This morning I filed my annual income tax return in Estonia, and thought it would be interesting to time the whole process from start to finish
It took 37 seconds
Rail Baltica is one of the European Union's flagship infrastructure projects, but it's also way over budget. Designed to bring the Baltics closer to Europe, parts of the rail line are already under construction in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. However, without a major boost in funding in the EUâs next Multiannual Financial Framework, construction may stall.
Read the full story by @pedersschaefer and @LoughlinNeuert: buff.ly/iSyplF1
Liebe Freunde, wenn Euch wĂ€hrend der Festtage irgendein Verwandter erzĂ€hlt, dass KapitaleinkĂŒnfte zu gering besteuert wĂŒrden, zeigt ihm diese Grafik. Ich habe korrektermaĂen den SolidaritĂ€tszuschlag (Soli) ergĂ€nzt, der gleich zweimal anfĂ€llt. Die Kapitalgesellschaft muss Soli zahlen, und Euch als Anteilseigner wird bei der AusschĂŒttung gleich noch mal Soli abgezogen. Insgesamt gehen vom Gewinn der Gesellschaft je nach Höhe der Gewerbesteuer mehr als 48% ab
For daily product work I now just iterate on the wireframe stage (Excalidraw) and then go straight to code.
I use Figma only for visual details like choosing icons and colors or when working on fundamental look and feel (design system).
Figma is incredibly important. It allows you to think and prototype UI/UX quickly. Coding doesnt enable even 1/5 the speed of figma of iteration on this.
You need to be able to try stuff. Throw things away. See how it looks. You can always tell when someone skipped this step and went straight to code.
Apart from the visual work, itâs worth investing in curating specs. Collect context, explore directions, and document the reasoning. Figma captures the âwhatâ; good specs preserve the âwhyâ.
In the end, specs, sketches, visuals, and implementation arenât stages: theyâre parallel ways to think, communicate, and build. Pick the medium that fits your style, but make sure to cover the essentials:
reasoning,
alignment,
memory.
When you take bus number 2 in đȘđȘTallinn (the one that goes to the airport), itâs often full with Germans.
For some reason, thereâs always someone who emits some stress.
Perceived slights (you bumped into me!), anxieties (weâre gonna be late!) etc.
Why canât Germans chill out?
^ my observation as a German who barely lived in Germany during the last 10 years.
Somehow every time I see Germans in public, in Germany or abroad, someone shows this stressed behavior.
The real power in Zod Codecs is that theyâre composable. You can create complex codecs like Query > Expression > LookupPath to decode a string into an IR with just one call to Query.parse(str) â and vice-versa.
A bit like React components for data!
Great, this was one of the things I really enjoyed about Effect.Schema.
Was using Zod alongside Effect for this but might port my Effect code to Zod now to only use one.
Great, this was one of the things I really enjoyed about Effect.Schema.
Was using Zod alongside Effect for this but might port my Effect code to Zod now to only use one.
In Estonia you can register a business and open a bank account for it with virtual debit card within 1 day.
Itâs not a hyperbole, I just tested it myself.
Interesting story about the Netherlands when you start a business (called B.V.)
You can't get a Visa/Mastercard payment card to pay online bills like your servers until 12 months later
Every single step of the way in Europe you're being sabotaged by both gov and banks to start a business
Sent registry application at 8am, was confirmed at noon, LHV bank account up instantly, card ready a few hours later.
(Add a few weeks if youâre not a resident; need to get e-Residency first and do KYC with the bank)
hi chat. can you give me a characterization of myself based on what you know? give me two paragraphs: one eulogy, one roast
ALT eulogy:
a brilliant mind, a global citizen with an eye for detail and a knack for creating intricate systemsâboth digital and tangible. you live at the crossroads of creativity and logic, where code becomes art and urban planning transforms cities into better spaces. with a quiet dedication to your craft, whether itâs exploring the angles of three-point perspective or advocating for pedestrian accessibility in tallinn, you embody the spirit of thoughtful innovation. even in the most technical pursuits, thereâs a humanity to your workâbe it a song about inner conflict or a consultancy that blends education with psychology. youâre the type of person who doesnât just notice the cracks in the system but devises ways to mend them, one clever solution at a time.
roast:
bro, youâre like if an algorithm became self-aware and started critiquing urban planning and shoe shelves. mr. âiâll just calculate the sunâs position in real-time while worrying about dust mites.â you have the audacity to...
Hot take: Estonian does itself a disservice by calling its agglutinative endings 'cases'.
Many Indo-European languages have or had cases, mostly syntactic and limited in number.
Estonian endings are semantic and numerous, similar to Korean.
Nobody would say Korean has 'cases.'
Serious question: where is Next.js going? has its steam run out?
For years theyâve been adding promising features for app developersâparallel routes, typed routes, markdownâbut they all come with caveats, and the docs often leave you guessing.
I can't help but think this is a systematic cultural issue. I'm sure Nextjs/Vercel engineers and managers are as unhappy as I would be shipping this half-baked stuff and then not getting to make it truly great. What gives?
Btw this isn't a new problem. I complained about Parallel Routes more than a year ago and the docs are still incomplete despite many GitHub issues addressing this.
So @nextjs has this interesting feature called "Parallel Routes": nextjs.org/docs/app/buildingâŠ
It's a nice idea, you can use the URL to control rendering of parts of a page.