Re/wind: Larry Page Praises Robots, Nadella’s Long Game

Flickr/TedConference

In case you missed any of the headlines this week, not to worry! Here are some of the stories that dominated Re/code this week:

1. Google CEO Larry Page raised eyebrows earlier this week when he told an audience that he believes machines replacing humans in the workforce is a positive development.
2. For now, Amazon may be the king of all you buy, but Google plans on amping up the competition. Google is setting aside $500 million to beef up its Shopping Express program, which delivers products directly to consumers' homes.
3. Samsung announced it’s totally redoing its phone and tablet app store, which has long lagged behind its iOS and Android competitors. Perhaps it has something to do with its "sluggish" smartphone and tablet sales?
4. Satya Nadella, CEO of enterprise startup Microsoft, unveiled his lengthy plan for the future of the company. Here are the five key things you need to know about it.
5. Learning a new language is hard! For those of us who didn't get much out of high school Spanish or French, there's Duolingo — a free new app that boasts a whole variety of tools with which to learn a variety of languages.
6. For the cryptocurrency enthusiast on-the-go, online used car site Beepi now accepts bitcoin as a form of payment, making it the first peer-to-peer auto marketplace to do so.
7. In a move that did not surprise Re/code readers, Twitter named Katie Jacobs Stanton as its global media chief. Maybe she'll be able to find a way to get World Cup goal replays back on Twitter. We're crossing our fingers.
8. The FCC approved a $2 billion program to expand Wi-Fi access to schools across the country, frustrating advocates who said the plan was not sufficiently funded or broad enough to address the scope of the problem.
9. Hey, CEOs! Want to save money? Then fix your damn IT!
10. In an effort to win back its ability to, you know, be a functional business, video startup Aereo told a U.S. district court that it is actually a cable system. Guess what the TV broadcasters who defeated Aereo at the Supreme Court think about that argument?

Coming to Your iPhone This Fall: An Easier Way to Make Time-Lapse Videos

iTwe4kz

When Apple unveiled its new iOS 8 mobile operating system last month, only a fleeting mention was made of a new camera feature: A built-in, automated time-lapse photography mode.

Time-lapse photography itself isn’t new. It’s been used for well over a hundred years to create accelerated videos of slow-moving actions, like clouds moving, ice cream melting or flowers blooming. It isn’t even new to smartphone cameras. For instance, there are numerous apps for both the iPhone and Android phones that let you make time-lapse videos.

But Apple’s aim is to make what can be a tricky, mostly enthusiast feature much easier. And, by building it right into what is probably the world’s most popular smartphone camera, the technique is likely to be tried much more widely, by many more average photographers, who will no doubt be eager to share their creations with the world once the new operating system appears this coming autumn. You’ll likely see videos of sunsets and crops growing all over the Web, at least until the novelty wears off — for you, or for the photographers.

Here’s how Apple describes the new feature on its website (scroll way down to find it):

“A new mode comes to Camera: Time-lapse videos. Capture the experience of the sun setting, a city street bustling, or a flower blooming with the new Time-lapse mode in Camera. iOS 8 does all the work, snapping photos at dynamically selected intervals. The result is a video showing an accelerated sequence of the photos over time. Just set up your device to shoot what you want. Swipe to select Time-lapse mode, tap the Record button, and let Camera record as long as you choose.”

I haven’t tried the new feature, but I suspect that, no matter how easy Apple makes it, creating time-lapse videos will still be much harder than taking selfies or short videos of your baby. It requires time — taking many photos over days or weeks — and added equipment, like tripods.

Still, developers who have early access to iOS 8, which runs on existing iPhones as well as the new ones also due in the fall, are already fooling around with the feature and posting their work. Here are a couple of examples posted on YouTube.

The first comes from Italian Apple aficionado Domenico Panacea, who spent a week making it in Sicily for the website macitynet:

The second comes from another Apple devotee, who goes by the name of  iTwe4kz:

This Is Not an Unreleased Bill Murray Movie That Leaked on YouTube

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were a Bill Murray movie you’d never seen before, that had suddenly appeared, for free, on YouTube?

Alas, there isn’t.

Yet many, many websites — big sites, little sites, sites that like clicks —  are reporting that there is an unreleased Bill Murray movie on YouTube.

Because it would be awesome if it were true. And even if it’s not, you’re going to click, right?

Here is the less-exciting truth: “Nothing Lasts Forever” is a not-even-cult-status experimental movie, made by former “Saturday Night Live” writer Tom Schiller in 1984. Bill Murray is in it, but it’s a small role — he plays a bus conductor, and the movie is not about being on a bus — and the real star is Zach Galligan. You know — the guy from “Gremlins,” and not many other things.

There is a sort-of-interesting backstory to the production, but you are very unlikely to care, because it’s basically unwatchable.

Still, it’s at least news that this thing has “leaked” to YouTube, right?

Nope! This particular upload that everyone has decided to link to in the last few days has been on the world’s biggest video site since October 2011. Go on and watch for as long as you can:

So there you go. “”Unwatchable Movie From 30 Years Ago Stars Zach Galligan, and Bill Murray Appears in It, Briefly.”

Still! It is a Saturday morning, and there’s no reason to start the weekend on a down note. Luckily, when you start looking for “Bill Murray” on the Internet, the Internet gives you amazing things.

Here, for instance, is an excerpt of a toast Murray gave at a stranger’s bachelor party this year. You can see the entire thing, and read the backstory, on Deadspin.*

*Which isn’t allowing full copies of the clip to appear on YouTube, so here’s a couple clicks for you, Telegraph.

Manything

My thanks to Manything for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Manything is a free app that turns your iPad, iPod Touch, or old iPhone into a cloud-enabled video monitoring camera.

Manything offers continuous cloud recording and instant setup. You can watch live streams remotely and have motion-activated alerts, with advanced motion detection thresholds and zones. They’ve even added IFTTT integration, which allows you to trigger recording automatically when you leave home and a whole lot more.

Manything is a really clever way to repurpose an old iOS device (or even a new one, like the updated $199 iPod Touch that now has dual cameras). Watch the video on their website to learn more, or just go ahead and download the free app from the App Store to see for yourself.

 ★ 

Curated Food Delivery Startup Caviar In Talks To Be Acquired By Square For $100 Million

 Curated food delivery startup Caviar is in talks to be acquired by Square in a deal that could be worth at least $100 million, according to several sources. While we’ve heard the deal is slated to take place over the next couple of weeks, these things could always fall apart. Read More

Humans And Computers Will Come Together For Middle Work

 Jon Evans’ post “Welcome To Extremistan! Check Your Career At The Door” on TechCrunch warns of mass penury for this generation and the next as the dual horseman of the techno-apocalypse, robots and software, strip humans of their ability to make a living. Don’t believe this dystopian vision of the future for a second. Read More

Hardware Is The New Software

 Nest. GoPro. Beats. Jawbone. Oculus. All hardware companies and each of them accorded multi-billion dollar valuations either in private investment transactions or acquisitions by some of the largest technology companies on the planet. Read More

Gillmor Gang: Taming of the Stream

 The Gillmor Gang – John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor – examine the gathering storm that is the Uber social network. After years of positioning, acquisition, soaring value payouts, and a winner-take-all sensibility in the tech community, now something different. The data points: Digg Deeper, Soundcloud, Twitter user metrics, and more… Read More

This is Not an Unreleased Bill Murray Movie that Leaked on YouTube

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a Bill Murray movie you’d never seen before, that had suddenly appeared, for free, on YouTube?

Alas, there isn’t.

Yet many, many Web sites — big sites, little sites, sites that like clicks —  are reporting that there is an unreleased Bill Murray movie on YouTube.

Because it would be awesome if it were true. And even if it’s not, you’re going to click, right?

Here is the less-exciting truth: “Nothing Lasts Forever” is a not-even-cult-status experimental movie, made by former Saturday Night Live writer Tom Schiller in 1984. Bill Murray is in it, but it’s a small role — he plays a bus conductor, and the movie is not about being on a bus — and the real star is Zach Galligan. You know – the guy from “Gremlins”, and not many other things.

There is a sort-of-interesting backstory to the production, but you are very unlikely to care, because it’s basically unwatchable.

Still, it’s at least news that this thing has “leaked” to YouTube, right?

Nope! This particular upload that everyone has decided to link to in the last few days has been on the world’s biggest video site since October 2011. Go on and watch for as long as you can:

So there you go. “”Unwatchable Movie From 30 Years Ago Stars Zach Galligan, and Bill Murray Appears In It, Briefly”.

Still! It is a Saturday morning, and there’s no reason to start the weekend on a down note. Luckily, when you start looking for “Bill Murray” on the Internet, the Internet gives you amazing things.

Here, for instance, is an excerpt of a toast Murray gave at a stranger’s bachelor party this year. You can see the entire thing, and read the backstory, on Deadspin*.

*Which isn’t allowing full copies of the clip to appear on YouTube, so here’s a couple clicks for you, Telegraph.

Amazon Web Services Moves Beyond Developer Tools

 Amazon Web Services is known for many things, but all of those have to do with developer services like cloud computing instances, databases and storage. Lately, however, AWS is slowly getting more into productivity tools that are meant for end users. Amazon’s first attempt to get into this market was Amazon Cloud Drive. It launched back in 2011, but while there are no exact numbers about… Read More