By LAURA LOREK, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

The path to national legalization of marijuana is underway.

That’s the conclusion from cannabis experts at South by Southwest, which hosted its first-ever Cannabusiness track this year with 60 panels.

In the U.S., 95 percent of the population believes in the medicinal value of cannabis and believes it should be available, said Kevin Murphy, Founder, and CEO of Acreage Holdings, which owns cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensary operations in 19 states. It does not operate in Texas.

And 66 percent of the population believe cannabis should be available for adult recreational use, Murphy said. Ten states have already approved recreational use of marijuana including Colorado, California, Washington, Michigan, Oregon, Nevada, Alaska, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont.

Last year, Former Speaker of the U.S. House John Boehner joined the board of Acreage Holdings.

Boehner and Murphy spoke on a panel discussion Friday at SXSW moderated by Tim Seymour, founder of Seymour Asset Management and host of CNBC’s Fast Money.

Medical marijuana is now legal in 34 states, District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But it’s not an easy path to a legal industry.

Those state laws conflict with federal law, which still classifies marijuana as an illegal Schedule 1 substance under the Controlled Substances Act, making distribution of marijuana a federal offense.  

And Texas still has some of the strictest laws in the country regarding cannabis. In 2015, the Texas Legislature passed the Compassionate Use Act which allows for low-THC cannabis for the treatment of intractable epilepsy. The state also licensed three dispensaries to grow and distribute it.

Overall, attitudes about marijuana are changing nationally.

“Over the last five or six years, I’ve found myself looking at this issue differently than I used to,”  Boehner said.

Boehner has heard firsthand stories from Veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who use cannabis to treat chronic pain and to eliminate headaches. He’s heard from an 85-year-old baggage handler at the airport who uses cannabis to deal with chronic arthritis.

“The American people clearly are changing their views of this product,” Boehner said. “And as they do, this industry is going to grow exponentially over the next 10 to 20 years.”

Boehner has never used marijuana. He does smoke cigarettes and drink red wine. And he might try it in the future, he said. He takes an Advil PM every night before bed. He said he might like to replace that drug with a cannabis-related sleep aid.

“We see this business at the cross section between regulatory and commerce,” Murphy said.

The Tenth Amendment gives states the right to pass their own laws regarding cannabis, but the federal policy still makes doing business difficult, Boehner said. The federal laws classifying cannabis as a drug leads to ambiguity around financial services, he said. So federal banks will not handle cannabis money and that leads businesses to deal with suitcases full of cash, he said. Also, the Veterans Administration will not offer cannabis as an alternative to harmful opioids.

If the federal government passed the States Act, it would give everyone a choice whether they wanted to use cannabis for medicinal purposes or not, Murphy said. The act would make the states’ law the authority when it comes to cannabis.

“If someone can use this plant and substitute it for opioids, we’re going to have a lot fewer deaths per day than 130,” Murphy said. The Center for Disease Control released a report last December stating 130 people die every day in the U.S. from opioid-related overdoses.

The federal government should pass the States Act in 2019 which will allow Acreage and other cannabis companies to operate more efficiently and use federal banks as well as have a fair tax code to operate under, Murphy said. It will also allow his company the privilege of being listed on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ.

“Today, we’re not welcome here in the U.S. as one of the largest providers of cannabis in the U.S.,” Murphy said.

Canada-based cannabis companies can operate on the New York Stock Exchange, Murphy said. Canada is one of the first countries to make cannabis legal.

The world is changing, and the U.S. is not keeping pace, Boehner said.

The 2018 U.S. Farm Bill, which President Trump signed into law, made growing hemp legal. Hemp does not have THC, which produces the psychotropic effects from marijuana. Hemp is derived from cannabis and is used to make Cannabidiol, known as CBD, based products. The Food and Drug Administration said it plans to heavily regulate the industry.

That’s created a lot of uncertainty in the market, Boehner said.

All the cannabis industry wants is clarity so it can abide by it, Murphy said. Every state right now has different regulations and it makes doing business across state lines difficult, he said.

Acreage is part of the National Cannabis Roundtable, which is made up of about 10 companies who are big players in the industry. It is focused on passage of the States Act, fixing the banking problem through financial services reform and tax equality.

Once something becomes law in the U.S. it’s extremely difficult to change that law, Boehner said. The forces of the status quo are immense, he said.

But cigarette, beer and alcohol sales are all down, Boehner said. And big pharma is looking for new opportunities, he said.

These industries are looking for ways to grow their business again and cannabis offers new opportunities, Boehner said.

But because Cannabis is a drug, they cannot get into the market today, Boehner said.

“Once the States Act passes, once this becomes somewhat legal, you’re going to see a flood of big players coming into this industry,” Boehner said.

There’s also a lot of concern about criminal justice issues related to the cannabis industry. About 15 percent of the imprisoned population in the U.S. is due to a cannabis related offense, Murphy said. He said his company advocates for social justice reform.

In a keynote talk before Boehner and Murphy, longtime cannabis advocate Steve DeAngelo said cannabis reform is coming in the U.S. He believes in an ethical and politically engaged cannabis industry that benefits everyone.

“I believe in the power of hippy dreams because I’ve seen so many come true,” DeAngelo said.

By Laura Lorek, publisher of Silicon Hills News

South by Southwest Interactive, Film and Music continue to go on with fascinating keynote and panel discussions as well as film screenings and live performances.

Here are a few observations from this year’s SXSW so far:

1. ANALOG CARS – I’ve never heard a car referred to as analog. In the tech world, analog is an old clock, radio, telephone, a vinyl record as an analog recording, etc. But this year, at SXSW, Malcolm Gladwell referred to cars as analog. How long before our cars become relics of the past? Go see the documentary, “Autonomy,” inspired by a story in Car and Driver magazine, for more on this discussion. The documentary debuted at SXSW following a panel discussion on autonomous cars. I never thought about a world in which we don’t own cars any longer. As a person, who like Gladwell, likes to drive, I don’t want to give up the keys to my car.
2. ROBOT TAKEOVER – The robots aren’t coming, they are already here. At the Austin Convention Center, visitors are greeted by Briggo, the robot barista. I remember a few years ago when Austin-based Briggo brought that barista robot to SXSW as a novelty item. Now, it’s just another fixture in the convention center. And robots like that were everywhere from Kitt, the self-driving car, on display in the Expo Hall to LG Electronics’ elaborate display of robots as companions, household servants, and even entertainers and Austin-based KUKA showing off its industrial robots. And did you catch Singularity Sushi in the Japan Expo Center booth? It’s a restaurant that takes blood samples from customers (at home in a kit that is then sent to the restaurant), uses artificial intelligence to create a nutritiously balanced sushi meal and then uses robots and 3D printers to create the food in a totally automated restaurant. It’s opening next year in Tokyo.
3. CREATIVITY – A lot of discussions about whether creativity can continue to flourish in an automated world. So far, the consensus is yes.
4. AUTHENTICITY – Being authentic is the new, new thing. In a social media world where everything is so highly curated and Instagram photos must look like full-blown Vogue cover shots, it’s refreshing to see a return to authenticity.
5. MENTAL HEALTH – Mental Health is on everyone’s mind. From the packed mainstage talk between Tim Ferriss and Michael Pollan on the use of psychedelics to lots of panel discussions on the epidemic of loneliness created in the technological age. It goes along with the trend of being authentic. It’s now OK to be vulnerable. But mental health problems aren’t a trend in the country. It’s a crisis that demands more attention.
6. PROBLEMS WITH TECH – This SXSW hosted lots of discussions about the problems with technology from Roger McNamee’s discussion with Wired Editor in Chief Nicholas Thompson on McNamee’s book “Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe” and the problems with Facebook’s social networking platform to the screening of the Theranos documentary: “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.” Technology does not always go according to plan. It’s important to talk about what went wrong and learn from the mistakes.
7. PROGRAMMING – Top notch speakers, so many fascinating discussions, wonderfully executed. It’s probably the best run SXSW I’ve ever been to. They’ve got it down to a science now. If you don’t get into the main ballroom, you can still watch the speaker in the overflow room or go to dozens of sessions happening at that same moment. The real time color codes beside each session indicate from green to yellow and red and help a person figure out which sessions they can still get into. And the SXSW express passes made it easier than ever to get into things you really, really wanted to see, if you could get up and log on at 9 a.m. every day to snag one.
8. BLOCKCHAIN – The hype around blockchain cryptocurrencies has cooled a bit, but it seems everyone is still bullish on blockchain technology.
9. POT – Cannabis is the new buzzed about business on the rise in the U.S. and already legal in Canada. Texas still has some of the strictest laws regulating medicinal and recreational use in the country though.
10. PARTIES – Fogo de Chao and the Entrepreneur’s Lounge Meatup is still the best party to mix and mingle with locals and special guests at SXSW for 12 years running. It’s tough to get a ticket, but if you do, it’s well worth it. Best networking in town with entrepreneurs, investors, tech industry innovators and great food and drinks.
11. BOOKSMART – For the first time ever, I went to a movie premiere at the Paramount Theater for SXSW Film. And if you haven’t done this, I highly recommend it. It was so much fun. I stood in line for 2.5 hours now that doesn’t sound like fun, but it was. I met new people, had some fun discussions and watched people on scooters try to navigate the sidewalk crowd, homeless guys yelling at us, ambulances with sirens and so much more go by. I was ticket number 103 to get into the premiere of first-time director Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart. And it was worth the wait. The film is hilarious and so much fun. After covering so much tech, I needed to laugh and Booksmart delivered. Whoever did the casting did a fantastic job. The actors and actresses are so believable and perfect in their roles. The movie transports viewers back to a carefree high school graduation party in which everything goes awry. It’s also a celebration of friendship. It’s a coming of age movie for the digital age on par with “The Breakfast Club” or “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

BOOKSMART Official Trailer (2019) Olivia Wilde, Lisa Kudrow Teen Movie HD

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By SUSAN LAHEY, Senior Writer with Silicon Hills News

You know that movie scene where all the people who have been victimized realize there are more of them than there are of the bad guy? That’s kind of what’s happening with women and marketing these days as a panel called Girl Culture pointed out in SXSW.

The panelists were filmmaker and VR and AR pioneer Nonny de la Pēna of Emblematic Group; documentary film maker Lauren Greenfield; CMO of consumer beauty at Coty Inc., Ukonwa Ojo; and moderator Margaret Johnson, chief creative officer for Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

Women influence roughly 80 percent of the buying decisions and yet historically have held few positions of power in areas where they feature heavily, such as marketing and film making. But that is beginning to change. The #MeToo movement, for one thing, “taught women all over the world there’s power when we get together,” De La Pēna said. While the narrative about women was that they argue against each other and bring each other down, #MeToo changed the narrative. But more needs to change.

Shattering Stereotypes

For example, De La Pēna said, Amazon did a study about why they kept hiring men when they were aiming for diversity. It turned out that their AI was biased toward people who used the words “capture” and “execute,” phrases women seldom used. “I don’t know how all the guys know to say ‘capture’ and ‘execute,’” she said. Another example was the fact that Rotten Tomatoes’ algorithm did not filter out sexist trolls when rating Captain Marvel.

The bias is institutional, and each of the panelists has battled sexism at its roots. Johnson has fought to gain more and more female representation among Goodby Silverstein partners to the point where there are now four men and four women.

“It has changed everthing,” she said, “the way we work internally, the kind of work pitch, the work we put out in the world….”

Beyond that, she launched an augmented reality app, Lessons in Herstory to correct th fact that women only make up about 11 percent of the narrative in U.S. history books. Hold the app over any history book entry about a man and the app shows you an augmented reality story of a woman who lived at the same time and influenced history.

Ojo has pushed for diversity in several respects, from creating the I Am What I Make Up Cover Girl marketing campaign that included author and chef Ayesha Curry; Issa Rae, the creator of HBO’s Insecure; fitness guru Massy Arias; 69-year-old model Maye Musk; and professional motorcycle racer Shelina Moreda. She also was the first to introduce a new line of cosmetics for all skin tones simultaneously. Historically the launch for products was for people with predominant skin tones first, followed by those of underrepresented groups six months or a year later. It was the most successful product launch in history.

Greenfield, producer of Generation Wealth, The Queen of Versailles and Thin, a record-breaking, Super Bowl ad #LikeAGirl, has created stereotype-shattering marketing videos and documentaries that assault the vision of women that have been cultivated by male marketers and film makers for centuries.

As the panelists pointed out, institutional sexism can seem monolithic. But each has had huge success coming against it “as herself” with her own dreams, creative vision, and personal passion.

Ojo recounted how she moved to the U.S.  on her own at the age of 18 from Nigeria. But she was inspired by her mother, who took the baby to London, leaving her other children at home, and studied fashion, then came back and opened her own boutique. This proved, she said, that where you are in life, in your journey, “doesn’t really matter, if you have a dream.”

By SUSAN LAHEY, Senior Writer with Silicon Hills News

“People aren’t interested in push-button art. It’s much more interesting to watch people struggle and find something to say,” said Douglas Eck, Sr Staff Research Scientist at the Google Brain team and a self-identified “failed musician.” The SXSW panel was on AI and the Future of Storytelling.

Panelists Eck, Charles Melcher, founder and director of Future of StoryTelling (FoST), Heather Smith of StoryFile, and writer/director/producer Lance Weiler, founding director of the Columbia University School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab, discussed the role of AI in the arts and whether human creativity was doomed.

Short answer: no.

In fact, there is a new term for art that replicates art produced by machine learning. It’s GANism. Art imitiates machines imitating art?

AI as framework

All of the participants talked about AI as “tool” for creating art—such as tossing out the bones of a story for a writer to base a poem or novel on. But they point out that AI is still very much in it’s infancy. Weiler directed an installation called Frankenstien.ai in which AI has conversations with people about what it means to be human. It even can be used at dinner parties where the participants each have earpieces for the AI to tell them what to say to their neighbor or to ask, or whether to whisper in someone’s ear. Diners don’t know whether conversations are the fruit of their fellow diners’ personalities or Frankenstein. Though sometimes it’s clear, like when Frankenstein, who is just learning about being human, asks questions like “Why do people like having sex even though they can see in color?”

While AI can absorb all the information in the world and generate stories, music and the rest, it isn’t yet capable of discriminating between the good and the bad, the truly human experience and the familiar jumble of words. On the other hand, AI can be used to tell the stories or provide a framework for the music others won’t bother with. As Melcher pointed out, AI would be able to write the story of a Little League game that a professional journalist would never cover.

AI as recording device

Smith’s organization was founded because fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors are around to tell their stories—especially to children. The most impactful encounters between survivors and audiences, she said, came during the question and answer period. She asked for the house lights in Ballroom D—the Convention Center’s largest venue that seats 2,408 people—to be brought up and a show of hands for how many people had lost someone. Many raised their hands. Then she asked how many people would want to have a conversation with that person. Fewer raised their hands, but there was still a large showing.

StoryFile interviews people in-depth for one to five days and creates personalized “conversations” that you can have on a smart phone or as a hologram in a museum display among other places. Rather than just playing with a cool technology, Smith said, she was interested in helping people—from those who benefit from learning about the Holocaust to others who simply want a way to reconnect with loved ones they’ve lost. Asked by an audience member if something like StoryFile interrupted the grieving process, Smith answered “As I shift in my chair….I don’t know.”

Panelists acknowledged the danger of AI preventing some people from really adventurous creativity. As Eck said, the electric guitar did. But he thinks that’s okay. You don’t really need to invent new genres all the time.

By LAURA LOREK, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Austin-based ICON on Monday unveiled its new “Vulcan II” 3D printer that can print up to a 2,000 square foot house quickly at half the cost.

“It’s four times as big, it’s twice as fast, and it’s going to start shipping to customers next month,” said Jason Ballard, CEO and Co-founder of ICON. “This is not science fiction, it’s science fact. The world you all have been waiting for is about to arrive.”

ICON has also created proprietary concrete/mortar material which it calls “Lavacrete” that has passed every structural test and is safe for people and resilient to the varieties of conditions it may encounter, according to the company.

“Our most significant challenge in this city is affordability, we are losing community,” said Mayor Steve Adler at an event along with a few hundred invited guests Monday at ICON’s Warehouse headquarters at 444 E. St. Elmo Road in South Austin to show off the new printer.

A median-priced home in San Francisco right now is more than $1.5 million, Adler said. A median-priced home in Boston and Seattle, and other major tech centers, are north of $800,000, he said

“Austin is a city that creates art,” Adler said. “We create art because we are a diverse and creative community.”

Creativity comes from the melding of all different kinds of people living together in the city, Adler said. Austin doesn’t want to become a city that just consumes art because its artists can no longer afford to live here, he said.

ICON’s technology helps Austin solve one of its most vexing problems of how to make houses cost less, and build them quicker, Adler said.

“This is about as Austin a place as South by Southwest,” Adler said.

A global housing crisis exists, and 1.2 billion people worldwide struggle with being homeless and can’t afford shelter, Ballard said. ICON’s technology can make housing more affordable, he said.

This technology is scalable, Ballard said.

“I believe in the next couple of years, you will see a 3D printed house with a for sale sign in front of it here in Austin, Texas, for sale for half price,” Ballard said.  

And with 3D printing a house, it produces nearly zero waste, he said.

“You print what you need to the drop and then you stop,” he said.

ICON also announced partnerships to put its technology in action to build affordable homes for Austin and other communities.

One of its partnerships is with New Story, a four-year-old nonprofit organization that pioneers affordable housing solutions to end global homelessness. It is using ICON’s technology to create the world’s first 3D printed community beginning this summer, said Brett Hagler, CEO, and Co-Founder of New Story.

Another partnership is with Cielo Property Group.

“Our big announcement today that we’ve been holding back, Austin that printer right there that is your printer dedicated to affordable, sustainable, resilient and beautiful housing,” said Bobby Dillard, founder of Cielo Property Group. Austin is the first city in the country to have its own 3D printer focused on creating affordable housing, he said.

3Strands Neighborhoods announced its early partnership with ICON to explore architectural and design concepts that could be delivered by Vulcan II.

Gary O’Dell, CEO of 3 Strands Neighborhoods, said his company builds clusters of houses with shared spaces and programming that builds communities and relationships. It has partnered with Overland Partners, an architecture firm based in San Antonio, to create a design competition for 3D printed houses.

Last year, ICON won the South by Southwest Accelerator pitch competition for its construction technology that builds 3D printed homes using concrete as a substrate. ICON also generated a lot of buzz when it built a 3D printed home in East Austin in two days during SXSW using its 3D printer.

That first permitted 3D printed house cost about $10,000 in materials. The 350 square foot house was created as a proof of concept house in partnership with New Story.

ICON closed a $9 million in a seed-stage round led by Oakhouse Partners last October. It plans to begin building homes in the U.S. and in Latin America this year.  Time Magazine named ICON one of the best inventions of 2018. Popular Science named ICON one of the best 100 Greatest Innovations of 2018. 

New Story + ICON : 3D Printed Homes for the Developing World

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In an ironic twist, Roger McNamee, author of Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe, is taking out ads on Facebook to sell his book.

“This is guerilla warfare,” McNamee said.

Facebook is a powerful social network and his book exposes the flaws in the social network and Facebook is also a way to get his message out there, McNamee said.

That’s one of the revelations from a Keynote discussion Sunday afternoon at South by Southwest Interactive between McNamee and Nicholas Thompson, editor in chief of Wired magazine.

McNamee, an early investor in Facebook and mentor to its Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has since become one of the company’s biggest critics.

His book hit store shelves last month and has already become a New York Times bestseller.

McNamee said he warned Zuckerberg years ago about the misuse of the platform by bad actors and how the social network could be used to do harm to society. But Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg didn’t take him seriously. They thought of his concerns as more of a public relations problem than something that was detrimental to the company or its users.

McNamee said that since Facebook has found out about people misusing its platform to promote fake news and influence U.S. elections, the steps the company has taken have not been enough.

“Facebook historically has behaved like it’s ok to apologize and go back to do what it was doing before,” McNamee said.

But that game plan doesn’t work like it did for the first 15 years of the company, he said.

“The scale that they operate at makes their mistakes greater,” McNamee said.

While few could have predicted that the Russians would interfere in the U.S. election by planting fake news through ads on the Facebook platform to manipulate voters, once the evidence was out, Facebook continued its obfuscation, McNamee said. Facebook continued to deflect and deny any responsibility, he said. Facebook claimed it was a platform and not a media company, he said.

“Once the public loses trust, you’re screwed,”  McNamee said.

McNamee said he still has Facebook and Instagram accounts.

“If you’re going to write a book about Facebook and Instagram, you have to have an account about Facebook and Instagram,” he said.

McNamee also didn’t sell his Facebook stock.

“If the stock went down, I felt it was appropriate for me to take a hit,” McNamee said. “I’m not the perfect messenger for this message.”

But McNamee felt like he had to get the story out, he said. The message isn’t just about Facebook.

“This is a problem that is endemic in a world where the business model is about tracking human beings and using it for steering them,” McNamee said.

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are being used to manipulate human behavior and people haven’t had discussions about how this technology is being used and where it is going, he said.

What people do on the web is tracked by everybody, he said.

All these business models have been developed behind a curtain and the general public didn’t know that was going on, McNamee said.

“We don’t want behavioral modification by companies to be part of our world,” he said.

McNamee also supports Presidential Candidate and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to break up the large social networks like Facebook, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, and Google, which owns YouTube.

Warren spoke Saturday at SXSW. She also proposed breaking up Google and Amazon in addiiton to Facebook.

McNamee said he went to Google a year ago and proposed that they spin off YouTube

“Like Facebook, they were not too interested in my idea,” he said.

McNamee said his book is about his journey of discovery. He said he is like the actor Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. He just saw a crime scene and pulls on a thread to reveal complex systems that are being used as filter bubbles and to persuade people to think a certain thing.

Technology can be great for society, McNamee said. The industry needs to go back to Steve Job’s vision of bicycles for the mind. Technology should empower people, it should not manipulate them, he said.

For example, McNamee said recruiting apps, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, are biased against women and people of color. They can be programmed to comb through resumes to identify white and Asian males between the ages of 18 and 35, he said.

Apple is not perfect, McNamee said. The company has had supply chain problems, he said. But what Apple is doing around protecting personal privacy is important.

McNamee doesn’t think Zuckerberg’s manifesto to make Facebook a better place and to protect people’s privacy, goes far enough. Last Thursday, Zuckerberg posted a 5,700-word letter on his Facebook page detailing his plans to make Facebook a better community. McNamee called the move a PR stunt. To really change, Facebook must change its business model, he said.

But Facebook isn’t the only big tech company that has him worried.

“I am much more worried today about Google, Microsoft and Amazon than Facebook,” McNamee said. “Because Facebook has been clumsy enough to get caught, the others have not.”

“The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” is a story about storytelling, said its Academy Award Winning Director Alex Gibney.

The documentary is about how a couple of veteran journalists got fooled along with a lot of investors into believing Elizabeth Holmes just might be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.

Instead, Holmes, an attractive and charismatic entrepreneur who favored black turtlenecks and black pants, took the fake it till you make it mantra of Silicon Valley a bit too far and faked test results, lied to reporters, regulators and investors, and committed fraud on a massive scale.

The HBO documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. But a screening of the film took place Friday night to a sold-out crowd at the Atom Theatre at South by Southwest.

Gibney also directed “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and HBO’s Emmy-winning “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.”

The documentary does a great job of laying out Holmes’ vision in her own words. The film kicks off with her proclaiming she doesn’t have many secrets. Theranos had a culture of secrecy, according to the documentary.

Holmes granted lots of interviews and spoke before TED and medical conferences and before lawmakers to promote her technology. And Theranos recorded quite a few internal talks and company meetings and parties too, which Gibney was able to obtain 100 hours of footage shot inside the company and use some of it in the documentary.

“That’s where suddenly we were able not to tell the story from the outside in but from the inside out,” Gibney said.

The idea for Theranos began in 2003 when Holmes, then just 19, and a student at Stanford founded a company that was going to revolutionize healthcare. She dropped out of Stanford the following year to work on it full time.

Theranos promised to disrupt the blood testing industry. It wanted people to be able to give a small sample of blood from a finger prick and test it for 200 different diseases. That would replace the legacy method of blood testing involving a venous blood collection with a long needle and several tubes of blood. And behind it all was Theranos’ printer-sized machine, called Edison, named after Inventor Thomas Edison, that could perform all the tests with just a tiny, bullet-sized sample of blood.

By 2014, Holmes had raised more than $400 million, valuing Theranos at $9 billion, and making Holmes the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, according to a Fortune article. Fortune put her on the cover of its magazine with a title that said, “This CEO is Out for Blood,” by Roger Parloff.

Another article followed by Ken Auletta called “Blood, Simpler” in the New Yorker. But Auletta’s article was a bit more skeptical of Theranos and Holmes and that caught the eye of Wall Street Journal Investigative Reporter John Carreyrou. He also got an inside source to provide him with information about how Theranos was defrauding investors and potentially harming people with incorrect and faulty blood test results.

Theranos lawyers found out the source of the leaked information and went after him with a cease and desist order and a threat of lawsuit for sharing trade secrets. But another whistleblower came forward and filed a complaint with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that eventually got the Theranos lab shut down.

Today, Theranos is worthless, the company shut down last September. Holmes reached a settlement for lying and making false statements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the New York Times. But then she was indicted on criminal charges and is awaiting trial, according to the New York Times.

The movie ends with the song “U Can’t Touch This” by M.C. Hammer. It is the same song Holmes played and danced to with other company executives during a company party. Other moments in the film show Holmes in talks with Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Theranos’ former president and chief operating officer, and Holmes’ former boyfriend.

One of the lessons of the film is to beware of arguments that tout the ends justifies the means, Gibney said. Police are aware of this – they call it noble cause corruption, he said.

Another lesson is to get the facts and don’t believe things that are too good to be true.

“A lot of what this story is about is how compelled we all are in emotional terms by stories that we want to like – the journalists were part of that, but the investors were part of that too,” Gibney said.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019) | Official Trailer | HBO

From Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney comes a documentary about the rise and fall of Theranos, the one-time multibillion-dollar healthcare company founded by Elizabeth Holmes. Premieres March 18 on HBO. #HBO #HBODocs Subscribe to the HBO YouTube Channel: https://goo.gl/wtFYd7 Don’t have HBO?

By LAURA LOREK, Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Self-driving cars are the future, but there is still some uncertainty on how long it will take to get there and what that future looks like.

That’s the conclusion from a panel discussion at South by Southwest Saturday morning. Hundreds of people showed up for the 9:30 a.m. session on Self-Driving Cars: The Future is When? Featuring Chris Urmson, CEO of Aurora Innovation and Malcolm Gladwell, author and host of the Revisionist History podcast.  NBC News Correspondent Jo Ling Kent moderated the discussion.

The talk took place before the premiere of the documentary film “Autonomy,” inspired by a special edition of Car and Driver Magazine on autonomous vehicles. The film features Gladwell and Urmson and explores the history and evolution of self-driving cars. It also focuses on the impact of those cars on car aficionados who prefer “analog” vehicles that they can take apart and control.  The documentary screening took place at the Atom Theatre at the Austin Convention Center following the talk.

Gladwell, who drives a Blue 2003 BMW M5, isn’t thrilled with the idea of self-driving cars replacing individually owned ones. He’s not ready to hand over his steering wheel to a robot.

“I’m not sure I am excited,” Gladwell said. “Do I want it? No, I actually really like driving.”

Urmson, who is already testing self-driving cars on public roads, drives an Audi Cabriolet. He loves driving down Interstate 280 in Northern California. But then he gets into gridlock traffic in San Francisco and he concludes, “this is why we need self-driving cars.”

Self-driving cars are being tested today, but they are not widely available in the United States. However, a lot of today’s cars have different levels of autonomous technology built in like automatic braking and sensors that warn about obstacles.

The benefits of self-driving cars are that they handle the mundane parts of driving, especially in urban environments, Urmson said.

“An awful lot of people don’t enjoy driving like you do,” Urmson told Gladwell. “The vast majority of people don’t enjoy driving, they don’t like commuting.”

The technology is inevitable, Gladwell said. He doesn’t think self-driving cars and cars driven by humans can co-exist and that eventually, the entire world will become one of self-driving vehicles. He also objects to the term “autonomous,” for self-driving vehicles, because autonomous describes the cars that are driven by humans. Cars give drivers autonomy, Gladwell said.

Gladwell is worried that people who like to drive, like himself, are going to get dealt out of the driving equation and will no longer have that option.

The system would be dramatically better if it were solely based on driverless cars, Urmson said.

“But I don’t think that’s real,” he said. “There are people who love driving.”

There is no reason to worry about self-driving cars taking over the roads entirely anytime soon, Urmson said.

“I think there are parts of driving that make a ton of sense to have self-driving cars serve,” Urmson said. For example, self-driving cars can help people move through urban centers more efficiently. Today, 30 percent of the traffic moving through San Francisco is people looking for parking, Urmson said.

In Paris, 80 percent of the people driving are looking for parking, Urmson said.

With self-driving cars, people don’t have to park. The cars just drop them off at their location and go on to look for another passenger. There will no longer be a need for parking garages, Urmson said.

Gladwell said that makes the situation even worse because people will no longer own cars. They will essentially be taking taxis everywhere. Cars will become mass transit.

If people have self-owned self-driving cars, the traffic will increase dramatically, Gladwell said. Uber has increased traffic in Manhattan because people don’t take mass transit, they hop in an Uber, he said.

Self-driving cars are inevitable in cities, Urmson said.

“It’s not sustainable to have one person in a two-ton vehicle driving down the road,” Urmson said.  “It doesn’t mean you don’t get to enjoy your car.”

Driving might be restricted in urban areas and people might be allowed to drive on the weekend in rural settings, Urmson said.

The promise of the self-driving technology is to have vehicles that are safer than human drivers, Urmson said. About 37,000 people die from traffic accidents in the United States every year and 95 percent of those accidents occur because of human error. Self-driving cars would make it safer to commute and save lives, Urmson said.

Already, the airline industry has adopted auto-pilot plane technology and that has helped reduce collisions and crashes, Gladwell said. With autos, there will be far fewer traditional accidents. But self-driving car technology opens the door to someone hacking into the system and causing a major car accident, Gladwell said.

He said he feels like people in Silicon Valley are  “a little too blasé about security features” when it comes to self-driving cars. Because the technology is introducing multiple points of vulnerability into the system, Gladwell said.

Cybersecurity is highly important, Urmson said.

“But it is not a self-driving car problem, it’s a connected world problem that we have to solve,” Urmson said.

“Silicon Valley can poo-poo some of the risks in favor of the technology,” Urmson said.

Gladwell said that was a grand understatement.

It’s really a fleet inoculation problem and engineers must think about cybersecurity, but this is a fundamental societal problem, not just a self-driving car problem, Urmson said.

Cybersecurity is a huge unanswered problem in the movement to the Internet of Things, Gladwell said.

 It’s just not encouraging to be launching a massive revolution when Cybersecurity is still unsolved, Gladwell said.

The one part of self-driving vehicle technology that doesn’t bother Gladwell is the jobs. He doesn’t think it will lead to massive unemployment of truck drivers. Self-driving vehicles is going to change the nature of the work and create a whole lot of new jobs, he said.

“There still has to be a person in the truck,” Gladwell said. “ There has to be a person that helps to unload the truck once it gets to where it’s going.”

By SUSAN LAHEY, Senior Writer with Silicon Hills News

One of the best moments at SXSW Release It pitch competition was when CEO and co-founder of the winning company, Lumos Helmet, admitted that he had no idea how the company’s first product wound up on Oprah’s favorites list.

“I was afraid to ask,” Lumos Helmet CEO and Co-Founder Eu-wen Ding confessed on stage.

Lumos Helmet, which launched its new line for scooter riders and skateboarders at Release It, makes helmets with bright lights on the front, and big, lighted, flashing signals on the back, to let motorists and others know which direction the helmet wearer is headed. They released their new, more streamlined “urban chic” helmet at the event.

The company was one of 10 companies chosen to release their products at SXSW 2019. Other standouts included Reviver Auto, which makes license plates that are customizable, trackable, connected to your smartphone, and never require you to go to the Division of Motor Vehicles again…ever. Company CEO Neville Boston pointed out the multiple uses of the license plate including replacing tags for toll roads. The plates are expected to be legal in 10 states by the end of the year.

Drugs and Rock and Roll

Leaf Tyme is an online e-commerce platform for cannabis products with CBD but no THC. The company provides a place for cannibus dispensaries and others to sell their goods without being kicked off the exchange—as they are for some more traditional e-commerce platforms.

The Labz is a collaboration platform for songwriters and musicians that let each person’s contribution to a piece of music be recorded on the blockchain so that people can be adequately compensated. The Labz CEO Farrah Allen said that some $2.5 billion in music profits goes unclaimed because people collaborated on songs without creating any kind of a paper trail documenting their work. The Labz, she said, is like “DocuSign for music.”

Riteband, a Swedish startup created to help with pay equity for musicians, allows music lovers to buy “stock” in a song, sending the money directly to the artist. Then when that song’s “stock” goes up, you can sell your investment for a profit. Founder Linda Portnoff pointed out that since Sweden is the hub of much of today’s music it’s the perfect origin for such a startup.

Ampl is a news article sharing platform that aggregates over 250 premium publishers including The New York Times, VICE, TechCrunch and Psychology Today. Ampl uses messaging tech that lets consumers converse about the article.

A Big Step Toward Diversity

What was as remarkable as the companies themselves was the incredible diversity presented. It was only a few years ago that people were complaining SXSW looked like a white frat boy convention. But more than half of the Release It competitors were people of color, showing the conference has made a serious commitment to diversity.

The judging panel consisted of Todd Nuckols, Managing Director of Lighthouse Labs, Melissa Larson Youngblood, Co-Founder of Venn Ventures, and Jennifer Skjellum, Director of Programs at the CO.LAB. Todd, Melissa, and Jennifer were joined by emcees Jen Consalvo, Co-Founder and COO of Tech Cocktail and Andy Stoll, a Senior Program Officer at the Kauffman Foundation. 

Sharing a pint takes on a whole new meaning at South by Southwest this year.

At the HBO Game of Thrones event at SXSW, participants are asked to bleed for the throne – literally.

HBO has joined with the American Red Cross to combat a worldwide blood shortage by harnessing the power of Game of Thrones fans, HBO asks fans “Will you bleed for the throne?”

And Thursday the event kicked off, people lined up outside to do just that. Those who opted not to donate ended up in a different line with a longer wait time. Priority went to those who bled for the throne by donating a pint of blood. They also got a special edition Game of Thrones T-shirt and a sticker to unlock a unique Snapchat filter.

The Red Cross has a special intake area, fashioned to look like a fancy castle or mansion, with rollaway beds and nurses who draw blood and provide snacks and drinks afterward. The entire process generally takes less than an hour.

HBO and the American Red Cross have taken over Fair Market in East Austin for the sold-out event which runs through March 9th. SXSW offered spots on Feb. 19 for fans to register as blood donors or to visit the activation without donating blood. All the appointments were filled in under two hours. Standby lines are available for fans who were unable to make appointments online.

HBO made quite a splash at SXSW in 2018 with its Westworld activation in which it took guests to a Westworld town on the outskirts of Austin for a Wild Westworld experience.

The Bleed for the Thrones event is similar, but on a smaller scale.

Guests start their adventure with a headset and an audio tour and walk through a maze filled with pictures of HBO’s Game of Thrones characters. It talks about those who have bled for the Iron Throne. Actors dressed up to look like Guards stand at attention throughout the throne room.

The installation is a celebration of the hit show which is entering its eighth and final season on April 14^th.

After the tour, guests are treated to a Choir concert and are asked to kneel before the Iron Throne. They are also given a pin showing an arm wielding a sword in victory. Afterward, everyone enters a courtyard “camp” filled with Game of Thrones character actors like Jon Snow who encourages everyone to fight for the living. Others mill about and forge weapons or get into sword fights. Drinks and burgers are served as long as supplies last.

In addition to the SXSW event, HBO and the American Red Cross are running a nationwide blood drive from March 12 to April 11^th in 43 states and nine universities. Fans who present to donate blood or platelets at participating drives between Feb. 19^th and March 17^th will automatically be entered for a chance to win one of five trips to the season 8 world premiere of Game of Thrones.

It’s a heck of a way to kick of SXSW, but yes, I did bleed for the throne.