The ideas, apps, music, and film of SXSW 2014 – The Verge

Mike Judge thinks we’re doomed

2014-03-14T15:12:17-04:00

Mike Judge has been taking shots at pop culture - and making people laugh in the process - ever since Beavis and Butt-head took MTV by storm. From Office Space to King of the Hill, the writer-director's satirical gaze has spared almost no one, and now he's taking on the tech industry. His new HBO show Silicon Valley debuted at SXSW, and while there may be some surface similarities to other recent shows Valley is most certainly its own thing: it's snarky and unafraid to call things like it sees them. We spoke with Judge about what makes him laugh, why startups are a perfect subject, and whether we're still on the path towards Idiocracy.

Your …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A natural glow: these plants produce their own light

2014-03-14T11:16:58-04:00

.social-col:before { content: ""; background: url("http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/4025755/storybadge_001.png"); display: block; position: relative; z-index: 999; width: 95px; height: 145px; left: -49px; }

Daan Roosegaarde invites me into a cramped, pitch-black photo booth no more than a couple feet wide. "Hold on," the Dutch designer whispers into my ear. "Just give it a minute." Soon, the tiny cucumber plant in his hand begins to emit a faint glow.

As my eyes adjust, it gets brighter. Roosegaarde's specimen was created by genetically modifying its molecular structure to include luciferin, a chemical that gives jellyfish their radiant glow. "I'm completely obsessed with jellyfish," Roosegaarde says. "They create their own light without a battery or solar panel." Roosegaarde's plant is nowhere near as vibrant as a jellyfish or a fern from Ava …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meet the tiny printer for libertarians

2014-03-13T19:15:01-04:00

A new, functional art project by Thibault Brevet that debuted this week at the South By South West festival in Austin, Texas turns ordinary receipt printers to speedy replicators of the US Constitution. Called Consti2Go, Brevet's device uses an Arduino processor hooked up to a small battery pack and serial cable that can be plugged in for "hijacking the existing network of standard receipt printers." Each time you press the button, it proceeds to print a copy of the Constitution - all 4,543 words of it - in just six seconds.

From the maker of the DRM chair

This isn't Brevet's first unusual printing effort. Last year the artist showed off Gran …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The era of Facebook is an anomaly

2014-03-13T13:30:02-04:00

danah boyd's SXSW keynote is sold out. When it's over, a dozen fans rush the stage.

These fans aren't young groupies hoping to get a closer glimpse at their favorite rock star, but full-grown adults hoping to hear one more word from boyd. She's one of the world's sharpest authorities on how teens interact with technology, and for many, her word has become canon for understanding why teens do what they do.

The stage-rushers are e-marketers, digital strategists, and marketing gurus, but many of them are also quite likely parents. "Why are teens creating multiple identities online?" one asks. boyd looks a little exhausted. After a 30-minute t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

‘Godzilla’ is going to be a very different monster movie, says its director

2014-03-13T11:29:54-04:00

The last two Godzilla trailers have given us a hint of what's to come in the upcoming film, and at SXSW a small audience got the best look yet at the new monster. After a screening of the 1954 Japanese original, director Gareth Edwards introduced an extended sequence from the 2014 version in which the new Godzilla lays waste to Hawaii before squaring off against another giant monster. Even with some unfinished visual effects the clip lived up to our highest hopes - in fact, the only downside was that the clip hasn't been formally released for a wider audience. The morning after the screening we sat down with the filmmaker to talk about the d …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Hucksters and hustlers: inside the hidden brand orgy of SXSW

2014-03-12T13:00:03-04:00

Half a decade ago, some of the brightest minds at South By Southwest Interactive came together to create the worst website in the world. Jeffrey Bennett proposed online image search for the blind. David Friedman pitched PeopleIPO, allowing anyone to buy shares in you. The winner, though, was Merlin Mann's FlockdUp, an incomprehensible social network for "thought leaders" that seem to be constructed entirely of buzzwords. "FlockdUp is really uniquely positioned at this juncture to suction all of the oxygen out of this vertical, vis-a-vis an incredibly sticky, almost uncomfortably sticky, humid-weather-seated-on-a-vinyl-seat kind of approach t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Snowden calls on the geeks to save us from the NSA

2014-03-12T12:13:02-04:00

Early Monday morning, more than 3000 people filed into an auditorium at South by Southwest to see a jittery video stream of Edward Snowden, the man behind the NSA leaks that have become inescapable in the last eight months. The stream kept stalling, often coming off more like a series of stills than a video. Even worse, for a talk that focused so much on encrypted communications, the channel wasn't secure. "The irony that we're using Google Hangouts to talk to Ed Snowden has not been lost on me," said Chris Soghoian, part of the ACLU team that put the event together.

But from another angle, it made perfect sense. Here was the world's most f …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Mondo and the lost art of the movie poster

2014-03-12T10:15:02-04:00

Looking through the posters at your local movie theater, it's easy to forget that the medium hasn't always been the domain of Photoshop and graphic design. Movies like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were once the gold standard, artists like Drew Struzan capturing the essence of a film in a beautifully composed painting. That's mostly been replaced by posters consisting of the bare essentials: the photographed faces of the actors the studio wants you to see, the branded title, and a release date.

But over the past 10 years, a small company in Austin has been fighting that trend, creating some of the most gorgeous original movie poster …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Ernest Cline is the luckiest geek alive

2014-03-11T11:50:02-04:00

Ernest Cline was planning to drive his tricked-out DeLorean to Austin for a talk about his upcoming novel Armada, but Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin called him up and asked for it. Cline said he could borrow the car for as long as he wanted to, but asked for a dragon egg in return. Martin obliged.

When I meet Cline, a DeLorean Motor Company T-shirt peeks out from behind his black blazer. He looks like a grizzlier Milton from Office Space, his bright blue eyes framed by thick black glasses. Two gray patches of hair in his beard are the only signs that he isn't still a kid. He's the archetypal geek that never quite grew up - except …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Failure to launch: why startups are using SXSW as a testing ground

2014-03-11T11:30:05-04:00

David Byttow and Chrys Bader | Garry Tan

In March 2007, Twitter became the breakout hit of the South By Southwest Interactive when attendees used the service to discover hot parties and connect with friends at the festival. Two years later, Foursquare replicated the feat, introducing the world to the check-in and giving rise to location-based services. It was only natural that SXSW is the place where Twitter and Foursquare took off - the festival attracted a then-rare concentration of smartphones and the tech elite who used them, giving big new ideas a singular place where they could take root and spread when festival attendees returned home.

In the wake of those successes, an opt …

Read the full story at The Verge.