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#sxsw — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sxsw, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Off-season, non-SXSW Austin is its own sort of weird

    AUSTIN, Tex.

    It feels like I barely visited my favorite part of Texas, and that’s not just because my trip here for the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s Unify conference only spanned three days. This visit has also reminded me that SXSW, my usual experience of Austin aside from one trip here in September of 2018 for the Online News Association’s conference, is not a reliable reflection of the city.

    The sidewalks this week aren’t crowded with hipsters and would-be hipsters (i.e., me) wearing the same conference badge, in the process making the number of unhoused people here a little more obvious. Bars and restaurants downtown go by their normal names instead of being rebranded as “activations” for one #brand or another. And instead of delightful spring weather, it’s ghastly hot out–not Vegas-in-August scorching, but also much more humid.

    Avoiding that heat by spending so much of my time in Unify’s air-conditioned confines at the Hilton Downtown made this even more of a fake visit for me. I did at least think to stop by a dive bar off Red River Street Wednesday night to get in some local color and put some money into the non-hotel economy.

    One other change I noticed compared to March: Austin’s streets seem to have picked up a lot more robotic occupants. Waymos are as ubiquitous as ever, but I also spotted several of Austin-based Avride’s refitted Hyundai Ioniq 5s, at least two Zoox toasters on wheels and one of Tesla’s two-seat, gold-colored Cybercabs–plus delivery robots rolling up and down sidewalks.

    (I didn’t get a good enough look at most of the non-Waymo vehicles to see if they had humans at the controls or otherwise overseeing them. Nor did I get rides on any of them, since it was such a short walk from my hotel to the conference venue.)

    But one part of Austin did take me right back to my usual marketing-spring-break nonsense: being greeted outside by the airport by the squawk of grackles.

    #AffordableConnectivityPlan #ATX #AUS #Austin #autonomousVehicles #ConnectivityStandardsAlliance #grackles #hipsters #robots #selfDrivingCars #sxsw #Texas #Waymo
  2. #CenkUygur and #HasanPiker were denied entry to the #UK by the #HomeOffice, preventing them from speaking at #SXSW London. The Home Office cited concerns about their potential risk to UK society, with reports suggesting the decision was influenced by their criticism of Israel. deadline.com/2026/06/cenk-uygu #tech #media #news

  3. #YoungTurks founder & his controversial #Twitch streamer cousin both barred from entry to #UK for appearances at #Oxford #SXSW events due to alleged anti #Israel bias

    A #LabourParty MP David Taylor took to #MelonHusk branded #socialmedia platform to praise the #UK home secretary office for the decision to block their visas:

    "There's no reason to open our doors to those who seek to spread hate and division, especially to those who've supported a proscribed terror group"

    theguardian.com/media/2026/jun

    #CenkUygur #HasanPiker #Censorship #Bias

  4. Weekly output: Most Innovative Companies, Serve Robotics, Android 17, United Airlines’ ambitions, Polymarket’s pop-up bar

    CHICAGO–This is one of my favorite cities in the U.S., but it doesn’t show up in my work travel as often as I’d like. So I’m delighted that the Online News Association decided to move its annual conference from late summer to early spring and then stage this year’s event here–in a hotel that should be familiar to everybody who’s seen The Fugitive.

    Patreon readers got a bonus post that I’d meant to have written weeks earlier: a recap of MWC Barcelona in which I also gave away a global eSIM to the first reader to ask for it.

    3/24/2026: The most innovative robotics and engineering companies of 2026, Fast Company

    This list, the product of months of research and editorial back-and-forth, finally emerged online this week. And then we had to run a quick correction after one of the companies honored said that we’d mentioned an achievement that they did not want disclosed.

    3/25/2026: Delivery Robots Have a Mapping Problem, PCMag

    I sat down in a hotel lobby in Austin during SXSW with MJ Burk Chun, co-founder and vice president of product and design at Serve Robotics, to talk about the issues that company is working to address as it tries to scale up having four-wheeled robots cart food deliveries to customers.

    3/27/2026: Google Ships Latest Android 17 Beta. Here’s What’s New, PCMag

    In between having so many longer stories to write, I was happy to get one that I could bang out in an hour or so.

    3/28/2026: United’s New Upgrades Aim to Keep You Online and Fully Charged at 35,000 Feet, PCMag

    My week started with me flying to another one of United’s hubs–with the airline covering my airfare and lodging–for its United Elevated event at LAX. In addition to looping me into UA’s ambitions for its onboard product, this event doubled as a reunion with some of the avgeek journalists I met at Cranky Dorkfest in September and with my former Washington Post colleague Lori Aratani, who interviewed United CEO Scott Kirby onstage Tuesday morning.

    3/29/2026: Pints meet prop bets: Polymarket’s “Situation Room” pop-up bar in DC, Ars Technica

    I thought I saw an opportunity to write for this occasional client for the first time since the summer of 2023; fortunately, my editor then and now agreed.

    #AIMIntelligentMachines #Android17 #Austin #BostonDynamics #Chicago #deliveryRobots #Dexterity #ForwardXRobotics #GlacierRobotics #Infravision #LAX #LosAngeles #LucidBots #ONA #OnlineNewsAssociation #ORD #Polymarket #predictionMarkets #RobustAi #ServeRobotics #sxsw #Symbotic #TerabaseEnergy #UA #United #UnitedAirlines
  5. @newyorktimes's veteran tech reporter @Markoff interviewed some of #TeamFediverse including @Gargron, @reckless1280 and our CEO @mike for a feature on the rise of decentralized social media. “It goes back to the original principles where the internet started out as decentralized,” Eugen Rochko told Markoff. Here's the full story [may be paywalled].

    We're so excited to develop these conversations further at SXSW this weekend — check out the itinerary and sign up to join us at #FediverseHouse at the second link.

    flip.it/NcjhLL

    lu.ma/xbve5fa0

    #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Federation #OpenSocialWeb #SXSW #JohnMarkoff #EugenRochko #MikeMcCue #SXSW2025

  6. I got too old years ago to elbow my way into Irish bars on St. Patrick’s Day, but I do fly the Irish flag from our front porch alongside the latest in a series of American flags that have graced our house since weeks after we moved in almost 20 years ago.

    3/11/2024: Uber App Now Tracks Carbon-Pollution Savings From Some Rides, PCMag

    I got an advance copy of Uber’s press release, but seeing this new feature live in my copy of the ride-hailing company’s app helped me discern its limits.

    3/12/2024: Uber CEO at SXSW: ‘Our Competition Is Car Ownership’, PCMag

    After watching this panel featuring Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Austin mayor Kirk Watson, I wrote my second post about Uber for this week.

    3/14/2024: On Third Try, SpaceX’s Starship Reaches Space Before an Explosive Re-Entry, PCMag

    I revised this post a day after I wrote it to reflect updates from SpaceX and space experts (for example, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell) that clarified that Starship didn’t achieve orbital velocity on this launch, contrary to a tweet from Elon Musk.

    3/15/2024: Ep 97 SmartTechCheck Podcast TikTok and Congress, Elon Musk and YouTube, and SXSW highlights, Mark Vena

    I shared a SXSW debriefing on this episode of my tech-analyst friend’s podcast.

    https://robpegoraro.com/2024/03/17/weekly-output-uber-apps-carbon-pollution-math-uber-and-austin-spacex-starship-test-flight-mark-vena-podcast/

    #Austin #carbonFootprint #DaraKhosrowshahi #KirkWatson #MarkVena #SpaceXStarship #sxsw #Uber