sem

Hello! I'm a new maintainer of a fairly popular niche project called GraphFrames (GitHub link). The project was in "maintenance mode" for a couple of years, and now I'm excited to help bring it back to life. However, I'm currently facing a serious issue with Sonatype and could use some advice on how to proceed.

Historically, GraphFrames' JARs were published in the Spark Packages repository (link), which was automatically synchronized with Maven Repository (link). The project uses the org.graphframes namespace internally. Unfortunately, the Spark Packages project is now semi-defunct, and the synchronization to Maven is broken.

There is strong demand from GraphFrames users and contributors to resume publishing the project in Maven Central. However, the problem is that the "graphframes.org" domain is not available (whois link). I reached out to Sonatype Support to request permission to register and verify the org.graphframes namespace in Maven Central, but their response was clear: it is not possible.

Here is their response:

Hello Sem,
I am sorry to inform you that it is not possible to register a namespace for a domain that you do not control for Central Portal.

I tried to argue that GraphFrames has a large community, 1k stars on GitHub, nearly 10 years of publishing under the org.graphframes namespace, and numerous existing tutorials and blog posts, but this did not change their decision.

One option is to migrate the project from org.graphframes to io.github.graphframes, but this would be a major disruption for users and dependent projects. It would also render all existing videos, tutorials, and blog posts about GraphFrames outdated.

What else can I do in this situation? DNS, domains, and Sonatype are new topics for me, as I have primarily focused on coding in the past. I would greatly appreciate any advice or guidance on how to handle this issue effectively.

Thanks in advance!

Abstract of the paper: Despite the dramatic rise of surveillance in our societies, only limited research has examined its effects on humans. While most research has focused on voluntary behaviour, no study has examined the effects of surveillance on more fundamental and automatic aspects of human perceptual awareness and cognition. Here, we show that being watched on CCTV markedly impacts a hardwired and involuntary function of human sensory perception—the ability to consciously detect faces. Using the method of continuous flash suppression (CFS), we show that when people are surveilled (N = 24), they are quicker than controls (N = 30) to detect faces. An independent control experiment (N = 42) ruled out an explanation based on demand characteristics and social desirability biases. These findings show that being watched impacts not only consciously controlled behaviours but also unconscious, involuntary visual processing. Our results have implications concerning the impacts of surveillance on basic human cognition as well as public mental health.

My own commentary: to the privacy concerns about CCTVs we can now add also concerns about mental health of people under CCTVs.

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.

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

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!

This summer I'm going to visit Tara National Park by bike starting from Belgrade. I'll first go to Valjevo for a few days (visit caves, etc.) and then directly to Tara.

Questions are:

1. How bad/good is the road quality? How wide is the road? How good is the visibility and lighting along the road?
2. How big a problem is it that I only speak English? Should I prepare some special phrases in Serbian for different cases or is it not necessary?
3. How much cash will I need? I prefer to pay with my Visa card.

Also, any advice about what to visit in Tara will be a pleasure!

Thanks in advance!