, the company is moving its redesigned Windows 11 Taskbar and Start menu closer to a public release. The latest developments suggest that users could start seeing these long-requested […]

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Ruka Studio’s TD-1 Vertical Turntable Turns Your Vinyl Collection Into Stunning Part of Your Room

For a very long time, the world was fixated on horizontal vinyl players that took up a premium space on a table. Just recently, the tide has started shifting in favor of vertical record players that are designed to stand out instead of blending in. The new entrant in the category already explored by designer Fatih Demirci, CoolGeek, and Dutch Hi-Fi maker Miniot, is Ruka Studio – a Los Angeles-based company that was founded in 2024.

Relatively new in its existence, Ruka makes its presence felt with the wealth of experience that forms the DNA of the brand. Reportedly, Ruka Studio was founded by a group of former Apple engineers and designers, so a high-end turntable with a premium finish would be a given. But that’s not where it’s stopping; the company has launched its first vertical turntable called the TD-1.

Designer: Ruka Studio

Designed as a turntable that mounts vertically on the wall, or stands upright on a floor stand, it becomes part of the room instead of taking over a table. The TD-1 can spin a vinyl record vertically, which is a treat to the eye and food for thought for your mind. The design is pretty seamless, and you’re left wondering how the giant disk is actually spinning without gravity acting upon it.

If you’re someone who holds your record collection dear and as a reflection of who you are. The TD-1 is conceived with the idea of enhancing that experience like no other has done before. Yes, there have been vertical record players we have seen in our time, but the Ruka’s model is a standout, thanks to its aluminum body and visibly enticing mechanical switches and knobs that turn and click to control playback, adjust the record’s rotational speed, and also to pair the device with a speaker system over Bluetooth. It also comes with wired output to connect with a hi-fi system.

When everyone is trying to integrate AI and convenient remote control via dedicated apps, the TD-1 remains as analog as the record playing was meant to be. The most it gets away from the analog commitment is to stream your vinyl records to a wireless Bluetooth speaker or compatible earbuds.

To make how it looks placed vertically more exciting, the TD-1 arrives with a rubber-coated magnetic plate that holds the record against the wall to appear as if it were floating in mid-air. To ensure you are not hassled with getting the placement straight, it comes with a built-in spirit level. The player features a swappable moving-magnet cartridge, which the company says should allow users to select the cartridge they want, of course for an additional cost from the device itself. The TD-1 turntable itself is belt-drive. The motor has been de-coupled from the acrylic platter to minimize vibration, ensuring smoother and quieter playback.

Ruka Studio TD-1 is available to preorder now starting at a reserve price of $100 on the company’s website. It is priced at $1,399, and preordered models are expected to ship in 2027. The $100 credit is fully refundable or will be adjusted in the final price when a device is shipped.

The post Ruka Studio’s TD-1 Vertical Turntable Turns Your Vinyl Collection Into Stunning Part of Your Room first appeared on Yanko Design.

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The 5 Best Outdoor Gear of August 2026

August outdoor gear doesn’t get the editorial runway of spring launches or the pre-holiday push. That’s what makes it honest. The products landing in late summer have already been through a season of real conditions and arrive in the lineup on merit rather than timing. This month’s five picks cover the full range of what a serious outdoor day demands: shelter, light, cooking, carry, and sound. Each one addresses a problem its category had been handling adequately for years, then makes adequately feel like the wrong standard to have accepted.

What connects all five is a refusal to inherit the category’s old logic. A jacket that transforms into a tent. A flashlight built around actual daily carry. A backpack that zips apart into three genuinely usable bags. A speaker shaped like a jerry can, with 300 watts and a guitar input. A grill plate that reconfigures to the meal. August’s best gear doesn’t announce itself. It earns its place quietly, trip after trip.

1. Shelter Wear

Yoon Myat Su Lin designed Shelter Wear from a specific memory. The Tokyo-based fashion student experienced an earthquake in Myanmar and watched people left without temporary shelter in the critical hours before help arrived. That moment produced a single design question: what if the garment you were already wearing could become what you needed most? At first glance, the answer looks like structured techwear outerwear with a high protective collar and a silhouette that works as well in a city as on a trail.

The transformation is the design. Unclip a series of buckles, unfold the panelling, and the garment expands into a triangular tent that forms shelter around the wearer. The detachable sleeves double as backpacks before becoming structural components of the form. Ripstop materials and engineered fasteners hold the system together under real conditions, a claim validated by the YKK Special Prize at the 25th YKK Fastening Award. For anyone spending time in unpredictable terrain, Shelter Wear removes the gap between what you’re wearing and what you need.

What we like

  • The garment-to-tent transformation addresses emergency shelter at the level of what you’re already wearing, not what you remembered to pack separately
  • The YKK Special Prize validates the mechanical integrity of the fastening system well beyond the concept stage

What we dislike

  • Currently a student concept design, with production availability and final manufacturing specifications unconfirmed
  • The techwear silhouette reads as urban and may not suit every outdoor environment or wearer preference

2. CasaBeam Everyday Flashlight

Most outdoor flashlights are built around a peak performance scenario: maximum output, maximum throw, maximum everything. The CasaBeam starts from the opposite end of that thinking. The “everyday” in its name is a design commitment, not a marketing qualifier. It’s sized and weighted for the person who carries their light not only on planned trail days but on every day between them, because those are often the moments that actually test whether your gear kept its promise.

That daily carry philosophy changes how the object performs for you. The pocketable form means it’s already on your person when you need it, not sitting in a pack you didn’t bring. The beam handles close-range campsite tasks and longer throws without demanding a deliberate mode change between them. For a flashlight that lives in your pocket rather than your kit bag, that standard matters every time you reach for it.

Click Here to Buy Now: $50.00

What we like

  • Sized and weighted for genuine daily carry, not just the planned outdoor days when remembering a flashlight is already obvious
  • The pocketable form keeps it accessible in the unplanned moments that a pack-stored light consistently misses

What we dislike

  • The everyday carry positioning means it isn’t optimized for the peak-output demands of technical night hiking

3. Modevo Trio

Man in a beige jacket and sunglasses walks along a sunlit urban street, carrying a large blue-and-black hiking backpack.

The design insight behind the Modevo Trio is one most bag companies avoid: a single pack that tries to be everything ends up the wrong thing across multiple scenarios. Onli Travel built the system in reverse, designing each of the three components as a genuinely usable standalone bag first, then engineering the connection points between them. The Core Pack is a 28-liter travel backpack with a clamshell opening and a functioning hip belt. The Link works as a briefcase or shoulder bag. The Go Daypack expands from 12 to 27 liters on its own.

Put all three together, and you get 58 to 73 liters of carry. Separate them mid-trip and each piece performs without producing a compromise product. Bluesign and OEKO-TEX certified water-resistant fabric with YKK zippers throughout reflects the build standard expected from a fourth-generation design. At $224 for the full Trio, it’s a considered purchase. For outdoor days that move between activities, the Modevo removes the most persistent pack complaint: that you brought the right bag for the first half of the day and the wrong one for the second.

What we like

  • Each component was designed as a standalone first, so separating the system mid-trip never produces a bag that only exists as a leftover from the combined configuration
  • Bluesign and OEKO-TEX certified fabric with YKK zippers reflects independently verified material and construction standards rather than self-reported claims

What we dislike

  • At $224 for the full Trio, the investment requires genuine confidence in modular carry as a system before committing
  • Three-bag systems introduce the real possibility of leaving one component behind when packing quickly or in low light

4. Jerry Can Speaker

The Ultimea Go looks exactly like a jerry can. Not a loose visual reference or a softened modern take on the form: a full commitment to the fuel container silhouette, boxy proportions, handle and all. The design misdirection is deliberate, and it lands. Under that shell, dual 5-inch woofers, dual 3-inch full-range drivers, and a 1-inch tweeter deliver 300 watts of peak output through 360° omnidirectional sound that radiates in all directions rather than projecting from a single face, which matters when a crowd is gathered around it.

The guitar input is what makes this genuinely useful for you rather than just visually interesting. Two microphone inputs and direct instrument connection turn it from a passive playback device into something you can plug a guitar into at a campsite or a backyard set. Auracast support syncs up to 100 devices simultaneously without the timing offsets that come with daisy-chaining. Sixteen hours of battery and IPX4 water resistance keep it running through a full outdoor day without requiring repositioning or supervision.

What we like

  • Guitar and microphone inputs transform it from a playback device into one a musician can plug directly into on a campsite, which no comparable outdoor speaker in this class offers
  • Sixteen hours of battery and IPX4 water resistance handle a full outdoor day without monitoring, repositioning, or an overnight charge between uses

What we dislike

  • The full-commitment jerry can form is a deliberate design statement that won’t suit every camp aesthetic or setting
  • At 300W peak output, the power draw requires a reliable source, which adds planning for longer off-grid trips

5. Compact Modular Grill Plate

Most camp cooking surfaces commit you to a single method before you’ve decided what you’re making. The Compact Modular Grill Plate works differently. The modular design lets the surface be configured around the meal rather than the other way around, so the same piece of gear that handles a morning sear handles an evening cook without requiring a second surface in the pack. That kind of adaptability usually arrives with a bulk penalty. This one resolves the trade-off rather than asking you to live with it.

The compact form changes what you’re willing to bring on shorter trips. When cooking gear is bulky, it gets left behind. When it packs flat and reconfigures at the campsite, it earns a permanent slot in the kit. For camp cooking that doesn’t require a second thought about space, this is the surface that justifies its place on the first trip and holds it on every one that follows.

Click Here to Buy Now: $100.00

What we like

  • Modular configuration adapts to different cooking requirements without adding a second surface or additional weight to the pack
  • Compact form removes the space calculation that causes most camp cooking gear to get left at home on shorter trips

What we dislike

  • Modular systems require all components to be present and accounted for before setup, which adds a pre-trip organization step
  • Still requires a separate heat source, making it a cooking surface rather than a self-contained cooking system

The Gear Holds

The five products in August’s lineup cover every stage of a serious outdoor day. What connects them is a refusal to accept the performance floor their categories had settled on. The Shelter Wear asks why clothing stopped at decoration. The Modevo Trio asks why a single bag has to make compromises. Each product arrived here by questioning something the outdoor gear world had quietly stopped questioning, and all five are better for it.

Gear that earns long-term trust doesn’t announce itself on the first trip. It builds that trust through every trip that follows, quietly removing the small calculations and compromises that average equipment leaves behind. Take these five picks into real conditions, and the design decisions behind each one become self-evident in the best possible way. August’s outdoor gear doesn’t need a seasonal hook to justify it. It just needs the chance to perform.

The post The 5 Best Outdoor Gear of August 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

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Droplet Finally Built the Audio Amplifier for Your Home Fragrance

Home fragrance, for the most part, has been a market of compromises. Scented candles are warm and atmospheric but burn through a fragrance’s more delicate top notes in the process, gone with the smoke. Reed diffusers take a gentler approach but dilute the oil with water, delivering something noticeably thinner than what was originally intended. Neither gives much meaningful control over how much scent actually fills a space.

Droplet’s Scent Amplifier takes a fundamentally different approach, one that borrows more from audio than from aromatherapy. The idea is to treat scent the way a good amplifier treats sound: amplify it faithfully without altering what’s already there. Instead of heat or water, the device uses pressurized air to atomize neat fragrance oil into micro-particles, so what reaches you is the fragrance exactly as it was composed.

Designer: Droplet

That analogy isn’t just conceptual; the physical form carries it well, too. The Scent Amplifier is built around a walnut-toned wooden base, with a hand-blown crystal glass vessel sitting on top that’s shaped much like a vintage light bulb. A single oxidized silver dial handles all the control. When switched on, the base emits a warm, tungsten-like glow that rounds out the valve-amp look completely.

Unlike most home-fragrance gadgets that quietly get shuffled out of sight, this one’s meant to be displayed. Droplet designed it to sit in a living space as a sculptural object rather than pass as a functional appliance. And it holds up to that treatment. It has the quiet confidence of something that belongs in a room rather than something that just happens to be sitting in one.

Using it is simple enough. Fill the glass vessel with oil, turn the dial to the preferred level, and the device handles the rest. It diffuses fragrance for three minutes, rests for two, and repeats, keeping the scent consistent rather than releasing it all at once. Only four to six drops are needed for an average-sized room, and a 10ml bottle lasts roughly a month.

On a full USB-C charge, it runs for up to 15 hours of cordless diffusion, which means it isn’t tied to a wall socket or any fixed spot. That’s a more practical detail than it might seem. You can move it to the bedroom before winding down for the night, or take it out of the study when you’re done working, without losing anything.

The six fragrance oils that pair with it were developed in Grasse, France, essentially the historical heartland of perfumery. The range covers floral, fruity, citrus, earthy, and woody profiles, each tied to a specific place in the world. You can go from fig leaf and cedarwood to orange blossom and tuberose, or something brighter like wild berry and bergamot, without much fuss. All six are vegan and cruelty-free.

The glass vessel is refillable, and switching between scents takes under a minute with no residue left behind. The Scent Amplifier costs £80 on its own, with the full six-oil set running £125. That’s not bad for something that does away with all the usual trade-offs, keeps the fragrance pure, and looks good enough on a sideboard that you’d actually want to leave it out.

The post Droplet Finally Built the Audio Amplifier for Your Home Fragrance first appeared on Yanko Design.

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Un script pour virer les produits sponsorisés d'Amazon

Allez, on va faire un jeu. Cherchez un disque dur externe sur Amazon et regardez où pointe le premier lien de la page. Bingo, ça part sur une adresse en /sspa/click, autrement dit un emplacement publicitaire. Et c'est pas le mieux noté, c'est pas le moins cher, non, c'est juste celui qui a payé le plus pour être là.

Et moi, ce qui me saoule vraiment, c'est que les filtres n'y peuvent rien.

Pour remédier à cela il faut sortir l'artillerie. J'ai d'abord pensé à faire un filtre uBlock Origin, puis à me coder une extension Firefox, avant de me rappeler que Tampermonkey tournait déjà dans mon navigateur.

Direction le repo Greasy Fork, donc, où traîne un script qui fait exactement ça . Une cinquantaine de règles CSS, qui dégagent du DOM les résultats sponsorisés de la recherche, les carrousels promo, les encarts publicitaires de la fiche produit, l'upsell Prime et les bannières de marque.

On passe ainsi de ça :

À ça :

Et ça fonctionne super sur toutes les versions d'Amazon, y compris Amazon.fr.

Trois réglages attendent dans le menu du gestionnaire de scripts. Un compteur qui affiche en bas de page ce qui a été retiré et pourquoi, une journalisation console pour les curieux, et une option qui redirige les pages de navigation vers la vraie liste de résultats.

Attention quand même à ce qui saute en plus des pubs. Le bloc "Les gens qui ont acheté ça, ont aussi acheté ça". Le script s'attaque aussi à Rufus, l'assistant d'achat maison et côté installation, il vous faut Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey ou Greasemonkey. Sur Firefox, ça s'arrête là. Par contre sur Chrome, depuis la version 138, il faut en plus activer un switch "Allow User Scripts" sur la fiche de l'extension, coupé par défaut sur toute extension fraîchement installée.

Voilà, j'espère que ça vous aidera à avoir un Amazon un peu plus propre. Maintenant, n'oubliez pas, Amazon, c'est le mal, donc si vous avez les moyens de payer 2x plus cher la même chose et que vous aimez passer votre vie dans les transports ou en bagnole à faire une espèce de chasse au trésor à travers toute la ville, pour trouver le produit qu'il vous faut, le mieux reste encore et toujours d'acheter dans des magasins physiques. Lol.

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PureMac - Faites un grand ménage sur votre Mac, gratuitement

Vous glissez une app dans la corbeille du Mac, elle disparaît du dossier Applications, et vous pensez que c'est réglé ? Que vous êtes naïfs ! Hé oui, ce que vous ne savez pas, c'est que ses préférences, ses caches et son container restent bien présent dans votre ~/Library, parfois pendant des années, encombrant votre espace disque pour rien.

Hé bien s'occuper de tout ce merdier, c'est le job de PureMac , une app native codée en SwiftUI qui piste ces fichiers-là pour libérer des ressources sur votre mac. Elle croise l'identifiant du bundle, celui de l'équipe de développement, les entitlements et les métadonnées Spotlight, selon trois niveaux d'agressivité en fonction de ce que vous voulez ratisser.

Elle sait aussi prendre le problème dans l'autre sens puisque son chercheur de fichiers orphelins parcourt ~/Library pour retrouver les restes d'applications que vous avez virées il y a trois ans et dont plus rien ne vous rappelle l'existence.

Et si vous développez, il y a de quoi récupérer bien plus de place avec les DerivedData, les runtimes de simulateur Xcode, les couches Docker, les caches npm, yarn, pnpm et Homebrew. Bon, ça vous savez déjà le faire avec docker system prune, deux ou trois autres commandes, ou avec Mole en ligne de commande dont je vous ai déjà parlé. Mais l'intérêt ici, c'est de tout voir d'un coup avant d'arbitrer.

Côté données, il n'y a rien à surveiller puisque PureMac n'embarque aucune télémétrie ni appel réseau. Et la licence, c'est du 100% licence MIT, là où d'autres outils similaires comme Pearcleaner ajoute une Commons Clause qui en interdit la revente, que AppCleaner, lui, s'arrête à la désinstallation, ou encore que CleanMyMac nécessite d'acheter une licence.

Pour le faire tourner, il vous faut macOS 13 au minimum, et ça s'installe en une ligne avec brew install --cask puremac. Sinon, il y a un .dmg signé et notarisé à récupérer directement.

Par contre, sachez que ça réclame le l'accès complet au disque, soit la permission la plus large que macOS distribue, et il ne garde aucun journal des chemins qu'il a supprimés. Surtout que quand un fichier est supprimé, il l'est pour de bon, donc vérifiez bien les choses avant de les supprimer.

Le nettoyeur de caches, est également une opération sans retour. Alors pour un cache ça n'a pas d'importance, puisqu'il se régénèrera tout seul. Mais pour un reste dans ~/Library qui contenait, j'sais pas, par exemple une licence, un wallet crypto ou vos réglages, c'est une autre affaire.

Donc soyez TRÈS prudent et lisez bien les chemins d'accès vers les fichiers avant de cliquer pour les supprimer, histoire de pas faire de conneries.

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Montez votre premier cyberdeck à l'aide de ce PDF gratuit

Je suis trop content, le numéro d'août du magazine officiel Raspberry Pi est sorti avec un dossier spécial cyberdeck en couverture, et ses 132 pages sont téléchargeables gratuitement en PDF.

Un cyberdeck, si ça ne vous dit rien, c'est un ordinateur portable bricolé à la main. Petit écran, clavier physique, look cyberpunk assumé. On fabrique la machine que le commerce ne vend pas, pour un usage qui n'appartient qu'à soi. J'en ai déjà montré un y'a pas longtemps, même si faut encore voir ce que ça donne une fois posé sur un bureau.

Le dossier de Raspberry Pi Magazine en aligne une dizaine. Un Amstrad PPC 640 de 1987 vidé de ses entrailles pour loger un Raspberry Pi 3 et une appli de narration qui se déclenche à l'insertion d'une disquette. Une machine à écrire Smith Corona de 1989 refaite à neuf autour d'un Raspberry Pi 4. Un sac à dos qui trimballe un labo mobile, radio logicielle et outils Kali Linux...etc. Y'a de quoi faire !

On y croise aussi un Hackberry Pi monté en outil de pentest, une pochette rose façon clutch avec un Pi Model A+, et le PiDex Doomsday Companion, caisse étanche à panneau solaire qui embarque Wikipedia sur clé USB.

Vient ensuite le montage pas à pas. Brian Corteil y déroule la construction d'une machine logée dans une valise étanche de type Pelican (lien affilié), avec un Raspberry Pi 5, un écran tactile 7 pouces, un clavier Bluetooth, une carte son USB et une batterie LiPo protégée par un fusible.

Et rassurez-vous, le tuto ne se contente pas d'aligner des références à commander sur Amazon... Non, il détaille même le calcul d'alimentation à faire à la main, I = P/V, soit 28 W et environ 5,6 A pour un Pi 5 et son écran à pleine luminosité. Il conseille également de prototyper en carton votre cyberdeck avant de vous lancer dans la CAO, et préfère un power bank au LiPo pour ceux qui ne veulent pas jouer avec les batteries (BOUM !).

Pour récupérer le fichier PDF du magazine, le lien passe d'abord par une page de don. Si vous êtes un gros radin, le bouton No thanks, take me to the free PDF déclenchera quand même le téléchargement sans compte ni adresse mail. C'est en anglais bien sûr et pour ceux qui aiment le toucher du papier, l'édition physique coûte 7,99 livres.

Ah et le contenu est sous licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0, sauf mention contraire. Amusez-vous bien !!

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33 secondes pour lancer un MP3 ? C'est pas VLC, c'est Windows Defender

Hé oui, ENCORE LUI !!

Jonathan Blow, le développeur de Braid et de The Witness, a annoncé hier (le 12 août) sur X qu'il laissait tomber VLC... La raison c'est 33 putain de secondes d'attente entre un clic sur un fichier MP3 et le début de la lecture, sous Windows (évidement). C'est vrai qu'une demi-minute pour lancer un son sur une machine récente, c'est abusé ! Du coup, il est repassé au bon vieux lecteur multimédia de Microsoft.

Son point de vue c'est que "tout un secteur du logiciel open source est dans un état franchement embarrassant" dès qu'il s'agit de tourner Windows. Je peux pas lui donner tord, c'est vrai que le ralentissement est réel sous Windows 11, sans qu'on sache vraiment pourquoi...

Mais heureusement, la réponse de VideoLAN ne s'est pas faite attendre et a replacer correctement le débat. Pour l'équipe de VLC, la lenteur vient d'un bug de Microsoft Defender arrivé avec une mise à jour de Windows 11, qui a mis le cache de plugins de VLC en quarantaine. L'antivirus maison de Windows a donc classé comme suspect, puis mis de côté, un fichier que VLC génère lui-même. VideoLAN écrit qu'il s'est retrouvé là "comme par magie".

Pour remettre VLC d'aplomb, VideoLAN propose donc de réinstaller le logiciel ou de régénérer ce cache. Mais pas besoin d'aller jusqu'à la réinstallation, puisque l'installeur Windows officiel dispose déjà d'un raccourci qu'il faut dans le dossier VideoLAN du menu Démarrer, "VLC media player - reset preferences and cache files".

Ce raccourci lance vlc.exe avec les deux options de remise à zéro, la configuration et le cache de plugins, puis referme aussitôt le lecteur. Ça devrait faire le taf même si attention, vos préférences partent aux chiottes avec le reste, donc si vous avez bricolé vos réglages de sortie audio, vos raccourcis clavier ou vos sous-titres, vous les perdrez. Mais ensuite, le cache, lui, se reconstruira au lancement suivant.

Après régénérer le cache n'empêche pas Defender de le rechoper par la suite. L'autre option, c'est donc d'exclure une bonne fois pour toutes vlc.exe de la liste d'analyse de l'antivirus.

Bref, ce genre de faux positif n'est pas nouveau chez Windows Defender, qui y'a pas longtemps a même pris des certificats DigiCert pour un cheval de Troie, sans parler des ISO Linux qui se font flagger régulièrement .

Voilà, hormis la comm de VLC pour le moment, personne n'a encore publié de détails techniques, et Microsoft n'a rien dit.

Source

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