The author uses Restic + Backblaze B2 storage. I was recently setting up backups for my homebase as well, and went with Restic + BorgBase [0]. Not affiliated, just wanted to share that I think they have a nice service with a straight-forward pricing model. They are the company behind excellent Pikapods [1], which may be interesting to the homelab crowd.

[0] https://www.borgbase.com

[1] https://www.pikapods.com

Most humans don’t, but maybe “most humans” do? As in, on average, as a collective, regressed to the mean of mediocrity and devoid of personality, we write like this? It’s not self-deprecating, it’s humbling.

That may have been the case for some time, but the current government in Finland is... well, perhaps I personally wouldn't describe them as fairly competent.

There was an interesting case in Finland. Finnish customs used to apply a 22% tax (ELV) on top of the car tax for imported used cars from other EU countries. On top of that, Finnish law required VAT to be charged on the car tax itself.

There were multiple court cases and this practice was found unlawful (and actually against EU law). But the government did not issue automatic refunds, and instead requested that people "actively appeal" with some time limits. They also refused to pay interest on the money withheld.

AFAIK, only about 50M Euro was paid back. A lot of funds gathered between 2002–2005 was never returned.

I've been living in Finland for 10+ years, and this whole story was super surprising for me to learn because the prevailing notion among people here is that Finland is the land of law, and everything is done correctly and legally, always, and we can and should trust the authorities.

Other comments from that account feel very similar. Eery.