NL75
Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #75, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
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This clocktower is at the Central Railway Station. I took this picture after leaving the Azure and Friends October meetup.
This meetup was at the Nordcloud office, in the same building as the Brightly building which is where we had the the last Azure and Friends meetup.
The Nordcloud office is closer to our office space - with doors that need someone to buzz you in and so on, in part because they work in a similar space as we do.
I had fun, the food was good, I learned something new. What more could you ask for?
It inspired me to write about the best practices for presenting things.
When milk or tea or coffee starts to cool, a think layer of malai forms on top. Some people don’t like it. Some do.
I was reminded of this while pouring the coffee I had made. I used a spoon to make sure none of it fell in Prerna’s cup.
When it came to pouring my cup I made sure I poured all of it in my cup. I love malai.
That made me laugh. It’s like that meme - one person likes this the other person not that and then they get married.
Autumn colours are here. Orange-yellow-brown hues everywhere you look.
We had gone to a friend’s housewarming party last week. It was a rivitalo (rowhouse). The house was built in 1993. They had bought it in January and shifted to it in February.
There was a small tree in the front of the house. They had put some lights on it. It looked pretty. They had paid someone to build a nice wooden patio at the front and the back of the house. The backyard was large - something I appreciate. They had planted an Apple tree in the backyard. I appreciated that as well.
Back home, in my village home I had planted an amla plant once. It had grown into a tree and then had to be cut down for some reason.
I like the idea of having your small patch of land and growing trees on it.
I finished reading The life of Chuck this week. It is a nice little book - two and a half hours of audio. I was done in a couple of days.
I contain multitudes.
It reminded me why I love Stephen King.
A year of mornings is available at the Helmet library to borrow. There are three copies - 2 soft and 1 hard copy.
Go ahead and reserve!
/five things to share
1. Video of GPT-OSS 20B running on a phone by Simon Willison
The latest iPhone 17 Pro Max is still stuck at 12GB of RAM, presumably not enough to run this same model.
We are getting closer to the dream I have of on-device smart enough AI.
This means two things - my next Mac needs to have maybe 32GB memory. And Apple needs to add more than 16GB to the iPhone Pros. I know they need to manage power - RAM eats power.
Or, we get an even better model which runs on even less memory. Less likely though.
We’re getting closer though.
2. Superpowers: How I’m using coding agents in October 2025
Skills are what give your agents Superpowers.
The first time they really popped up on my radar was a few weeks ago when Anthropic rolled out improved Office document creation. When the feature rolled out, I went poking around a bit – I asked Claude to tell me all about its new skills. And it was only too happy to dish.
This is how Claude creates docs with that new feature that came out.
These are basically markdown documents that Claude reads to do things a certain way.
This post is full of so much interesting stuff. Like Claude can use this to read a book, or doc, or repo and teach itself new skills.
This is how to install it.
You’ll need Claude Code 2.0.13 or so. Fire it up and then run:
/plugin marketplace add obra/superpowers-marketplace
/plugin install superpowers@superpowers-marketplace Quit and restart claude and you should be good to go.
3. China Confirms Solar Panel Projects Are Irreversibly Changing Desert Ecosystems - Slashdot by
A team studying one of the largest photovoltaic parks in China, the Gonghe project in the Talatan Desert, found a striking difference between what was happening under the panels and what lay just beyond. They used a detailed framework measuring dozens of indicators — everything from soil chemistry to microbial life — and discovered that the micro-environment beneath the panels was noticeably healthier.
Solar panels cause deserts to improve - cooler soil, extra moisture, green pockets.
4. Toyota Aims to Launch the ‘World’s First’ All-Solid-State EV Batteries - Slashdot by
According to Toyota, the next-gen battery tech “offers the potential for smaller size, higher output, and longer life.” The two companies have been developing cathode materials for all-solid-state EV batteries since 2021, focusing on some of the biggest challenges in producing them at a mass scale.“
5. Finnish Customs wants to turn back the tide on Temu
“Chinese shopping platforms fuel a culture of disposable consumption and pose a serious threat to the future of responsibly operating businesses,” Elo said in a statement. “It’s completely unsustainable — not only for the environment and the climate, but also for workers’ rights and consumer safety.”
One of the surprising things when I first arrived here in Finland was the prevalence of second hand stores.
It is totally normal for people to buy second hand stuff. That does not align with what Temu and Shein and other brands like these mean to do in this world.
But Temu stuff is cheap and good value for money. You’ve got to compete at some level.
If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. 😄
Until next week.