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Highlights from SXSW 2017 | Ars Technica

Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech, Joe Mullin and Nathan Mattise attended SXSW 2017 and report on their favorite films, panels and experiences at the festival.

Released on 3/21/2017

Credits

Producer: Nathan Mattise
Camera Operator: Nathan Mattise
Editor: Jennifer Hahn

Transcript

00:00
(upbeat music)
00:16
[Machkovech] Hey everybody, this is Sam Machkovech
00:17
from Ars Technica standing with Nathan Matisse
00:19
and Joe Mullin, also from Ars.
00:22
We're here at South by Southwest
00:23
catching tacos, barbecue, films, tech, music.
00:28
We wanted to come back and report on
00:29
some of the cool things we saw.
00:31
I wanted to start by talking about movies.
00:33
There's a lot of movies and a lot of
00:34
geek and tech kind of movies.
00:36
[Matisse] The movie that surprised me the most
00:38
is I saw a documentary called 44 Pages.
00:40
It's about Highlights for Kids.
00:42
You would never think that is an engaging topic whatsoever.
00:45
It's the magazine of everyone's childhood dentistry,
00:47
but the thing that surprised me most,
00:49
this magazine's been around 70 years as of last summer.
00:52
The film focuses on the making of the June 2016 issue,
00:56
and then kind of frames Highlights' philosophies
00:59
throughout the making of that,
01:01
and there's a really surprising amount of
01:03
tech and science that goes in the magazine.
01:05
They just started a robotics column,
01:06
so if your kid is interested in robotics,
01:08
they can pick up a Highlights magazine
01:10
and take it from there.
01:11
I might subscribe.
01:12
Joe, you see anything cool?
01:14
[Mullin] I did.
01:15
The one that I was most surprised by
01:16
is the one that I just published a review of yesterday,
01:18
which is the Kim Dotcom movie.
01:20
Uh-huh.
01:21
Kim Dotcom is probably the most famous
01:23
criminal copyright case in the world,
01:25
and we've been covering it since 2012
01:26
when there was a raid on his New Zealand mansion.
01:30
I didn't think I had much more to learn about that case,
01:32
but this film, which is called Kim Dotcom Caught in the Web,
01:36
really surprised me because it made me realize
01:38
how much his story, even if it wasn't originally,
01:42
it's really become a story about New Zealand,
01:46
because I think the fundamental issues at this point
01:48
aren't even so much related to copyright law,
01:50
it's about what kind of relationship
01:52
does New Zealand want to have with the US.
01:55
The US has legal systems decided he should show up in court.
01:58
He hasn't, and there's been this ongoing extradition thing.
02:02
It was great to see an in depth movie
02:04
that was actually really balanced,
02:06
which I think is tough to do with
02:08
a larger than life personality like that,
02:10
and it was a new perspective on an old case.
02:13
I really enjoyed it.
02:14
Dotcom did not like my review.
02:15
That's what I hear.
02:16
He said it was full of filth and bias, and so.
02:21
You heard it here first.
02:22
Check it out for yourself.
02:23
[Mullin] So there was a movie called
02:25
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press,
02:27
which is coming out on Netflix this summer,
02:29
and that is an interesting and provocative look at
02:31
the Gawker litigation and whether you think
02:34
that it's a travesty of free speech
02:36
or there are people who are not sad that Gawker went down,
02:40
I'd say whatever side of that argument you're on,
02:43
the movie is compelling and it's worth a watch.
02:47
[Machkovech] There was one documentary I saw
02:48
called Becoming Bond.
02:50
This is gonna be on Hulu.
02:51
Hulu picked up the rights to it,
02:52
and it's the story of the Bond actor
02:55
who was in only one movie.
02:56
He followed Sean Connery, did only one film,
02:59
and then disappeared, and so the movie sort of explores
03:01
how did this guy come to be, what the heck happened to him.
03:05
It's got enough twists and turns
03:08
that I feel like he's making stuff up.
03:10
I can't imagine the fact checking nightmare it was,
03:12
but even if it's not true, it's riveting stuff,
03:14
so really good surprise.
03:16
[Matisse] That one looked really good, too.
03:17
The guy started out as a car mechanic
03:18
and somehow becomes Bond?
03:19
[Machkovech] Oh, it's even,
03:21
that's putting it lightly in terms of the weirdness.
03:23
But it wasn't just films at South by Southwest.
03:26
Lots of panels, technology, stuff all over the place.
03:30
Everyone's throwing a bunch of crap at the wall
03:31
seeing what sticks, and I know one thing that didn't was
03:33
I watched a guy Google how to hack on a panel.
03:36
South by Southwest does have its BS,
03:39
but it also has its really compelling stuff.
03:41
I was curious at the kind of stuff you guys caught
03:42
that really stood out that you remember
03:44
in terms of conversations or tech.
03:46
[Matisse] I think panel wise,
03:48
I was really fascinated any time I got
03:50
a behind the scenes look at the entertainment I love,
03:52
so I saw a panel about VFX design,
03:55
specifically towards aliens in movies,
03:57
which was really cool.
03:58
I saw the duo Survive, who scored Stranger Things,
04:02
talk about the thought process for composing
04:04
depending on what the scene involved
04:06
and depending on the characters involved,
04:08
but those were both very cool.
04:09
I still think the coolest thing for me
04:11
was getting to do some demos.
04:12
I'm not usually a gear reviewer,
04:14
but I went over to the Levi's outpost.
04:16
They have a collaborative project with Google
04:18
called Project Jacquard.
04:19
It's essentially a denim jean jacket with a touch interface
04:22
embedded right into the fabric on your left cuff.
04:25
Levi's is thrilled with that.
04:27
They can't wait to sell this jacket in the fall.
04:29
Google sees it as the beginning of something larger.
04:31
We can get this smart fabric,
04:33
put touch interfaces on practically anything.
04:36
You know, I'm interested to see the crazier ideas
04:37
that come from it, but for now,
04:39
I think starting small is probably gonna be a smart thing.
04:42
[Mullin] I nerded out at some tech policy panels.
04:45
What I found more interesting was to catch up on a couple of
04:50
issues that Congress has tried to move in the past,
04:53
and people are still hopeful they might be moving on,
04:55
so for example, what's called ECPA Reform.
04:58
The real problem is that the government can look at
05:01
your emails without a warrant once they're 180 days old.
05:05
No one really thinks that's a good idea
05:07
on any side of the aisle.
05:09
The House has passed it before.
05:10
The House passed it again this year on a voice vote.
05:13
It's interesting to go to a panel about
05:14
digging down about kind of what the obstacles are,
05:17
which essentially seem to be it's just an easy solution for
05:20
law enforcement, especially IRS and the SEC,
05:23
and they don't want to give up those rights.
05:25
Another panel that I saw was about
05:28
bots that may discriminate.
05:30
There's a lawsuit going on right now,
05:32
which was filed by the ACLU on behalf of
05:35
the media organization and researchers,
05:37
and what the researchers are trying to do is
05:40
figure out whether there may be certain algorithms
05:42
that discriminate on the basis of gender or race
05:46
or other protected categories.
05:47
It's one thing to target a movie to you
05:50
based on your interests from browsing the web,
05:52
but it's quite another if it's
05:53
an ad for housing or for a job.
05:55
There's already been one study
05:56
where they found in certain situations,
05:59
women were much less likely to see
06:01
Google ads for very high-paying jobs.
06:04
Those things are regulated by federal law,
06:06
and the researchers can't even really investigate
06:08
if there are bots or algorithms that are discriminating
06:11
because they're worried about violating
06:14
the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
06:15
It's a long shot either way,
06:17
but it was definitely interesting to hear
06:19
a really in-depth description of what the problem is
06:21
that they're trying to solve.
06:23
[Machkovech] I saw former vice president Joe Biden
06:25
speak about The Cancer Moonshot,
06:28
a term that some people at Ars Technica kind of revile at,
06:30
but the push specifically at South by Southwest
06:32
was pointing at app makers and entertainers and saying,
06:35
What can you do for me?
06:36
How can you develop apps that advocate
06:39
and advertise about getting screenings?
06:42
How can people in the data world work with the government
06:46
to get data going from facility to facility because of
06:49
how medical research relies so heavily on that.
06:53
I know Congressmen Hurd, a Republican from Texas,
06:55
he talked a lot about other issues with data transparency,
06:57
talking about how when you're a young member of Congress
07:00
you essentially turn into the IT guy for everyone older.
07:03
A woman, he did not name the congresswoman,
07:05
but said that she asked for his help in figuring out
07:07
how to use Snapchat for her office and things like that.
07:09
He thinks the computer science graduates in Congress
07:12
are the ones who are going to push that forward.
07:14
The other very surprising government-related panel I went to
07:17
was one in which the CIA showed off
07:19
a really curious training exercise, board gaming,
07:23
specifically super nerdy, go to the board game shop,
07:27
go to the back to the big bulky
07:28
war gaming style board games.
07:30
[Matisse] Public available board games?
07:32
[Machkovech] They are not public, the CIA's.
07:33
These are still only internal.
07:35
In fact, they were very itchy about
07:37
what I could and couldn't take photos of,
07:38
because some of it's not IP necessarily,
07:40
but there are certain things.
07:42
We're thinking about ways to maybe get our hands on them,
07:44
but I did get to play some of them,
07:45
until a fire alarm went off,
07:47
and I'm still wondering,
07:48
one of the games was actually about chasing and capturing
07:51
El Chapo from the 2014 successful check capture.
07:55
[Mullin] Did you get him?
07:56
[Machkovech] I didn't even get to play it,
07:57
but the group that was playing it almost got him.
07:58
I played a game that was more like the game Pandemic
08:01
where people are teaming up to handle
08:03
multiple crises around the globe.
08:05
We had trouble in Venezuela was one of ours.
08:08
That was my favorite, but it was really,
08:10
the training was about bringing out
08:11
organic learning situations, having officers for the CIA
08:15
essentially talk to each other in ways
08:17
that are both real and not real.
08:18
Actually they said that some of the criticism
08:20
and exploits of the games prove to be
08:22
really interesting and educational.
08:24
[Matisse] Austin has been beautiful to us.
08:25
I think the coolest thing about South by Southwest is
08:28
the variety you can get within a given day.
08:30
I'm getting world class barbecue for breakfast,
08:32
I'm going to see Senator Cory Booker at my brunch hour,
08:35
then maybe I'm going to see a panel on
08:37
some hardcore film VFX techniques afterwards,
08:41
and of course at the end of the night,
08:42
Trouble in Venezuela at the Mohawk,
08:44
so it's been really fun to see the variety
08:46
that you can get in just a single day here.
08:49
I thinK we're gonna go tear it up a little bit,
08:50
maybe have a barbecue taco or a taco barbecue,
08:54
something with taco and barbecue in it,
08:55
so we're really looking forward to that.
08:57
Again, Sam from Ars here with Nathan and Joe.
08:59
Thanks for tuning in.
09:00
We will see you soon.