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Weekly News: Artificial Intelligence, Minecrafting the Real World

IT news

Since 2018, the Generative Design in Minecraft (GDMC) competition challenges participants to push the limits of artificial intelligence and come up with realistic cities from scratch.

If you are unfamiliar with Minecraft (I doubt it), the cube-based video game lets players build all sorts of structures with almost absolute freedom. In other words, cubic freedom.

Participants must leverage a combination of various Artificial Intelligence techniques in Minecraft to level terrain, build roads and bridges and erect buildings. It is a very complex task involving everything from path-finding algorithms to machine learning, but it’s starting to come together. 

Surely the technology is still years away, but it looks like city planners and designers will soon have a new digital partner for their construction projects.

Your future apartment building might well be designed by an AI architect. At least parts of it.

Racist Artificial Intelligence strikes again

And speaking of artificial intelligence I, yet another poorly trained algorithm has put yet another Internet giant in serious trouble. This time it was Twitter’s turn. 

Have you ever wondered how the platform decides what parts of a picture to crop in preview mode? It is, of course, an image-cropping algorithm. Using a combination of tools, Twitter tries to prioritise faces and text, unless your face is black. 

Ironically, the issue was discovered when a PhD student was trying to tweet about another racially-biased algorithm he had encountered on Zoom. The videoconferencing service had erased the image of his black colleague after failing to recognise his face. Twitter decided that wasn’t enough and erased his colleague from the screen capture too. 

Although the company was quick to apologise for not testing the algorithm thoroughly enough, Twitter feeds quickly filled up with people doing experiments to test the flaw. Some even tried posting images of differently coloured dogs. 

Time for lessons to be learnt.

Announcements from Microsoft Ignite

Microsoft has kickstarted its annual Ignite user-focused conference by announcing a series of additions to its cloud and productivity portfolios. 

Teams is getting new security and compliance-related features, as well as a suite of new tools to help companies better support remote workers. The latter are mainly data insights to assess the overall wellbeing of employees, made available to users and managers to help them improve productivity and reduce burnout.

The company has also teased Virtual Commute, an upcoming Teams functionality aimed at helping workers unwind after a long day of work. Hmm, how about not being on Teams after working hours to start with?

Plans to expand Azure Stack’s hybrid cloud capabilities have also been announced. The platform lets businesses run public cloud-like workloads within on-premise data centres. Users will be now able to run and deploy containerized applications on the setup, while the Azure Stack Hub will incorporate GPU support for broader machine learning capabilities. 

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Weekly News: Fishing for Data & Data Storage

Weekly News: Fishing for Data & Data Storage
Fishing for Data, data storage, data center, AI, cloud gaming and DevOps, discover latest news with Mission Control Center by Mindquest.

Fishing for Data, cloud storage, data center, AI, cloud gaming and DevOps, discover latest news with Mission Control Center by Mindquest.

Data storage & Liquid cooling

Some weeks ago we learnt how a future where cloud gaming was the norm could see emissions rise by 30%. 

Maintaining a data centre and a data storage is a costly endeavour. Especially because of how much power is devoted to cooling the hardware. But Microsoft has a solution. 

Earlier this week, the company retrieved a cylinder-shaped data centre it had sunk off the Scotland coast two years ago. Albeit covered by algae and barnacles,; the data centre is in perfect working order and has in fact proven to be more reliable and efficient than traditional server rack environments. 

Researchers attribute the positive results to a combination of less human interaction and cooler temperatures; as well as to the nitrogen that was used for ventilation instead of the usual oxygen. Which reduces corrosion.

Although one could wonder how an ocean floor full of servers would affect global water temperatures. 

BBC

Snakeoil sellers beware

And speaking of AI…

An international coalition of medical experts has introduced the world’s first standards for clinical trials involving artificial intelligence. 

The standards, which were published on Nature Medicine and The Lancet, are aimed at tackling the current hype around AI and preventing interested parties from leveraging the media attention to sell dubious research.

The move comes at a time when the entire world is laser-focused on Covid vaccine clinical trials. An area in which AI can help speed up things immensely. Applied wrongly, however, the technology could endanger millions of people.  

MIT Technology Review

DevOps: the future of the enterprise

In an interview with SiliconANGLE, Gene Kim, the DevOps guru behind books like “The Phoenix Project” stressed how vital DevOps is to the future of the enterprise. 

At a time when ensuring effective data storage, management and analytics is so pressing, businesses are prioritising developer operations to make informed business decisions.

Kim argues that DevOps not only helps organisations’ bottom line; it is the new bottom line.

A focus on empowering developers, Kim says, will undoubtedly reward companies with unprecedented freedom and agility.

SiliconANGLE

Discover our article: The IT Jobs Market of Today

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Weekly News: IT Professionals Feeling Confident Lately

IT professionals feeling confident
IT professionals feeling confident

A renewed sense of confidence for IT professionals

A new report from SolarWinds suggests that IT professionals are feeling more confident during the pandemic. Thus, according to the survey, tech experts admit to having been more proactive in bringing new ideas to the table and taking on a bigger role.

Also, experts believe this newfound confidence is the result of IT pros being used to sudden shifts and unexpected situations – a quality that has helped them ride the Covid-19 wave as opposed to being swept by it.

IT has been pivotal to business resilience during this unprecedented crisis, elevating tech experts within their organisations and putting them closer to the decision-making process. 

Luckily, it looks like things will stay this way.

ITProPortal

IT professionals: Bye to VS Codespaces and Flash Player

Microsoft has decided to end Visual Studio Codespaces (formerly known as Visual Studio Online). The cloud-based development environment will then be merged with GitHub’s version of the same product.

Microsoft’s move comes after some developers expressed confusion between the two nearly-identical products. Unfortunately for developers, there is currently no way to migrate existing projects from one platform to the other. 

The company has also warned businesses to get ready for the end of Adobe Flash Player support. Microsoft and Adobe first announced the phase-out of the popular internet media player in 2017. From January 21, Flash will be disabled in both IE 11 and Microsft Edge browsers.

ZDNet / TechRepublic

IT professionals: IT jobs are booming in the UK

IT professionals are feeling more confident so that the government-funded think tank Tech Nation reports a 36% increase in tech vacancies between June and August. 

The sector is experiencing a fast recovery compared to other industries, with 90,000 new jobs being advertised every week across the UK. 

The most sought-after skills identified in the report include:

  • Engineering
  • .net
  • Javascript
  • Java
  • C++
  • Data
  • SQL
  • Python
  • Amazon Web Service
  • Client

CBR

C++ just got an A+

Tiobe Software’s latest Programming Community index points at a revival of C++. 

The 35-year-old language is the fastest growing language in terms of popularity, while C tops the list of most used languages.  

Experts at the company believe the new C++20 standard is responsible for the recent uptick, moreover, the standard includes a new modules feature which replaces the infamous include mechanism function.

Other languages gaining popularity are R and C#, whereas Java has experienced a drop compared to last year.  

ADT Mag

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Weekly News: The Best Language for Economic Research

Weekly News: The Best Language for Economic Research
Python, Matlab, Julia -- R. Who would win the battle of the best language for economic research? Hint: the winner has a woman's name.

The Best Language for Economic Research

Python, Matlab, Julia — R. Who would win the battle of the best language for Economic research? That’s probably one of the most common online queries in the programming world. There is just something about humans and our obsession with chasing the very best of the best. 

Discover Python Projects to Try – From Beginner to Advanced

In reality, of course, each language has its nuances and areas in which it shines. Anyone claiming to have a definitive answer on the matter should come up with some solid arguments to back their verdict.

And that’s exactly what two London School of Economics researchers did. They looked at different languages based on the power of available libraries, the speed and possibilities when handling large datasets, and the speed and ease-of-use for a computationally intensive task.

Hint: the winner has a woman’s name.

Thanks, but no thanks

That’s the polite version of what UK students were shouting in front of the Department of Education over a week ago. The cause of their anger was an algorithm.  

University admission exams had been cancelled because of the pandemic. Teachers proposed predicting their student’s scores as a way to compromise. The education department dismissed the idea on the grounds that previous research had proved such estimates to be biased. Instead, they decided to use an algorithm.  

Well, that one turned out to be even more biased. Close to 40% of students received lower grades than what their teachers had predicted, potentially harming their chances to get into their university of choice. Those in working-class and disadvantaged communities were disproportionately affected.

The issue has now been fixed, but it’s a textbook examples of the dangers of AI bias.

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How To Learn Python With Rune

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Weekly News: Your Phone is an Earthquake Detector

Weekly News: Your Phone is an Earthquake Detector
If you are one of the 2.5 billion Android device users out there, you now have a new conversation topic. Yes, your phone is an Earthquake Detector soon...

If you are one of the 2.5 billion Android device users out there, you now have a brand new conversation topic. Soon your phone will be part of a worldwide earthquake detection network. Yes, your phone is an Earthquake Detector soon…

Also discover our article: Weekly News: Robot Butlers and Virtual Influencers

Your Phone is an Earthquake Detector

While using smartphone sensors to build an okay seismometer app is nothing new, Google has a better idea: integrating it into the phone’s operating system directly. 

All devices running Android 5.0 and up will get the new feature through a Google Play Services update, essentially becoming decentralised tremor-monitoring stations that one day will help detect earthquakes early on and warn users. 

For now, Google plans on collecting data for a while to fine-tune the system before rolling out proactive alerts. But don’t worry. You can opt-out of the service via your phone’s settings. Although most people won’t even know it is there.

Toshiba-bye

Thirty-five years after debuting its first laptop, the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba announced it is abandoning the portable PC market. 

The entire PC hardware market, in fact. In 2018, Toshiba had already sold most of its PC business to Sharp, the same buyer this time around. 

The decision comes as the company announced its first quarterly losses in 4 years and officially marks the end of an era in laptop history. 

Toshiba laptops reached their heyday in the 1990s, when they came to dominate the global market. They started losing ground in the late 2000s after an industry shift towards more attractive designs and more powerful machines   

A good reminder of how important it is to adapt and keep innovating.

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Weekly News: The Two-Faced Approach to Regulating Big Tech

Weekly News: The Two-Faced Approach to Regulating Big Tech
Regulating Big Tech. The popular video app TikTok has been making headlines.The reasons behind its quick ascend to fame are a no-brainer.

The Two-Faced Approach to Regulating Big Tech; why ransomware attacks keep on happening ; and how VR could change real estate.

The Two-Faced Approach to Regulating Big Tech

Regulating Big Tech. Big The popular Chinese short-form video app TikTok has been making headlines since its origins back in 2018. The reasons behind its quick ascend to fame are a no-brainer. 

TikTok lets anyone produce and edit videos effortlessly, and is powered by an incredibly effective recommendations algorithm that makes scrolling down its feed highly addictive. 

The platform has also become a meeting place for younger generations that had so far eluded traditional social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. And brands love that.

Given its huge monetization potential, then, it’s no surprise that TikTok’s has also attracted the attention of powerful interests. For good and for ill.

After threatening to ban the app under suspicions of Chinese-sponsored espionage, the U.S. government –and Trump– had a new message: 

It’s okay as long as Microsoft buys TikTok’s U.S. business before mid-September. Oh, and the government should get a cut of the benefits. 

Only that now it appears that Microsoft might want to buy TikTok’s entire global business.

The new episode of this serialised drama comes just a week after Big Tech leaders appeared before U.S. Congress to defend themselves against accusations of monopoly and unfair competition. Now one big tech company might get even larger.    

Whatever it takes to win a trade war and fatten the national coffers.

And that’s why ransomware attacks keep on happening

This past month has been a busy one for cybersecurity. 

First Twitter got hacked by what turned out to be an amateur group of teenagers. Then the smartwatch maker Garmin was knocked out by a ransomware attack that kept its services down for days. 

Well, new information emerged this week suggesting that Garmin paid a multi-million dollar ransom in exchange for a decryption key to recover its files. 

Garmin would have supposedly made the payment through an intermediary, Arete IR, which provides ransomware negotiation services. 

A great ending for EvilCorp, the Russian hacking organisation thought to be behind the attack. Or maybe not? 

In fact, Arete IR claims that WastedLocker, the ransomware strain used in this occasion, is not consistent with the Russian group’s modus operandi. Another player might be responsible.

Whoever is the real culprit,  the fact that a large multinational company like Garmin has opted to pay the ransom sets a dangerous precedent in the fight against cybercrime. 

No wonder these attacks keep on happening.

Also read our Weekly News: A Ransomware Attack, Self-Taught Robots and Online Abuse: The Week in Tech News

How VR could change real estate

Taking a virtual reality tour of a new apartment or office is nothing new. The technology has existed for some time now. They were simply not that many incentives to make it a widespread thing. 

With the pandemic, however, shopping for a home without leaving the sofa has acquired more of an appeal. Especially considering that lockdown has left many hungry for a change of scenery. 

Too much time trapped in between four walls tends to make you want to at least change those for walls. 

Although, as the BBC shows in an article published this week, the number of apartment offerings that incorporate a VR tour option remains marginal, things are quickly picking up pace.

The property listing company Zoopla says the coronavirus crisis has tripled the number of virtual viewings for new properties. 

This goes in line with developers and the broader real estate industry, which for years now have been allocating a part of the construction budget of new buildings to developing a VR experience. 

There’s only one big caveat: visiting an apartment in this manner requires you to have a VR headset at home, and they are expensive. At least for now.

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Weekly News: Tracking Down the Untrackable

Weekly News: Tracking Down the Untrackable
Tracking down the untrackable; News Windows virtual desktop features,; How old is an old dev; Confronting the new data reality... Discover the weekly Tech & IT news.

Tracking down the untrackable; News Windows virtual desktop features,; How old is an old dev; Confronting the new data reality… Discover the weekly Tech & IT news.

Tracking Down the Untrackable

What can be worse than crushing your personal record and not being able to brag about it to your friends online? 

Well, how about, for example, a ransomware attack.

If you are a fitness lover or know someone who fits into this category, chances are you have already heard about the Garmin hack. 

The American GPS and smartwatch maker was down for almost three days, its data and services held hostage for a ransom of $10m. As a result, users were unable to sync their devices with Garmin’s ecosystem of apps. 

Evil Corp, a Russian hacking group behind a recent string of attacks on U.S. companies, is thought to be responsible for the incident.

Discover our interview: A Career in Data Science: Unlocking The Power of Data with AI

New Windows Virtual Desktop features

With the current pandemic, being able to deliver a secure Windows 10 desktop experience to remote workers has become a must for many companies. 

First introduced under public preview, the Virtual Desktop updates are now generally available. 

The new, now-polished features include:

  • Azure portal integration and role-based access control (RBAC)
  • Scalable user management via the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
  • Monitoring logs now stored in Azure, for quicker troubleshooting and analysis
  • A/V redirect for Microsoft Teams
New Windows Virtual Desktop features

How old is an old dev?

Unfortunately, age discrimination remains an issue in most industries and professions. 

Whereas experience was once unanimously revered and treasured, our fast-paced society often tends to see older professionals as necessarily outdated. Rather than being the exception, IT is one of those areas in which the gap is even wider. 

In a short paper published earlier this year, software engineering students went through popular online articles and related discussions on Hacker News to analyze how the media portrays the employability of older developers. 

“Too old to be a developer” seems to be a common theme.

Discover our interview: How To Code Well: Taking Breaks and Other Pieces of Timeless Career Advice

How old is an old dev?

Confronting the new data reality

European data watchdogs aren’t wasting any time. 

Shortly after the European Court of Justice stroke down the Private Shield dataflow agreement between the U.S. and the E.U., the European Data Protection Board warned there will be no regulatory grace period.  

Companies relying on the cross-Atlantic flow of data to conduct operations and sell products and services will have to adapt; and fast.

Confronting the new data reality

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Weekly News: A Look at Diversity in Tech

Weekly News: A Look at Diversity in Tech
Regarding diversity in IT, there is much work left to be done. Let's start by tracking these numbers more consistently with our weekly news.

As the Black Lives Matter movement swipes through the globe with renewed strength, it’s time for communities and sectors of activity of all sorts to carry out an honest self-assessment. IT is no exception. Let’s talk about diversity in Tech.

Computerworld looked at census and tech-sector data of a few major Western countries to see how they are doing in terms of ethnic diversity in IT. Spoiler alert: not well at all.

Unfortunately, only a handful of countries track industry-specific ethnic diversity, which complicated the analysis. Of those who do (U.K., U.S. and New Zealand), none comes even close to having an equitable ethnic representation in tech.

The Western IT industry remains disproportionately white, particularly at the managerial level. Workers with Asian ancestry come in second place, but way beyond. 

Much work left to be done. Let’s start by tracking these numbers more consistently.

Diversity in Tech: What’s all that AR buzz about?

Rumours and whispers suggest that Apple will soon introduce its own version of the ill-fated Google Glass. 

The company has spent the last few years making several advancements and acquisitions in augmented reality (AR) and supporting technologies like Lidar. 

Yes, the Google Glass failed strepitously, but Apple has a good track record when it comes to making a new product an indispensable part of everyone’s life — remember the first iPhone? 

With AR seemingly about to become more of a real thing, one might wonder what exactly can be done with it. Especially in business. Here are some examples.

diversity in tech

Closing the data tap

Last week, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled to invalidate the E.U.- U.S. Privacy Shield agreement for data sharing over concerns around privacy and extreme surveillance practices.

The court’s decision threatens to interrupt the free flow of data between the two regions, which serves as the basis for much of today’s digital trade an economic activity. 

A myriad of solutions including Gmail, Zoom calls and CRM systems are all enabled by Privacy Shield. Furthermore, many businesses across Europe trust their data and workloads to U.S. cloud services like AWS and Microsoft Azure. 

But tech giants and the enterprise world are not the only ones that stand to lose much. Thanks to Brexit, U.K. players might see access to E.U. data restricted as well. They can, after all, end up shipping it across the Atlantic anyway.

diversity in tech

The impact of COVID-19 on enterprise IT

A new Forrester report has identified 5 trends that outline the effect that the pandemic will have on technology and business in the short, medium and long term.

The biggest shifts will involve: 

  • Safety and convenience influencing future customer expectations
  • Businesses leveraging digital engagement to create hybrid experiences
  • Firms and governments investing in a new workplace model
  • Companies doubling down on digital transformation
  • Business resiliency becoming a key competitive advantage
diversity in tech

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Weekly News: A Difficult Relationship With 5G

Weekly News: A Difficult Relationship With 5G
IT news

How is the relationship with 5G? Outlandish theories were spreading like wildfire across the U.K. at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. 

In a sudden burst of technological ignorance, a few conspiracy-lovers set out to destroy the country’s newly deployed 5G towers. The technology was, of course, behind the mysterious disease. 

Since then, the relationship with 5G is difficult, anti-5G sentiment has grown around the globe, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Only that the U.K. has another major problem with 5G: China. Following raising internal pressure and sanctions by Washington, the British government has banned sales of Huawei’s 5G kit starting January. Network providers will also have to abandon all already-purchased Huawei 5G tech by 2027.

Meant at addressing national security concerns, the decision is likely to delay the U.K.’s 5G rollout by 2 to 3 years. 

Big ‘oops’ from Twitter

No one is safe from cyberattacks. Not even Twitter. 

The company’s IT, PR and legal departments sure had one hell of a day yesterday after news emerged of a high-profile breach involving major firms and public figures. Apple, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Kanye West. 

It all started when their accounts starting posting invitations to participate in a lucrative Bitcoin scam with a simple message: send 1.000 dollars to this account, and you will get double in return. 

While Twitter blames the breach on a coordinated social engineering attack against its employees, other sources point at a rogue employee who might have helped hackers get inside access.

relationship with 5G

Remote work is here to stay

Newsflash — Gartner survey confirms the writing on the wall: remote work is part of the new normal. 

A sweeping 82% of business leaders are planning on allowing at least some level of remote work moving forward, even after the pandemic is over. 

\Nearly half of companies (47%) will allow employees to work remotely full time, while 43% of respondents are aiming for a flexible week schedule. 

This new set-up highlights the necessary transformation of the CIO role. IT leaders will now have a bigger role within organisations, leading the construction of stronger cloud collaboration environments and helping maintain a cohesive remote corporate culture.

relationship with 5G

The AI bandwagon

53% of global tech and business leaders invested more than $20 million in AI and related talent in the past year, according to a report by Deloitte.  

Although the majority of respondents believe AI will significantly transform their industry in the next 3 years, only 47% of them consider they have a sufficiently skilled AI workforce. 

Ethical concerns, data privacy/regulations and AI failure are among the top concerns keeping executives up at night. 

relationship with 5G

Also discover our weekly news: Eco data centers, a Microsoft hack and the EU’s digital sovereignty

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Weekly News: How Tech Is Rewiring our Brains

Weekly News: How Tech Is Rewiring our Brains
Our brain is being rewired, pushed towards shorter attention spans and shallower forms of reading by feeds and visuals. How Tech is rewiring our brains?

How Tech is rewiring our brains, a few bumps on the road for data science, new AI beats historic videogame trap; and the newest new Internet… Discover our weekly news about Tech & IT.

How Tech Is Rewiring our Brains – ‘We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.’

How Tech is rewiring our brains?

‘We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.’ Often mistakenly attributed to the philosopher Marshall McLuhan, this quote by John Culkin has become a symbol of the symbiotic relationship between humans and tech. 

Science writer Nicholas Carr took the concept to a new level in his 2010 book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to our Brains. It was not that well-received at the time. But with every new app that changes the way we communicate and consume information, it gets clearer how relevant Carr’s work was and remains. 

In the book, Carr leaves moral judgements aside and urges us to approach technology from a position of understanding. 

Our brain is being rewired, pushed towards shorter attention spans and shallower forms of reading by feeds and visuals. Only by being aware of these effects, we will be able to stay in control.

Ten years after the book’s publication, Vox’s Ezra Klein sits down with Carr to discuss where we stand today. 

An interview worth checking out.

A few bumps on the road for data science

A new report by software provider Aanaconda sheds some light on the current state of data science and its role in the enterprise. Far from being a consolidated part of today’s business world, the discipline has yet to overcome a few key challenges before reaching maturity. 

Problems demonstrating ROI across the organisation. Difficulty integrating open-source tools. Attracting and retaining top talent. Tackling AI bias and ethics — quite the line-up. 

Thankfully, the report also provides specific recommendations on how to overcome these challenges. Taking a look at them won’t hurt.

New AI beats historic videogame trap

First released in 1979, Zork set a new standard for interactive, story-driven videogames. Rich in storytelling and equipped with advanced language syntax recognition, this text-based adventure prompted players to input actions at every step. 

Now, a new AI built by Georgia Tech and Microsoft Research has become the first to overcome one of the game’s most iconic bottlenecks (i.e. times where players tend to get trapped and die).

Named Q*BERT, the AI leverages NLP and reinforcement learning to avoid getting eaten by a ‘Grue’ monster whenever it moves without any lights around the game’s dungeons.

Also read our article: The Task of Rebuilding AI Infrastructure: Machines and the New Reality

The newest new Internet

Blockchain-powered Dfinity proposes a decentralized and non-proprietary type of network that takes the power away from existing monopolies. 

It does this by allowing for apps to be built and run on the network itself, rather than exist in data centres that are increasingly controlled by large companies like Facebook and Amazon.

This so-called ‘Internet Computer’ is now open to third-party developers and entrepreneurs in a bid to spur a new era of connectivity and development. 

Dfinity launched a privacy-friendly version of TikTok named CanCan to illustrate the platform’s power. Thanks to its architecture, the app is said to do in 1,000 lines of code what Facebook does in 62 million.

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