Another Unreleased iPhone Lost by Employee In a Bar 225
First time accepted submitter MightyMait writes "Looks like another Apple employee left an iPhone prototype in a bar. From the article: 'The errant iPhone, which went missing in San Francisco's Mission district in late July, sparked a scramble by Apple security to recover the device over the next few days, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Last year, an iPhone 4 prototype was bought by a gadget blog that paid $5,000 in cash. This year's lost phone seems to have taken a more mundane path: it was taken from a Mexican restaurant and bar and may have been sold on Craigslist for $200. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.' Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy."
It's a double-reverse (Score:5, Insightful)
Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy.
No, it actually makes it look more like an accident.
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To quote my friend Auric Goldfinger: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action."
Re:It's a double-reverse (Score:5, Funny)
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Here's the real strategy (Score:3)
Apple knows they're going to lose more prototypes of iPhones, iPods, or whatever other new shiny things they make over the next few years, because that just happens sometimes. Employees accidentally take the wrong devices out of buildings, go to bars, whatever. They try to keep stuff under wraps, but can't stop all the accidental leaks.
So Apple's now having their art department make fake prototype devices and leave them around in bars on purpose. They don't all have to work perfectly, the amazingly cool
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I just pictured a Police Squad like moment where someone goes into a bar and attempts to order a drink, their task being made more difficult because of the surfaces being piled high with "lost" tablets, phones, laptops, gizmos, dongles and widgets
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No, it actually makes it look more like an accident.
Cut me some slack. When I saw that the story was only 23 minutes old, I almost peed my pants and rushed to submit it to Slashdot. I had to think of *something* to say along with the headline and URL, and that was the best I could do. Apparently it was good enough.
It's been years since I'd even bothered to submit anything (and, as you can gather from TFS, none of my previous submissions were accepted). The fact that I'm strutting around right now as if I'd won the Superbowl must give you a sense of ho
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Wow. I had no idea that you knew I was thinking you knew I knew what you thought I was thinking.
Modern marketing techniques!
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Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy.
No, it actually makes it look more like an accident.
Oddly, something about it sort of reminds me of a Clancy plot [moviesounds.com].
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That's what she said.. hmm.
Strategy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
Interesting job interviews ... (Score:3)
I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
The job interviews for marketing at mobile phone vendors must be fun. How many beers does it take before you begin to have trouble keeping track of items on the counter or table.
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Judging from the people I know who are in marketing, I do actually believe this being part of the interview. Well, at least the "how much can you drink before you pass out" part.
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How many beers does it take before you begin to have trouble keeping track of items on the counter or table.
Don't they have pockets?
Or if they must display them, put them on a lanyard.
I really don't know why so many people walk around clutching a phone in their hand all day long.
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Phones, wallets full of money, 15" laptops... it's ridiculous the stuff people leave at San Francisco bars. Sometimes they don't come looking for it for a month.
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Yeah right, so now the streets are paved with gadgets are they ? Not falling for it America.
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Welcome to the United States. Maybe this is a good indicator for why our politicians of both parties consistently choose to spend more money than we make.
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I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
There's a bit of a difference when you lose your own production version phone vs. an unreleased version of an upcoming phone the company you work for is going to be marketing/selling in the near future. It makes me wonder just how many drunken clumsy incompetent idiots work in the iPhone department at Apple.
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I have friends who lose their phones in bars every month. I had no idea they were strategic geniuses, I assumed they were just clumsy and drunk. Silly me!
There's a bit of a difference when you lose your own production version phone vs. an unreleased version of an upcoming phone the company you work for is going to be marketing/selling in the near future. It makes me wonder just how many drunken clumsy incompetent idiots work in the iPhone department at Apple.
I'm more curious what happens to the employees that lose "top secret" products. Surely if a person is given a phone that is not even released it would be paramount that the person is trustworthy enough to not lose it. At the very least a demotion, I would rate it as a sackable offence.
If nothing is done about it (especially considering how hard Apple works at "protecting their IP" ), something is rotten in the state of Denmark....
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It makes me wonder just how many drunken clumsy incompetent idiots work in the iPhone department at Apple.
They're just trying to understand their customers by hiring them.
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It makes me wonder just how many drunken clumsy incompetent idiots work in the iPhone department at Apple.
The reason (at least one of the contributing factors to that reason anyway) Apple sells millions and millions of iPhones is because they have normal everyday people using iPhones before they are released to the public. It could very well be a secretary. You want a good sampling of different types of folks playing with a consumer device to get good data.
Companies who have their devs test the software UI design before its released to the public end up like RIM and Microsoft's mobile line recent string of jo
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There's a bit of a difference when you lose your own production version phone vs. an unreleased version of an upcoming phone the company you work for is going to be marketing/selling in the near future. It makes me wonder just how many drunken clumsy incompetent idiots work in the iPhone department at Apple.
If you only had smart, responsible people testing the phones in the field, you wouldn't have any clear idea if the product is reasonably rugged or not.
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Actually, some of them do.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, Apple literally did invent the rounded rectangle UI element: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt [folklore.org]
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Actually, Apple literally did invent the rounded rectangle UI element: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt [folklore.org]
I think you'll find that is just showing an algorithm for fast drawing of rounded rectangles, not an invention of any shape or UI element at all.
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Just looking at the Apple Lisa article on Wikipedia, I find plenty examples of rounded corners in both the GUI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Lisa_Office_System_3.1.png [wikipedia.org]
And the design of the machine itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Lisa.jpg [wikipedia.org]
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Just looking at the Apple Lisa article on Wikipedia, I find plenty examples of rounded corners in both the GUI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Lisa_Office_System_3.1.png [wikipedia.org] And the design of the machine itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Lisa.jpg [wikipedia.org]
So because it has them that means they must have invented them? Well you know the samsung galaxy has icons, i guess that means they invented icons. Seriously have you not bothered to look at anything that came before the Lisa?
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Wow, Thanks! You sparked in me a vague memory of round rectangles in a sample demo for Macintosh Programmer's Workshop (de-facto IDE for macs prior to OSX's CodeWarrior took the crown.) I think it was while running sillyballs.c, where between this and flicker-free simple 3D I took my first non-QBASIC GUI programming steps. Google searches of "silliballs +MPW" only returned geocities.jp / random french language introductions to building silliballs or very old macusenet sites that were technically forums, rat
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Hey now!
It's Apple so it's not just a phone!
This is a Apple product, soon to come, so we need to know, right now, because we can't wait any further, goddammit!
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I'm not sure you're thinking in the right direction. I personally can't STAND it when I get linked to a site and I get redirected to a mobile site and lose the link. Or the mobile site is severely functionally limited in comparison with the normal site. Or the "back" button doesn't work properly on mobile sites. Or the viewport is set so that I can't zoom in. This covers almost all the "mobile" sites out there. I almost always try to just browse on the regular site, but zealous webmasters often don't make t
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Sorry, but who in the developed world cares about WAP anymore? If you have a smart phone, you want HTML5, clearly not WAP.
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If you make your living developing web apps for mobile devices, you should care a great deal about a new iPhone. And not because of any of the device's inherent qualities. But because people will be in fact lining up to buy it. It's like the stock market in a sense. A stock is worth a lot because people think it's worth a lot. The iPhone is a big deal because people think it's a big deal.
And people only like Harry Potter because it's secret? Really? Super compelling argument.
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why would you need to understant mobile web sites when websites build a css custom version specifically for iOS?
yeah why would you need standards when web developers can just build custom versions for specific browsers, seemed to work great for IE6, it's so good it's still sticking around.
First we need to know ... (Score:2)
Once might be an accident, but two unreleased iPhones lost in bars starts to look like a strategy
First we need to know how many unreleased iPhones are out there and for how long this field testing goes on. iPhones get lost/stolen in bars all the time, the pre-release loss rate may be comparable to the post-release loss rate. Personally I think it looks like drunk guys are not very good at keeping track of the expensive gadget they leave laying on the counter or table.
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Two iPhones walk into a bar...
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Two iPhones walk into a bar...
Have you seen the iLostIt II?
--
In Soviet Russia, the phone is not lost.
Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
2: Deny all access to new product for rank-and-file
3: When attention starts to wane, "accidentally" leave product somewhere it can be found and analyzed
4: Watch media hype increase
5: Release new product
6: Profit!!
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It's not like Apple is the only company that uses hype, is this Google-Facebook thingamajig still invite-only?
Not again... (Score:3)
It was neither funny nor subtle the first time. Now a second time? I was going to say that someone at marketing lost his original touch, but then I remembered the whole never ending "I'm a mac vs. I'm a PC" campaign... and that was that.
Who losses a phone in a bar anyway?!
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Thousands of users..
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Who losses a phone in a bar anyway?!
Apparently Apple employees.
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Who losses a phone in a bar anyway?!
Drunk people?
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Who losses a phone in a bar anyway?!
TFA: the phone was lost at San Francisco's Cava 22, which describes itself as a "tequila lounge"
'Nuff said [whicdn.com]
Drunkards? (Score:2)
radio radio... (Score:2)
It would be nice to know what radios this thing has... CDMA? GSM? AWS? LTE?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's okay, it's only Apple's CIDR.
Fool me once... (Score:2)
Wouldn't you think that Apple would have immediately made it against policy to leave Apple grounds with a prototype if they were serious about preventing them from being lost? Unless Apple announces that in accordance with their policy set in place last year, WHEN THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED, the employee who lost the phone this time is fired, and then ask the public for assistance in returning of the phone, it is a marketing strategy in my opinion.
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Really? Judging from what I've seen, real people use their phones a lot more at bars than they do at the supermarket. In my book, "real world testing" doesn't mean "take it home and fiddle around with it as if you're using it."
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In my book, "real world testing" doesn't mean "take it home and fiddle around with it as if you're using it."
Agreed. But it also doesn't mean "go get wasted at the bar with the new prototype and then leave it there...AGAIN". UNLESS they are doing it on purpose. Hence, my initial comment.
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You conveniently cut off the rest of my sentence. It read: 'But "real world testing" can be done BEFORE going out to the bar and getting wasted enough to leave your phone there...especially if it's a prototype.' The ending is key. I'm not saying that testing shouldn't be done in a bar. But when you are carrying a prototype device that has already once been lost in a bar once before, just last year, you'd think it could be done responsibly or without incident. And is a bar the best place for "real world" tes
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Well, one o
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You are assuming said real-world testing. Where people hold the phone wrong.
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Hey, are we talking about it or are we not? It worked.
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Do they actually *want* people to suspect they're leaking the phone on purpose?
What precisely is the downside to people thinking, or even knowing, that these phones are fake-leaked?
Do you now think less of Apple than you previously did?
The fact of the matter is that regardless of how you feel about Apple, the details about upcoming products are welcome by many.
from the self-destruct button needed department... (Score:2)
Response from cops to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
I find most interesting from this episode the following:
Apple electronically traced the phone to a two-floor, single-family home in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood, according to the source.
When San Francisco police and Apple's investigators visited the house, they spoke with a man in his twenties who acknowledged being at Cava 22 on the night the device went missing. But he denied knowing anything about the phone. The man gave police permission to search the house, and they found nothing, the source said.
When you or I go to the police and tell them our phone/computer was stolen, but we can track it via GPS from any computer and can even use the built-in camera to take pictures of the perpetrator, they tell us to take a hike and go read up on vigilante justice.
When Apple goes to the police with a missing phone, the police go with them, stick around to search a person's house, and in the last case:
Last year's prototype iPhone went missing when Robert Gray Powell, an Apple computer engineer who was 28 years old at the time, left it in a German beer garden in Redwood City, Calif.
In early August, San Mateo County prosecutors filed misdemeanor criminal charges against two men, Brian Hogan and Sage Wallower, for allegedly selling Powell's iPhone 4 prototype to Gawker Media's Gizmodo blog. An arraignment is scheduled for tomorrow.
Prosecutors obtained a warrant to search the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen, and indicated they might prosecute Gizmodo, but eventually decided not to file charges.
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When you or I go to the police and tell them our phone/computer was stolen, but we can track it via GPS from any computer and can even use the built-in camera to take pictures of the perpetrator, they tell us to take a hike and go read up on vigilante justice.
When Apple goes to the police with a missing phone, the police go with them, stick around to search a person's house, and in the last case...
That's because there's a difference between the value of an individual's retail handset and an industrial prototype.
In the Gizmodo instance, the cost of the loss wasn't a few hundred bucks for a handset - it was a few hundred thousand, or maybe even a few million bucks as potential customers abruptly stopped purchasing the current product line in the shops at the time.
If you or I contributed as many tax dollars to the US as Apple, we could probably expect a pretty darn attentive service from the police
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Apple is a tax cheat: http://www.pcworld.com/article/229382/advocacy_group_targets_apple_as_a_tax_cheater.html [pcworld.com]
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Compare this sentence from your link :
"Apple reported income of $18.5 billion and paid $2.7 billion in income taxes, or about 15 percent. "
With this article [reuters.com] "Some U.S. firms paid more to CEOs than taxes: study." :
* eBay whose CEO John Donahoe made $12.4 million, but which reported a $131 million refund on its 2010 current U.S. taxes.
* Boeing, which paid CEO Jim McNerney $13.8 million, sent in $13 million in federal income taxes, and spent $20.8 million on lobbying and campaign spending
* General Electric whe
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Why are the police wasting taxpayer money participating in Apple's publicity stunt?
Cnet Comments (Score:2)
As some people have already said in the comments on CNet, this entire story may be made up, as the only citation for the phone being lost–and searched for–is an unknown source. The SFPD never received a request from Apple to get the phone, as is noted in the article; however, the unknown source tells us that SFPD did search a house in the SF area. I have a hard time believing this story because of a lack of specific information about the phone itself.
The conclusion? CNet page views. Mission A
In other news: 3G MacBook, Apple wants it back (Score:3)
Remember that prototype MacBook with what appeared to be a SIM card clot and antenna popping up on e-bay? /. never covered it. )
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20092180-248/3g-equipped-macbook-prototype-pops-up-on-ebay/ [cnet.com]
( I'd link to a Slashdot article but Google's failing to find it. Or maybe
Welp, they want it back. Rather suddenly, coinciding with cnet's requests for comments from Apple.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20099494-248/apple-wants-its-3g-macbook-prototype-back/ [cnet.com]
source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=13272429&postcount=38 [macrumors.com]
Reminds Me of a Joke (Score:2)
Guy: Hey, you're new here.
iPhone: Yeah, that's right.
Guy: Could I sell you to iGadget for a million dollars?
iPhone: Oh, well, yes!
Guy: How about ten dollars.
iPhone: How dare you! What kind of iPhone do you think I am?
Guy: We already established that, now we're just talkin' price.
Churchill-ism (Score:2)
I first heard that joke as the following Winston Churchill witticism:
Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Woman: My goodness, Mr. Churchill Well, I suppose we would have to discuss terms, of course
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Woman: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.
An Apple employee walks into a bar... (Score:2)
Wait, stop me if you've heard this one before.
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An Apple employee walks into a bar, and asks for a glass of water.
iPhone walks into a bar... (Score:3)
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And the phone says, "I'm fine now, I just got held up by the corner before".
I think I know more than TFA does. (Score:2)
Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.
(Emphasis mine)
Having never owned an Apple product in my life, I just googled images of iphone original, iphone 3g, iphone 3gs, and iphone 4. After carefully comparing the changes over the years, I think I have a pretty good guess about what the iphone 5 prototype probably looks like.
So an iPhone walks into a bar... (Score:2)
And finds out the warranty won't cover that kind of damage.
looks like a strategy... (Score:2)
Well, if it works...
Strategy (Score:2)
Hey babe. Want to see my new iPhone? Its a 5, at least. I'll bet you've never held a 5.
Sorry. That's never happened before. It usually stays up all day. Maybe its the way you held it.
No wait, I think I heard this one... (Score:2)
...So an Apple iPhone Engineer walks into a bar...
strategy? (Score:2)
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They really should start putting a tee-totaller clause in the field test section of the NDA, though.
unprofessional (Score:2)
That's certainly not a company I'd entrust my data to.
Mission District? (Score:2)
The errant iPhone, which went missing in San Francisco's Mission district in late July...
It would have been more appropriate if the iPhone had been lost in a bar in the Castro district instead...
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Wonder if it gets any service.
Only if you hold it correctly. ;-)
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Could you patent that before Apple does?
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If this is Viral Marketing, they owe Jason Chen [gsmarena.com] a very, VERY big apology and probably a rather hefty settlement check,
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But as far as I can tell from the article there's no trace of the phone. They allegedly (I see no sources mentioned) traced it to a guy's house, offered him money for it no questions asked and he denied involvement. It's very much a non story: a guy lost an iPhone, it may have been a prototype. If it's viral marketing they're doing a piss poor job of it.
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It's very much a non story: a guy lost an iPhone, it may have been a prototype.
What's the big deal? Hon Hai in Shenzen (the real manufacturer; Apple is just the design and marketing company) can make more.
While we're on the subject of bars, many name brands of booze are outsourced. Skyy is just a marketing company. The alcohol comes from a big MGP Ingredients (formerly Midwest Solvents) plant in Pekin, IL. They sell beverage, industrial,and fuel alcohols. (Yes, kiddies, E85 and vodka come from the same plants.) It's pumped into railroad tank cars and shipped to Frank-Lin Distillers
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Hmmm... considering the ideas that usually come out of the marketing department of the companies I worked for so far, I guess getting drunk regularly is a job requirement.
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A better idea would seem to be to produce a set of fake iPhone prototypes fitted with ghost peppers and an electric heater. If the phone "wanders", the area gets peppered.
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And a two button mouse!
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