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Software

Software is "soft" because it can be installed, uninstalled or modified easily, while hardware is "hard" because it is physical and hard to change.

  • They Tyranny of the Marginal User (HN)
    • What makes product get simpler and stupider?
    • Daily active users is the north star metric, shaping products to approach the "marginal user"
    • The marginal user has zero tolerance to complexity and any friction, only 1 thumb to flick upwards
    • The marginal user drives product to be simple and "stupid", which in the end deteriorates the quality
    • The marginal user is a state of mind. We've all been the marginal user.
  • Every trick Microsoft pulled to make you browse Edge instead of Chrome
    • Some tricks are pretty invasive, it does look like what bloatware and spyware would do
    • Open source software and operating system might be the solution to safeguard freedom in general computing
  • YouTube's Anti-adblock and uBlock Origin
    • The battle between YouTube's anti-adblock effort and adblockers
    • And the struggle of open source contributors to maintain and support software for free