Catalyst

Latest Episodes:

Warning Signs: What to Look Out For When Working in the Tech Industry Oct 01, 2019

Show notes

Beware the low-hanging fruit: On this week’s episode of Track Changes, Paul and Rich share some industry warning signs. We chat about why you should be wary of long research phases and of people who have total faith in the product funnel. We also share some tips on how you can tell if your deadline is slipping and chat about the importance of long term product thinking. In this week’s Hello Postlight segment we meet Stephen Koch, a lead engineer who joins us to talk about his transition from marine biologist to musician to computer engineer.

Links:

Letter of Recommendation: Bug Fixes by Paul Ford

Athletic Brewing Company

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Getting to the Heart of the Web Economy: A Look at the HiQ v. LinkedIn Lawsuit Sep 24, 2019

Show notes

To scrape or not to scrape: In this week’s episode of Track Changes, Paul and Rich sit down to discuss the recent verdict in the hiQ v LinkedIn lawsuit. We chat about the importance of this case and how it helped solidify a basic aspect of the web: public information access. But first, in this week’s Hello Postlight segment we hear from Thomas Rudczynski, our Director of Product Management, who shares advice on how to be a good product manager and how to get into the field.

Links:

HiQ v. LinkedIn and the Legality of Web Scraping

Common Crawl

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

That Will Never Work: A Conversation with Netflix Co-founder Marc Randolph Sep 17, 2019

Show notes

The Fun of the Struggle: On this week’s episode of Track Changes we are joined by Netflix’s first CEO and co-founder, Marc Randolph. Marc talks about the origins of Netflix and how he helped grow the company from a Patsy Cline CD to a billion dollar publicly traded media provider. He shares some tips on how to stay flexible in the face of changing demands and talks about the importance of timing and luck when starting a business. He also shares some details about why he left the company and talks about his new book That Will Never Work.

Links:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Global Internet: Does it Really Exist? Sep 10, 2019

Show notes

There is no perfect freedom: This week on Track Changes, Paul and Rich sit down to discuss internet censorship on a global scale. We chat about how power impacts technology and information access and whether global software can really exist when countries have such different approaches to the internet. Also in this week’s Hello Postlight segment we meet Liran Okanon, a Senior Product Designer at Postlight, who talks about the importance of empathy in his work.

Links:

Life in an Internet Shutdown - New York Times

Revel

Getaway Bar

‘You Stink’: The fight to get rubbish off Beirut’s streets

Trakt

WeChat

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Inspect Element: What’s hiding behind the web page you’re looking at? Sep 03, 2019

Show notes

Trojan Horse: Ever wonder why some web pages take forever to load? On today’s episode of Track Changes, Paul and Rich explore the mess that is the internet. We take a look at three different websites to see what’s hiding behind them, and what we find is not pretty. From ad-tech to unknown JSON files, the results are surprising and confusing.

Links:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Can We Sue The Internet?: Paul and Rich on Holding The Internet to Account Aug 27, 2019

Show notes

We Need Guardrails: On this week’s episode of Track Changes we sit down to discuss the big question of regulating online content. Could a class action lawsuit be brought against sites that encourage violence? How can content be screened to ensure it doesn’t lead to harm? What is the role of government in all this? We discuss these questions and many more and Paul and Rich share some online privacy tips. We also chat with Engineer, John Holdun!

LINKS

LGBTQ creators accuse YouTube of discrimination in class-action lawsuit alleging it unfairly restricts and demonetizes queer content
TikTok
Full House of Mustaches
Firefox
Pi-hole
Variable Stage
John Holdun
Postlight Labs (Trimmings coming soon!)

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Analyze Society and You Have a Trend: A conversation with The Markup’s Adrianne Jeffries Aug 20, 2019

Show notes

Follow the Data: On this week’s episode of Track Changes, tech journalist Adrianne Jeffries sits down with us to talk about The Markup, a new non-profit data driven newsroom. She talks about the importance of using data to combat bias and about how using data in journalism can bring about greater change. She also addresses the shake up that happened at The Markup in its beginnings and tells us about her personal podcast Underunderstood.

Links:

- The Markup

- Propublica

- Machine Bias by Propublica

- HUD Sues Facebook Over Housing Discrimination by Propublica

- New York Times

- Buzzfeed

- Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Design System Has To Reflect The Business : Paul and Rich on Twitter’s Redesign Aug 13, 2019

Show notes

Without the user there is no product: When Twitter rolled out its new design, many users were upset with the new changes, but what comes first, the product or the user? On this week’s episode Paul and Rich sit down to chat about Twitter’s redesign. We share our reactions to the changes and delve into questions of user consultation. Also featured in this week’s episode is the second installment of our new segment Hello Postlight. In it we hear from Aimée Reed, Postlight’s Director of Product Design, who talks about where she finds inspiration for her work (Hint: get out of the house!).

Links:

Twitter

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium by Paul Ford

Aimée Reed

Barbara Kruger

Geoff Teehan

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Playing with Fire: Why Email is a Dangerous Game Aug 07, 2019

Show notes

What's the purpose of Email today? This week Paul and Rich sit down to discuss the monster that email has become. Email has transitioned away from a place to have conversation and become a function that eventually moves to another platform (usually Slack). So what is email's real purpose? Do all meaningful conversations need to happen face-to-face? Can we collectively put an end to the eight-paragraph email? We answer these questions and share the top 5 worst email subject lines (Hint: "You have a minute?" is up there!)

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You Don't Release Software, You Let It Escape: Paul and Rich on Shipping Jul 30, 2019

Show notes

To ship or not to ship: Software is never ready, but sometimes you have to ship it. This week Paul and Rich sit down to talk about the difficulties of shipping software. We share tips on how to deal with numerous stakeholders and engineers so that you can release software on time. We also talk about the importance of setting deadlines and draw some parallels between software and Las Vegas buffets.

Links:

General Magic

Tinysheet by Postlight

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