Dozen Worthy Reads š° (No. 161)
This week : AWS, Bitcoin, Systems Design, Growth, Social Class, Why People Share, copyright law, Reddit, Steven Sinofsky's blog on MSFT, and product innovation
Hi All,
I hope you all are doing well and welcome (if you arenāt new then again) to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on ā¦
So as you might recall a couple of months ago I contemplated how I would approach the future of Dozen Worthy Reads and to that intent Iām slightly tweaking the format of Dozen Worthy Reads. This here, going forward will be the original links of super interesting things I read with only little context. The reasoning is that the article/post itself is so good that you should just read the whole thing! I also find that as I try to write about a specific topic, for example, in the recent past Clubhouse, or WhatsAppās Privacy Policy, or Substack/Revue/Twitter it honestly has been very hard to write all that I need to as well as keep the length readable! To that end I actually had to split the above into three articles! So Iām going to have two formats as below!
Links with great reads (Dozen Worthy Reads) - This kind of article!
Strategic Analysis (Similar to Clubhouse)
Been so long since I wrote a Dozen Worthy Reads :) Let me know if you have any feedback/thoughts/questions/comments! Thank you!
The inception of AWS from Dan Rose. Fun thread!
Bitcoin for the Open-Minded Skeptic : A good read on the skeptics still out there!
Systems design explains the world
This post connects a bunch of disparate things into Systems Design problems. Really enjoyed this read and a lot of it goes back to not just 1st order thinking but 2nd and 3rd order thinking. Connecting the dots and pattern recognition. Frameworks on their own are mostly useless unless you can connect the dots and make sense of the forest for the trees. God knows how many times I have fallen (and continue to fall) into that trap š¤·š»āāļøš¤·š»āāļø
The Racecar Growth Framework ā Reforge
Good read on how to think about your business as a high-performance race car and hot to think about growth loops, one-off events, optimizations, and inputsĀ
Good read on why India should not ban crypto (or actually any country should not ban crypto). I mean a country canāt really ābanā crypto unless they completely self isolate. If you were a remote island with tribals and no internet. Sure!Ā
The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class
This read from Alex Danco was just brilliant. He talks about 3 different ladders in the class system : Labo(u)r, Educated Gentry, and Elites and how weāre not only trying to move up the ladder but across ladders!Ā
Why People Share: The Psychology Behind "Going Viral"
Great read for product folks who are thinking about how to build virality into their products ..
Court Rules Deliveroo Used 'Discriminatory' Algorithm (vice.com)
Your AI algo can get you into trouble. An Italian court ruled that the algo used by Deliveroo to ārank and offer shiftsā is discriminatory!Ā
Copyright laws and fair use.
Here are two great examples of āfair useā in copyright law:
Apple loses copyright battle against security start-up Corellium : In this case Corelliumās software gives customers the ability to run āvirtualā iPhones on desktop computers instead of a physical iPhone allowing users to poke and prod iOS, Appleās mobile operating system. Apple is playing the privacy narrative to their favour but in this case it fell flat on their face! In fact it actually helps find security issues faster!Ā
Spotify Loophole Allows Remixes, Unreleased Songs to Live as Podcasts talks about āfair useā in the context of remixes. Are these āderivative worksā and under US copyright law or are they āfair useā?Ā
Reddit: Organized Lightning : Great read on Redditās history, product gaps, slow growth, and what is next for the āfront page of the internetā
Steven Sinofsky writes hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com about 2x a week and talks about his experience at MSFT back in the day. Highly recommended if you like computing history and what better way to understand this other than from someone who was at the frontlines of tech! 001. Becoming a Microsoftie (Chapter I)
How and what do Product Managerās innovate on? What should work āas-isā and what should not?Ā Intercom on Product: the siren call of innovation | Inside Intercom
Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well! If you enjoyed reading this please consider sharing with a friend or two (or sign up here if you came across this or were forwarded this)