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'Silicon Valley' season three, episode six: Oh, the Bachmanity!

2016-05-30T18:57:21-04:00

Never has "I need more space" held so much emotional heft.

Each week, we watch "Silicon Valley" on HBO and then reflect on the ways the show mirrors — or doesn't — the real Silicon Valley. This week, our founding fellas make halting forays into the world of romance. To catch up on the recaps, you can see them all here.

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While the guys are out at a bar, putting the last of Richard Hanneman’s Tres Commas tequila into a giant virgin margarita, Richard makes contact with a woman. A woman who is not contractually obliged to speak to him. This sets off a competitive avalanche of attempted hookups in which Dinesh tries to make a love connection with a remote coder in Estonia, Jared turns out to have mucho mojo and Richard ruins everything by letting his coding standards overshadow his actual almost-relationship.

The issue: When coders are writing the letters in ASCII that will later become code, there are certain finicky details that don't affect the code in the end, but that different coders have definite opinions about. For example, in some instances you can insert carriage returns just to make it easier on the eyes; to some coders, this is just annoyingly stupid, while others like the aesthetic appearance of the ASCII.

In this episode, Richard makes it clear — overly clear, maybe — that he disapproves of some coders' preference for spaces where he would use tabs. In the workplace, this is a boss-preference thing and easy for coders to change. But when Richard's date, Winnie, reveals that she isn't on the same page, he can't see past it. It's like the coding equivalent of Jason Alexander's character in "Shallow Hal" — the guy who dumps a beautiful woman because she has one weird toe.

Coders of my acquaintance confirm that "spaces versus tabs" is, indeed, something people get excited about, but none of them had strong feelings about it. Yes, Richard’s "tabs" method saves a minimal amount of file size, but the alternate “spaces” method allows for more specific alignment. For a deep dive into how that works, read this fantastic PopSci article.

“Of course,” said one of my supercoder friends, “the correct answer is tabs and the [visual] editor. The use of spaces is just indicative of the dumbing down of programming; tabs will make America great again.” Another added, “I find writing ASCII so objectionable. We may as well use crayons on construction paper. Why do programmers still live in technology that wasn't even cutting edge in 1970?”

Did I say none of my coding friends had strong feelings about this? My mistake.

In Season 2, we saw this view of a Mexican restaurant. Is it the same one with the giant margaritas?

HBO

A few folks wondered about the restaurant the Pied Piper team is in. The Mexican-themed outing seems to be a leitmotif throughout the series; in fact, this looks like the same place where Richard and Gavin had a confrontation at the end of Runaway Devaluation (season two, episode two), in which a dramatic moment is interrupted by a mariachi band.

A quick search reveals that there was a place called Compadres (the name written on one of the sombreros on the wall), but it closed years ago. (Maybe it was beloved of Mike Judge during his brief tenure as an engineer.) Palo Alto Sol is a less-fancy Mexican restaurant that serves non-giant margaritas and is known to be a favorite of Mark Zuckerberg. And there is an adorable place called Nola, also in Palo Alto, which is not Mexican but that does have giant cocktails. (Recode/Silicon Valley meetup? Name the date!)

Suds, not barf.

HBO

This episode also featured a very specific tribute to the particular San Francisco Bay Area style of street theater protests — Gavin should be grateful he was only doused with suds, not barf. In response, Gavin reminisces about the good old days when men like him could have protesters beaten and/or killed, a direct reference to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Is Gavin ideological buds with Trump delegate Peter Thiel?

See you next week and on Twitter, folks.

Silicon Valley HBO: The Recode recaps

2016-05-30T18:33:43-04:00

The Recode view of the nerd sitcom.

Welcome back to the Recode recap of HBO’s “Silicon Valley”! After last week’s failed prediction, you’d think I’d slink back to my lair, but it turns out I don’t actually have a lair. So I’m back to unpack this week’s episode the Recode way.

Just the facts: Richard took interim control over Pied Piper’s day-to-day operations and put the company into austerity mode. Unfortunately, his lingering fury at being dethroned from his CEO role led him to unknowingly run his mouth to a tech blogger. To halt the story, he found a better one: Big Head revealed how Gavin Belson scrubs the internet of negative mentions of him.

During the company’s fire sale, Dinesh accidentally sold his hard drive; Gilfoyle posed as a Geek Squad worker to destroy it. Laurie admitted she never should have un-CEOed Richard and reinstalled him. Erlich manipulated Big Head into creating a vanity project for him. And Jared is just frickin’ weird.

So let's unpack this:

Didn’t Big Head sign a major NDA?

Erlich’s new business venture, Bachmanity, depends on the $20 million severance Big Head got from Hooli. But let’s look back at that severance, back in this season’s first episode:

The most important aspect is the nondisclosure / nondisparagement clause, in which you agree not to say anything negative in the press, in public or in private, about Hooli or Gavin Belson. You will not discuss anything you did at Hooli, at all, in perpetuity, throughout the universe.

The $20 million hinges on that. I would say that CodeRag (no, it’s not a real publication; that’s an HBO-made site) definitely qualifies as “the public,” even if some might argue it doesn’t quite live up to “the press.” So I think what we’re looking at in a few episodes is Big Head getting totally wrecked by his actions in support of his old friend, with Erlich being a pretty satisfying ancillary casualty.

Really, the greater mystery here is why he’s not calling his company Bachman Big-Head Overdrive.

Stop saying Clinkle

What is Clinkle? It was a once-promising startup that was cloaked in mystery and secrecy for months. It had a 22-year-old wunderkind as CEO. It got $30 million in funding and created a weird commercial for itself. In the end, it turned out to be a money-transfer app like Venmo or Square, and it pretty much imploded.

What is Pied Piper? It’s a promising startup with a 26-year-old wunderkind as CEO. It got $5 million in funding for tech that nobody has really seen in action. It has a weird logo. And as of this episode, it looked like it was going to implode.

It’s not an unfair comparison.

Pop culture synchronicity

First of all, totally adorable: In praise of Richard being renamed Pied Piper CEO, Jared recites the beginning of the second stanza of of “O Captain! My Captain!”, a Walt Whitman poem written to eulogize Abraham Lincoln. Kinda dark! Like Richard is maybe a zombie president rising from the dead! Still really sweet, though.

But kind of funny that it aired the same weekend as this SNL sketch, since any reference to that poem necessarily references the 1989 literary bro-drama “Dead Poets Society.” Keep watching:

It’s also funny that the word “gallivanting” was bandied with such nonchalance, considering what happened about an hour earlier on "Game of Thrones":

HBO / Recode

And, of course, big fun for both H.L. Mencken fans out there.

The hardest of drives

Disposal of hard drives is a touchy subject for techies. In another bout of synchronicity, Tom Limoncelli, author of six books on computer system administration and a former Googler, just posted a rant about used hard disks on Facebook. Contacted by email, he said, “Erasing disks before they are disposed is a real issue. An easy way to get PR is to buy some used hard drives on eBay and write a security paper about all the info found: Credit card numbers, personal information and naked pictures.”

He recommends DBAN software to erase disks rather than going the Gilfoyle route: “Drilling a disk through the spindle does not erase the magnetic material, and there are services that can recover such things. Gilfoyle should have used a process that would have shattered the individual platters, not just break the spindle. The gold standard is to first erase it, then crush it — Google uses a wood-chipper.”

Also useful for getting rid of Steve Buscemi.

See you guys next week, or earlier on Twitter!

Gawker's Nick Denton is coming to Code Conference this week

2016-05-30T14:06:32-04:00

We've asked Peter Thiel to join us, too.

Some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful leaders will be onstage at this week’s Code Conference. Also onstage: A man Silicon Valley leaders love to hate.

Gawker Media owner Nick Denton, who has been fighting what could be a crippling lawsuit funded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel, will join us on Thursday for an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher.

This is going to be a good one: The Denton vs. Thiel fight has been the talk of the tech and media world for the last week, and depending on how you want to look at it it’s either a slam-dunk case or a knotted, nuanced argument.

And while Denton and many of his tech critics have sparred for years, they don’t often gather in the same space.

The only thing that would make this better would be if Thiel joined Denton onstage on Thursday. We’ve asked him several times in the past few days, but haven’t gotten a response.

We've also asked some of Denton's most prominent critics from the tech world. They either could not or declined to come.

So Peter: If you want to join us, you’ve got a standing invitation. Just get down to Terranea by Thursday morning.

Time for Google to have consumer-facing customer service

2016-05-30T08:00:02-04:00

It's nearly impossible to contact Google for help. No direct email. No phone support. Not even chat. You're basically on your own.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

One of the themes coming out of the recent Google I/O conference was that Google plans to make a more aggressive push into the consumer hardware business. The company announced the Home product, an AI-oriented service to compete with Amazon Echo; a VR headset; and a new smartphone division that will build and ship its modular Ara phones. Former Motorola CEO Rick Osterloh will lead the new hardware division.

In a Recode post last week, Mark Bergen argued that one of the key unanswered questions coming out of I/O is how these exciting new products are going to be distributed. Getting products such as Nexus and Chromecast into consumers’ hands is something Google has "never done well," Bergen wrote, further suggesting that if Google wants to more directly compete with Apple, the company will also need to think about its retail strategy.

It's nearly impossible to contact Google for help. No direct email. No phone support. Not even chat. You're basically on your own.

I agree with Bergen’s points, and would like to take his argument a step further. If Google wants to play more seriously in the consumer realm, the company needs a better consumer-facing customer service infrastructure. If you are a consumer of Google products or services such as Gmail, Maps, or Office-like products such as Docs or Sheets, it is nearly impossible to contact Google for help. No direct email. No phone support. Not even chat. You are basically on your own (there are some exceptions, such as the Google Play Store and Nest). Basically, you are left to search help forums, bulletin boards, and answers to FAQs Google has posted on its site.

Now, I know this is sort of the way of the web. It’s not easy to contact a human being at Mint, Uber, LinkedIn or Facebook, either. However, if consumer hardware is a big part of Google’s future, and it wants to compete more directly with the likes of Apple and Amazon, the company needs to think seriously about how it will provide help and support to its customers.

The customer segment for Android devices, for example, has always tilted toward the younger, geekier, do-it-yourself crowd. By contrast, Apple’s year of free phone support, Genius Bar and Apple Care are significant market differentiators, which many consumers cite in justifying the "Apple Premium."

Amazon customers also cite customer service as one of the company’s hallmarks. All the major service providers, and most consumer tech hardware manufacturers, provide some level of phone support, plus other direct contact options such as email and chat. I’m not saying it’s always good, and many companies make you jump through all sorts of hoops before you can get direct support, but at least it’s there. For the companies who do a good job of it, it’s a market differentiator.

As a side note, if you are an enterprise customer, Google provides excellent product and tech support, via phone and other channels — even for small businesses, where the minimum ante is about $100 per year.

By contrast, Apple’s year of free phone support, Genius Bar and Apple Care are significant market differentiators, which many consumers cite in justifying the "Apple Premium."

Why is there a greater imperative for Google to consider direct consumer support, since the company has certainly done fine up till now without it? There are three reasons, in my view. First, Google is making a bigger push into the consumer hardware segment, so it needs to start thinking differently about the consumer experience, including distribution and support.

Second, Google has focused on making its myriad services work more harmoniously in an integrated fashion. It’s a big focus of Google Now, forthcoming AI and intelligent assistant related products, and some of its current and announced physical products. I suspect that many users "underutilize" the rich features and capabilities of Google products and services because there is so little in the way of initial hand-holding and ongoing support.

And third, if Google is going to be serious about the consumer business, it needs to broaden its base beyond the younger, more tech-savvy crowd, who are a little more accustomed to being "on their own" in the digital world. As an illustration, Android’s share in the U.S. among those over the age of 30 under-indexes its share among younger users and it’s not just about price.

The breadth of products and services Google offers and has in the pipeline is impressive. Though monetization will continue to be heavily dependent on search and advertising, Google is clearly delving deeper into the consumer realm.

But even though Google is a huge part of consumers’ daily lives, consumers don’t have much of a "relationship" with Google. Given some previous missteps in the consumer hardware business, the company needs to rethink distribution and customer support if it hopes to become an important consumer brand on the scale of an Apple or Amazon.

Intelligent/digital/AI assistants are great, but consumers occasionally need an analog assistant.

A leading wireless industry analyst and consultant, Mark Lowenstein is the managing director of Mobile Ecosystem. Most recently, Lowenstein was a member of the senior leadership team at Verizon Wireless, where as vice president of strategy he led the company’s efforts in product and business planning, market segmentation, national pricing and customer intelligence for both consumer and enterprise markets. Reach him @marklowenstein.

LeBron James's manager, Maverick Carter: Athletes become kings when they control their own message

2016-05-30T06:30:03-04:00

Teens in Houston don't care what 50-year-old newspaper columnists in New York think, Carter says.

When LeBron James announced in 2010 that he would leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat, he did it through a live TV special on ESPN called "The Decision." Media reactions were swift and often critical, his manager, Maverick Carter, said, but then something funny happened.

"The largest growth in LeBron’s brand at Nike was that year, 'The Decision,'" Carter said in an interview with Recode's Kurt Wagner on the latest episode of Recode Decode. Put another way: Whatever, haters! "The Decision" and the move helped James sell lots and lots of merch.

That was one of the best indicators to Carter that his approach to media coverage — control the message — was working.

After two NBA Playoff championships in Miami and a return to Cleveland, this time announced via a carefully planned letter in Sports Illustrated, James is a bigger star than ever. He and Carter co-founded Uninterrupted, a platform for first-person athlete stories hosted on Bleacher Report; he made a well-received crossover into film with a prominent role in Judd Apatow's "Trainwreck"; and whispers abound that he will succeed Michael Jordan in the Looney Tunes sports movie "Space Jam 2."

"Maybe we’re going to do it. There’s a lot of rumors. Nothing is set yet," Carter said of "Space Jam."

Today, Carter said he sees traditional media as "complementary" to his and James's work, and a good source of broad distribution, but he wants more and more athletes to be telling their own stories.

"The media has to cover a lot of stories and a lot of athletes," he said. "If Draymond Green wants to tell a deeper, more insightful story, we [Uninterrupted] are the place for that. But he’s still going to talk to the Golden State press every day."

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If you like what we’re doing, please write a review on iTunes — and if you don’t, just tweet-strafe Kara. Tune in next Monday for another episode of Recode Decode!

Recode Video: Intel's new 360 game review technology

The Facebook papers Part 4: What’s a publisher to do?

2016-05-30T06:00:02-04:00

The single most important thing media companies can do is to nurture the growth of as many different platforms as possible.

This is the fourth in a four-part series looking at what happens when what you do is now done by someone else.

"[A senate was created] in the reign of king Theopompus, who, when his queen upbraided him that he would leave the regal power to his children less than he had received it from his ancestors, said, in answer, "No, greater; for it will last longer." — Plutarch, "Lives of Illustrious Men"

Like the Spartan king, the media companies of 2016 must decide if they wish to optimize for size or longevity. Both will be difficult. The platforms have no interest in seeing the media companies disappear, but nor do they have any reason beyond the charitable to make margins anything other than razor-thin. Those scale-based media companies who believe that the answer is to disengage from the platforms' initiatives will find themselves in an untenable position. As their competitors see short-term advantage in traffic from embracing the platforms' encroachment, the competitive pressure to folllow suit will be hard to break.

Some media executives will wisely remind their peers that all empires fall, and that that future is true for Facebook just as it was for Sparta.

Some media executives will wisely remind their peers that all empires fall, and that that future is true for Facebook just as it was for Sparta. However, should any one platform fade, it’s highly unlikely that audiences will return to a landing-page focused mode of content discovery. We will see something new, rather than a return to the past, and that novelty may concern publishers yet more. The clear-eyed media executive must instead look to where they are spending their money and what they are placing at their core. If the answers are the same as three years ago, it may be worth another look.

Move investment from replication to differentiation

Over the last 10 years, digital media companies have often sought to compete through the technical infrastructure they can leverage rather than the content they create. VCs have claimed that their media investments were actually technology investments (they weren’t). Much of this infrastructure serves to inefficiently replicate platform capabilities (programmatic advertising exchanges that enable marketers to target specific demographic groups at scale, for example). Continuing to do this today is to allocate capital as if the platforms did not exist and had not won that battle. It is looking at a new competitive threat and then deciding to fight the last war instead of the present one.

Should any one platform fade, it’s highly unlikely that audiences will return to a landing-page focused mode of content discovery. We will see something new, rather than a return to the past.

Publishers investing heavily in a new site-focused CMS while also recognizing that the majority of their future traffic will happen on other platforms should investigate the inherent contradiction in those two positions. Likewise, those investing in personalization should recognize that it is largely focused on improving the performance of landing pages and recirculation widgets, neither of which see meaningful traffic in a mobile world.

This is not to say that investments in technology will not deliver competitive advantages in future, only that true advantage will be found by investing in what differentiates rather than what replicates. The media company that engages in cargo-culting — hoping that by adopting the forms of the platform without its substance that it can succeed — will find itself outcompeted, overextended and off target.

What matters now

Media companies ability to attract premiums in a platform world will depend upon three things:

The quantifiable differentiation of its brand
The percentage of its audience with which it has a direct relationship
The number of platforms from which it secures meaningful audience

The value of a media company will be predominantly tied up in its brand; the amount of incremental revenue or reach that content can derive from being associated with that company. This will not depend upon another layout redesign or logo refresh. When content is atomized and accessed far from the publisher’s site, the content itself must act as an expression of brand. Its style must be a fingerprint, an instantly recognizable promise of quality that can inform, inspire or engage.

The single most important thing media companies can do is to nurture the growth of as many different platforms as possible.

Those publishers still able to capture a direct relationship with their users unmediated by the platforms will greatly benefit from that connection, particularly if they are able to make a subscription business work. However, this will be difficult to achieve at scale, and niche ultralight publishers will leverage this more effectively than those that depend upon a mass audience.

Building a brand is a lonely and singular endeavor. Collectively, the single most important thing media companies can do is to nurture the growth of as many different platforms as possible. They should do this even if some of those platforms' economic terms are initially less attractive than Facebook’s. The greater the variety of platforms on which their content can be found, the greater the likelihood that they will be able to extract the premiums they desire. If there is only one dominant platform, then media companies will find themselves in a situation akin to the chicken farmer and Tyson foods, where there is one buyer and one price.

This will be difficult. It will require less internecine conflict for scraps of transient advantage, and more working together to invest in their own collective long-term sustainability. Media companies still have a level of power and influence that they can bring to bear to shape how a platform world might look in the future, and what’s more, the things that they do are important.

It is important that media is able to invest in deep and painstaking reporting. It is important that the public can access the very best journalism from a range of different independent companies. It is important that media can act without fear or dependence upon any one entity.

Media at its best is what uncovers the corrupt politician, moves national attitudes along the arc towards tolerance, and inspires the cynical teen. While its infrastructure and organisation may morph beyond recognition, its essential output must be preserved.

Read part one of this series here, part two here and part three here.

Tony Haile is the founding CEO of Chartbeat and an adjunct professor of media and technology at Columbia and Stanford Universities. Reach him @arctictony.

Capital Gains: Toyota teams up with Uber, Snapchat adds nearly $2B to its Series F and a new unicorn emerges

2016-05-29T13:01:08-04:00

Volkswagen also jumps into the ride-hailing game.

Uber found an automaker to help it develop self-driving cars, and Wi-Fi device maker Eero struck a deal with Best Buy and raised a bunch of new cash. Here are the rest of the funding headlines from Silicon Valley this past week:

Toyota said that it is making a strategic investment in Uber, but it's not saying how much it's putting into the ride-hailing behemoth. The deal has a lot to do with a partnership for self-driving car technology.
Snapchat added $1.8 billion to its Series F funding round, and is telling investors it expects to make between $500 million and $1 billion in revenue in 2017. It's aiming for between $250 million and $350 million in revenue this year.
Volkswagen Group is investing $300 million in the ride-hailing service Gett, becoming the latest major automaker to get in bed with a ride-hailing company (like GM and Lyft, for example).
Menlo Ventures, alongside Shasta Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, First Round Capital and Playground Global, led a $50 million investment in the Wi-Fi device company Eero. The company also announced that it had struck a deal to make its home networking equipment available in Best Buy stores.
Security startup vArmour, which primarily works on protecting data centers, raised $41 million in Series D funding from Redline Capital, Australian telco Telstra, Highland Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, Citi Ventures and others (Fortune).
Transferwise, a British money transfer service, raised $26 million at a $1.1 billion valuation. The funding came from Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Sir Richard Branson and others (TechCrunch).
Password management startup Dashlane picked up $22.5 million in a Series C round, led by TransUnion, with participation from Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners (TechCrunch).
Berlin startup Contentful, which is working on a content management system optimized for devices that aren't PCs, raised $13 million in a round led by Benchmark Capital, with participation from Trinity Ventures, Balderton Capital and Point Nine Capital (VentureBeat).
Molekule, a startup that aims to produce "the world’s first molecular air purifier," raised $3.25 million in funding from SoftTech VC, Crosslink Capital, and CSC Upshot, plus grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (VentureBeat).

A video game creator got death threats when he delayed the release of a high-profile game

2016-05-29T09:45:33-04:00

No Man's Sky is delayed by about a month. You can survive.

No Man's Sky, a highly anticipated adventure video game, was supposed to be released in late June. That's no longer happening.

So what did some "fans" of the game do when they found out this week that the release was being delayed until August so the creators could polish up some imperfect parts? Threatened the game's creator, Sean Murray, of course.

Thanks to everyone for being so supportive. Apologies to anyone who feels hurt by this. We'll try make it up to you with a good game
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) May 28, 2016

I have received loads of death threats this week, but don't worry, Hello Games now looks like the house from Home Alone #pillowfort
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) May 28, 2016

Murray received many responses from enthusiasts who said, essentially, that they'd rather the game be late and great than on time and not.

But there were also glimpses into the mind of folks who aren't so rational.

@NoMansSky geez... do people really need to get that worked up? #entitlement
— Jamie Hamel-Smith (@jamie3d) May 28, 2016

@jamie3d @NoMansSky Well destroying some1s vacation you might not be that happy and more angry if you cant move it...
— PrototypeTheGameHell (@Prototyp7159off) May 28, 2016

What a world.

Snapchat's startup professor says we're overlooking one of its big advantages

2016-05-28T22:35:22-04:00

Unlike tweets, Snapchat Stories don't get lost in the social stream.

As far as venture capitalists go, Mark Suster publishes more of his views online than most. He blogs. He tweets. And, as of late, he snaps. A lot.

So when he says he's learned some new things about distributing content online in 2016, it's worth a read. In a new blog post, Suster points out the big challenge of reaching all of your followers on Twitter with the same article or video or message, given the way the timeline is organized.

Because Twitter was a reverse chronology network, once a Tweet had passed by your stream you were unlikely to see it. The “half life” was very short. As somebody who invested his time heavily in writing and wanting to share his thoughts through a blog I learned that I had to Tweet a post 3 times to get it read: 5am, 8am and 10pm.

Yes, Twitter has started showing some older, popular tweets in your stream that you may have missed. But the issue Suster notes still largely holds true.

The structure of Snapchat Stories, on the other hand, means you should be able to reach more of your followers with the photos or videos you are publishing.

[T]here is one big innovation that the market hasn’t talked about. Snapchat stories takes everything that I do in a 24 hour period and builds it into one cohesive story.

Think about that. On Twitter if I post at 7:35am and again at 8:15am, there will probably be 150 Tweets in your stream between those, meaning there is no cohesion in my successive Tweets and meaning that if you log in at 8:30am your chances of seeing my 7:35am Tweet is slim-to-none. That’s not necessarily good or bad — but it’s different.

On Snapchat when you click on my “story” you see every post of mine sequentially for my entire past 24 hours. This is a big deal. If you don’t want to “complete” my story you simply swipe left and you’re on to the next story.

Snapchat Stories aren't really the place to share links to written stories. And building a following on Snapchat can be harder than on some other platforms.

But Suster has a point. If you're in the business of distributing photos and videos — and aren't a big media company that can get your own Snapchat "channel" — the 24-hour life of Snapchat Stories makes it an attractive place to set up shop.

How Steph Curry's three-pointers get the 360-degree replay treatment from Intel

2016-05-28T14:00:02-04:00

A new perspective on key plays.

As the Warriors' Stephen Curry finally gets hot midway through the second quarter of the must-win Game 5 Thursday, a TNT producer comes over a loudspeaker inside Intel's cramped trailer just outside Oracle Arena.

"Can you guys do that last one?"

The two-man team cranking out 3-D replays gets to work, scrapping the highlight they were working on in favor of Curry's fadeaway. The technology, acquired by Intel earlier this year, creates a new kind of replay, one that combines the video with a single still frame that can now be viewed in three dimensions from any angle.

After a "pilot" chooses just the right 10-second video snippet and still image, the clip gets sent for processing. Creating the clip takes roughly 30 servers, pulling images from 28 super-high-definition 5K cameras spaced throughout the upper ring of the arena. A second person oversees this task.

Just over three minutes later, the rendering is done and the video clip is ready for air.

Sometimes it can take several minutes longer if there is post-production work to do, but in this case everything goes smoothly and the clip goes straight to the TNT broadcast team in a nearby trailer.

If something goes a bit awry, a player can initially show up missing some details that have to be manually "painted" back in from the original video. Another person or two is on standby for that duty.

As the game continues, a terabyte of data per second continues flowing from inside the stadium to a nondescript brown trailer in the parking lot. The "pilot" has to decide within five seconds whether a play is a clip worth grabbing or whether to wait for the next one.

Inside a cramped trailer outside Oracle Arena, the "pilot" in the control booth decides which plays are suitable for a 360-degree replay.

Ina Fried

At halftime, announcer Marv Albert shows the national TV audience a pair of the Intel-created replays, including the Curry shot that the tech team hurried to produce in the second quarter. The Intel workers cheer as their work makes it onto the air.

For Turner Sports, ESPN and other broadcasters, the technology offers an opportunity to show things from a new perspective.

"It allows you to go where we don’t have cameras," Turner Sports VP Tom Sahara told Recode. Sahara said the technology has been a hit with both fans and the on-air announcers.

"We can look at things like passing lanes. We can look at how a defense or offense is set up."

Unlike other panoramic technologies, which let you view the game from any angle, Intel's technology offers the ability to go anywhere inside the action as well. Plus, there are none of the stitching effects that happen using most other approaches.

During the Warriors-Thunder series, Intel cranks out all its replays from this rather dull looking trailer outside Oracle Arena.

Ina Fried

Intel is rooting for the Warriors, and not just because they are the home team. Only five arenas are equipped with Intel's cameras. Fortunately for Intel, they include those of three of the final four teams -- all of them except Oklahoma City, the Warriors' opponent.

The chipmaker has been showing the technology in commercials, but the best advertisement is the replays themselves. If the Warriors can manage the comeback, then Intel will have its technology in place throughout the finals.

The technology was developed by Replay Technology, an Israeli startup. Intel had been working with Replay for a while before deciding to just buy it earlier this year.

In addition to the five basketball arenas, Intel also has its cameras inside baseball's Dodger Stadium and in several football stadiums, including the 49ers Levi's Stadium, home to last season's Super Bowl. CBS used the Intel technology there.

Over time, Intel wants to put that technology in the hands of more than just sports broadcasters. The company sees the day not far off when anyone at home would have the same ability as that TNT crew to order up a replay of a key play and show it from any angle.

It could also be used in a range of other events of widespread interest. Imagine the cameras taking people to Times Square, museums or other popular attractions, says Jeff Hopper, general manager of Intel Immersive Services, as the business unit is now known.

For Sahara's part, he'd just like to see the highlights come a little bit faster than the 10 minutes or so that it takes today.

"With Intel’s help in the processing, we expect to see the time get reduced," Sahara said.

That's Intel's plan, too. It wants to see the tech become an instant replay option and figures its server know-how should make that a reality in the not-too-distant future.

"Today, that is a heavy lift" Hopper said. "Tomorrow we will bring the full breadth of Intel technology to bear to make it doable."