Amal Hussein has left the browser behind. She is now at Istari, a digital engineering company working with aerospace organizations on problems that have nothing to do with your typical web SDLC. This episode of Changelog covers what that transition looks like in practice, how software development lifecycles are being reshaped in 2026, and why ambitious orgs in aerospace are rethinking their digital tooling from the ground up.
The conversation goes further than a career update. Hussein and hosts Jerod Santo and Adam Stacoviak dig into Jevons paradox, the AWS Re:invent Blue Origin keynote, and a concept that gets referred to simply as moon vacuums. That last one alone is worth your time. Changelog++ members get an additional 21 minutes not available in the public feed.
What makes this worth reading in full: Hussein is one of the few engineers who can speak credibly about both frontend web standards and mission-critical aerospace software pipelines. The framing around friction, borrowed in part from the book Frictionless, gives the episode a through-line that connects her past work to what Istari is actually building. If the SDLC conversation interests you, start there.
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