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  1. Responsible Inventing

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    I finally understand why Rambaldi may have hidden so many inventions.

    Forecast

    When you invent something, you should forecast the impact of your invention in the current cultural (social, political, economic, belief systems) context, and if it

    • poses non trivial existential risk
    • or is likely to cause more harm than good

    Shoulds

    Then you should stop, and:

    1. encrypt your work for a potentially better future context
    2. or destroy your notes, ideally in a way that minimizes risk of detection of their deliberate destruction
    3. and avoid any or any detectable use of your invention, because even the mere use of it may provide enough information for someone else to reinvent it who may not be as responsible.

    In Addition

    Insights and new knowledge are included in this meaning of “invention” and the guidance above.

    Forecasting should consider both whether your invention could directly cause risk or more harm, or if it could be incorporated as a building block with other (perhaps yet to be invented) technologies to create risk or more harm.

    Instead

    Instead of continuing work on such inventions, shift your focus to:

    1. work on other inventions
    2. and document & understand how & why that current cultural context would contribute to existential risk or more harm than good
    3. and work to improve, evolve that cultural context to reduce or eliminate its contribution to existential risk, and or its aspects that would (or already do) cause more harm than good

    Da Vinci

    The Should (1) provides a plausible explanation for why Da Vinci “encrypted” his writings in mirror script, deliberately making it difficult for others to read (and thus remember or reproduce). Per Should (2) he also wrote in paper mediums of the time that were all destroyable, and he may have been successful in destroying without detection, since no one has found any evidence thereof, although such a lack of evidence is purely circumstantial and he may just as likely never destroyed any invention notes.

    Methods & Precautions

    Learning from Da Vinci’s example within the context of the Shoulds, we can infer additional methods and precautions to take when developing inventions:

    • do not write initial invention notes where others (people or bots) may read them (e.g. most online services) because their ability to transcribe or make copies prevents Should (2). Instead use something like paper notes which can presumably be shredded or burned if necessary, or keep your notes in your head.
    • do not use bound notebooks for initial invention notes because tearing out a page to destroy may be detectable by the bound remains left behind. instead use individual sheets of paper organized into folders. perhaps eventually bind your papers into a notebook. Which apparently Da Vinci did!
      “These notebooks – originally loose papers of different types and sizes…”
    • consider developing a simple unique cipher you can actively use when writing which will at least inconvenience, reduce, or slow the readability of your notes. even better if you can develop a steganographic cipher, where an obvious reading of your invention writings provides a plausible but alternative meaning, thus hiding your actual invention writings in plain sight.

    Dream

    Many of these insights came to me in a dream this morning, so clearly that I immediately wrote them down upon waking up, and continued writing extrapolations from the initial insights.

    Additional Reading

    After writing down the above while it (and subsequent thoughts & deductions) were fresh in mind, and typing it up, I did a web search for “responsible inventing” for prior similar, related, or possibly of interest works and found:

    Invent The Future

    While this post encourages forecasting and other methods for avoiding unintended harmful impacts of inventions, I want to close by placing those precautions within an active positive context.

    I believe it is the ultimate responsibility of an inventor to contribute, encourage, and actively create a positive vision of the future through their inventions. As Alan Kay said:

    “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

    Comments

    Comments curated from replies on personal sites and federated replies that include thoughts, questions, and related reading that contribute to the primary topic of the article.

    1. Crul at :

      Also related: Paul Virilio's concept of "The integral accident": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Virilio#The_integral_accident

    2. Roma Komarov at :

      If some invention can pose a risk, should it be treated as a vulnerability?

      Destroying/delaying an invention, in this case, could lead to it being re-invented and exploited in a different, less responsible, place.

      Obviously, it doesn't mean that invention should be unleashed. But if it poses a risk, wouldn't it be more responsible to work on finding a way to minimize it, and, ideally, not alone?

      There is probably no one good answer, and each case will be different.

    3. Lewis Cowles at :

      I am unsure if it is always practical or possible, for an inventor to understand all the characteristics of their inventions and their impact beyond a very slim set of hops.

      If things go well, I believe inventors can "believe their own hype", because they are human.

      Questions:
      Is it a free pass if you make something awful and can't take it back?
      Would that make Ignorance a virtue?

      This opens up many more problems, for both creators, and broader society.

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  2. Finished my second Broken Arrow #Skyrace 23k¹ yesterday in 6:52:44! #RingDasBell

    This year’s #BrokenArrowSkyrace² 23k was actually that distance! I ran 23.3km with 4557' vertical climb! In contrast, last year’s "23k" race³ was rerouted (due to weather conditions) last minute to two laps of the 11k course, where my actual distance was 18.87km with 4905' vert.

    I have been looking forward to this all year, to climbing the infamous "Stairway to Heaven" ladder to the top of Washeshu Peak (8885'/2692m elevation) for the first time (since last years’s race had to skip it).

    This year’s Broken Arrow is the start of the Mountain Running World Cup. It’s a rare sports event opportunity to compete with the best in the sport, to literally run the same trails they do, on the same day, with the same start (there are no waves), and finish line.

    Lots to write-up, for now, I’m grateful for the experience and accomplishment.

    Super grateful for everyone who came out to cheer and especially my coach whose training and guidance got me here.

    A few notes:

    Great lining up with so many friends.

    Hot day. Filled my ice bandana at the first aid station (Snow King) which made the rest possible.

    Steady hydration & fueling.

    Fueling timeline notes (times are my H:MM race clock times from the start)

    0:00 start
    1:45 ate Picky Bar
    2:00 finished Tailwind in 500ml bottle
    2:08 Snow King aid station, refilled bottles one with water and the other with mandarin Tailwind, filled ice bandana with ice, picked up a few Spring Energy gels
    3:15 ate Awesome Sauce gel
    3:45 ate Awesome Sauce gel
    ~4:30 left Siberia aid station with refilled ice bandana, bottles, a few Spring Snacks, ate potato chips, a watermelon slice, salt+nuun add to one water bottle, mandarin Tailwind in the other
    5:05 ate Awesome Sauce gel
    5:35 (-13:39) left Julia aid station with another Spring Energy gel
    6:03 ate Awesome Sauce gel
    6:52:44 finish

    Lots of incredible views along the way. The air was clean and quite breathable even nearing 9000'. Felt a bit slower but kept going within my capacity.

    Kept an eye on the time remaining before cut-off compared to my distance and vert climbing remaining and pushed steadily when I could.

    Finished with just over 7 minutes to spare before the official cut-off, to friends cheering on all sides. Saw and hugged my coach after ringing the bell at the finish.

    What an experience.

    #BrokenArrowSkyrace #trailRace #trailRun #trailRunner #runner #running #trailRunning

    ¹ https://www.brokenarrowskyrace.com/23k
    ² https://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=106489
    ³ https://tantek.com/2023/178/t1/june-trailrunner-ultrarunner
    https://worldathletics.org/news/preview/mountain-running-world-cup-2024-opens-broken-arrow

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  3. Happy 12 years of https://indieweb.org/POSSE #POSSE and
    19 years of https://microformats.org/ #microformats! (as of yesterday, the 20th)

    A few highlights from the past year:

    POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) has grown steadily as a common practice in the #IndieWeb community, personal sites, CMSs (like Withknown, which itself reached 10 years in May!), and services (like https://micro.blog and Bridgy) for over a decade.

    In its 12th year, POSSE broke through to broader technology press and adoption beyond the community. For example:

    * David Pierce’s (@pierce@mas.to) excellent article @TheVerge.com (@verge@mastodon.social): “The poster’s guide to the internet of the future” (https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon):
      “Your post appears natively on all of those platforms, typically with some kind of link back to your blog. And your blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet.
    Done right, POSSE is the best of all posting worlds.”

    * David also recorded a 29 minute podcast on POSSE with some great interviews: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-posters-guide-to-the-new-internet/id430333725?i=1000632256014

    * Cory Doctorow (@craphound.com @doctorow@mamot.fr) declared in his Pluralistic blog (@pluralistic.net @pluralistic@mamot.fr) post: “Vice surrenders” (https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/):
      “This is the moment for POSSE (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere [sic]), a strategy that sees social media as a strategy for bringing readers to channels that you control”

    * And none other than Molly White (@mollywhite.net @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io) of @web3isgoinggreat.com (@web3isgreat@indieweb.social) built, deployed, and started actively using her own POSSE setup as described in her post titled “POSSE” (https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/202403091817) to:
      "… write posts in the microblog and automatically crosspost them to Twitter/Mastodon/Bluesky, while keeping the original post on my site."
     
    Congrats Molly and well done!


    In its 19th year, the microformats formal #microformats2 syntax and popular vocabularies h-card, h-entry, and h-feed, kept growing across IndieWeb (micro)blogging services and software like CMSs & SSGs both for publishing, and richer peer-to-peer social web interactions via #Webmention.

    Beyond the IndieWeb, the rel=me microformat, AKA #relMe, continues to be adopted by services to support #distributed #verification, such as these in the past year:

    * Meta Platforms #Threads user profile "Link" field¹
    * #Letterboxd user profile website field²


    For both POSSE and microformats, there is always more we can do to improve their techniques, technologies, and tools to help people own their content and identities online, while staying connected to friends across the web.

    Got suggestions for this coming year? Join us in chat:
    * https://chat.indieweb.org/dev
    * https://chat.indieweb.org/microformats
    for discussions about POSSE and microformats, respectively.


    Previously: https://tantek.com/2023/171/t1/anniversaries-microformats-posse


    This is post 15 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

    https://tantek.com/2024/151/t1/minimum-interesting-service-worker
    https://tantek.com/2024/237/t1/people-over-protocols-platforms


    Post glossary:

    Bridgy
      https://brid.gy/ and https://fed.brid.gy/ for direct federation instead of POSSE
    CMS
      https://indieweb.org/CMS
    h-card
      https://microformats.org/wiki/h-card
    h-entry
      https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
    h-feed
      https://microformats.org/wiki/h-feed
    microformats2 syntax
      https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats2-parsing
    rel-me
      https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me
    SSG
      https://indieweb.org/SSG
    Webmention
      https://indieweb.org/Webmention
    Withknown
      https://indieweb.org/Known


    References:

    ¹ https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
    ² https://indieweb.org/rel-me#Letterboxd

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  4. Yesterday I proposed the idea of a “minimum interesting service worker” that could provide a link (or links) to archives or mirrors when your site was unavailable as one possible solution to the desire to make personal #indieweb sites more reliable by providing at least a user path to “soft repair” links to your site that may otherwise seem broken.

    Minimum because it only requires two files and one line of script in site footer template, and interesting because it provides both a novel user benefit and personal site publisher benefits.

    The idea occurred to me during an informal coffee chat over Zoom with a couple of other Indieweb community folks yesterday, and afterwards I braindumped a bit into the IndieWeb Developers Chat channel¹. Figured it was worth writing up rather than waiting to implement it.

    Basic idea:

    You have a service worker (and “offline” HTML page) on your personal site, installed from any page on your site, that all it does is cache the offline page, and on future requests to your site checks to see if the requested page is available, and if so serves it, otherwise it displays your offline page with a “site appears to be unreachable” message that a lot of service workers provide, AND provides an algorithmically constructed link to the page on an archive (e.g. Internet Archive) or static mirror of your site (typically at another domain).

    This is minimal because it requires only two files: your service worker (a JS file) and your offline page (a minimal self-contained static HTML file with inline CSS). Doable in <1k bytes of code, with no additional local caching or storage requirements, thus a negligible impact on site visitors (likely less than the cookies that major sites store).

    User benefit:

    If someone has ever visited your personal site, then in the future whenever they click a link to your pages or posts, if your site/domain is unavailable for any reason, then the reader would see a notice (from your offline page) and a link to view an archive/mirror copy instead, thus providing a one-click ability for the reader to “soft-repair” any otherwise apparently broken links to your site.

    Personal site publisher benefits:

    Having such a service worker that automatically provides your readers links to where they can view your content on an archive or mirror means you can go on vacation or otherwise step away from your personal site, knowing that if it does go down, (at least prior) site visitors will still have a way to click-through and view your published content.

    Additional enhancements:

    Ideally any archive or mirror copies would use rel=canonical to link back to the page on your domain, so any crawlers or search engines could automatically prefer your original page, or browsers could offer the user a choice to “View original”. You can do that by including a rel=canonical link in all your original pages, so when they are archived or mirrored, those copies automatically include a rel=canonical link back to your original page or post.

    The simplest implementation would be to ping the Internet Archive to save² your page or post upon publishing it. You could also add code to your site to explicitly generate a static mirror of your pages, perhaps with an SSG or crawler like Spiderpig, to a GitHub repo, which is then auto-served as GitHub static pages, perhaps on its own domain yet at the same paths as your original pages (to make it trivial to generate such mirror links automatically).

    If you’re using links to the Internet Archive, you can generate them automatically by prefixing your page URL with https://web.archive.org/web/*/ e.g. this post:

    https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://tantek.com/2024/151/t1/minimum-interesting-service-worker

    Possible generic library:

    It may be possible to write this minimum interesting service worker (e.g. misv.js) as a generic (rather than site-specific) service worker that literally anyone with a personal site could “install” as is (a JS file, an HTML file, and a one-line script tag in their site-wide footer) and it would figure everything out from the context it is running in, unchanged (zero configuration necessary).


    This is post 14 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

    https://tantek.com/2024/072/t1/created-at-indiewebcamp-brighton
    https://tantek.com/2024/173/t1/years-posse-microformats-adoption


    Post glossary:

    GitHub static pages
      https://indieweb.org/GitHub_Pages
    HTML
      https://indieweb.org/HTML
    JS
      https://indieweb.org/js
    rel-canonical
      https://indieweb.org/rel-canonical
    service worker
      https://indieweb.org/service_worker
    Spiderpig
      https://indieweb.org/Spiderpig
    SSG
      https://indieweb.org/SSG

     
    References:

    ¹ https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2024-05-29#t1717006352142600
    ² https://indieweb.org/Internet_Archive#Trigger_an_Archive

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  5. Ran my 12th #BayToBreakers race in 1:59:54 on Sunday 2024-05-19.

    After a comedy of transit struggles to get to the start line, I jumped in with Corral C runners (my bib was for Corral B) and started with them.

    Great seeing the Midnight Runners crab rave cheer gang in Hayes Valley before Hayes Hill.

    Made it into Golden Gate Park, and eventually saw Vivek and David Lam making their way back from the finish.

    Just before the bison paddock, I saw Paddy & Eleanor walking back as well, and stopped to briefly chat with them.

    Soon after I saw Adrienne and a few other #NPSF pals running and as they stopped to say hi to Paddy, I took off to go finish.

    Adrienne and friends caught up to me on the last segment before Ocean Beach, and decided to run together. After turning the corner onto Great Highway, I could see the finish line. Glancing down at my watch there seemed to be enough time to finish under 2 hours if we picked it up. I asked Adrienne if we could try for a sub-2 hour time and she said to go for it. We picked up the pace and after crossing the finish line I stopped my Garmin — it read 1:59:54.

    Oddly the official Bay to Breakers results (which are not at a linkable URL) showed 2:00:07. The only explanation I have is after the first timing strip after the finish line where I stopped my watch, there was a big crowd of loitering people that made it hard to keep moving, and cross a second timing strip. It is possible the first timing strip did not register my bib chip, and only the second timing strip picked it up. I have emailed Bay to Breakers to see if they can correct it, and included a link to my Strava activity that shows I recorded the entire race on my watch.

    It was a harder race than usual, despite the good weather.

    There were a few things that contributed. First, I had run each of the prior two days: 5km+ at Friday night’s Midnight Runners 5th anniversary run and run/walk celebration afterwards totaling ~5 miles, and then 6.5 miles at SFRC on the trails on Saturday.

    I slept reasonably well the night before the race, and having checked the news announcements about the availability of transit options in the morning, planned accordingly. When I checked the actual train arrival times, none of the MUNI trains that were supposed to be running were running. I ran down to take the MUNI bus which was supposed to go downtown, except it stopped at Van Ness avenue, inexplicably, and the driver told everyone it was the last stop.

    Admittedly I was already annoyed that SF MUNI for some reason decided to stop the MUNI trains the morning of Bay to Breakers that could easily have taken thousands of runners to near the race start at Embarcadero via the Market Street subway. Having the bus stop sooner than expected was a second disappointment and discouragement.

    I (and many other runners) decided to run towards the start, which was still ~2 miles away at that point.

    Upon reaching the Civic Center station on Market street, we realized from the street level displays that BART trains appeared to be running normally like any other Sunday, so we went downstairs and paid for a second transit ticket to take the BART a few stops.

    The BART train was full of costumed Bay to Breakers runners. Disembarking at the Embarcadero station, I jogged/ran the rest of the way around the entrance corral maze to the right spot for Corral B entrants, and joined the group waiting at the start line.

    Lessons learned: I am not trusting MUNI rail or bus into downtown on Bay to Breakers race day again, despite any announcements from SFMTA. Too many years of bad experiences.

    However, BART seems reliable so I plan to find my way to taking BART in the future. Perhaps by taking a bus to the 16th street BART station, avoiding all street closures.

    Having missed my start corral due to the transit mishaps, I didn’t see anyone else I knew. The combination of being annoyed at MUNI’s unreliability (both in what was announced vs what was running and premature bus termination) and starting in a crowd not knowing anyone took my motivation down several notches.

    Still, the weather was pleasant yet cool, ideal for a race so I ran a pace that felt good for me, and kept an eye out for friends along the course. I stopped after mile 1 for a portapotty pitstop. Back in the chaos of Howard street and then Ninth to Hayes, I saw a few folks I knew from a distance.

    Seeing and high-fiving the Midnight Runners crab race cheer crew at Hayes Hill turned my mood around though, and I enjoyed the rest of the race, from Hayes Hill through Golden Gate Park.

    It was my slowest Bay to Breakers yet, however first in a while that I finished with friends!

    After we grabbed our medals and snacks in the finish area, I hiked/jogged back to the Panhandle, found the Midnight Runners crab rave crew keeping the party going and joined in.

    2023: https://tantek.com/2023/157/t1/ran-baytobreakers

    #2024_140 #SanFrancisco #run #runner #race #roadrace #b2b #bay2breakers

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  6. Still sitting with the awesomeness that was this past week and weekend’s 1-2 combination of:

    #IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf — https://indieweb.org/2024/DUS
    #btconf Düsseldorf — https://beyondtellerrand.com/events/dusseldorf-2024

    Great seeing old friends and meeting new amazing people as well. So many thoughtful inspiring conversations germinating new ideas for creative projects.

    Took lots of photos and notes.

    We recorded all the IndieWebCamp day 1 #BarCamp style breakout sessions, and I believe all the Beyond Tellerand talks were recorded as well. I’m looking forward to rewatching the sessions and talks and reconnecting with all the ideas and open tabs in my browser.

    Aside: this past Tuesday, the second day of the 2024 Beyond Tellerand talks, was also the five year anniversary of my closing talk at btconf DUS 2019: _Take Back Your Web_ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBLob0ObHMw )

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  7. @thisismissem@hachyderm.io re: “issue might be with what you're federating out maybe”, possibly except that regardless of what I’m federating out, the point in my reply to @flaki@flaki.social is that #Mastodon is still getting it half-right, which is a bug in Mastodon regardless of what I’m federating out.

    Either Mastodon should be treating my hashtags precisely as hashtags, (re)linking them to the local tagSpace *and* ignoring them for link previews, or it should be treating them “purely” as links, and not changing their default/published hyperlink and considering them for a link-preview.

    Re: “help to have the activities json representation” — my understanding is that should be automatically discoverable from my post permalink, so all that should be needed for a bug report is my post permalink. Perhaps @snarfed.org can clarify since I’m using https://fed.brid.gy/ to provide that representation.

    Either way, is there a validator for the “activities json representation” that we can use to test a particular post permalink, have it auto-discover an activities json representation, and report back what it finds and the validity thereof?

    For example, since my posts use the h-entry standard, I am able to validate my post permalinks using the IndieWebifyMe h-entry validator:

    https://indiewebify.me/validate-h-entry/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftantek.com%2F2024%2F132%2Ft1%2F

    Which finds and validates that I have marked up my hashtags/categories correctly.

    Re: “@flaki@flaki.social's Mention there got federated as a Link instead of as a Mention (since replying to this post didn't automatically include flaki's handle)” — this too sounds like a (different) Mastodon bug, since I believe @flaki@flaki.social was notified of my reply and mention of their handle. Perhaps Mastodon is getting it half-right: notifying but not canoeing¹?

    Did you receive a notification in your Mastodon instance/client of this reply and its mention of your @thisismissem@hachyderm.io? Or only one but not the other?

    #federate #federating #federated #hashTag #hashTags #atMention #atAtMention


    Post glossary:

    h-entry
      https://microformats.org/wiki/h-entry
    IndieWebifyMe
      https://indiewebify.me/


    References:

    ¹ https://indieweb.org/canoe

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  8. @flaki@flaki.social no cross-posting at all, that post, and this reply are federated directly from my personal domain. If you look at the top of my post in your Mastodon client / reader you can see that it’s from @tantek.com — no need for a username when you use your own domain.

    Regarding “why the expanded link preview is to one of the (first) hashtags and not to one of the links in the post”, that’s likely a #Mastodon link preview bug with how it treats hashtags.

    If you view your reply in your Mastodon (client), you can see that the first hashtag in my post #webDevelopers is correctly (re)linked to your Mastodon’s tagspace: https://flaki.social/tags/webDevelopers, so Mastodon is at least getting that part right, recognizing it as a hashtag, and linking it correctly for your view.

    However, Mastodon is still for some reason using the default link for that hashtag on my site (where I am using https://indieweb.social as the tagspace¹) as the link for the link preview.

    Since you use Mastodon, perhaps you could file an issue on Mastodon to fix that bug? Something like:

    If Mastodon recognizes a hashtag and converts it to link to a local tagspace, it MUST NOT use that hashtag’s prior/default hyperlink as the link for the link preview shown on a post.

    Thanks!

    #hashTag #linkPreview #federation #fediverse #federated #tagSpace

    References:

    ¹ https://tantek.com/2023/100/t1/auto-linked-hashtags-federated

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  9. For #webDevelopers who like to try out pre-release features in #browsers, in addition to the numerous #Firefox experimental features which everyone has access to in Nightly Builds (as documented by MDN¹) did you know that #Mozilla also has Origin Trials?

    Instructions and how to participate on the Mozilla Wiki:

    https://wiki.mozilla.org/Origin_Trials

    In addition, we’ve linked to the #originTrial documentation pages of #GoogleChrome and #MicrosoftEdge if you want to check those out. Linkbacks welcome of course.

    #webDev #originTrials #webBrowser #webBrowsers

    References:

    ¹ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Experimental_features

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  10. @github.com/annevk’s proposal in https://github.com/whatwg/sg/issues/231#issuecomment-2046559430 to add Compression Streams to the Streams Workstream is OK with me.

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