Netflix's Todd Yellin: Create a Culture of Iconoclasts

As VP of Product for Netflix and self-proclaimed “enabler of iconoclasts”, Todd Yellin leads the team that helps millions of people find something great to watch. In this 99u talk, Yellin explains his unique approach to leadership, which includes:

• Why leaders should never say never
• How to empower your team to make decisions (and mistakes)
• Why a simple hand-raise is fundamental to the diversity of voices and ideas at Netflix
• Plus, what we can learn from Titus Andromedon, Michael Scott, and Paul Blart Mall Cop

Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets

Katrina Brooker, writing in Vanity Fair, profiles Tim Berners-Lee. "Berners-Lee has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it."

At 63, Berners-Lee has thus far had a career more or less divided into two phases. In the first, he attended Oxford; worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN); and then, in 1989, came up with the idea that eventually became the Web. Initially, Berners-Lee’s innovation was intended to help scientists share data across a then obscure platform called the Internet, a version of which the U.S. government had been using since the 1960s. But owing to his decision to release the source code for free—to make the Web an open and democratic platform for all—his brainchild quickly took on a life of its own. Berners-Lee’s life changed irrevocably, too.

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He is now embarking on a third act—determined to fight back through both his celebrity status and, notably, his skill as a coder. In particular, Berners-Lee has, for some time, been working on a new software, Solid, to reclaim the Web from corporations and return it to its democratic roots. On this winter day, he had come to Washington to attend the annual meeting of the World Wide Web Foundation, which he started in 2009 to protect human rights across the digital landscape. For Berners-Lee, this mission is critical to a fast-approaching future. Sometime this November, he estimates, half the world’s population—close to 4 billion people—will be connected online, sharing everything from résumés to political views to DNA information. As billions more come online, they will feed trillions of additional bits of information into the Web, making it more powerful, more valuable, and potentially more dangerous than ever.

Ada Lovelace, the First Tech Visionary

Betsy Morais, The New Yorker:

Augusta Ada Lovelace is known as the first computer programmer, and, since 2009, she has been recognized annually on October 15th to highlight the often overlooked contributions of women to math and science. The main event is being held today at Imperial College London, with the début of an anthology of essays, “A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention.” “I started to think that one of the biggest parts of the problem was that women in tech are often invisible,” Suw Charman-Anderson, the founder of Ada Lovelace Day, told me. After reading a study in 2006 by the psychologist Penelope Lockwood, who researched the dearth of female role models in the sciences, Charman-Anderson thought that a fête for Lovelace could raise awareness of her noteworthy successors. This year, dozens of celebrations will be thrown around the world, including an “Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon” at Brown University, where volunteers will ramp up Wikipedia entries for female scientists.

Have You Met John Goodenough? The Father Of The Lithium Ion Battery

Daniela Hernandez writing for Fusion, introduces us to John Goodenough. He is responsible for "the invisible device that powers everything you do":

The Nobel Prize for chemistry was announced earlier this month: three scientists shared the almost $1 million award for their work on how cells repair DNA.

Once again it did not go to John Goodenough, the 93-year-old physicist regarded as the father of the lithium ion battery. You probably haven’t heard of him, but for years, pundits have predicted that Goodenough would win science’s highest honor. And for good reason. His work transformed society. His is possibly the most revolutionary invention yet not to win the prize. What’s it to you? Well, your life wouldn’t be the same without his work.

Have You Met Margaret Hamilton? Her Code Got Humans on the Moon—And Invented Software Itself

MARGARET HAMILTON WASN’T supposed to invent the modern concept of software and land men on the moon. It was 1960, not a time when women were encouraged to seek out high-powered technical work. Hamilton, a 24-year-old with an undergrad degree in mathematics, had gotten a job as a programmer at MIT, and the plan was for her to support her husband through his three-year stint at Harvard Law. After that, it would be her turn—she wanted a graduate degree in math.

But the Apollo space program came along. And Hamilton stayed in the lab to lead an epic feat of engineering that would help change the future of what was humanly—and digitally—possible.

That's how the profile, in Wired by Robert McMillan, begins. Go read the whole thing. Hamilton deserves to be better known.