When Vesper launched last year, developers John Gruber, Dave Wiskus and Brent Simmons described the app as "opinionated software". I feel that ever since Vesper's introduction, finding an opinionated combination of capability, design and usability has been a feverish trend. Eliminating features and making design choices in favour of simplicity can be touchy but extremely effective when done right.

Unread is also opinionated software. And it's opinionated software done right.

Some will choose not to like this. Some will swear by it. So far, I'm somewhere in between.

Unread definitely sheds the power-user mentality of Reeder and Mr. Reader, but that doesn't mean Unread is featureless. If anything, Unread is just as powerful. It's just powerful in a far different way.

Unread has changed how I read my RSS feed. And, more importantly, Unread finally entrenches the divide between Twitter and RSS.

I have always experienced a large duplication between Twitter and RSS. I followed my favourite writers in both and I followed my favourite news sites in both. This led to double the effort in weeding through all of my favourite content.

After I installed Unread two nights ago, I immediately realized this duality. The little devil on my left shoulder yearned not to delete my oldest subscriptions. But why keep an RSS subscription of a feed that breaks news on Twitter? Reeder allowed me to quickly skim through these feeds and mark all as read too easily. Unread quickly corrected that.

This is the effect of simplified software. It seemed so obvious upon opening Unread that my RSS feed was bloated.

This isn't to say that I'm eliminating Reeder from my RSS arsenal. In fact, it probably won't even leave my home screen. But I finally know how to use Reeder. Alongside Tweetbot and Unread, I have a strong content consumption workflow.

And all it took was some opinionated software.

Adrianne Jeffries and Russell Brandom reporting for The Verge:

A week ago, 24-year-old Charlie Shrem landed at JFK, home from giving a talk about the virtual currency Bitcoin at an e-commerce convention in Amsterdam.

The trip had gone well. Shrem’s speech made the front page of the Dutch Financial Times, his Icelandair flight had internet, and he was excited to be reunited with his girlfriend, Courtney. He did not expect to be arrested when he got off the plane. But as soon as he saw the agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and IRS waiting for him at the gate, he knew.

Whatever the trouble was, it must have something to do with Bitcoin.

Remember when I said Bitcoin was too volatile to be true? If you feel like making a quick buck via Bitcoin, you better pull out your chips as soon as you actually make that buck.

There is something innately calming about massive institutions that you can't imagine changing. I'm talking about the big things, like religion, war, education, sport, the works. They all have a major impact on our lives and they always will. You can put money into that list. These massive institutions change at incredibly slow rates because human beings can't handle the massive upswing of a revolutionary change.

Bitcoin is too revolutionary. A currency not backed by a federal bank or by some sort of precious metals has no backbone. Who is to say that that Bitcoin pays for the cup of coffee I'm about to serve? Who is to say that it can pay for my car?

This is what happens when people take fast things too fast. Laws get broken and people get hurt.

Great reporting by The Verge. I can't help but enjoy their longform pieces.