IT Executive news

• Mark Zuckerberg checks in on his year building A.I. for his home

  20-12-2016 22:25
  
  Mark Zuckerberg's personal 2016 challenge to build an artificial intelligence system to run his home has been a learning experience for the co-founder and CEO of Facebook.
  Some parts were simpler than expected and others were a surprising challenge, Zuckerberg said in a blog post.
  "My goal was to learn about the state of artificial intelligence -- where we're further along than people realize and where we're still a long ways off," Zuckerberg wrote. "These challenges always lead me to learn mor
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 6 life hacks for email marketers

  20-12-2016 22:20
  
  Despite the email medium being replaced by newer messaging systems on social media and better communications technology like video chatting, email marketing remains one of the best and most efficient marketing strategies available to digital marketers. It’s relatively easy to manage, it has a straightforward goal, and overall, it’s one of the highest-ROI marketing strategies in existence, with some estimates as high as 400 percent.However, as any email marketer will tell you, email s
  
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• BrandPost: Manufacturing in Their Genes: An ERP Technology Evolution

  20-12-2016 22:12
  
  Joshua Hopp, President of HK Metalcraft, confesses that he’s a technology nerd, and that he picked up this trait from his father, Raymond Hopp. Joshua is the fourth-generation owner of a manufacturing business that specializes in precision metal stampings. He remembers when his father installed an ERP system back in the 80s when no one else in the industry even considered it.Nearly three decades later and that once cutting-edge ERP now required customization after customization to keep pac
  
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• The 15 best job markets for IT security specialists

  20-12-2016 21:37
  
  (Insider Story)
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to develop an online marketing strategy for your business

  20-12-2016 21:08
  
  Businesses that fail to market themselves effectively are far less likely to find success within today's increasingly competitive marketplace. Online marketing techniques can offer a number of key advantages, such as their lower cost as well as their potential ability to reach a larger audience to make contact with a key demographic. Learning more about the latest trends that are shaping digital advertising and influencing content marketing strategies can allow business owners to make more infor
  
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• Cutting the cord: GM tests wireless car chargers for EVs, self-driving cars

  20-12-2016 21:05
  
  General Motors is working with a wireless charging startup to test a floor pad that will allow electric vehicle (EV) drivers to cut the cable and pull into a parking space or garage to charge their car.
  The automaker is working with Watertown, Mass.-based WiTricity to test the company's Drive 11 park and charge system prototype.
  GM is focused on testing the floor pad prototype that's capable of wirelessly charging at 7.7 kilowatt (KW) and 11KW charge rates (11KW is the typical maximum for power
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How a dose of AI could be the cure for hospital EHR cyberattacks in 2017

  20-12-2016 21:04
  
  I know how terrible hospital record theft can be. I myself have been the victim of a data theft by hackers who stole my deceased father’s medical files, running up more than $300,000 in false charges. I am still disputing on-going bills that have been accruing for the last 15 years.This event led me on the path to finding a solution so others would not suffer the consequences that I continue to be impacted by, but hospitals and other healthcare providers must be willing to make the change.
  
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• How Rackspace will stay alive in cloud: Stop competing with Amazon, start partnering

  20-12-2016 20:39
  
  In August, 2016 months of speculations ended when Rackspace announced that an investment management group would purchase the 18-year-old company. Rumors have been swirling that the company may be acquired, but instead Rackspace took the route that Dell, Riverbed and BMC have and went private.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Google researchers help developers test cryptographic implementations

  20-12-2016 20:30
  
  Security experts from Google have developed a test suite that allows developers to find weaknesses in their cryptographic libraries and implementations.The company's Project Wycheproof, which was released on GitHub, contains more than 80 test cases for widely used cryptographic algorithms, including RSA, AES-GCM, AES-EAX, Diffie-Hellman, Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH), and the digital signature algorithm (DSA).Google's researchers have developed these tests by implementing some of the most
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 3 business risks you want to avoid when investing in tech

  20-12-2016 20:18
  
  We’ve learned how to avoid project risks in terms of resources, time and cost. We’ve also learned how to avoid quality risks. Question is: Have we learned how to avoid business risks? Well, industry analyst firms frequently point to C-suite concerns about business risks. And to know why business risks exist, we only need to look at software practice, which is implementation-focused rather than business-focused.So let's recognize three business risks and talk a little about them. Whet
  
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• Why every CIO needs to be a hands-on leader to succeed

  20-12-2016 20:17
  
  For CIOs, the struggle to gain organizational respect and parity with other CXOs has always been real. In the past, one way that IT executives knew they had “made the grade” was to be considered strategic. In other words, the transition from working on computers, banging out code, and answering tickets to sitting as a member of the senior leadership team showed the outside world that a person had achieved the ultimate career success.But just as CIOs started to settle into the corner
  
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• Top 4 security trends of 2016

  20-12-2016 18:05
  
  Faced with ever larger data breaches and a shifting technology and cultural landscape driven by digital transformation, boards and the executive suite started paying more attention to security in 2016 than ever before.Here are our picks for the most significant security trends in 2016, as illustrated in 15 stories from the past year.1. Security and digital transformation
  New technologies and business practices made their presence felt in 2016. The cloud, mobile, data analytics and the internet o
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: IBM blockchain in healthcare rallies for patients

  20-12-2016 18:01
  
  Which industry is the most progressive? Healthcare won’t appear on most lists. A recent study by the IBM Institute for Business Value revealed that, surprisingly, healthcare executives are setting the pace of blockchain adoption.The survey, conducted for IBM by The Economist Intelligence Unit, found that 16 percent of healthcare executives expect commercial blockchain solutions at scale by 2017.Integrating artificial intelligence with machine learning, experimenting with virtual reali
  
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• BrandPost: The Opportunities and Challenges of BPaaS

  20-12-2016 17:42
  
  Forward-thinking organizations are on the hunt: They’re searching for cost savings, strategic capabilities and scale while minimizing capital investment, time to market and risk. Cloud computing, in the form of SaaS, IaaS and PaaS, has been a big part of making that happen.KPMG defines business processes as-a-service (BPaaS) as the combination of technology, people and process requirements of a business function into a fully-managed service, provided in a leveraged environment and measured
  
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• There may be more Samsung Galaxy Note7s still in use than LG V20s

  20-12-2016 17:17
  
  While Samsung readies a series of software updates that will effectively brick any remaining Galaxy Note7s in circulation, some new numbers suggest there may be a lot more of them out there than we think. Or perhaps there just aren’t that many LG V20s.
  Apteligent has released its tally for new Android flagship device launches in the second half of 2016, and the visuals are quite stunning. The most obvious takeaway is that in a normal year a new Samsung Note absolutely blows away its compe
  
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• BlackBerry counts on cars to reverse decline in revenue

  20-12-2016 17:16
  
  BlackBerry reported another quarter of losses and declining revenue on Tuesday, but CEO John Chen forecast that the company will break even next quarter, its first since quitting the smartphone business.The company signaled its departure from the smartphone hardware business last week, licensing its brand to TCL, the Chinese manufacturer that built the last two BlackBerry handsets.Chen's break-even forecast had a caveat: It didn't include restructuring charges, stock compensation expenses, fair-
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Mac desktops: Pipeline Tim becomes Roadmap Tim

  20-12-2016 17:13
  
  Many people have been wondering just what is going on inside Apple when it comes to Mac desktop computers. The company seems to be stuck in a strange lethargy as its Mac product line has stagnated in recent years, causing much disappointment and anger among Mac users.So what's going on inside of Apple? Macs have clearly been put on the backburner while the iPhone gets the lion’s share of the company’s marketing and development efforts.Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg Technology:
  Int
  
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• This Intel board computer can be a powerful Ubuntu 16.04 Linux PC

  20-12-2016 17:11
  
  If you want a PC with Ubuntu Linux, you can turn to Intel's Joule single-board computer instead of buying an expensive machine.Support for Ubuntu 16.04 desktop OS has been added to the Joule board, according to developer notes for Intel IoT Developer Kit 5.0 released late last week.Intel has two Joule boards: the 570x, which sells for $219 on Mouser, and the 550x, which is priced at $179 on the same retail site. The 550x, which started shipping recently, was priced at $349 until Monday, but was
  
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• There's Still Time! Go Here For Last Minute Deals That Will Ship Fast - Deal Alert

  20-12-2016 17:06
  
  Procrastination has once again turned into desperation. "Maybe I could whittle a pan flute from those broken chair legs in the basement", you're thinking. Snap out of it! Stay calm and remind yourself that with just a few minutes on Amazon right now you can still snag great gifts for anyone left on your list, and have them at your doorstep with plenty of time to gift wrap. Amazon's "last minute deals" page right here features great deals in almost any department, guaranteed by Amazon to ar
  
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• Box CEO: It's the 'best time in history to be CIO'

  20-12-2016 16:56
  
  Box CEO Aaron Levie has a message of hope for CIOs as they approach 2017: "I think it's the best time in history to be a CIO, because you have so many great companies working on your behalf to enable you to have way better technology in your organization," he says.Levie's positive outlook runs counter to many IT trends and common perceptions. CIOs' grip on technology and budgetary oversight has been challenged for years as marketing executives and others throughout their organizations gain influ
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: On a mission

  20-12-2016 16:53
  
  In my previous blog posts, I outlined why it's important for IT leaders to venture out of their comfort zones and assume the roles of “IT diplomat” and “servant” when thinking about how to best work with business peers.But even though you’ve learned the language of business and positioned yourself as a service provider, it’s still not enough. The challenge is that your biz colleagues don’t always understand the true value you provide, particularly in a c
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 5 mistakes to avoid when creating foolproof surveys

  20-12-2016 16:19
  
  One of the biggest breakthroughs in marketing since the dawn of the internet has been increased accessibility and improved methods in conducting research.Online surveys have made it simple to find relevant and up-to-date insights on consumer behaviors and opinions. The days of physically mailing out questionnaires and waiting for responses are long gone. Now, you can get better results in greater quantity for a fraction of the price.However, as surveys have become much easier to produce and dist
  
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• Wanted: More women CIOs (but do they want the job?)

  20-12-2016 16:02
  
  Men hold the overwhelming majority of positions in IT leadership, where women fill less than 20 percent of CIO roles at top-performing companies. The lack of diversity remains a thorny issue heading into 2017 and the numbers are unlikely to improve markedly, a painful failing for corporate boards starving for diverse C-suites. But there is a silver lining, if you can call it that: Experts say some women working for increasingly digitally focused companies are choosing leadership roles outside of
  
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• The year ransomware became one of the top threats to enterprises

  20-12-2016 15:53
  
  On Feb. 5, employees at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, started having network access problems that prevented electronic communications. Over the next few days, they learned that the hospital was the victim of a ransomware attack that encrypted files on multiple computers.After several days during which staff had to resort to pen and paper for some record keeping, the hospital decided to pay the $17,000 ransom -- the equivalent of 40 bitcoins that the attac
  
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• Remain paranoid, err vigilant, with online security in 2017

  20-12-2016 15:45
  
  Remember those Nigerian prince scams? They almost seem quaint now, but 2017 might put a new spin on them that could set security awareness training back years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Cyberattack suspected in Ukraine power outage

  20-12-2016 15:24
  
  Security experts are investigating whether a power outage that affected parts of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and the surrounding region this weekend was the result of a cyberattack. If confirmed, it would be the second blackout caused by hackers in Ukraine.
  The incident affected the automation control systems at the northern power substation near Novi Petrivtsi, a village near Kiev, close to midnight between Saturday and Sunday. This resulted in complete power loss for the northern part o
  
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• Diving into Microsoft's Azure Data Lake

  20-12-2016 15:12
  
  Microsoft has been working with big data for a long time. Internally, it uses a tool called Cosmos, built with its own distributed processing technology, Dryad, to handle the data for everything from Bing AdCenter to Windows telemetry. Cosmos is used for curation, processing, analysis and reporting on massive data sets; imagine what looks like a single file that contains all the URLs Bing has ever seen, against which you can run interactive queries, with those queries running on maybe 50,000 mac
  
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• Fraud detection firm outs $1b Russian ad-fraud gang and its robo-browsing Methbot

  20-12-2016 15:00
  
  A $1 billion Russia-based criminal gang has been bilking online advertisers by impersonating high-profile Web sites like ESPN, Vogue, CBS Sports, Fox News and the Huffington Post and selling phony ad slots, but that’s about to end.
  Online fraud-prevention firm White Ops is releasing data today that will enable online advertisers and ad marketplaces to block the efforts of the group, which is cashing in on its intimate knowledge of the automated infrastructure that controls the buying and
  
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• Eclipse embraces Java microservices initiative

  20-12-2016 15:00
  
  MicroProfile, which provides a technology blueprint to outfit enterprise Java for microservices deployments, has become an Eclipse Foundation project.
  Now known as Eclipse MicroProfile, the effort makes it easier for developers to use Java technologies and APIs to build microservices. "The goal of the project is to create a community to add new features and capabilities to Java EE that address microservices architectures," said Ian Skerrett, Eclipse vice president of marketing. "At some point t
  
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• CIO Career Coach: How to resign from an executive position (video)

  20-12-2016 14:46
  
  Welcome to the ninth and final episode of season one of "CIO Career Coach," a video collaboration between Heller Search Associates, CIO.com and IDG.tv, the video division of CIO's parent company, IDG.In this season of CIO Career Coach, we covered every major step of the job search process. Whether you are a CIO, CTO, CISO, a vice president, an IT director, or you aspire to one of these roles, these videos were designed to help you land your next great IT leadership job.I tapped my 12 years of ex
  
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• 3 worthy wearables that could replace your Fitbit

  20-12-2016 14:33
  
  Fitbit is still the crowned head of wearables. The San Francisco-based company has the largest share of the wearables market at 23 percent, according to IDC (a CIO.com sibling organization).However, nearly every day, I read headlines and articles that predict Fitbit's doom. To be fair, the San Francisco-based company had a challenging 2016. One look at its stock price during the past 12 months shows cause for concern. I share some of that concern, but I also believe Fitbit offers the best a
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Don't confuse project outcomes with business outcomes

  20-12-2016 14:00
  
  Don't confuse project outcomes with business outcomes. It's amazing how many really good CIOs, project managers, sponsors and stakeholders do!
  In their 2016 Pulse of the Profession report, 83 percent of organizations lacked maturity with what the Project Management Institute (PMI) calls "benefits realization" and only about half indicated that project benefits are well aligned with business strategic goals.
  Unpicking these statistics reveals something of a trend. It seems a lot of IT projects a
  
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• Facebook 'misled' EU regulators over its takeover of WhatsApp

  20-12-2016 13:05
  Facebook misled European Union regulators over its 2014 takeover of WhatsApp, European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said Tuesday. At issue is the company's recent linking of Facebook and WhatsApp user accounts, something that it had previously told the Commission it would not be able to automate reliably.The acquisition, announced in February 2014, won EU approval in early October that year, and was completed a few days later.To read this article in full or to leave a com
  
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• How to get more from your security budget

  20-12-2016 12:37
  
  Infosec budgets. They are small, they largely come from IT, and CISOs/CSOs often complain they are not nearly big enough.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Tech execs' boldest predictions for 2017 and beyond

  20-12-2016 12:30
  
  (Insider Story)
  
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• 4 employee wellness predictions for 2017

  20-12-2016 12:02
  
  The end of 2016 sparks predictions about what we can expect to see in the workplace for 2017. And, for the members of the Virgin Pulse Science Advisory Board, it turns out that wellness programs will likely become a major focus for successful businesses in the coming year."The most forward-thinking companies are seeing the business value and benefits of providing employees with resources and tools to help individuals overcome challenges and meet personal goals -- anything from managing diabetes
  
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• Virtual reality is actually here

  20-12-2016 12:00
  
  If you think virtual reality exists today primarily in the gaming industry, you are seriously behind the times! VR springing up all over, and in some rather surprising places. VR videos are already available on YouTube, Android PlayStore and the Apple Store. Equipment prices and quality vary dramatically, from Google’s inexpensive Cardboard to incredibly expensive and complex systems.
  VR has been evolving since the first commercial flight simulator was patented in 1931. That invention hel
  
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• Trump’s tariff threat may speed cloud adoption

  20-12-2016 12:00
  
  President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on goods manufactured in Mexico and offshore may accelerate the movement to cloud computing, analysts said.
  IT managers may seek to protect their companies from higher hardware or capital expenditure costs by shifting more of their IT spending to services. This shift is well underway, and the new administration may push it along, even before Trump takes office next month.
  At this point, industry analysts are uncertain as to what Trum
  
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• Q&A: Hortonworks CTO unfolds the big data road map

  20-12-2016 12:00
  
  Hortonworks has built its business on big data and Hadoop, but the Hortonworks Data Platform provides analytics and features support for a range of technologies beyond Hadoop, including MapReduce, Pig, Hive, and Spark. Hortonworks DataFlow, meanwhile, offers streaming analytics and uses technologies like Apache Nifi and Kafka.
  InfoWorld Executive Editor Doug Dineley and Editor at Large Paul Krill recently spoke with Hortonworks CTO Scott Gnau about how the company sees the data business shaking
  
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• Google's biggest hits, misses, and WTF moments of 2016

  20-12-2016 12:00
  
  Hardware and AI lead the wayImage by Martyn WilliamsWith last year’s corporate restructuring out of the way, 2016 was a year of rebuilding for Google and its parent company Alphabet.This year, Google got much more serious about hardware, while placing big bets on artificial intelligence as the heart of its software. Products that fit this mission got revamped, while those that didn’t got axed or ignored. Read on for a review of what went right and wrong at Google in 2016.To read this
  
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• Google open-sources test suite to find crypto bugs

  20-12-2016 12:00
  
  Working with cryptographic libraries is hard, and a single implementation mistake can result in serious security problems. To help developers check their code for implementation errors and find weaknesses in cryptographic software libraries, Google has released a test suite as part of Project Wycheproof.
  "In cryptography, subtle mistakes can have catastrophic consequences, and mistakes in open source cryptographic software libraries repeat too often and remain undiscovered for too long," Google
  
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• 6 tools to help boost your personal brand

  20-12-2016 11:50
  
  Your personal brand isn't just a buzz phrase. It's the unique combination of skills, experience, passion and personality that makes you exactly the right fit for your dream job. Building a personal brand means going beyond simply regurgitating your resume across multiple platforms, says Gianna Scorsone, vice president of marketing and sales operations at IT staffing and recruiting firm Mondo."Developing a personal brand is all about standing out -- you're not going to do that if you're just post
  
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• 2017 Fiat 124 vs. 2016 Mazda MX-5: What two Miata faithfuls think of the Italian job

  20-12-2016 08:51
  
  Ask a Mazda MX-5 Miata driver about the 2017 Fiat 124 Spider, and you’ll probably get one of two answers:
  1. Love it. The world needs more cars like the Miata.
  2. Why did you dress my perfectly good Miata in a flashy Italian suit?
  Basically identical to the 2016 MX-5 (ND) save for the exterior design and the drivetrain, Miata drivers are split between embracing the 124 Spider (often nicknamed Fiata) as a long-lost twin, or disdaining it as an interloper. (The truth: Mazda has openly
  
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• Uber admits its self-driving cars have issues with bike lanes

  20-12-2016 08:46
  
  Uber Technologies admitted Monday that its self-driving cars have problems crossing bike lanes, and said it is working to fix the issue that could have deadly implications for cyclists.The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition had warned users that self-driving Uber vehicles  take unsafe “right-hook-style" turns through bike lanes rather than first merging with the bike lane, yielding to traffic already in the lane, before taking a turn from the curb, as required by California rules. To rea
  
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• Privacy groups complain to FTC over Google’s 'deceptive' policy change

  20-12-2016 07:24
  
  Privacy groups have complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Google is encroaching on user privacy through a policy change in June that allows it to combine personally-identifiable information with browsing data collected by its DoubleClick digital advertising service.The complaint by Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearing House alleged that Google has created “super-profiles” as it can track user activity on Android mobile phones, with an 88 percent market share of sma
  
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