The Chillest Thing At SXSW, And Everything Else You Missed Yesterday

The Chillest Thing At SXSW, And Everything Else You Missed Yesterday

Apple’s retail plans for the Apple Watch, a bigger M9 may be coming soon, and one chill guy at SXSW. This is all the news and rumours you’ve missed in the last 24 hours on BitStream.

This guy’s name is Michinobu Uda. He’s not particularly famous in tech circles. He doesn’t own some startup and didn’t launch some transformative app, but he’ll forever be remembered as the chillest dude at SXSW 2015. Why? Because he’s the inventor of the Udar, one of the strangest instruments I’ve ever seen. Here’s just a taste.

You can hear the faint din of people hustling back and forth to look at all the shit SXSW has on display, and this guy is just chilling (perhaps close to the buffet line?) and just going to town on his 21st century organ grinder. It’s also strangely impossible to not smile while hearing this overly happy tune. Uda actually trained as a classical guitarist and wanted to investigate western scales in a whole new way, so he created this fretless wonder. It also has MIDI output, which means you make this instrument sound like anything you wanted. Every Udar is handmade by Uda so there’s a only a few in existence, but all I know is that I kind of want one.

[h/t @lindsaydarkalley]

A former computer science professor thinks AI could lead to a real-life Idiocracy, hopefully without that awkward eugenics angle. [Wall Street Journal]

Apps and Devices

  • Slack is the workplace app saviour for Mac OS X, and now Windows has an official (non-beta) version. [Slack]
  • Starbucks delivery service? You knew it was only a matter of time. [Postmates]
  • Vine for iOS now sucks less! Clips will preload, and you can watch videos offline. Neat-o. [Vine]
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson’s late night TV show will premiere on 4/20. If it’s not an in-depth, science-y investigation of cannabis, I’m going to be so upset. Oh wait, it’s Star Trek… I accept. [Indie Wire]

Rumours!

  • Apple will give people 15 minute appointment blocks to try Apple Watch and “experts” to handle the $14,000 Edition who are most likely trained in a variety of martial arts in case people decide to get flighty. [9to5Mac]
  • HTC may be nearing a release of the HTC One M9+. You guessed it, it’s just a bigger version of their flagship (with some depowered specs with maybe a QHD screen), but it may not make its way to the West. [@upleaks]
  • I now require all robot footage to be accompanied by “Push It to the Limit” montage music.

What You Might Have Missed on Gizmodo

The Coolest Robotic Platforms At GTC 2015
Data Retention Bill Passes Aussie House Of Reps
Samsung 850 Evo SSD: Australian Review
Foxtel iQ3: Here’s The Release Date
A Deal Has Been Struck On The Aussie Metadata Bill
The Pirate Bay Is Successfully Dodging ISP-Level Site Blocking
The Southern Lights Are Going Off In Australia, And It Looks Amazing
Trying to Arouse My New Sextbot Buddy [NSFW]
The Neuroscience of Why Virtual Reality Still Sucks
The Biggest Online Drug Market Just vanished, Taking $US12 Million With It


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.