Re: Guest Post: The Apple Hat

1

I believe you are right about not looking through the goggles. Likewise it simulates your eyes when people are looking at you.


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:08 AM
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The linked article is interesting. Thank you.

It is convincing that the tech is good enough that people will use it, and I have no idea what follows from that.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:15 AM
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I feel like overall, Apple has been the one to look at technology that exists and figure out what is at the stage where they can design the crap out of it & make it take over. So even their doing this at all could say so.

But they're presumably more and more challenged to keep repeating successes as time goes on, so no guarantee it won't be a dud.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:42 AM
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could say *something


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:42 AM
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It looks 50% more ridiculous than Google Glass, so it will probably work. I remember when the iPad came out and I thought it would fail because of obvious jokes about menstruation.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:45 AM
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It seems a lot better thought out than, well, any of the other efforts at this.

Even if the battery pack is lame.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 8:07 AM
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5: the thing about Google Glass aesthetically was that it was trying to hide and be unobtrusive, whereas this unashamedly owns it.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 8:08 AM
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I'm laughing really hard at Sergeant Cybercop, thank you.


Posted by: lourdes kayak | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:12 AM
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They'll design it. They design everything.


Posted by: steve roboJobs | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:18 AM
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I'm impressed by how long people are able to go on about the possibilities without mentioning porn. You're excited to watch basketball on this thing, are you. Uh huh.


Posted by: lourdes kayak | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:27 AM
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The article made a really interesting point about using them to watch sports. That really makes a lot of sense, you can only sell so many front-row tickets and they're extremely expensive. And although there's some benefits to actually being in person, there's also huge benefits to not having to deal with arena parking or traffic and being able to drink better beer for cheaper at home.

Large concerts are another interesting example. Think about what people pay for front row seats for Taylor Swift, and you could do a virtual concert where everyone sits in the front row.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:29 AM
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The juxtaposition of 10 & 11 is amusing.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:37 AM
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Obviously everything is going to be used for porn, but I'm not exactly sure how this makes porn way better. I see how this makes you feel like you're actually in the front row at a Basketball game, which is awesome, but it won't make porn feel like you're actually there in an important way (since there's no touch aspect). Does this really make porn better? Maybe more of the application is some kind of enhanced reality in-person sex, but then big bulky goggles seems like they'd get in the way too much for it to be worth it. Or I guess maybe some kind of creepy x-ray vision thing if you wear this walking around your daily life? But then the battery issues become a problem.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:38 AM
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Someone pointed out that despite the launch video showing the dad attending his kids' birthday wearing one of these things, something that surely won't bring about expensive therapy bills down the line, the end goal is probably to make the 3D video/photo-taking technology available in phones, with the headset for playback, but the stereo camera setup is not available yet except in the helmet. Which makes taking the photos seem less creepy and off-putting, although you still have Sgt. Cybercop drinking alone in his house, reliving the worst day of his life.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:41 AM
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I went to an AR/VR conference 5 ir 6 years ago, using a free pass I was given by someone who had to cancel their plans at the last minute, and what stood out to me as someone who generally ignores this technology was that all the applications with a clear idea of their potential customer base had to do with specific occupations like industries where hands-free video can help a lot (think repairing machinery where only one person may fit but someone with more expertise may be able to consult remotely) while all entertainment applications were speculative as businesses, with people using the industry work to subsidize their creative dreams.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:49 AM
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One reason that sports feels really natural to me is that watching live sports is a situation where you're usually unable to move your body but you are moving your head around a lot. So sitting at a couch with a VR goggle where you can turn your head to look at what you want to look at seems pretty great. Same thing for concerts or theater. But for things where your eyes tend to stay in the center of the screen (films, porn, speeches, etc.) it doesn't seem that great. Sure it's a larger screen but do you really want to be zoomed in that far?

The professional thing that would be a game changer for me is if these leads to some kind of realistic "using a shared board in the same office." Zoom just is absolutely not the same thing as actually being in someone's office working at a board, and if this was something that genuinely felt like being in the same room with another person or two, that'd be amazing.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:51 AM
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And Heebie, that's correct -- you're getting a projection of what you're looking at on the tiny little high-def monitors (the pixels are apparently 7 microns wide!) inside the googles, not a direct view. The latter was the way the failed startup Magic Leap tried to do things, which apparently was amazingly cool in demos but had real physics-type limitations on the optics and never really worked outside controlled conditions and tethered to a full-size computer. Compositing everything into a view on camera is how Apple is handling compositing in the monitors and virtual IMAX screens and such, and it apparently works much better; they're using an entire separate processor with a real-time OS to keep the display at what they say is below human-perceptible lag to cut down on nausea. It sounds like an impressive technical achievement even if I'm skeptical about the utility of the product outside the use cases of watching Kevin Durant get eliminated from the playoffs and also more mainstream porn.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 9:52 AM
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I think 16.last is very much where Apple wants to head, and their presentation clearly showed moves in the direction--I'm certain that there are people in the org who've been talking about convergence between this and FaceTime.

My observation is that this could/should be an amazing tool for designers in general and architects in particular--not for design, but for showing clients your design. You pretty much don't enter these fields unless your internal visualization abilities are way on the edge of the spectrum, but of course most people aren't that good, and that's who our clients are. CAD renderings are nice and all, and video walkthroughs have their strengths, but I know for certain that many people still don't really get what they're seeing in such formats. Whereas I'm confident that it would take very little translation to get from the kinds of modeling we already do to a VR/AR experience that would make clients understand designed spaces in a way that they currently can't until the building is almost complete.

That's a small niche, of course, but it's one where practically any multi-person firm would want to partake.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:02 AM
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18.2 makes a lot of sense. You can imagine a lot of similar situations where you just want to show a real thing to someone distant in a way where they'll get a real feel for it. For example, you have a director working out of LA and a team on the ground in Georgia trying to scout locations for shoots, and if you find one you like you can just have one of the people throw on a headset and have the director throw on a headset and just see the location in a way that would usually require being on the ground. Though for that kind of application speed of internet connection might be a big problem.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:38 AM
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Its an Apple product. They are going to set up an app store with high barriers to entry and no porn. For our own protection.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:43 AM
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Cheesecake stuff is still fine, right?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:44 AM
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I thought we all would just cease to exist below the waist?


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:45 AM
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22: I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:46 AM
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16 seems right.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:47 AM
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23: If so, you should watch (rewatch) "Clue". It is the most cleavage-forward movie if you exclude Russ Meyers's movies on the grounds that he was playing on a different level.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:49 AM
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Virtual museum visits could be interesting? That's a scenario where it's often nice to be able to walk around and have different viewpoints, plus you could get closer to the art than they let you in a museum.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:55 AM
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13: The very mainstream paysite I use is just in the last couple of months incorporating a number of VR videos into its offerings. Based on the interface, it looks like the added value is the verisimilitude of being able to move your head around across a whole field of view, even if you're still fixed in one virtual spot. (Maybe there will also come CYOA-like ones where you can walk around a little bit in predefined ways.)

I bet while Apple would block porn on its store, it won't on browsers.


Posted by: Levi Morton | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 11:14 AM
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22: No, that's the Facebook model.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 11:16 AM
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26: Also things like virtual tours of attractions like archaeological sites that are too fragile for mass visitation.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 11:17 AM
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15: Yeah, this thread from someone with experience in the field is interesting on how the main near-term application (not necessarily what Apple specifically is working on) is things like that in industrial contexts.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 11:20 AM
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25: I am pleasantly reminded of the first episode of Cheers, where the bar denizens get into an argument about what the sweatiest movie ever made is. (Diane's boyfriend at the time wins with Cool Hand Luke.)


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 11:20 AM
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Oh the humid titties.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 11:42 AM
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In the inevitable Clockwork Orange remake, that one scene isn't going to have the same impact and it'll be because of the Vision Pro product placement.


Posted by: Todd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 12:23 PM
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On twitter, Hilzoy linked off to a good explanation for industrial uses where this is the 90% of the way there tech for inspections, etc. Basically, think of how you could use this like a hands free tablet, if you needed to work in confined spaces, etc. (fa notes similar use cases in 15, the thread of about 15 tweets)


Posted by: Mooseking | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 1:07 PM
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31: I can't remember when Cheers came out, but if it was before Body Heat that might explain why Body Heat didn't win.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 1:45 PM
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Just very slightly after.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 1:51 PM
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The one truly useful thing this tech could do for me is the thing they said they'll never do with it. Facial recognition so that a person's name shows up along with other details that enable me to have proper social conversations. "How's your wife Judy and your two kids? Remember when we met at the conference in San Diego last year? See you in a week when we're meeting the team for dinner!"


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 6:04 PM
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There was a Benedict Weaselbatch episode of Sherlock where the plutocrat villain had a version of 37 embellished to identify and autoreport a seen person's vulnerabilities (can't remember what they were-- business debt, or disabled family members I think?). Not sweaty programming. For that Papillon? Kurosawa's Stray Dog?


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:24 PM
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Otterbatch


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:24 PM
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In the books, Sherlock kept a cross-indexed card file system, just like the old lady that hung with my grandma and ran the school library.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:42 PM
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35: Considering Ted Danson was in Body Heat that might have been a subtle inside joke


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:42 PM
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I've just now realized I was asking the wrong teacher if they had any cocaine.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 7:44 PM
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You got to ask them for weed first and work your way up to coke


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 06- 7-23 10:06 PM
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Otterbatch

A batch of 100 otters, to be precise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmlXLU-1E6Y


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 1:06 AM
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43: I didn't want her to tell my grandma I didn't even have weed.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 4:17 AM
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NMM to Pat Robertson, although that has to be a pretty rare fetish.
If 9/11 was God's punishment for American liberalism, is Robertson's death a Pride gift?


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 5:50 AM
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Except if they pick two rent boys for his tomb to carry his luggage.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 7:04 AM
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46: And in other good news -- MM to the VRA! https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/us/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-alabama.html



Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 2:04 PM
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I bet while Apple would block porn on its store, it won't on browsers.

Do you really think that nude filtering AI software they just launched is going to stay optional?


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 4:26 PM
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Do you really think that nude filtering AI software they just launched is going to stay optional?

I'd never heard of that software before now, so no.

But now that I have, I'd wager yes. Imagine the market share Apple would lose if they stopped also being porn-machines.


Posted by: Levi Morton | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 4:37 PM
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Imagine how much they would profit if they charged extra to access porn.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 4:43 PM
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Spike, it's just wild that you are so certain that the company that introduced private browsing (to the broader market anyway) is on a crusade against porn in all its forms.

They've never done anything to reduce their users' access to web-based porn. The fact that they try to run a clean store and TV network has no bearing whatsoever on what their devices are able to access using HTTP.

Also wild to equate "You may not want to see unsolicited nudes" with "Thou shalt not see nudity you navigate to."


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 4:47 PM
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you are so certain that the company that introduced private browsing (to the broader market anyway) is on a crusade against porn in all its forms.

I don't actually think that, but I do think they provide a gatekeeping function that I am not comfortable with. Combine it with enhanced surveillance and AI-based pattern matching and it becomes a lot of power for any tech giant to have.

Apple may not want to censor porn, but how long before Utah decides they have to?


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 06- 8-23 5:56 PM
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Imagine how much they would profit if they charged extra to access porn.

When Dilbert was still funny there was a strip where he coded a web blocker that would prevent access to porn, and Dogbert's response was "so you're willing to pti your coding skills against the collective horniness of every teenager with a computer." "What's your point?" "Did you know that if you put a little furry hat on a snowball it can last longer in Hell?"


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 12:43 AM
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Philip Jose Farmer was a patchy sci-fi writer but one of his descriptions (from the 70s?) stuck with me: it was of a set of imaginary (future) visualisation tools. One was a wall-sized display with such good fidelity that you could walk up to it and still have no sense that it was a synthetic image (i.e. with pixels). Another was a camera used to make such images; the camera was small enough to be wearable as a ring. Anyway, I think Apple get some credit for realising a serving of sci-fi like this; that is, for apparently reaching into the future and bringing it forward.

On the cost: it's expensive because they seem to have decided to spend what's needed for a proper execution. I have no idea if there's a product to be had here. In a utopian sci-fi world, things like Apple's VR/AR headset would exist for no particular reason; they would just be something that a person could have and use. In our world, things must be products with a production run, etc. so that the R&D can be paid for, and so that more products can be funded.


Posted by: Charlie W | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 2:09 AM
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Philip Jose Farmer was a patchy sci-fi writer but one of his descriptions (from the 70s?) stuck with me: it was of a set of imaginary (future) visualisation tools. One was a wall-sized display with such good fidelity that you could walk up to it and still have no sense that it was a synthetic image (i.e. with pixels). Another was a camera used to make such images; the camera was small enough to be wearable as a ring. Anyway, I think Apple get some credit for realising a serving of sci-fi like this; that is, for apparently reaching into the future and bringing it forward.

On the cost: it's expensive because they seem to have decided to spend what's needed for a proper execution. I have no idea if there's a product to be had here. In a utopian sci-fi world, things like Apple's VR/AR headset would exist for no particular reason; they would just be something that a person could have and use. In our world, things must be products with a production run, etc. so that the R&D can be paid for, and so that more products can be funded.


Posted by: Charlie W | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 2:09 AM
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re: 55

Apple have the kind of market share and capital that they could keep an AR/VR headset program going for quite a long time without it necessarily being profitable if they thought it was strategic on the relevant time horizon. I agree, though, that they probably have limited patience for it if the market doesn't seem to start to ramp up.

I've not looked at what they are doing for the other side of the interaction process, too. For a lot of applications, industrial or entertainment, you are going to need some method of controlling and interacting with the virtual or augmented environment and it doesn't seem like anyone has really nailed that yet.

I also wonder about what the legal ramifications might be, too. If people start using these tools for the kinds of industrial applications described above (inspections, etc) at what point is that likely to get challenged legally?

"You have to inspect this nuclear reactor cooling duct on an annual basis. This year, you did it with tiny-crawler-drone-with-8K-cameras and an engineer in a lab wearing a headset and you missed a crack."


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 2:34 AM
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Don't know about other countries but in the UK it's usually OK if you 'used reasonable care' or something like that.

The interface demo seemed to involve a combo of eye tracking (said to be really accurate and fast) with hand gestures. Gf said there was a virtual keyboard at some point. Is that enough for all applications? No idea. The eye tracking is interesting though, because I reckon that's just about the fastest human muscle response available, or at any rate, a lot faster than any pointing device, or a finger.


Posted by: Charlie W | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 3:25 AM
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You can pair it with a real wireless keyboard, or a bluetooth controller, if you want. It's just not a use case Apple wanted to show off.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 4:53 AM
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I want Wii Sports again. I was getting good at tennis.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 5:26 AM
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I was thinking of trying real tennis, but now I'm afraid that will lead to pickleball.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 6:08 AM
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And nobody wants their balls pickled.


Posted by: Doug | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 6:33 AM
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Oh, I think you'll find that somebody, somewhere, does.


Posted by: Opinionated Rule 34 | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 6:34 AM
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61- real tennis meaning "normal" tennis in the physical world, or Real tennis which is a different thing (which I recently tried for the first time)?


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 7:11 AM
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The former but I apologize for forgetting to add "lawn."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 06- 9-23 7:18 AM
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