Not disagreeing with you (often have to preface internet comments with that :) but instead discussing. The grocery store example is quite revealing. Yes, you

Not disagreeing with you (often have to preface internet comments with that :) but instead discussing. The grocery store example is quite revealing. Yes, you can point to the American grocery store, but what has been well studied there is that presenting people with choices creates its own form of stress. I certainly feel the stress of going to Whole Foods and wanting cocoa powder and seeing what seems like a thousand variations, versus going to Trader Joe's where there's almost always one brand per item (and often it's the Trader Joe's brand). Whole Foods can be good if there's some niche thing I want, but Trader Joe's is quite relaxing to just have a shopping list and pick up stuff not worrying about comparing each item to a whole bunch of other ones. I believe this was also part of the thinking behind most stores introducing house brands over the last several decades. Anyhow, this is not some huge announcement. I'm assuming it got voted up in hacker news because there's a humorous element to the whole thing, notepad being one of the more glacially-iterated-but-still-around software systems in existence.