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I love the running joke that the main characters work on fake technobabble, but the background companies (particularly the TechCrunch episode) are babbling abou

I love the running joke that the main characters work on fake technobabble, but the background companies (particularly the TechCrunch episode) are babbling about stuff that sounds fake but is real tech. “Making the world a better place through Paxos distributed consensus!”

saagarjha 8y ago
I mean, it would be kind of odd if the show's writers came up with something novel and instead of rushing to patent it decided to make a TV show out of it. Meanwhile, it's OK for the other companies to work on things that already exist–it adds to their run-of-the-mill-ness.
- gkfasdfasdf 8y ago
  The "Weissman score" is an actual metric for compression algorithms that was invented for the show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weissman_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weissman_score
- elliekelly 8y ago
  That hasn't stopped people from trying to make PiedPiper a viable startup though: https://www.wsj.com/articles/actual-silicon-valley-startup-gets-inspiration-from-hbos-silicon-valley-startup-1542391937 https://www.wsj.com/articles/actual-silicon-valley-startup-g...
  - geggam 8y ago
    My experience in Silicon Valley has me uncomfortably laughing at the show. This startup is laughing at themselves and the valley. It's so absurd that a VC actually funded this it makes me wonder if they aren't laughing too.
awakeasleep 8y ago
A compression algorithm that works well enough to make a P2P Internet practical seems like a ground-breaking technology that is close-to-believable. I challenge any of us to come up with something better or an alternative!
- hk__2 8y ago
  > A compression algorithm that works well enough to make a P2P Internet practical seems like a ground-breaking technology that is close-to-believable. That’s not the amount of transfered data that makes a P2P Internet practical or not, but rather its reliability, something a compression algorithm can’t do anything about.
  - btym 8y ago
    Such a compression algorithm could make it much cheaper for the community to volunteer capacity to the network (short-range relays? data storage nodes? crowdfunded cell towers?), which could make it much more feasible to build a reliable P2P network.
    - hk__2 8y ago
      If this were true, there would be much more P2P networks today than fifteen years ago, but that’s not the case. According to [1], in 2004 BitTorrent accounted "from 20 to 35% of all traffic on the Internet". At that time the bandwidth cost was at least two orders of magnitude higher than today. The price of hard drive has since been divided by 40 [2] and the total Internet traffic has been multiplied by 40 [3]. [1]: http://history-computer.com/Internet/Conquering/BitTorrent.html http://history-computer.com/Internet/Conquering/BitTorrent.h... [2]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3182207/data-storage/cw50-data-storage-goes-from-1m-to-2-cents-per-gigabyte.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3182207/data-storage/c... [3]: https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/the-history-and-future-of-internet-traffic https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/the-history-and-future-of-interne...
      - btym 8y ago
        My argument was only that bringing the cost down would make it easier to build a more reliable P2P network. I doubt that reliability/cost are the main reasons P2P networks aren't more popular, rather that the average person doesn't really care or even know about their existence.
- asgionio1235 8y ago
the_clarence 8y ago
Then you would love that netflix season of arrested developement.
- Kiro 8y ago
  Which one?
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    All of them
  - the_clarence 8y ago
    The first on Netflix released. It has a similar plot

saagarjha 8y ago

I mean, it would be kind of odd if the show's writers came up with something novel and instead of rushing to patent it decided to make a TV show out of it. Meanwhile, it's OK for the other companies to work on things that already exist–it adds to their run-of-the-mill-ness.

gkfasdfasdf 8y ago
The "Weissman score" is an actual metric for compression algorithms that was invented for the show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weissman_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weissman_score
elliekelly 8y ago
That hasn't stopped people from trying to make PiedPiper a viable startup though: https://www.wsj.com/articles/actual-silicon-valley-startup-gets-inspiration-from-hbos-silicon-valley-startup-1542391937 https://www.wsj.com/articles/actual-silicon-valley-startup-g...
- geggam 8y ago
  My experience in Silicon Valley has me uncomfortably laughing at the show. This startup is laughing at themselves and the valley. It's so absurd that a VC actually funded this it makes me wonder if they aren't laughing too.

awakeasleep 8y ago

A compression algorithm that works well enough to make a P2P Internet practical seems like a ground-breaking technology that is close-to-believable. I challenge any of us to come up with something better or an alternative!

hk__2 8y ago
> A compression algorithm that works well enough to make a P2P Internet practical seems like a ground-breaking technology that is close-to-believable. That’s not the amount of transfered data that makes a P2P Internet practical or not, but rather its reliability, something a compression algorithm can’t do anything about.
- btym 8y ago
  Such a compression algorithm could make it much cheaper for the community to volunteer capacity to the network (short-range relays? data storage nodes? crowdfunded cell towers?), which could make it much more feasible to build a reliable P2P network.
  - hk__2 8y ago
    If this were true, there would be much more P2P networks today than fifteen years ago, but that’s not the case. According to [1], in 2004 BitTorrent accounted "from 20 to 35% of all traffic on the Internet". At that time the bandwidth cost was at least two orders of magnitude higher than today. The price of hard drive has since been divided by 40 [2] and the total Internet traffic has been multiplied by 40 [3]. [1]: http://history-computer.com/Internet/Conquering/BitTorrent.html http://history-computer.com/Internet/Conquering/BitTorrent.h... [2]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3182207/data-storage/cw50-data-storage-goes-from-1m-to-2-cents-per-gigabyte.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3182207/data-storage/c... [3]: https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/the-history-and-future-of-internet-traffic https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/the-history-and-future-of-interne...
    - btym 8y ago
      My argument was only that bringing the cost down would make it easier to build a more reliable P2P network. I doubt that reliability/cost are the main reasons P2P networks aren't more popular, rather that the average person doesn't really care or even know about their existence.
asgionio1235 8y ago

the_clarence 8y ago

Then you would love that netflix season of arrested developement.

Kiro 8y ago
Which one?
- wetpaws 8y ago
  All of them
- the_clarence 8y ago
  The first on Netflix released. It has a similar plot