We chat with Michelle Yang, a former PM at Amazon, about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Amazon product development, and how it felt from the inside as this once-beloved shopping platform enshittified. In Falcon Mode, we discuss apps to find free produce.
Hana Fields - use ACTUALLY25 for a discount!
We’d love to hear from you. Email us at heyactuallyuseful@gmail.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).
We chat with Alex Sanfilippo, co-founder of PodMatch, about imbuing products with personality, building tech as an act of community care, and how culture is shaped by products that price-gouge creativity. In Falcon Mode, we revisit a previous listener submission with a new suggestion.
Commons (sustainable budgeting app)
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We chat with Raj Singh, VP of Product at Mozilla, about AI slop, closed discovery loops, the productization of unsociable behavior, and whether or not popularity is the only metric of usefulness that really matters. In Falcon Mode, we debate the usefulness of an app for finding pro-laptop coffee shops.
Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class
Ariel and Producer Josh dive into super spooky surveillance giant Palantir, which powers everything from beverage planning on commercial flights to predictive policing, ICE kidnappings, and literal war. In Falcon Mode, we imagine a more useful way to avoid parking stress.
Links:
Does Palantir See Too Much?, a New York Times Magazine article
Alex Karp Has Money and Power. So What Does He Want?, a New York Times article
Peter Thiel: Everything You Didn't Know About His Sh*tty Past, an episode of Hysteria
Failing to Do Right: The Urgent Need for Palantir to Respect Human Rights, an Amnesty International report
ethanmeadforever’s reel about tech bros discovering a park
We chat with Marcos Moldes, a UX researcher at Monzo, about UX dark patterns, the ethics of freemium, and the peace of working on a product that does what it says it does. In Falcon Mode, we wonder why there isn’t an app that tells you how long the TSA line will be before your flight.
Links:
Monzo the bank & Monzo the rapper
404’s article on Tea, including a screenshot from the fake podcaster ad
The bullseye question Ariel references in minute 43 is from this framework developed by UX Researcher Michael Margolis.
We’d love to hear from you. Email us at heyactuallyuseful@gmail.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).
We chat with Sal Mohammed, co-founder of LangSync and founder of healthcare app DOGO, about not letting small businesses get left behind in the AI revolution, the stark reality ahead for middle-market AI tools, and why he’s that rare technologist who sees a problem in his community and just…builds the fix. In Falcon Mode, we tackle 'like Google Search for Google Search,' because apparently all our listeners hate Google Search.
Additional Resources:
Ariel and Producer Josh discuss Karen Hao’s book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, a chronicle of tech’s current AI fervor and everything left in its wake. Along the way, everything AI tumbles out: Trump banning “woke AI,” whether this AI boom is just a financial illusion or a catastrophic arms race, and the problems for which AI solutions would be actually useful. In Falcon Mode, we explore ways to filter out AI search results.
Additional Resources:
Empire of AI by Karen Hao
Trump's AI Action Plan is a blueprint for dystopia by Brian Merchant
The Hater’s Guide to the AI Bubble by Ed Zitron
We chat with Dorian Perron, co-founder of Groover, about democratizing the discovery of new musical artists, measuring “sadness rate,” and the ethical lines he’d never cross for growth. In Falcon Mode, we help a listener find alternatives to shopping on Amazon.
Our outro music this episode is Dorian’s song “Metropolitan” 💖
Additional Resources:
Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin
Bookshop.org, Boycat, Beni, Goodbuy, DoneGood
We’d love to hear from you. Email us at heyactuallyuseful@gmail.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).
We chat with Alex, a developer at an audio-first news organization, about the ethics of remote work, how to unionize, avoiding burnout at mission-led companies, and the peculiar relationship between disinformation and outdated UX. In Falcon Mode, we explore a listener’s idea for a combined valet/car expert to reduce the opacity and hassle of getting your car fixed.
Additional Resources:
We’d love to hear from you. Email us at heyactuallyuseful@gmail.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).
On our inaugural episode, Ariel and AJ talk about the hazards of managing crappy products, the challenges of living without a smartphone, and the clear-eyed intellectuals from whom we're learning as we carve out a path towards a more useful corner of the internet. Lastly, we introduce Falcon Mode, our listener-submitted segment that's named after a pretty cringe CEO memo that cracked us up.
Additional Reading:
All things Cory Doctorow
Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
We’d love to hear from you. Email us at heyactuallyuseful@gmail.com. Find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).