5 Minutes on The Verge | The Verge The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts. 2015-10-22T20:24:09+00:00 https://www.theverge.com/rss/5-minutes-on-the-verge/index.xml https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/verge-rss-large_80b47e.png?w=150&h=150&crop=1 Adam Popescu <![CDATA[Ev Williams on Medium’s future, his new venture fund, and listening to his gut]]> https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/22/9598176/ev-williams-on-medium-s-future-his-new-venture-fund-and-listening-to 2015-10-22T16:24:09-04:00 2015-10-22T16:24:09-04:00
Ev Williams | Ian Bailey, Jupiter Media Group

Ev Williams has said that Medium is a platform, not a publisher. Despite its title and apparent initial focus on long features, it's become increasingly known as a place for writers to post short-form content. It's also proven popular with companies, as we saw earlier this week when Amazon's Jay Carney and The New York Times' Dean Baquet used the platform to attack and defend the paper's Amazon investigation. Around 20,000 people are creating posts every week, and it gets 25 million unique visitors a month. Now Williams is trying to steer the service toward big brand dollars.

At the Kairos Summit in Los Angeles last week, Williams and his p …

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]]> Casey Newton <![CDATA[Ben Horowitz on IPOs from hell, the power of profanity, and why he likes a good fight]]> https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/5/5474214/andreessen-horowitz-ben-horowitz-on-ipos-from-hell-the-power-of-profanity 2014-03-05T14:09:38-05:00 2014-03-05T14:09:38-05:00
Ben Horowitz | Andreessen Horowitz

Before Ben Horowitz built one of the fastest growing venture-capital firms in Silicon Valley's history, he was a CEO on the perpetual brink of disaster. Loudcloud, the early cloud-computing company Horowitz founded with Marc Andreessen after the sale of Netscape to AOL, nearly went bankrupt when the NASDAQ crashed in 2000. When fundraising proved impossible, Horowitz pursued a controversial initial public offering that BusinessWeek called "the IPO from hell."

The business that emerged from Loudcloud's assets, Opsware, was another journey through hell. When Horowitz finally unloaded Opsware on Hewlett-Packard - for $1.65 billion in cash - he f …

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]]> Andrew Webster <![CDATA[Designer music: how Tycho blends art and sound]]> https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/25/5419816/tycho-interview 2014-02-25T13:06:42-05:00 2014-02-25T13:06:42-05:00
Tycho lead

For years Scott Hansen has had two different personas. He's created art and design work under the name ISO50, while his ambient, electronic music was made under the Tycho moniker. Those worlds are now finally coming together. Next month Hansen will release Awake, his second album on label Ghostly International, and his first where he's been able to focus on music full time, putting aside his previous career as a freelance graphic designer. Instead, he's put all of that energy into Tycho, crafting not only the music but the visual aspects as well, from album covers to concert posters. We talked to Hansen about the change in focus, what it's l …

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]]> Jesse Hicks <![CDATA[Seeing secrets: Trevor Paglen on photographing the NSA’s headquarters]]> https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/5420270/seeing-secrets-trevor-paglen-photographing-nsa-headquarters 2014-02-19T10:46:01-05:00 2014-02-19T10:46:01-05:00
trevor paglen

Artist Trevor Paglen spends much of his time photographing places you're not supposed to see, whether that's desert military bases or mountainside listening posts or classified spacecraft. His first photographic monograph, Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, captured those secret spaces as hazy, nearly unreadable images: a collection of lights on the horizon, or a dark smear across the sky. He's also reported on the CIA's covert rendition flights and collected 70 military patches representing secret government projects.

Most recently, he rented a helicopter to photograph several intelligence headquarters: the (now) well- …

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]]> Katie Drummond <![CDATA[Ape escape: the argument to keep chimpanzees out of cages]]> https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/29/5257104/ape-escape-the-argument-to-keep-chimpanzees-out-of-cages 2014-01-29T13:30:00-05:00 2014-01-29T13:30:00-05:00
wise

Steven Wise has been waiting more than 30 years to give chimpanzees their day in court. A lawyer who specializes in animal protection, Wise is widely credited as a pioneer in the animal rights arena: he's taught classes on the subject at schools including Harvard and John Marshall Law School, has written four books and countless journal articles, and is the former president of the influential Animal Legal Defense Fund.

But it's only in recent months that Wise's work has made national headlines. In early December, the Nonhuman Rights Project - a group that Wise founded and now runs - filed three landmark lawsuits on behalf of captive chimpan …

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]]> Jesse Hicks <![CDATA[‘Unmanned’ director Robert Greenwald on how America embraced drone warfare]]> https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/2/5207010/unmanned-director-robert-greenwald-on-how-america-embraced-drone 2014-01-02T10:15:01-05:00 2014-01-02T10:15:01-05:00
drones

Robert Greenwald has made films for more than three decades; recently, that's meant guerrilla documentaries on a small budget, released through his production company, Brave New Films. He's used social media and inexpensive distribution to get his message out. His most recent film, Unmanned: America's Drone Wars, investigates US drone policy, including testimony from people on the ground. Last October on Capitol Hill, Greenwald testified with the Rafiq Rehman family, the first Pakistani drone strike survivors to appear before Congress. In the following conversation, edited for length and clarity, he discusses why he thinks drone strikes are …

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]]> Andrew Webster <![CDATA[Final delivery: David X. Cohen on the end of ‘Futurama’]]> https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5223788/david-x-cohen-end-of-futurama-interview 2013-12-20T11:03:02-05:00 2013-12-20T11:03:02-05:00
David X. Cohen

Futurama is over. No, really this time. After seven seasons, a few cancellations, and multiple visits to parallel universes, the long-running sci-fi animated series finally ended its run on September 4th, with the final episode "Meanwhile." Executive producer and head writer David X. Cohen has been along for the whole bumpy adventure, taking charge of the show following stints writing for Beavis and Butthead and The Simpsons. With the complete series now bundled in a big, expansive box set, we took the chance to talk to Cohen about mixing science fiction and comedy, the pitfalls of being canceled, and Futurama's legacy.

What's it like seeing …

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]]> James Chae <![CDATA[Hi-res censorship: Metahaven on Edward Snowden and rebranding WikiLeaks]]> https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/19/5223620/hi-res-censorship-metahaven-on-edward-snowden-and-rebranding-wikileaks 2013-12-19T15:00:02-05:00 2013-12-19T15:00:02-05:00
metahaven assets

Metahaven is a graphic design collective based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Since its launch in 2007, the team - led by Daniel Van der Velden and Vinca Kruk - has pursued collaborations with organizations that traditionally don't seek out graphic design as a platform or medium. Examples include the whistleblower platform WikiLeaks, the Icelandic Modern Media Institute (IMMI), and the diplomatic advisory group Independent Diplomat.

An interdisciplinary group of writers, editors, critics, and curators, the collective has been able to expand upon the foundation of designer as form-maker and break free from the traditional confines of the studio. …

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]]> Jesse Hicks <![CDATA[Cicero’s Twitter: Tom Standage on the forgotten history of social media]]> https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/3/5170440/tom-standage-on-the-forgotten-history-of-social-media 2013-12-03T12:15:45-05:00 2013-12-03T12:15:45-05:00
standage

To Tom Standage, "social media" is nothing new. Twitter and Facebook, he argues in his latest book, Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years, are simply the newest twists on an old form. People have always shared gossip and information in highly personal ways, from the Romans who scrawled quips to one another on the walls of Pompeii; to the courtiers of Tudor England, whose intrigues filled the pages of manuscript books passed hand-to-hand; to the coffeehouse intellectuals throughout Europe, who gathered together at tables piled high with the day's news. Far from being a novelty, Standage points out, social media has always …

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]]> Jacob Kastrenakes Bryan Bishop <![CDATA[‘I wasn’t scared’: Spike Lee on reimagining ‘Oldboy’]]> https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/20/5122912/spike-lee-interview-oldboy 2013-11-20T12:30:03-05:00 2013-11-20T12:30:03-05:00

Filmmaker Spike Lee has been getting the attention of audiences since 1986's She's Gotta Have It, but for his latest film he took on a decidedly different challenge: mounting a remake of Park Chan-wook's revenge classic Oldboy. Starring Josh Brolin as a man who finds himself mysteriously imprisoned for 20 years, the new film is an English-language reimagining of a film that's held dear by fans. We spoke with Lee about the challenges of taking on such a beloved film, what it was like working with Brolin, and his recent foray into online crowdfunding.

This is the first time you've done a remake of an existing film. What was it about Oldboy th …

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