Val Scholz

@levelsio @martbln_dev Portugal was already like that back in 2016 minus the cost. Personally, I believe that what makes Portugal special - time moves slow. But if you or others don’t like it, you shouldn’t have moved there.

@martbln_dev I'm talking a lot how much Portugal is messing up though, pretty much every week but people getting tired of it and every time I do I get loads of death threats (which I report every time) I made this onlyinportugal.com

Portugal just signed a new nationality law 🇵🇹 here's what changed and why it matters if you moved here trusting the rules: residency requirement for citizenship just doubled - from 5 years to 10 years for most people. no grandfathering. no transitional protections for people already in the pipeline. think about what that means for a second. someone left their country. packed their life. paid lawyers, accountants, relocation fees. signed leases. built a life here. learned the language. paid taxes, very high taxes. did everything right - under the rules that existed when they made that decision. and now the government just moved the finish line. doubled it. without saying "don't worry, you're covered." meanwhile Portugal is out here positioning itself as a digital capital Cloudflare opened an office here. Web Summit at Lisbon. companies are investing. conferences are coming. the whole pitch is "come build here, we're open, we're modern, we're the future of Europe." and then this. but here's what most people outside don't understand - and what even locals don't get: living here with just a residency permit is not the same as living here. every time locals find out you're an immigrant they ask "why do you need a passport?" they don't understand what it actually means: waiting 6 months to years(!!!) just to renew your residency permit. banks treating you like a ghost - good luck getting a mortgage, a loan, or even keeping your account open where your salary lands. basic things that every citizen takes for granted become bureaucratic nightmares that follow you everywhere. and the family reunification situation is just nightmare. I know people who came here in 2022. doing everything right. paying taxes. building a life. and still haven't reunited with their families in 2026. recently AIMA only opened family reunification slots for the first time in over 1.5 years. and while you wait - you can't leave the country. not to see your parents. not for a work trip. not for anything. because the moment your residency application is pending, you're stuck. if you leave, you risk everything. people are sitting here and years going by. not because they broke any rule. but because the system just doesn't move. and here's the part nobody is talking about: AIMA - the immigration agency, formerly SEF - processes cases for years. not months. years!! under the old 5 year rule, people were waiting 7-8 years by the time the bureaucracy finished with them. now imagine what happens with 10 years. it won't be 10 years. it will be 13, 14, 15! easily! no grandfathering. no "thank you for trusting us." just: new rules, good luck. you did everything right. followed every rule. waited every queue. paid every fee. and the government just doesn't care. that's not how you build a digital capital. and one more thing - there are people who invested €500K+ into this country through golden visas. half a million euros. because Portugal said "invest here and we'll welcome you." now the rules changed on them too. no grandfathering. just: thanks for the money, good luck waiting another decade. what does that say to the next investor looking at Portugal? @levelsio - you are living here. you know exactly what this feels like on the ground. you've been saying that Portugal is an amazing place but the system is completely broken - and people came for you for saying it. well. here we are. you have more reach than most people talking about this. would mean a lot if this got your attention 🙏

@scholz_felix Claude Code by far. Not even a competition 😃

What's working best for coding for you? 🔸 Claude 🔸 Cursor 🔸 Copilot 🔸 Gemini I'm not up to date anymore and need a place to start 🙏

@andreasklinger Build an agent :-)

Is there a form builder that has address verification (or autocompletion) built in? I want to send 100+ things via DHL and avoid issues due to typos. Jotform advertises it but i don't get it to run unfortunately – any other provider worth looking at?

@OpenAIDevs @promptshant @bfioca Please help 🙏 “Session expired” bug prevents organisation verification. Generating new session link throws a 404.

Our latest speech-to-speech model is faster, more accurate, and excels at function calling. Watch @promptshant and @bfioca build a realtime voice agent that can search the web and hand off tasks to reasoning models with full context.

Hey @sama — any chance you could take a look at @OpenAI’s org verification? Tons of users (me included) are stuck in a “Session expired” loop and can’t continue. Would love to build with GPT-image — but can’t get past this bug. Docs and forums are full of the same issue.

@t_blom Trump’s running the YC playbook—massive vision, ruthless execution, zero burn. Yeah, the short term might suck, but give it 10 years and US is a quadrillion-dollar empire. It’s like if Elon and Genghis Khan co-founded a nation and said, ‘Screw it, let’s speedrun world domination’

Trying to steelman Trump's plans: 1. Tariffs will lead to higher consumer prices for everyone in the short and medium term, but will encourage companies to onshore manufacturing and create American jobs in the long term. This will predominantly help the lower-wage red manufacturing states. 2. Slashing federal spending will make millions of people unemployed, but reducing the debt burden and lowering taxes will make the economy stronger in the long term. 3. Leave NATO and let Russia have Ukraine. Trump doesn't care if Russia decides to take Latvia or Estonia next. There's no reason for the US to spend another $100bn fighting diminished a Russia, since they're really no threat to the US. Let the Europeans pay for their own defence. Save the money and reduce the US debt burden. 4. Of course, there is a serious risk it emboldens China to take Taiwan. The US cares most about the microprocessor supply from Taiwan, so let's push TSMC to spend $100bn to move their manufacturing to the US, supporting American manufacturing. Once that happens, China can take Taiwan for all Trump cares. 5. This will all provoke massive economic turmoil for the next 5 years, put millions of American voters out of a job, tank global stock markets and drive prices for normal consumers through the roof. In the worst case, it provokes a shooting match with China over Taiwan. That's the price Trump is willing to pay to create an America-First new world order.

@andreasklinger This is interesting and adds some context x.com/actbrigitte/st…

@valscholz Then they shouldn’t Right now trump wants Zelenskyy to give him a mineral deal for in return giving russia a rearmament pause and no guarantees or deterrent to attack again

How can Trump fail this so hard. 🤯 He had to half-ass pretend security guarantees and not giving Russia everything (and more) they ask for and he'd be celebrated – maybe even Nobel Peace Prize like Obama Now he is on the backfoot and needs to play strongman demanding respect.

@andreasklinger It wouldn’t trigger NATO’s Article 5 but would still be a direct attack, likely provoking retaliation. Even in proxy wars like Vietnam, the U.S. and Russia avoided direct conflict. Also we should stop the illusion a bankrupt nation is eager to continue funding an expensive war.

i dont think nato clause would trigger if he'd attack the troops or? only on nations afaik btw yes he invaded before Ukraine would be defendable he sees those countries as russian colonies that ran away But we need to stop with the illusion that he won't invade again unless there is actual security guarantees

@andreasklinger Guess that’s where it falls apart as Putin would never allow NATO troops in Ukraine. I mean that’s literally why the war started to prevent from having NATO in Ukraine

@valscholz yea watch the full thing zelenskyy asks multiple times for security guarantees to not be invaded again

@andreasklinger x.com/elonmusk/statu…

@valscholz afaik they primarily ask for security agreements right now

@andreasklinger What am I missing? How do you negotiate a peace deal when one side will only agree if they regain their territory, which seems militarily unlikely?

@andreasklinger The conversation seemed to escalate when Zelensky made a veiled threat to the U.S.: ‘You have a nice ocean. You don’t feel it now, but you will in the future.’ This came after Trump/Vance pointed out that diplomacy is difficult when one side refuses to compromise. Or?

@daniel_nguyenx Best game 🔥

I’m a self-taught developer. But I also have a CS background.

@helloitsolly I might be able to help 🫡

2.5 years, $52,000 MRR and we still can't get our analytics to work consistently Every 4 - 6 weeks there's an issue with the setup, tracking, or reporting An issue that undermines my trust in our data We've tried Posthog, we've tried Segment, we've tried our ESP, we've tried pulling data directly from the database All I want is one source of truth from which I can make informed marketing decisions Maybe my mistake is expecting our reports to be > 80% accurate But if anyone can recommend an analytics person who can check the integrity of our setup and get things working consistently, please tag them 🙏

@ChadWestTweets x.com/levelsio/statu… 🫣

“These cards belong in a museum”, said a user That comment inspired our new packaging

Yeah

@levelsio EU caps payment networks above a market share as far as I know - that’s why Amex can charge a higher interchange and offer higher rewards

Can someone explain this? So the EU caps payment fees at 0.3% per transaction Yet in Portugal banks charge 3% for card payments Isn't that illegal? That's illegal in Netherlands for ex

@ElonMuskAOC 🔥

Should I make a Tesla limousine for Trump? Bullet proof of course!

Guest bedroom reveal 👀 Boutique hotel inspired