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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?

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"

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.

The photo is just for the cover :)

Has anyone cycled through Bosnia and Herzegovina? I'm planning my next solo trip and I'm thinking of going from Belgrade to Sarajevo, crossing the border at Bajina Basta Water Power Plant one way, after visiting Sarajevo it looks like I can cross the border at Bijelina. Most of the videos on YouTube are about cycling back through Croatia, but this is not an option for me due to visa restrictions... The whole route (~700km with +-8500m of altitude difference) looks like an interesting challenge and a great opportunity to get to know BiH.

But I have a lot of general questions about road quality, driver culture in relation to cyclists, water accessibility, etc. I'm also worried about the mountains near Sarajevo: from the border to Sarajevo and from Sarajevo to Tuzla. How good are these mountain roads for cycling? Is it possible to zigzag on the most difficult climbs?

Thanks in advance!

Hello, community! I saw in one video that tires and wheel weight are critical for the fast cycling. But how important is it for the tourism? For example, I'm using "hard" slick tires from Kenda (on the photo) that are great for asphalt roads and are very strong against small stones, plant spines and glasa pieces. The problem is weight about 600g (700x32c). I also have 700x32c soft and lightweight gravel tires with only 300g weight. But how important is it for cycling if I have about 10 additional kilograms of bags on top of my bike when I go into a long trip? Does it make sense to lose the durability and dril resistance of Kenda Kwest 700x32c for decreasing the weight of tires twice? Thanks in advance!

I was going to upgrade my bike (Decathlon Triban 100) and ordered the whole new groupset (Shimano SORA). It will be delivered soon, so my question is how hard is the replacing process? It is not a problem to pay in local bike service for the replacement but I'm also interested in trying by myself. I have a repairment kit and all the things, I like to make some maintenance of bike by mysleft but I didn't do so complex maintenance before.

Is there any android app or web app with movie ratings and reviews? Android app would be better. Alternative to imdb? I want to be able to fast check the rating of movie or list of actors. I know about wikipedia app but it's interface is not focused on movies. Thanks in advance!