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After gaining attention from Neowin and DistroWatch last week, the sole maintainer behind AnduinOS 1.3 -- a Linux distribution styled to resemble Windows 11 -- decided to reveal himself. He turns out to be Anduin Xue, a Microsoft software engineer, who has been working on the project as a personal, non-commercial endeavor built on Ubuntu. Neowin reports: As a Software Engineer 2 at Microsoft (he doesn't work on Windows), Anduin Xue says he's financially stable and sees no need to commercialize AnduinOS. Explaining the financial aspects of the project, he said: "Many have asked why I don't accept donations, how I profit, and if I plan to commercialize AnduinOS. Truthfully, I haven't thoroughly considered these issues. It's not my main job, and I don't plan to rely on it for a living. Each month, I dedicate only a few hours to maintaining it. Perhaps in the future, I might consider providing enterprise solutions based on AnduinOS, but I won't compromise its original simplicity. It has always been about providing myself with a comfortably themed Ubuntu." In our coverage of the AnduinOS 1.3 release last week, one commenter pointed out that the distro is from China. For some, this will raise issues, but Anduin Xue addressed this in his blog post, too, saying that the source code is available to the public. For this reason, he told lacing the operating system with backdoors for the Chinese government would be "irrational and easily exposed." For those worried that the distribution may be abandoned, Anduin Xue said that he intends to continue supporting it and may even maintain it full-time if sponsorship or corporate cooperation emerges.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US Senate today voted along party lines to kill a Federal Communications Commission program to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, with Democrats saying the Republican-led vote will make it harder for kids without reliable Internet access to complete their homework. The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify the hotspot rule, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The program would be eliminated if the House version passes and President Trump signs the joint resolution of disapproval. The Rosenworcel FCC's rule expanded E-Rate, a Universal Service Fund program, allowing schools and libraries to use E-Rate funding to lend out Wi-Fi hotspots and services that could be used off-premises. The FCC rule was titled, "Addressing the Homework Gap through the E-Rate Program," and the hotspot lending program was scheduled to begin in funding year 2025, which starts in July 2025. Today's Senate vote on the resolution of disapproval was 50-38. There was a 53-47 vote on Tuesday that allowed the Senate measure to proceed to the final step. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said on Tuesday that "this resolution would prevent millions of students, educators, and families from getting online." Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) called the Republican move "a cruel and shortsighted decision that will widen the digital divide and rob kids of the tools they need to succeed."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: When Microsoft announced new Surface devices earlier this week, we noted that there wasn't a lot of daylight between the starting prices of the new but lower-end devices ($799 for the 12-inch Surface Pro, $899 for the 13-inch Surface Laptop) and the starting prices of the older-but-higher-end Surfaces from last spring ($999 for both). It appears Microsoft has quietly solved this problem by discontinuing the 256GB versions of the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 and the 13-inch Surface Pro 11. Microsoft's retail pages for both devices list only 512GB and 1TB configurations, with regular prices starting at $1,199. Though not technically a price hike -- the 512GB versions of both devices also cost $1,199 before -- it does amount to an effective price increase for last year's Surface hardware, especially given that both devices have user-replaceable storage that can easily be upgraded for less than the $200 that Microsoft charged for the 256GB-to-512GB upgrade. The upshot is that the new Surface PCs make more sense now than they did on Tuesday in relative terms, but it's only because you'll pay more to buy a Surface Pro 11 or Surface Laptop 7 than you would before. The 15-inch version of the Surface Laptop 7 still lists a 256GB configuration and a $1,299 starting price, but the 256GB models are currently out of stock.

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A Florida federal judge has dismissed the majority of claims against celebrities who endorsed Sam Bankman-Fried's now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Judge K. Michael Moore ruled that investors failed to demonstrate the high-profile endorsers -- including Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Kevin O'Leary, Larry David, Shohei Ohtani, and Stephen Curry -- knew about FTX's fraudulent activities. In his ruling, Moore wrote that while the celebrity endorsers may have been "uninformed, negligent, or even reckless," plaintiffs didn't adequately establish that defendants had "knowledge of FTX's fraud" or "the requisite intent to deceive and defraud investors."

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Wikipedia is taking legal action against the UK's new Online Safety Act regulations it says could threaten the safety of its volunteer editors and their ability to keep harmful content off the site. From a report: The Wikimedia Foundation -- the non-profit which supports the online encyclopaedia -- is seeking a judicial review of rules which could mean Wikipedia is subjected to the toughest duties required of websites under the act. Lead counsel Phil Bradley-Schmieg said it was "unfortunate that we must now defend the privacy and safety of Wikipedia's volunteer editors from flawed legislation." The government told the BBC it was committed to implementing the act but could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings. It's thought this is the first judicial review to be brought against the new online safety laws - albeit a narrow part of them - but experts say it may not be the last. "The Online Safety Act is vast in scope and incredibly complex," Ben Packer, a partner at law firm Linklaters, told the BBC. The law would inevitably have impacts on UK citizens' freedom of expression and other human rights, so as more of it comes into force "we can expect that more challenges may be forthcoming," he told the BBC.

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Plastic producers have pushed "advanced recycling" as a salve to the plastic waste crisis despite knowing for years that it is not a technically or economically feasible solution, a new report argues. The Guardian: Advanced recycling, also known as chemical recycling, refers to a variety of processes used to break plastics into their constituent molecules. The industry has increasingly promoted these technologies, as public concern about the environmental and health effects of plastic pollution has grown. Yet the rollout of these technologies has been plagued by problems, according to a new analysis from the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), a fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group. "The companies make it sound like it's pretty great, like it's something we should pursue," said Davis Allen, investigative researcher at the CCI and author of the report. "But they know the problems, the limitations." The new analysis follows a 2024 CCI report which alleged that plastic producers concealed the problems with traditional recycling, and argued that they could face legal ramifications for doing so. That earlier research was cited in a September lawsuit filed by California's attorney general, Rob Bonta, against ExxonMobil for its role in the plastic pollution crisis. "The new report focuses on this modern deception with advanced recycling, which has become a real focus for the industry in recent years," said Davis.

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Apple asked a judge to halt an order forcing it to give up control over App Store payments while it appeals the decision. From a report: In a filing on Wednesday, Apple says the order contains "extraordinary intrusions" that could result in "grave irreparable harm" to the company. Last week, California District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple was in "willful violation" of a 2021 injunction issued as part of the Epic Games v. Apple case. As a result, the judge ordered Apple to stop collecting an up to 27 percent commission on purchases made outside the App Store, and said the company can no longer restrict how developers point users toward external purchases.

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Switzerland will hold a national referendum on the introduction of electronic identity cards after opponents of the legislation secured enough signatures to force a public vote. The Federal Chancellery confirmed Wednesday that 55,344 valid signatures were submitted against the Federal Act on Electronic Identity passed last December. The proposed e-ID would enable citizens to apply online for criminal record extracts, driving licenses, and age verification when purchasing alcohol. This marks the second referendum on e-ID implementation, after voters rejected a previous version in 2021. The government has revised its approach, making the new system free, optional, and fully state-operated rather than privately managed. If approved, the e-ID would come into force no earlier than 2026, though the collection effort suggests privacy concerns remain paramount for many Swiss voters.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is aggressively promoting a future where AI becomes the dominant form of social interaction, claiming that AI friends, therapists, and business agents will soon outnumber human relationships. During a recent media blitz across multiple podcasts and a Stripe conference appearance, Zuckerberg cited statistics suggesting "the average American has fewer than three friends" while claiming people desire "meaningfully more, like 15 friends" -- positioning AI companions as the solution to this gap. The Meta founder's vision extends beyond casual interaction to therapeutic and commercial relationships, with personalized AI that "has a deep understanding of what's going on in this person's life." Meta has already deployed its AI across Instagram, Facebook, and Ray-Ban smart glasses, reaching nearly a billion monthly users.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: When the pandemic upended the world of higher education, Robin Pugh, a professor at City College of San Francisco, began to see one puzzling problem in her online courses: Not everyone was a real student. Of the 40 students enrolled in her popular introduction to real estate course, Pugh said she'd normally drop three to five from her roster who don't start the course or make contact with her at the start of the semester. But during the current spring semester, Pugh said that number more than doubled when she had to cut 11 students. It's a strange new reality that has left her baffled. "It's really unclear to me, and beyond the scope of my knowledge, how this is really happening," she said. "Is it organized crime? Is it something else? Everybody has lots of theories." Some of the disengaged students in Pugh's courses are what administrators and cybersecurity experts say are "ghost students," and they've been a growing problem for community colleges, particularly since the shift to online instruction during the pandemic. These "ghost students" are artificially intelligent agents or bots that pose as real students in order to steal millions of dollars of financial aid that could otherwise go to actual humans. And as colleges grapple with the problem, Pugh and her colleagues have been tasked with a new and "frustrating" task of weeding out these bots and trying to decide who's a real person. The process, she said, takes her focus off teaching the real students. "I am very intentional about having individualized interaction with all of my students as early as possible," Pugh said. "That included making phone calls to people, sending email messages, just a lot of reaching out individually to find out 'Are you just overwhelmed at work and haven't gotten around to starting the class yet? Or are you not a real person?'" Financial aid fraud is not new, but it's been on the rise in California's community colleges, Cal Matters reported, with scammers stealing more than $10 million in 2024, more than double the amount in 2023. Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, the president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges and a professor at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, said the bots have been enrolling in courses since around early 2021. "It's been going on for quite some time," she said. "I think the reason that you're hearing more about it is that it's getting harder and harder to combat or to deal with." A spokesperson for the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office estimates that 0.21% of the system's financial aid was fraudulently disbursed. However, the office was unable to estimate the percentage of fraudulent attempts attributed to bots.

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At its Config 2025 event on Wednesday, Figma unveiled four new AI-powered tools -- Sites, Make, Buzz, and Draw, positioning itself as a full-stack design platform to rival Adobe, WordPress, and Canva. These tools enable users to build websites, generate code, create marketing content, and design vector graphics without leaving the Figma ecosystem. The Verge reports: Figma's first solution is Figma Sites, a website builder that integrates with Figma Design and allows creators to turn their projects into live, functional sites. Figma Sites provides presets for layouts, blocks, templates, and interactions that aim to make building websites less complex and time-consuming. Additional components like custom animations can also be added either using existing code or by prompting Site's AI tool to generate new interaction codes via text descriptions, such as "animate the text to fall into place like a feather." Figma Sites is rolling out in beta for users with full seat access to Figma products. Figma says that AI code generation will be available "in the coming weeks," and that a CMS that allows designers to manage site content will be launched "later this year." Figma Make is Figma's take on AI coding tools like Google's Gemini Code Assist and Microsoft's GitHub Copilot. The prompt-to-code Figma Make tool is powered by Anthropic's Claude 3.7 model and can build working prototypes and apps based on descriptions or existing designs, such as creating a functional music player that displays a disc that spins when new tracks are played. Specific elements of working design, like text formatting and font style, can be manually edited or adjusted using additional AI prompts. Make is rolling out in beta for full seat Figma users. Figma says it's "exploring integrations with third parties and design systems" for Figma Make and may apply the tool to other apps within its design platform. Figma Buzz is a marketing-focused design app that's rolling out in beta to all users, and makes it easier for teams to publish brand content, similar to Canva's product design platform. The tool allows Figma designers to create brand-approved templates, styles, and assets that can be used by marketers to quickly assemble emails, social media posts, advertising, and more. Figma Buzz includes generative AI tools for making and editing images using text prompts, and can source information from spreadsheets to bulk create thousands of image assets at once. Lastly, the Figma Draw vector design app is like a simplified version of Adobe Illustrator that creatives can use to make custom visuals without leaving the Figma platform. It includes a variety of brushes, texture effects, and vector editing tools to create or adjust scalable images and logos for product design projects. Figma Draw is generally available now for full seat users as a toggle in Figma Design, with some features accessible in Sites, Slides, and Buzz. It's not quite as expansive as Adobe's wider Creative Cloud ecosystem, but Figma Draw places the two companies in direct competition for the first time since Adobe killed its own XD product design platform. It also brings some new options to the creative software industry after Adobe failed to acquire Figma for $20 billion due to pressure from competition regulators.

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sciencehabit shares a repot from Science.org: Scientists have captured fungal spores cruising in the inhospitable environment of the stratosphere, much higher than commercial aircraft fly. When brought back to the lab, the researchers found that some of the spores -- including pathogens of plants and people -- had survived intercontinental trips and could be cultured in the lab. Although spores and microbes have been detected in the stratosphere before, the new results come from a cheap, homespun sampling device dangled from weather balloons, the project could help researchers figure out what traits and conditions allow spores to survive a swing through the stratosphere and how they get up there in the first place. The work could also be a first step towards an atmospheric monitoring system that could nip emerging fungal pathogens in the bud, the study's authors reported at a conference of the European Geophysical Union. After five preliminary flights, the team has already learned a lot. Based on DNA sequencing analysis, they identified spores from 235 genera, including fungi that infect blackberries and carrots in the United States and Japan, and one species, Naganishia albida, that can make immunocompromised people sick. In the lab, they were able to revive and culture spores from 15 different fungal species, among them several plant pathogens. Mostly, the results show that their sampler works. Now, the researchers want to set up regular flights to track airborne fungal biodiversity and seasonal variations. They also want to identify how events such as wildfires or volcanic eruptions inject spores into the stratosphere.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Chris Pelkey was killed in a road rage shooting in Chandler, Arizona, in 2021. Three and a half years later, Pelkey appeared in an Arizona court to address his killer. Sort of. "To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances," says a video recording of Pelkey. "In another life, we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness, and a God who forgives. I always have, and I still do," Pelkey continues, wearing a grey baseball cap and sporting the same thick red and brown beard he wore in life. Pelkey was 37 years old, devoutly religious and an army combat veteran. Horcasitas shot Pelkey at a red light in 2021 after Pelkey exited his vehicle and walked back towards Horcasitas's car. Pelkey's appearance from beyond the grave was made possible by artificial intelligence in what could be the first use of AI to deliver a victim impact statement. Stacey Wales, Pelkey's sister, told local outlet ABC-15 that she had a recurring thought when gathering more than 40 impact statements from Chris's family and friends. "All I kept coming back to was, what would Chris say?" Wales said. [...] Wales and her husband fed an AI model videos and audio of Pelkey to try to come up with a rendering that would match the sentiments and thoughts of a still-alive Pelkey, something that Wales compared with a "Frankenstein of love" to local outlet Fox 10. Judge Todd Lang responded positively to the AI usage. Lang ultimately sentenced Horcasitas to 10 and a half years in prison on manslaughter charges. "I loved that AI, thank you for that. As angry as you are, as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness," Lang said. "I feel that that was genuine." Also in favor was Pelkey's brother John, who said that he felt "waves of healing" from seeing his brother's face, and believes that Chris would have forgiven his killer. "That was the man I knew," John said.

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Google has pushed back against Apple executive Eddy Cue's testimony that Safari searches declined last month, asserting it continues "to see overall query growth in Search" with "an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms." The statement comes as Apple's Senior VP revealed under oath that the company is "actively looking at" revamping Safari to focus on AI-powered search engines, potentially threatening the estimated $20 billion-a-year deal making Google the default search provider on Apple devices. Cue testified that AI search providers including OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic will "eventually replace standard search engines." Google, in its response, pointed to ongoing enhancements to its search product, noting users are "accessing it for new things and in new ways, whether from browsers or the Google app, using their voice or Google Lens."

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Google has partnered with Elementl Power to develop at least 600 MW of nuclear capacity at each of three planned sites. It's unknown where the three proposed sites will be located or how much Google is investing. World Nuclear News reports: The two companies will work "with utility and regulated power partners to identify and advance new projects" and Elementl "will continue the evaluation of potential technology, engineering, procurement and construction, and other project partners, while prioritising specific sites for accelerated development." Elementl Power, founded in 2022, describes itself as a technology-agnostic advanced nuclear project developer which aims to provide "turn-key development, financing and ownership solutions for customers that want access to clean baseload power but may not want to own or operate nuclear power assets." It says its mission is to "to deploy over 10 gigawatts of next-generation nuclear power in the US by 2035." It is not Google's first nuclear power deal -- in October 2024 the company signed an agreement with Kairos Power to purchase power from its fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature small modular reactors, with a fleet of up to 500 MW of capacity by 2035. The aim of the power purchase agreement was to facilitate Kairos Power to develop, construct, and operate plants and sell energy, ancillary services, and environmental attributes to Google. At the time of that announcement Google said that it would help it achieve net-zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030. Further reading: Google tries to greenwash massive AI energy consumption with another vague nuclear deal (The Register)

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According to Valve insider Tyler McVicker, Half-Life 3 is finally playable from start to finish and could be announced this summer, with a release as soon as winter 2025. Engadget reports: Besides McVicker's hours-long livestream, there have been other recent hints about Valve's progress on its highly anticipated title. In March, Valve concept artist Evgeniy Evstratiy claimed that he was in the room where Valve made Half-Life 3 on CG Voices Podcast. In the same month, another Valve leaker, Gabe Follower, claimed that Half-Life 3 would be the "end of Gordon's adventure," potentially signaling a non-cliffhanger ending to one of gaming's best franchises. Outside of these rumors, internet sleuths discovered code referencing HLX, which is widely thought to be the codename for Half-Life 3, in major updates to Deadlock and Dota 2.

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The Open Document Format reached its 20th anniversary on May 1, marking two decades since OASIS approved the XML-based standard originally developed by Sun Microsystems from StarOffice code. Even as the format has seen adoption by several governments including the UK, India, and Brazil, plus organizations like NATO, Microsoft Office's proprietary formats remain the de facto standard. Microsoft countered ODF by developing Office Open XML, eventually getting it standardized through Ecma International. "ODF is much more than a technical specification: it is a symbol of freedom of choice, support for interoperability and protection of users from the commercial strategies of Big Tech," said Eliane Domingos, Chair of the Document Foundation, which oversees LibreOffice -- a fork created after Oracle acquired Sun.

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Riot Games has reduced cheating in Valorant to under 1% of ranked games through its controversial kernel-level anti-cheat system Vanguard, according to the company's anti-cheat director Phillip Koskinas. The system enforces Windows security features like Trusted Platform Module and Secure Boot while preventing code execution in kernel memory. Beyond technical measures, Riot deploys undercover operatives who have infiltrated cheat development communities for years. "We've even gone as far as giving anti-cheat information to establish credibility," Koskinas told TechCrunch, describing how they target even "premium" cheats costing thousands of dollars. Riot faces increasingly sophisticated threats, including direct memory access attacks using specialized PCI Express hardware and screen reader cheats that use separate computers to analyze gameplay and control mouse movements. To combat repeat offenders, Vanguard fingerprints cheaters' hardware. Koskinas admits to deliberately slowing some enforcement: "To keep cheating dumb, we ban slower." The team also employs psychological warfare, publicly discrediting cheat developers and trolling known cheaters to undermine their credibility in gaming communities.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The European Union launched a drive on Monday to attract scientists and researchers to Europe with offers of grants and new policy plans, after the Trump administration froze U.S. government funding linked to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. "A few years ago, no one would have imagined that one of the biggest democracies in the world would cancel research programs under the pretext that the word diversity was in this program," French President Emmanuel Macron said at the "Choose Europe for Science" event in Paris. "No one would have thought that one of the biggest democracies in the world would delete with a stroke the ability of one researcher or another to obtain visas," Macron said. "But here we are." Taking the same stage at the Sorbonne University, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU's executive branch would set up a "super grant" program aimed at offering "a longer-term perspective to the very best" in the field. She said that 500 million euros ($566 million) will be put forward in 2025-2027 "to make Europe a magnet for researchers." It would be injected into the European Research Council, which already has a budget of more than 16 billion euros ($18 billion) for 2021-2027. Von der Leyen said that the 27-nation EU intends "to enshrine freedom of scientific research into law" with a new legal act. As "the threats rise across the world, Europe will not compromise on its principles," she said. Macron said that the French government would also soon make new proposals to beef up investment in science and research. [...] While not mentioning the Trump administration by name, von der Leyen said that it was "a gigantic miscalculation" to undermine free and open research. "We can all agree that science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity, no political party," she said. "We believe that diversity is an asset of humanity and the lifeblood of science. It is one of the most valuable global assets and it must be protected." Macron said that science and research must not "be based on the diktats of the few." Macron said that Europe "must become a refuge" for scientists and researchers, and he said to those who feel under threat elsewhere: "The message is simple. If you like freedom, come and help us to remain free, to do research here, to help us become better, to invest in our future." Further reading: 75% of Scientists in Nature Poll Weigh Leaving US NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider 'Scientific Exile'

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Hyundai Motor Group is accelerating its factory automation efforts by deploying Atlas humanoid robots from Boston Dynamics at its Metaplant America facility in Georgia, as part of a broader $21 billion U.S. investment strategy to boost efficiency and local production amid rising tariffs. InterestingEngineering reports: At Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, Hyundai already uses Spot robots -- four-legged machines -- for industrial inspections. In addition, the plant features a dedicated robot that removes car doors before the vehicles enter General Assembly, and a fixed robot that reinstalls the doors toward the end of the process -- a technology unique to the Georgia facility. The South Korean automaker has not disclosed how many Atlas robots will be deployed at the facility or what specific tasks they will perform. According to reports, the company plans to further expand the use of robots across its global manufacturing facilities, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency. [...] The automaker aims to manufacture 300,000 electric and hybrid vehicles annually at the new facility. At its recent Grand Opening Ceremony, the company announced plans to ramp up production to 500,000 units over time, without specifying a timeline.

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