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My (well parents') worst purchase was this all-in-one game controller that went probably into gameport back in the late 90's or early 2000's. Basically you could strip parts of it or realign pieces of it to: 1. Act as a steering wheel 2. Act as a flight yoke (You could push/pull it towards/away from the base like a flight yoke, not a joystick) 3. Act as a....motorbike controller (Nothing different from the steering wheel apart from some parts aligned differently I believe) 4. It also had a regular joystick at the right hand side of it. I remember it being an absolute piece of poo poo. I have no memory of the brand apart from it was fairly unknown. If I spent ages trawling old (Finnish) PC Magazine I could probably find it. ....But I would be curious to try it again (if it gameport worked) just to see if my memory serves right or whether I was just bad at using it.
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Nov 22, 2023 02:49
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Dessel posted:My (well parents') worst purchase was this all-in-one game controller that went probably into gameport back in the late 90's or early 2000's. Basically you could strip parts of it or realign pieces of it to: That's pretty neat sounding even if it didn't work well in practice, I'd love to see it. That was definitely the era I was most interested in alternate controllers for racing games and flight sims, but I don't remember anything with modifiable configurations like that.
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Nov 22, 2023 03:25
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Dessel posted:My (well parents') worst purchase was this all-in-one game controller that went probably into gameport back in the late 90's or early 2000's. Basically you could strip parts of it or realign pieces of it to:
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Nov 22, 2023 03:51
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Found it. Zykon Joyrider Pro https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/374909669605 Apparently it was a Belgian firm. Please do not buy it. I found one Finnish review of it and it considered it completely horrible. It was in a 98 short puff piece including other great hits such as InterAct UltraRacer, InterAct Vortex 3D, Saitek Cyborg 3D, Per4mer Air Racer and Thrustmaster FragMaster  image of it from some Russian website. Source: https://youla.ru/sankt-peterburg/kompyutery/ruli-dzhoistiki-geympady/dzhoistik-4v1joyrider-pro-zykon-5eb68a2c78a89b773008d7b0 Dessel fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Nov 22, 2023 |
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Nov 22, 2023 05:48
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Best Purchase was a 1080ti. I have used it as a loaner card to all my friends and gave it to my brother as a gift last year. It is still a beast all these years and keeps on chugging 7 years later with no end in sight. Worst purchases are a few. First one was the Samsung Flip 4. I got caught up in the hype cycle with this as my Pixel 5 was getting long in the tooth. The screen protector came off the phone within a few months and the screen cracked a few times from light use. It got to the point where I never opened the phone at all because I didn't want to crack the screen again from just using it. I sold it off for a Samsung s23 Ultra after the 3rd RMA. Second being Gigabyte video cards. I don't think I ever used a company that just produce terrible video cards. I had a 460ti that bluescreened all the time. I had a AMD 270x that died after a week and the warranty replacement dragged on for a year. I got a 6700xt that refused to load anything regardless of the pc I put it on to make sure it wasn't a driver issue. I have used MSI, ASUS, XFX, and Sapphire many times without issue. Gigabyte Video Cards, a failure every time.
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Nov 23, 2023 15:17
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Worst purchase is my 5600X, in the sense that if I'd waited longer I could have gotten a 5800X3D 
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Nov 23, 2023 19:12
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Best purchase probably was my old BlackBerry Curve 8320 considering I used the hell out of that thing. Actual computer related would probably be my Audioengine A2+ speakers. Worst purchase has to be spending $900 on an RTX 3070 Ti late into the pandemic only to replace it a year later because Nvidia won't put enough VRAM on their loving cards. Maybe an Xbox One (not S, not X, just the original VCR shaped one).
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Nov 26, 2023 01:17
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when i had no idea what i was doing i bought a passively cooled gaming card (an X800XL i think) and ho boy was that a mistake even with the meagre ~50W TDPs of the day arctic cooling came to the rescue on that one
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Nov 26, 2023 02:23
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best purchases were probably the 2500k and 8700k, and managing to bag an FE card for MSRP at the height of the pandemic which ended up being an almost free upgrade with the inflated price my old card sold for
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Nov 26, 2023 02:40
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Best purchase was a Steam Deck. I've been using it regularly ever since I bought it, and I'm immediately buying a Steam Deck 2 whenever it drops in 2025. Worst purchase was a gaming laptop. Keyboard only worked in the BIOS, never in Windows or Linux, and Dell basically threw their hands up when replacing the keyboard didn't fix the issue. It ran hot af and despite having a mobile 3080 it couldn't handle VR games. Ended up giving it away.
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Nov 27, 2023 19:29
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The Elecom HUGE trackball, as seen in this link: https://a.co/d/it0rkeL I found mine at a thrift store for 3 bucks, and let me tell you it lives up to its name and I swear by it. I also bought a wireless one full price for my laptop. I loving love this thing! I also should give props to my ThinkPad T420, it taught me Linux and got me into IT, and continues to be a workhorse and a versatile machine. Got 3 drives shoved in it, which is handy as well. 
Vile_Nihilist666 fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Nov 28, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 18:18
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Woolie Wool posted:best: 
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Nov 28, 2023 18:30
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Valve Index easily.
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Sep 21, 2024 06:17
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AEMINAL posted:Valve Index easily. For best, or worst?
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Sep 21, 2024 23:57
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I'm still convinced that VR is the future, but rn they're too constrained by cost and the fact that nobody at all is loving developing for them.
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Sep 23, 2024 21:22
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klosterdev posted:I'm still convinced that VR is the future, but rn they're too constrained by cost and the fact that nobody at all is loving developing for them. Also by nobody wanting to be cut off from the world by their nerd helmet. Worst is probably every Android tablet I've ever bought with the sole exception of the Nexus 7, especially the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 I have now which is one of the least responsive devices I've ever owned. Best is my PS2, got it in 2004, took it apart earlier this year to clean it, replace the thermal pads and clock battery and it's still going without issue a full 20 years later.
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Sep 24, 2024 05:38
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Hasturtium posted:For best, or worst? Best! Thing cured my social anxiety and is how I met my SO of 5 years 
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Sep 24, 2024 09:30
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Best Hardware purchase was the 1080Ti. Even during the Video Card Crisis during Covid, I was using it and lending it to friends while they tried to get new video cards. It ended up in my brother's scarped together pc, and it still works like a champ to this day. RIP EVGA. Worst purchase was corsair virtuoso headphones. I got a wireless pair that would consistently just cut out all the time, even when i made a dongle setup to have it close to the headset as possible. When the headphones were connected to my PC for charging, the mic made my voice sounds like a coin being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Then I tried the corsair virtuoso pro which were some of the poorest quality open backed headphones I tired. The first part had a driver problem where anything with bass would make it come off as a fart. The second part broke in a few months due to the plastic joints on the headphones cracking from the high pressure force that the headphones has on bigger heads. Went back to Steelseries headsets after that.
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Sep 24, 2024 14:40
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klosterdev posted:I'm still convinced that VR is the future, but rn they're too constrained by cost and the fact that nobody at all is loving developing for them. I love my Index, but VR just ain't it. It has many problems that prevent it from being a good general purpose platform, but key among them are Locomotion and Physicality. VR just sucks to move in. Bad. Some games have done a lot of good work to get around that and games like Sairento have more or less dodged the problem completely. Games like Echo VR have also gone in a better direction by 'detaching' you from the ground and being more momentum based. Seated or stationary experiences can also work pretty well and I would argue Beatsaber is still a killer app for the platform. There are solves for this as long as your game can work with those kinds of solves, but the idea of an FPS or an RPG, or any game where you traverse a map via walk - it's just dead in the water and that right there just axes a huge pile of games. The second problem I see is in physicality, or the lack thereof. It's really cool to swing a sword in VR. It doesn't work the second it comes into contact with another thing though. Again, Beatsaber has successfully dodged this, but so many games try and fail because the ultra-cool 1:1 mapping of your movement falls apart the second it needs to collide with something. VR simply cannot deliver on this promise and games would do well to stop trying as far as I'm concerned. Besides that, Facebook has done wonders in completely poisoning that well for other reasons and it's gonna be hard to recover from their stupidity. For those reasons and others though, VR is just not destined to be a 'General Purpose Gaming Platform' and the problem is not cost or computing power, but one of interface that can't really be overcome.
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Sep 24, 2024 22:53
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another problem with vr is that a bunch of us are much more likely to get motion sickness from it. I did an iss simulator (granted which was absolutely cool as hell) and lasted ~5 minutes before getting so nauseous I had to lay down for an hour  best so far: pixel watch 2. fashionably late to the smart watch party, now I get the hype
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Sep 25, 2024 02:57
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Best was probably my 2013 MacBook Pro Retina 8/256. Purchase was subsidized by family but it carried me through college and beyond that, and beyond that, and beyond that. It was my first MacBook and my first foray into macOS as a daily driver (I left my gaming computer at home so I would be nudged into spending as much time socializing as possible - which worked well). The way it integrated with my iPhone was magical, even back then. The build quality was ridiculous, as was the display. I also ran bootcamp on it so I could play lighter/older games on the windows partition. Had a lot of fond memories going over to my then-boyfriend’s house and playing terraria with him. My decision to list this might be colored by emotion, but it was also just an amazing, performant machine that was a real gem to use. I’m hesitant to call my 3070 the worst purchase, but it was one I regretted the most in recent because I heard the siren song of raytracing and ignored the perils of 8GB VRAM. I should have just gotten the AMD equivalent for better raster and much more VRAM. RT still seems to eat too much performance for the meager image quality boost (baked lighting still looks fine for my eyes).
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Sep 26, 2024 05:48
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Intel celeron slot 300a. Instant over clock to 450mhz out the box that was 100% solid and never crashed. Slap a coolermaster fan on it and you were sorted for years!
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Sep 30, 2024 14:04
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Best was absolutely my ThinkPad X200. Bought it in 2008, resuscitated it a couple years ago with a new fan/battery/SSD, and it’s still running Windows 7 like a champ. I’m using it for basic odds and ends while I wait for my new Framework machine to ship. Every laptop should have as many status lights on it as this thing. Worst was probably my Surface RT. It was just way too early to buy into Windows on ARM. It didn’t perform well and the app selection was just so mediocre.
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Sep 30, 2024 15:15
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2013 MacBook Air 13 inch i7 8/512. Lasted me 7 years as the daily driver. Truly had an all day battery that would last 10 hours doing actual work. Battery was very easy to replace. Now is my Router/VPN with a thunderbolt PCIE expansion box with a dual 2.5gb Nic. I now have a 2020 MBA M1 16/1TB that has been as good as my last one. I know they aren't cheap, but they have been great computers. I don't beat on them, but they have fallen off multiple tray tables and suffered no damage. Worse purchase was a Mac Performa 6220. I could have got a 7100 but I wanted that video in! Apple basically took a PPC chip, which had a 64 bit bus and put it in a 68040 motherboard with a 32 bit bus, and tried to make it perform ok by giving it 256k L2 cache. the 603 in it also had a somewhat neutered FPU, so even the advantage of the PPC for math was much lower. It used IDE and not SCSI, which, at the time seemed attractive because of scsi drive prices, but performance was horrible. In PC terms, it was would be like Dell selling a 486 with a pentium overdrive in it saying, "It's a full fledged pentium system". Same issues with 64 vs 32 bit bus, slower memory. I was too young to realize this, as I was 14 at the time. I quickly sold it, switched to Windows, but went back to Mac when OS X came out. EDIT: You know who else did fuckery like that with new CPUs in old system boards? IBM. They sold "486" systems with 16 bit system busses. Basically grafting Cyrix 486 cpus onto 386sx boards and selling them to people who didn't know any better. They were always so slow, cause they were even doing this into the windows 95 era. Nutsy Crustack fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Oct 2, 2024 |
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Oct 2, 2024 19:20
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best: Atari 800 with basic cartridge (I didn't buy it), 21" Trinitron Monitor, Diamond Monster 3d, iPhone 4, 1080ti, every Chromebook I've owned worst: $2500 laptop circa 1998, Apple watch, some brand new WD hard drive that immediately died and lost my meticulously curated mp3 collection
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Oct 4, 2024 04:04
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Best: Bought a Lenovo TS440 when they were like $250 or something. 4 Cores, 8 Threads 32GB RAM paired with ZFS and it still runs my NAS pretty great. Xbox 360: I had so much fun with this machine, games weren't afraid to try something new and even with RROD (i had this) it was a fun machine. Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising etc. Playstation 4: Great games, great hardware. I still like it a lot. Radeon 9700 Pro, man this card was fast. Worst: Xbox HD DVD drive, yes I was one of those suckers who bought one. It was discounted though.  Cheap 3d Printer: costs 250 or something and it never worked right.
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Oct 6, 2024 08:20
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Recent best purchases: Philips oneblade, theragun
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Nov 10, 2024 05:53
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8 10tb drives for $75* each, upgrading my array from raid-z2 6*3 to 6*10 with 2 to spare *they're now $87
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Nov 22, 2024 11:25
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Best: Audio-Technica AD900 headphones. Going on 15 years and they are still in good condition and sound better than everything I’ve tried outside of boutique hi-fi stores. I’ve dropped them so many times and nothing has broken. Surface Pro 2. People hate on these, but I’d argue that it was literally the only form factor and platform on which MS’ goofy touchscreen OS made sense. Also my use case was night-school/backpacking/sleeping on a couch in a bar or at friends’ houses because my roommate was insane. That tiny brick got me through a lot of poo poo and even ran XCOM. 2500K Worst: XBOX Elite controller. Bumper pads broke inside 2 months, which is just ridiculous for a premium controller. Online retailer and Microsoft both gave me the run-around and I was too busy with work to force one of them to honor a return. It’s still sitting in a drawer somewhere, taunting me
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Nov 22, 2024 13:55
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Fruits of the sea posted:... Mine broke in some stupid way I can't remember. I tried to glue the piece back on, but the super glue bottle broke and dumped glue all over the thing, sealing the battery door shut.
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Nov 22, 2024 21:02
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I can't believe Xbox controllers still take two AA batteries up through this generation. I had to buy an off brand rechargeable battery pack for mine because refilling it with new batteries or leaving it plugged in all the time was such a pain. Much better to go with a good capacity interior battery like Sony and Nintendo, especially if you work dark magic to get one with the lifetime of a Switch Pro controller.
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Nov 23, 2024 02:01
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Eneloops baby!
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Nov 23, 2024 02:24
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Captain Hygiene posted:I can't believe Xbox controllers still take two AA batteries up through this generation. I had to buy an off brand rechargeable battery pack for mine because refilling it with new batteries or leaving it plugged in all the time was such a pain. Much better to go with a good capacity interior battery like Sony and Nintendo, especially if you work dark magic to get one with the lifetime of a Switch Pro controller.  replaceable batteries rule. I suppose the best option is the combined system that 8bitdo and other third parties use - having a 2xAA spot that comes with a rechargeable pack that can be charged in the controller via USB. I guess like the old play and charge kit.
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Nov 23, 2024 02:32
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Yeah, I wouldn't mind if they had a good capacity one that came packed in, I just don't like that it's an extra purchase on top of the controller. And I know it's not a huge deal, but I just don't like dealing with a separate charger for AAs.
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Nov 23, 2024 02:46
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Captain Hygiene posted:I can't believe Xbox controllers still take two AA batteries up through this generation. I had to buy an off brand rechargeable battery pack for mine because refilling it with new batteries or leaving it plugged in all the time was such a pain. Much better to go with a good capacity interior battery like Sony and Nintendo, especially if you work dark magic to get one with the lifetime of a Switch Pro controller. You buy a pack of eneloops and the advanced charger. I'm glad they kept the AA compartment; I never really understood the appeal of using a cable to charge the controller. It's a wired controller at that point. I'd rather deal with the aa battery charger, but each to their own HalloKitty fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Nov 23, 2024 |
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Nov 23, 2024 10:11
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the ikea rebranded eneloops 2450mah AAs can run my electric toothbrush forever on a single charge
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Nov 24, 2024 02:19
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Worst: 7950GX2 I forced myself into SLI hell right before the 8800GTX came out blowing my card out of the water as a single GPU Best: 7800X3D / X670E mobo / 32 gig ddr 5 6000 Microcenter bundle back when the cpu was 330 before discount beginning of summer.
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Nov 24, 2024 03:43
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AEMINAL posted:Recent best purchases: Philips oneblade, theragun Ikea's LADDA rebranded Eneloops are definitely a great purchase.
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Nov 24, 2024 13:35
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HalloKitty posted:You buy a pack of eneloops and the advanced charger. I'm glad they kept the AA compartment; I never really understood the appeal of using a cable to charge the controller. It's a wired controller at that point. I'd rather deal with the aa battery charger, but each to their own This also means that if the enerloops wear out, you buy new ones, instead of a new controller, or the controller becoming permanently wired.
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Nov 25, 2024 13:43
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Worst: My leap motion I bought when I was 12. I got exactly 0 use from it, and had no good experiences with it. I think I had more fun loving with a kinect I got for 8 pounds in Garry's mod than the stupid hand tracker. Best:series X I got for 300 quid. It's my main media player and allows me to rid my desktop of AAA sin and move it to a dedicated machine. Never loved a console more than that silent box. adainthewiree fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Nov 25, 2024 |
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Nov 25, 2024 14:54
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