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How Mike Judge and Co. Are Turning "Silicon Valley" Into the Next "Spinal Tap"
- knodi 12y agoI watched the first episode of it and I was not impressed. It wasn't really funny and it wasn't really exciting to watch.
- romanovcode 12y agoSeems like people forgetting that downvote button is not "I DISAGREE" button.
- pessimizer 12y agoSo far, not so good. 60% of the funny is coming from the fact that Kumail Nanjiani is a great standup. It's Mike Judge, so I'm going to watch it all anyway, but if it were anyone else, it'd have 2 more episodes to get a lot better.
- afatc 12y agoYou didn't watch the same episode I did. TJ Miller is hilarious
- nhebb 12y agoMost of the bits made me grin, but Kumail was the only one who made me laugh. He's great on Portlandia too.
- toby 12y agoI'm glad I'm not the only one. I was really excited about this show (big fan of Mike Judge in general) but it feels like what someone would think SV was like if they based their entire impression on Techcrunch articles and 80s nerd / guru tropes.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago>> "it feels like what someone would think SV was like if they based their entire impression on Techcrunch articles and 80s nerd / guru tropes." It's not a documentary. The aim is to make people laugh while not straying too far from reality that it's completely unbelievable. I think they achieved that. Personally I didn't think I'd enjoy it at all but I found it kind of funny and will probably return for ep 2.
- toby 12y agoFair enough, I guess I was hoping for the satire to be a bit more original. It was just the first episode though so I have some faith that there will be some more subtle humor as well later on.
- a_e_k 12y agoAmusingly, Kumail's college degree was in C.S. There was a time back in the day when he was entertaining the rest of us in the lab while typing Scheme or Java into XEmacs on the HP-UX machines. He has some honest nerd credit.
- poolunion 12y agoIf you like Kumail I'm pretty sure you will end up liking this show. I thought TJ Miller and Kumail were the funniest parts of the first episode. TJ's Hexadecimal joke got a big laugh from me. Also Andy Daly as the doctor was pretty great.
- overload119 12y agoI was surprised that HBO allows you to watch the episode on YouTube. For those that haven't seen it, I think it's really good satire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvkmsI54ss4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvkmsI54ss4
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- CGudapati 12y agoRegion restricted. Yet they wonder why people pirate content.
- dailyrorschach 12y agoThey don’t, HBO is acutely aware of the motivations of pirated content, and even more aware of the challenges they’d face being a stand-alone provider. Not trying to single your comment out but I see this sentiment all the time with HBO. They’ve obviously done the math and concluded that at this point they make the most money by subscription fees to cable providers, DVD and Online sales, then they would - if they started offering every show for sale at the same time as air-date, likely diminishing their cable subscription fees.
- diminoten 12y agoIt's huge risk mitigation. If they're a stand-alone provider, and one of their shows doesn't draw in the viewership it needs to, they immediately feel that. But since they've got all this "free" money coming in through deals with various providers, there isn't an as immediate effect.
- nivla 12y agoI think its only the first episode to attract viewers. I was surprised when I noticed they were airing this season's first episode of Game of Thrones on Xbox for free with no registration/app download requirements. Glad to see content publishers "getting" the marketing angle.
- Udo 12y agoIt's interesting how software startup culture seems to become mainstream, we've got two new shows centered on that topic now. So far I enjoyed watching "Betas" a bit more than the "Silicon Valley" pilot, but I'm looking forward to seeing more of SV.
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 12y agoI second this, and I'm a huge Mike Judge fan, but "Betas" feels so much more genuine then "Silicon Valley". Both are good, but I'm completely sold on "Betas".
- andreasklinger 12y agoso far i like the show. also i have the weird feeling that i know at least 3 of the fictional characters in person.
- atonse 12y agoI was chuckling a lot and telling my wife "I feel like I'm watching parts of Hacker News and Techcrunch come to life" It's satire but doesn't seem too exaggerated (unfortunately?). My favorite was the marketing bicycle meeting. It seems like it would be such a silicon valley type thing.
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- sharkweek 12y agoI love the concept and I thought a lot of the jokes were pretty funny but... I'm not sure how they'll keep it funny over more than a few seasons, seems kind of like a one trick pony (and maybe that's just fine). I trust Mike Judge, so I'll likely keep watching, but what made King of the Hill so magical was how he was able to show our changing world through the eyes of a simple propane and propane accessories salesman. Plenty of content there; likely not as much with SV to survive maybe a two season run.
- buttsex 12y agoStartups don't last long so it'd be pretty fitting for a show about them to only last a season or two.
- alttab 12y ago3-4 seasons ending with an IPO where they dump the shares on an unknowing public and make it rich!
- psbp 12y agoI think almost the opposite relationship can be explored. What is the normal world's relationship to a bunch of people trying so hard to "Think Different"?
- sharkweek 12y agoThat's a really good thought -- If anyone can pull this off, it's likely Judge. I've never seen a pilot that wasn't at least a slight bit awkward too, so as I said above, I'll definitely give Judge the benefit of the doubt for a while at least.
- cjf4 12y agoIt's all about characters. If they're able to create an audience connection with characters, the show will be long lasting. Entourage (this show's closest comparison) had some pretty stupid episodes (the last season in particular was awful), but I stuck through it all because I liked Ari and Drama.
- serg_chernata 12y agoIt's definitely the best attempt yet. Remember that other show called something like "The Valley"? =/
- dodders 12y agoThe idea of lossless compression in a smaller file size than anything else on the market spoiled the entire show for me. Call me picky, but...
- taternuts 12y agoI gotta admit, as soon as they said "and it's lossless!" I was a little disappointed
- stefantalpalaru 12y agoDon't compare it to reality, compare it to The Big Bang Theory.
- gkop 12y agoOn the contrary, I appreciated this detail. It's difficult to come up with a plausible-sounding start up idea that doesn't sound like a joke. The lossless compression idea sounds plausible to the mainstream audience. For the hacker audience, it plays on a different level - it's a cue for us to get.
- michaelochurch 12y agoLossless compression of non-random data is very possible, though. Video and audio files are far from random, and I don't believe that lossless compression is "a solved problem" (even by the business standard) for those. (However, it is a bit far-fetched that someone would invent a groundbreaking new algorithm in the space for a silly website.) General lossless compression may not exist, but we're talking about highly patterned (low entropy) subspace of all possible files/bit-strings. Lossless compression requires assumptions about the data, of course, because making some patterns shorter requires making others come out longer. Random data will, in general, get larger under a lossless compression algorithm.
- foobarian 12y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity
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- marcbarbosa 12y agoThey should add a Signup for Private Beta on the website http://www.piedpiper.com/ http://www.piedpiper.com/ :)
- area51org 12y agoWhen you have billionaires in Silicon Valley comparing the 1 percent to Jews during the Holocaust, and all that shit… So I haven't seen it yet, and I do plan to watch the first episode. But quotes like this — from one of the producers — make me not want to bother. Yes, this quote is justified, because SV is full of billionaires like Tom Perkins, and not struggling, creative people just trying to get by. The reason I'm hesitant about this show is that it seems to be mocking something that isn't worthy of mockery: people genuinely trying to make the world a better place. You can laugh all you want at the What's App buyout, but assuming that the ridiculous events that make the news are the reality of life in the Bay Area tech industry is ignorant, isn't it? Maybe the show isn't as caustic as I'm assuming it is. Maybe I'll love it. I really liked the Amazon series Betas. But the premise of this show — which seems to amount to "SV is full of assholes" — doesn't sound promising.
- cmelbye 12y agoI'd recommend watching it before reviewing its premise. I didn't take away "SV is full of assholes" after watching the first episode.
- isbadawi 12y agoIt's funny that you use "make the world a better place" -- that's one of the specific phrases (and attitudes) the show makes fun of. "We're making the world a better place. By constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility." "Making the world a better place. Through minimal message-oriented transport layers."
- area51org 12y agoYes, I'm aware of the show's mockery of good intentions. Few (or no) actual startups actually use language so wildly specific; when they say they want to make the world a better place, they generally cite the intent of the startup rather than specifics of the technology — which makes this attempt at satire fall flat on its face.
- kungfooguru 12y ago1) They aren't making the world a better place. 2) SV is full of assholes. 3) The show is hilarious.
- drakaal 12y agoSarah Austin, (from the bravo Silicon Valley reality series) is my CPO. She is very aware that the way "TV" wants to portray Silicon Valley and the way it really is are very different. Founders don't typically drive McLaren's and live in a multi-room suite at the Four Seasons. It is much more typical to do what she does now, crash at AirBnB as she bounces between cities for meetings, and working 10 hours at the office and working another 4 at the house. http://plexinlp.com http://plexinlp.com is a passion, and we'd be building it even if we weren't out to get rich. Sure we hope it is the next billion dollar wolfram/siri/google killer. We aren't planning to be like the reality series and get canceled in episode 4. We are in it for the long haul. Which is something that is happening less and less in SV. People routinely tell me they are doing 2, 3, and even 4 startups at the same time. SV needs to be able to laugh at itself. But it also needs to understand that it isn't in a bubble entirely right now. The money is bigger, but not by the orders of magnitude that the pervasiveness of the Internet has increased. The people getting rich are creating more divide than there ever was, but also the expectations on those who achieve that level have gone up. SV is in flux as no other place on the planet has as much potential to make you a millionaire or a pauper in a 2 year time.
- arbutus 12y agoI like it so far. A lot of it was pretty funny, and then the hexadecimal joke killed me. For anyone else who's enjoying it, you should also check out the TV adaptation of JPod. So far the humour feels pretty similar.
- nswanberg 12y agoThere was a tv version of JPod? Astonishingly it looks like there was also a movie version of Microserfs that came out in 2011, but I've never heard of it. So much of what made those two books funny were the email exchanges intermixed with the narrative--it'd be a shame to lose that in a movie adaptation.
- nsfyn55 12y agoI didn't like it. Like most TV shows about professions it felt like a big bundle of crude stereotypes. Maybe its because I am an east coaster, but I couldn't relate to any of the characters or scenarios.