After reading such news I have an obvious question. Does anyone know a PayPal-like service, that allows to hide the destination of my transactions from Mastercard / bank, but with a good privacy policy? Or how else can I restrict the usage of my financial data by mastercard or bank?

Let me share my post with a detailed step by step guide how an exisiting Spark scala library may be adopted to work with recently introduced Spark Connect. As an example I have chosen a pupular open source data quality tool AWS Deequ. I made all the necessary protobuf messages and a Spark Connect Plugin. I tested it from PySpark Connect 3.5.1 and it works. Of course, all the code is public in git.

I have my personal blog, made with Hugo and hosted on GitHub pages. Initially I did not turn on any kind of web tracking / web analytics, because I do not like tracking at all. But I want to make my blog better and to achieve it, I need a feedback loop about traffic. For example, what are the most popular publications, or how many people view my blog from mobile devices, etc.

So, my question is, what is the most appropriate (ot the less evil) way to track a web traffic?

An answer "there is no good way to do it without breaking user's privacy" is acceptable too, I did not decide yet turning on the analytics. Instead I'm interested in an opinion of the community.

Thanks in advance!

tldr: Green transition, like switching to electric vehicles and use renewable energy sources, requires a huge amount of minerals. One of the main sources of these minerals is African continent. Researchers found big overlapp of that mining with areas of big apes. Almost 200.000 of apes are in a risk area, based on the estimation:

We estimated that more than one-third of the entire great ape population in Africa—nearly 180,000 individuals—could be directly or indirectly threatened by mining now and in the near future. Apes in West Africa could be most severely affected, where up to 82% of the population currently overlaps with operational and preoperational mining locations and their 50-km buffers

Another problem is that mining companies working there are not pay attention to ecological consequences of their business:

only 5% of the 400 assessed companies had carried out science-based nature and biodiversity impact assessments of their operations and business models

In the Russian region of Astrakhan, near the Caspian Sea, the regional government has approved spending 224 million rubles (~2.5 million EUR) to kill stray dogs. According to the new law, dogs caught on the streets will be placed in temporary shelters for only 15 days and then killed. When the same government rejected the proposal of the program to catch dogs for permanent placement in shelters, they argued that there was not enough money in the regional budget. But now, when the new program to kill dogs was approved, money was immediately found. Many local volunteers say that the regional government is in tight connection with the interests of the company that won the tender to kill the dogs. And they sabotaged all other options, for example, in 2019 they failed to spend even 70% of the money for the sterilization program. In 2022 all the money was sent to the private company, which did almost nothing. Some managers of this company were sentenced to prison, but the money was gone and the beneficiaries escaped punishment. This is how corruption and human greed kill innocent dogs.

A link the the same text in Telegram channel of one of Russian non commercial fund helping animals Givers of the Hope "Дарящие надежду"

Apple donated to community their own implementation of native physical execution of Apache Spark plan with Data Fusion.

The hotel was designed by Ivan Štraus, one of the most famous architects of former Yugoslavia (Museum of Aviation in Belgrade, Bosnia Electric Power Buiilding in Sarajevo and others). The building was opened in 1983. During the Bosnian War it was damaged and was restored in the modern time following the original project. It looks like it is one of the most famous example of Yugoslavian modernism in Sarajevo.

Original content, CC-BY-4.0.

Photo was made by myself. Original content under CC-BY-4.0.

Original content, CC-BY-4.0

Hello! I would like to share the route I made for myself and my story how I finished it recently. The route I will describe starts in Belgrade, goes along the Danube River, through Djerdap National Park to the border with Serbia, and returns to Belgrade through Kucaj-Beljanica National Park. The route is compilation from parts of different EuroVel routes.

Route Summary:

• Total length: about 700 km;
• Total elevation: about 5000 m;
• Highest climbing category: 2;
• Highest point: 960 m above the sea;
• Estimated days required: 6-7;
• Overall level: medium;
• Recommended lowest gear: 1:1
• Recommended tires: 35+ mm or MTB;
• Link to the routeplanner;
• Link to Kamoot;
• Total price, including hotels and food in restaurants: 385 Eur (Fall 2023);

I made a blog post with detailed information about every part and also additional photos inside.