Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

He really is that stupid.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

“But what about the lurkers?”

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / So Do We Like It?

Reader Interactions

135Comments

  4. 4.

    Steve in the ATL

    Have only seen it on my iPad so far but it’s great there. A huge improvement.

  7. 7.

    Dog Dawg

    I can’t tell any major differences on iOS other than the boxes which I think are block quotes.

    Test

  8. 8.

    Kropadope

    I like it. Easily readable and I can use the back button to navigate to my former position when checking replies again, that alone makes the update wonderful.

  9. 9.

    Comrade Mary

    Yeah, the desktop has two scrollbars (gotta love those whack-a-mole bugs that show up in any new design), but I really like the look, especially the improvements in the use of white space with only a few exceptions.

    1) The placement of the “Reply” link under each comment
    2) The timestamp under each poster’s name

    Apart from the way those two elements are crowded, everything else seems well-placed and spacious in the latest Firefox on Windows 8.1. Good job, nerds!

    EDIT: Edit mode still works nicely.

  11. 11.

    Major Major Major Major

    It’s interesting. I’m sure I’ll get used to it. The bottom/top buttons keep distracting my eye, which is an impediment to reading, and the big top ad could be less big. Otherwise I’m sure I’ll get used to it, nothing else stands out. I like the biggerness of the right column, I think. But the autoplay video is gonna be a deal-breaker for some people, I imagine.

  12. 12.

    Mike J

    Add overflow:hidden to the body selector and most of my complaints will go away.

    I don’t like having to click something to see recent comments in the sidebar, but that’s a taste issue, I suppose. Mostly I like it. (I’d also tighten up the vertical spacing on the name-email-website-post stuff under the comment box, but again, that’s just me.)

  13. 13.

    amk

    down arrow borked. also. too. once you use the up arrow, the ‘puter’s home/end/pg up/pg down don’t work. firefox & windows 10.

    back button works. yay.

  15. 15.

    guachi

    The button that scrolls all the way down is placed zero pixels from the text on the left side. It should be father away.

  16. 16.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I’m not seeing anything to get overly outraged about.

    Seems to be clean and functional, at least on Firefox/Win 10.

  17. 17.

    Mike J

    @amk: When you first load a page, don’t click anywhere on it. Arrow keys will scroll. The fix I posted in #13 is for that bug, and we can hope it gets rolled in soon.

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    The scroll to bottom button is very handy on the iPad. Me likey. Haven’t had the inclination to do a real test drive yet (like trying to correct a comment).

  28. 28.

    Comrade Mary

    Hi! I haven’t been around much because Life and also too Election Fatigue. Nice to see y’all!

  30. 30.

    Steve in the ATL

    @John Cole:

    @Corner Stone: Christ. You’re such an insufferable asshole.

    QFT. And also to test the new block quotes, which are awesome.

  34. 34.

    scav

    Entirely approve that there is now something new and different to have extended, vehement, and copiously detailed disagreements about.

  35. 35.

    Steeplejack

    Desktop version looks okay (Firefox on Windows 10). There are some glaring clunkers that seem like they should have been obvious in testing, but it’s also obvious that a lot of stuff got fixed, so kudos for that.

    I just called up the mobile version on my (Android) phone, and, holy shnikeys, the text is tiny—microscopic. And there are duplicate Reply buttons.

    . . . Just switched to desktop version on the phone, and that looks/works somewhat better. (Browser is Chrome on the Android phone.)

  36. 36.

    frosty

    Did this just disable the PageUp PageDown Home End keys? They’re not working and that’s how I navigate through everything. Comes from using a laptop on a commuter train without a mouse for many years.

    IE on Windows 7.

  38. 38.

    Comrade Mary

    Oops! Replies just got really, really weird.

    Comment #15, a reply to Mike J, was made on desktop and worked fine, but my comment #30, a reply to TaMara made on mobile, shows up on desktop as a solo comment without the link to Tamara’s comment. Even worse, on mobile, it shows up within her original comment as a quote instead of a separate comment, plus her name header is stripped out of that comment.

    (Are we not getting comments numbered on mobile? I don’t see any in iOS 9.2).

  42. 42.

    ? Martin

    My suggestions:

    .comment {
    margin-bottom: 1em;
    padding: 0 0 0 0;
    }

    #scroll-top-link {
    opacity: 0.1;
    }

    The bottom margin padding per comment really stretches the page out a lot. The whitespace below the reply button doesn’t add much.

    Set the top/bottom page buttons to the same opacity/hover treatment as the previous/next post. We’ve got those worked out, they are nicely subtle and non-distracting. Top/bottom can match.

    I would tighten up white space on the sidebar – close up the amazon/store banners and try and get that first ad up above the fold. You have ads so people will see them and click, so don’t bury them.

    Other than those minor things it’s all working very well. Nicely done.

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    Forgot to say, I’m on the iPad with iOS 9-something, desktop site. I briefly went into mobile but the text was ant-sized.

  45. 45.

    scav

    Though I will add, I rather wish the recent posts / comments element was as the very top of the sidebar (and thus first visible and accessible when we hit the uparrow) as that’s what we’re likely to use the most, rather than the various support elements (AMZN/Tunch/Paypall). Having to scroll a teeny bit down those (alas! rarer) times when we choose to donate isn’t likely to really deter that many people, but it adds up when we’re commenting or looking for where the active threads are.

  49. 49.

    Bobby D

    Actual content bar too narrow, ads-n-xtrashit bar too wide.
    Looking like about 3:2 ratio between those columns now, try about a 4:1 content width to ads-n-xtrashit width.

  51. 51.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    I was hoping the banner would be changed to a rainbow and butterflies to reflect the site’s legendary bonhomie.

  54. 54.

    Mike J

    @scav: And we don’t need the empty boxes (supposed to be used for the graphic that used to be mandatory for each post, and were thankfully killed) with each comment on the recent comment list

  56. 56.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    FYI, the site looks like shit on my Mattel Aquarius and I’m running the 4K memory expansion.

    Are you running the latest ANSI set?

  57. 57.

    Corner Stone

    @Kropadope: Speaking of insufferable assholes.
    As a Bernie supporter, you make me repeatedly wonder what kind of message this campaign is actually sending out.

  59. 59.

    Comrade Mary

    @Steeplejack: That TaMara “Ditto” looks like a reply to my comment #40 (nested as a quote inside my comment on mobile, but out in the open with no pointer back to me on desktop)

    (This is a reply to Steeplejack in comment 58, just in case my reply formatting doesn’t show up. Yep, it’s a weird night. Hope the web nerds are getting some beer after this.)

    This is a reply made on the desktop.

  60. 60.

    Comrade Mary

    (And my last reply/comment looks just right on desktop and mobile. Well done, nerds!)

  62. 62.

    Sfinny

    Well this seems an appropriate time to test out a comment as I set up a new computer.

    Checking out edit. Yes it works.

  63. 63.

    mclaren

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    FYI, the site looks like shit on my Mattel Aquarius and I’m running the 4K memory expansion.

    Jeez. Upgrade to a Commodore Pet, dumbsh!t. And use a 600 baud modem!

  65. 65.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @srv: I gotta log off now. My 300 baud acoustical modem has been tying up the line for hours. Haha, I bet someone has been trying to get through.

    Good luck with your shitty blog, John Cole.

  67. 67.

    Kropadope

    @Corner Stone: If I’m showing you my asshole side, you damn well better believe you earned it.

    ETA: You literally opened up with a direct personal insult. I mean, come on.

  69. 69.

    Mary G

    Personal pet peeve, comments are gone from bottom of post. I don’t like having to scroll back up to the top.

  72. 72.

    different-church-lady

    @Corner Stone:

    you make me repeatedly wonder what kind of message this campaign is actually sending out.

    “Send More Chuck Berry”

  73. 73.

    Ruckus

    @Mary G:
    What’s your browser/OS?
    On mac FF I have a down button and an up button at the bottom of the screen. And I’m not sure what you mean by no comments at the end.
    I’m not having the errors that others are talking about. I also looked at the mobile, Android/Chrome. No comment numbers but otherwise works fine as well.

    To answer John, Works fine and YES, CS was and still is a absolute asshole. Riffing on EF, there isn’t an assholeectamee effective enough to fix that.

  74. 74.

    different-church-lady

    a) Layout easier on the eyes.
    b) Not exactly keen on the quote box look, but it’s a huge improvement over what we had. I’ll get used to it.
    c) When I use the floating-on-page top button, I temporarily lose the ability to “gesture” up and down on my trackpad — don’t get it back until I click on the scroll bar
    d) Have no idea what the double scroll bar is all about. The inner one doesn’t seem to do anything.
    e) My page up and page down keys no longer seem to work

  75. 75.

    different-church-lady

    @different-church-lady: I’m guessing (d) and (e) are related. The inner scroll bar looks “full length”, as though the entire page is displayed and, thus, there is nothing to scroll. Seems like scrolling works when the browser “thinks” I’m on the “page” associated with the outer scroll bar, but not when I’m on the “page” associated with the inner one.

  76. 76.

    different-church-lady

    He’s the human equivalent of vomiting tequila through your nose

    HEY COLE Y U SAVE BEST STUFF FOR THE TWEETS?

  77. 77.

    mclaren

    @Corner Stone:

    As a Bernie supporter, you make me repeatedly wonder what kind of message this campaign is actually sending out.

    The message we are sending out is that America is the greatest nation in the country, and things are more like they are now than they have ever been.

  78. 78.

    eemom

    @efgoldman:

    What, did you think he had an an insufferable-ectomy while he was away?

    Nah, that’s backwards. What he needs is a sufferable transplant. Any compatible donors out there?

  79. 79.

    mclaren

    Also, on my Lisp machine keyboard, the infinity key does not scroll to the end of time after this blog has shut down, the meta key fails to make all posts ironic, the hyper key does not make the posts hyperventilate as it should, and the super key only slightly increases the impressiveness of all the posts rather than making them all awesome.

    These are serious problems and need to be fixed immediately.

  80. 80.

    mclaren

    @eemom:

    Nah, that’s backwards. What he needs is a sufferable transplant. Any compatible donors out there?

    Corner Stone is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life, and even now I feel that way.

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    Positives:
    More appealing and judicious use of white space
    Font sizes more standardized and consistent
    Return of blockquotes in a box
    Quick Links at top right an improvement over the stuff that was at the top

    Negatives:
    Static non-functional scrollbar appearing at right hand margin
    Shading of outlines of the box for blockquotes is sketchy visual design – makes the monitor screen look dirty or smudged, more so if multiple blockquotes are used
    @ sign in Recent Comments list on its own separate line look both clunky and odd – @ sign was not included in Recent comments list prior to today’s upgrade; ditto the blank boxes preceding the @ signs
    Return of number of replies display between the post and the first comment on the comments page – redundant, as the number of comments is already displayed in the post itself
    Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys on keyboard now not doing anything if used (FF latest build, Win 7)
    Clutter of tags (including an “Add New Tag” tag) on right sidebar is plain ugly (plus, having 2 of those tags include the word “rape” not a great incentive to stick around for new visitors)
    Vertical delineation lines on front page are black, horizontal delineation lines are gray; choosing one color or the other for both will tighten up the overall look
    Rotating tag line does not appear if javascript disabled – hasn’t done so since rolling out the design last November; it did show regardless of js setting prior to that
    Contact dropdown now moved all the way to the bottom, separated from the other dropdowns for some reason
    Changing the display of buttons under Follow to vertical instead of horizontal will eliminate overlapping text showing when page is viewed with images turned off
    Adding a blank line below the last line of a comment and the Reply button would help avoid misclicking, particularly if a commenter includes a link at the end of a lengthy last line in his/her comment
    Footer link might well be more useful if placed on right hand side; most people are right-handed and the closer to their mouse that button is to click on, the more convenient it would be
    Ellipsis in the mouseover/alternate text for Amazon button unnecessary (also grammatically questionable as there is no space between the final dot and the words “a lot”)
     

  83. 83.

    sleepy

    I don’t understand the purpose of the scroll bar. My browser already has a scroll bar: why does the page itself need one of its own? What’s more, for me at least, the page’s scroll bar doesn’t work anyway, making its presence even more mysterious.

    Also, if I click anywhere on the page, the page up, page down, home, and end keys quit working. I don’t know but suspect that this is related to the non-functional scroll bar.

    Not crazy about the “scroll to bottom” thingamajig. It’s much too close to the content. It would be less visually intrusive if it were further to the outside and a lighter color.

  84. 84.

    Prescott Cactus

    John Cole by Prescott Cactus

    Young Repub redeemed

    Kitten herder / pet keeper

    Pet shelter donor

  87. 87.

    Suzanne

    @John Cole: But he’s OUR insufferable asshole! GROUP HUG!

    Looks the same in my iPhone. I lost my iPad, so I can’t tell you how it looks there. That was where I always had problems. Looked good in portrait only.

  88. 88.

    A Humble Lurker

    I’d rather what we read be centered instead of off to the side, and I have way too many scroll bars. Otherwise…looks okay?

  90. 90.

    Ripley

    Nope, it’s totally screwed – I can still read the comments. TRY HARDER COLE.

    Netscape 3 Windows 98

  91. 91.

    mclaren

    @different-church-lady:

    What does the “end” key do?

    “Then another sign became visible in the sky, and I saw that it was a huge red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, with a diadem upon each of his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them upon the earth.”

    After that, the sea turns to lead and the sun blots out and the dead rise in Megiddo. You want to make sure you don’t hit this key by accident.

  92. 92.

    mclaren

    @Amir Khalid:

    When will the site look presentable again?

    This site has never been presentable. Balloon-juice has always been a louche disreputable demimonde full of lurking scalawags and caitiffs and mountebanks. You would never want your mother or your sister to see this site. It is best not even to speak of it in public.

  95. 95.

    Keith G

    The pc version seems great. However the mobile seen on Android is worse than it was before. The comments have no date stamps or numbers, so that looking back to a reply reference gets one lost.

  96. 96.

    Central Planning

    iPad mini here, 9.3.1 and Chrome. I see two reply buttons/links on each post.

    Also I don’t see numbers on the posts nor the time they were posted

    Finally, there is a sliver of a scroll bar on the right side of the display which is almost the same color as the page background.

  98. 98.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ruckus: I think she means there’s no longer a link to open comments at the bottom of the post; you have to scroll back up to the top to open comments. Not the end of the world, but not convenient, especially for longer posts. This was something that was addressed in one of the earlier iterations, so maybe there’s a fix coming. Or maybe not!

  99. 99.

    Gvg

    iPad. Tiny font and big black wasted space column on the left in landscape mode the way I usually read it. Still tiny but no black column if in portrait. No comment numbers. The tiny font is a problem for my eyes. Resizing just hides some of the text.

  101. 101.

    different-church-lady

    Everything seems to be faster for me. Others may not notice, because most of you are not limping along on a 7 year old computer.

  104. 104.

    Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim

    Did the links in the blogroll used to open in new tabs? Because they don’t now.

  105. 105.

    Shantanu Saha

    There doesn’t seem to be any change on the mobile version that I can immediately see, but the desktop version now has a larger font and seems to be a bit more readable as a result. No other changes that I can see.

  106. 106.

    sherparick

    @efgoldman: Hey that clunky video ad is paying the bills. Maybe we should ask how much the ads bring in and then see if we can do a fundraiser to buy the space and close down video.

  107. 107.

    J R in WV

    Agree about this one thing mentioned in a long complaint above:

    Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys on keyboard now not doing anything if used (FF latest build, Win 7)

    Also, most all pages allow the SpaceBar to be a page down command, which used to work here on B-J. Now it doesn’t. I suspect it is connected to the Home, End, Page Up and Page Down not working. My touchpad on my laptop has a scroll function along the right edge of the pad, and sometimes that quits working too.

    Also see a dummy scroll bar inside the real scroll bar on the right…

    Agree that the large black end button on the bottom left should be moved to the left some (You all knew I’m a leftist/communist/trotskite didn’t you? But I vote Dem here in the US!) and made paler, like the up button on the right.

    But I think the most of it looks good. Thanks Alain for the smooth implementation and all the work!

    I’m running Firefox 45.0 on Ubuntu 14.04 on an Acer Aspire E5-573-57DV. I don’t recall having any trouble with paging or scrolling in the test environment, so maybe this is something that didn’t get moved from test to prod.

  108. 108.

    tarragon

    Visually nice, good use of white space to frame comments and posts.
    Two scroll bars in desktop chrome.
    No scroll bars in iOS
    Not a fan of the comments link only being at the top of a post.
    And the big one: somehow it goes back and forth between space and PG UP/PG Down will scroll the page but the mouse scroll wheel wont and the opposite where the keyboard wont scroll but the mouse will.

  109. 109.

    HeartlandLiberal

    I just emailed Heymistermix this, and I now note I am not alone in experiencing this, I think from comments above. Namely, the arrow keys and page up and down keys WILL NOT SCROLL THE PAGE. Which is horrible design, if you are interrupting those events. I searched and found in one place in source for main page “overflow:hidden”, which, per some quick Google research, can block the up and down arrow key events. But I cannot use the arrows and page up/down keys, and that really sucks. Working on laptop, I should not be forced to click and drag with touchpad and control bar to move down and up with thumb in slider on side of page. ARGGGHHS!!!! Since the Internet gods gave us page up and down and Home and End keys in Original Design, I see no reason I cannot live happily with out the two floating blocks with arrows to go top and bottom. Superfluous design, unnecessary, and possibly related to the problems I am experiencing, which, if some design elements are intercepting events from these keys, is bad, bad, bad design.

  112. 112.

    Kay (not the front-pager)

    @Comrade Mary:

    the desktop has two scrollbars

    That’s not an extra scroll bar, it’s a wall; a uuuge wall to keep the scroll bar out of the blog. The Mexicans will pay for it.

    Seriously, I love the new layout. I particularly like that the Amazon link was moved up near the top so I don’t have to scroll down every time I want to buy something from them (which is many times a day it seems). Love that I can jump to a referenced comment and then go back to where I was via the ‘back’ button. Happy to see that I can go to earlier pages again. Love the larger, easy to read font and lots of white space. Much easier to read with my elderly eyes.

    All in all, a great job. I know how hard implementing an update is, and how many new problems spring up each time you fix one problem. You’ve done a good job tracking down and catching the all the tribbles that escape and stuffing them away.

  113. 113.

    Starfish

    It looks about the same as before, but the padding around the Reply button looks odd.

    It looks like if there is a single-line comment, the padding under the reply button is bigger than when there is a multi-line comment.

    If there is a quote box in the comment, the box runs into the the top of the Reply button.

  114. 114.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Mike J: Thank you for this explanation of the workaround for arrow keys (“hack” being a widely misused word for “crack” when talking about computers, as I’m given to understand – or perhaps through popular usage the meaning/understanding has shifted). *

    In the later site thread Alain noted my remark and said it would go on the list – he’s a mensch like that.

    I’m not gonna bitch about design nitpicks, as I can still see contrasting background colors for adjacent comments with MBBJ.

    Thanks Cole, and Alain, and Mike J, and all the others I’ve undoubtedly omitted.

    *Pedants gotta pedantify.

  115. 115.

    HeartlandLiberal

    I scrounged in source code and in one of the includes “view-source:balloon-juice.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.11.3“, I find a preventDefault() statement which I am wondering may be the source of my total inability to scroll the page with standard arrow and page keys, and home and end key. Which behavior is atrocious and unacceptable, as far as I am concerned. What is the point in overriding such standard behavior and making it so hard to scroll the page??

  116. 116.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @HeartlandLiberal: As for arrow keys, see Mike J’s workaround in # 13. Alain is aware of it from my high dB complaint last night.

    Edit isn’t operational for me Win10/current FF, but I can just make multiple comments to work around that.

  117. 117.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @HeartlandLiberal: Mike’s workaround for arrow keys is actually explained in #18, and I’m confident Alain will fix it. As opposed to telling us we’re internetting wrong. Which Alain has never done. I’ll just leave it at that, and I recognize even that is bitchy.

  120. 120.

    Bobby Thomson

    @tarragon: the comments link needs to be at the bottom, especially since the site doesn’t scroll for shit on a touch pad.

  121. 121.

    Aleta

    Maybe upgrade-related: When I copy a phrase from someone else’s quote (text from elsewhere put in by a FP post or in another comment), it gets pasted in as the words “flat white” when using an iPad.

  122. 122.

    low-tech cyclist

    The buttons to p.2, p.3, etc. at the bottom of the main page now work.

    Their recent lack of functionality was my only problem with the site, so I’m happy. Rock on.

  123. 123.

    JaneE

    I am using Chrome on Win10, and see about 1/3 of the screen as whitespace before the BJ logo & title. Cosmetic problem only.

  124. 124.

    john b

    I’d like a link to the comments at the bottom of the post (on the front page) as well as at the top as it is now. For long posts, I have to scroll back up. Thanks

  125. 125.

    hedgehog the occasional commenter

    Reads very easily on mobile. Still getting used to the full-screen version.

  127. 127.

    Luthe

    I’d like to add to the complaining about the content to sidebar ratio and the continuing presence of the damn autoplay ad. I know Cole needs the bucks and I whitelist the site in AdBlock, but autoplay videos at Just Not On. Plus, it really fucks with the ancient Mac I borrow from time to time.

    Also, the comment numbers/timestamps have not returned to the mobile site for me (Chrome/Android 5.1.1).

  128. 128.

    daddyj

    Looking good! Thanks to Alain and the other testers!

    I also have the double scroll-bars. Mac 10.9.5 in Safari, FFox and Chrome. Didn’t notice them on the testing server.

    If I toggle this rule (base.css, line 48) on and off:

    html.responsive, .responsive body {
    overflow-x: hidden;
    }

    …the inner scrollbar goes away, so I am guessing that is the culprit. No idea why one would put such an odd directive on the html tag; the class indicates it’s some kind of responsive framework gambit, but the necessity escapes me.

  129. 129.

    amk

    The mobile version on android is much better than the dt version, which has become unreadable.

  130. 130.

    Grump

    Nearly unreadable now. Go back to the way it looked 10 years or so ago. Don’t know why y’all had to change it in the first place.

  131. 131.

    Elie

    Thanks for asking, John. I am late to the thread but I like the bigger print and most of the functionality. I hope the disappearing comments glitch has been solved… Thanks for trying so hard. I like this format ok, but like Grump above, I was fine with the old way. But that is water under the bridge and here we are, so I say, this is good, thanks for trying to improve the site and carry on!

  133. 133.

    pat

    Haven’t read the comments, so maybe this has been mentioned.

    What I don’t like: Have to scroll back to the beginning of the post to access Comments. Used to be able to do it from the end of the post.

    The name of the commenter is too small.

  135. 135.

    Miss Bianca

    How have you managed to do a site redesign that is so much less jarring than any other site redesign I’ve seen? Like, I hardly ever visit DKos anymore for other reasons, but one of them is definitely that I can’t stand the way their makeover looks and operates.

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