Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

McManus: Silicon Valley flashed real, compilable C code Easter eggs on screen

Ed McManus · The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO: Ed McManus · Y Combinator · May 17, 2017 · at 21:44

Ed McManus, technical advisor for HBO's Silicon Valley, discusses creating functional code snippets for on-screen scenes.

0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think in the second episode we hid an Easter egg in some C code. That we like had just sort of like flash on screen for like a second. Pausing it, copying it over and actually compiling it. And it was kind of cool. I wrote like a really simple compression algorithm.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Ed McManus

Assertion Not checkable as stated
McManus: Silicon Valley's fictional Middle Out algorithm is technically plausible
“The surprising thing with Middle Out is that, like, there is actually a technical background for it, and like, it is actually the result of a lot of sort of machine learning developments applied to compression. So the sort of, like, the theory behind the tech,…”
Ed McManus May 17, 2017 ▶ 11:45 The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO: Ed McManus · Y Combinator
Opinion
McManus: Mr. Robot is the gold standard for television technical accuracy
“One is Mr. Robot. And even when I was on Silicon Valley, I kind of said like, this is the gold standard for both playback and technical accuracy.”
Ed McManus May 17, 2017 ▶ 28:36 The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO: Ed McManus · Y Combinator
Insight
McManus: Shorter TV season orders enable higher technical accuracy
“Season orders are going down, right? So, like, now instead of, like, producing 20 episodes a season, they're only doing 10. Which just means that the quality of every episode is so high that they can, you know, afford to Take the time to reach out to the consu…”
Ed McManus May 17, 2017 ▶ 29:57 The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO: Ed McManus · Y Combinator
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
McManus: Silicon Valley's beta storyline was based on his startup Yard Sale
“They ended up pulling directly from our experience with Yard Sale launching a beta, and sort of, like, not being totally sure at first, like, whether this thing is working or not.”
Ed McManus May 17, 2017 ▶ 15:45 The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO: Ed McManus · Y Combinator
Disclosure
McManus: Silicon Valley Only Parodied Figures Already in Major Headlines
“I think that, that like we, the show would not go after anyone unless it were sort of like already kind of like a big story. A lot of what the writers end up using is, is, You know, stuff that gets pulled from the headlines.”
Ed McManus May 17, 2017 ▶ 17:42 The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO: Ed McManus · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
McManus: GitHub account made for Silicon Valley character Winnie accidentally went viral
“I actually, I created a GitHub profile for playback purposes, right? So just, like, we wanted an authentic looking GitHub profile. The best way to do that is just to make a GitHub profile for that person. Yeah. So I made one for Winnie and we had to populate i…”
Ed McManus May 17, 2017 ▶ 22:44 The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO: Ed McManus · Y Combinator
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.