A Stanford engineer built the fake compression algorithm in HBO's 'Silicon Valley'

By Dante d’Orazio / The Verge

The creators of HBO’s Silicon Valley could have glossed over the breakthrough technology behind fictional start-up Pied Piper, but instead they reached out to a Stanford professor for some help crafting a compression algorithm that seemed perfectly plausible on the surface. Ultimately, Ph.D student Vinith Misra was brought in to work on the nitty-gritty details of the algorithm. Beyond the original algorithm in the show, Misra also had to come up with the “breakthrough” discovery for the punchline of season finale. IEEE Spectrum has the full story, and be sure to check out Misra’s complete — and hilarious — 12-page analysis called “Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency: A Model for Male Audience Stimulation.”