Actually Useful

Ariel, AJ, and Producer Josh are finally all together for a very anticipated episode: we’re digging into Cory Doctorow’s new book, Enshittification. We talk about who really owns your shoelaces, how Amazon controls the price of everything you buy everywhere you buy it, and what happens when the company you rent your eyeballs from runs out of business. In Falcon Mode, we discuss how to build a low-tech book swap with like-minded readers.

Links:

- Cory Doctorow’s new book, Enshittification

- What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life, New York Times guest essay

- Jeremy Carrasco’s absolutely crazy experiment with YouTube Shorts trained on Cocomelon

- Brian Merchant’s crowdsourced project, AI Killed My Job

- Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing

- Kagi (our favorite search engine)

- The Kids on the Night Shift, the New York Times article about child labor on US poultry farms

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

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!

Ichigo Farms

Cosmic Jelly

MutualAidHub.org

Produce Good

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠ 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.

PodMatch.com

Commons (sustainable budgeting app)

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

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.

Solo by Mozilla

Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class

NYT article on “996” culture

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:

Focus Friend & Finch App

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 ⁠[email protected]⁠ 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:

DOGO and LangSync

Kagi

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

AI 2027

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.

Groover

Dorian’s Instagram

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 [email protected] 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:

Tech Workers Coalition

Libby

The Internet Archive

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).