Silicon Valley
- Thread starter Qhue
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Show jumped the shark in Season 3 when they decided that instead of spending 5 dollars redesigning the UI of their multibillion dollar compression platform they went with a cop out of "it's too good for people to understand how good it is" and used the MS Office assistant paperclip look alike "Pipey" to try and explain how to use the absolute shit UI. That was the precise moment when you realized they are completely out of ideas and were just going to continue recycling the same story until the show gets cancelled. They are never moving out of Urlichs (Guess it's now Jin Yangs) house, they were never going to succeed, the show was never going to change. That meets everyone's definition of jumping the shark.
Now the show has been going down hill since the dick joke of Season 1. there's been some moments in a few episodes that are kinda clever or funny but every season has been worse than the one before it. That also matches everyone's statements about what "going down hill" means.
Kind of like House of Cards.
Now the show has been going down hill since the dick joke of Season 1. there's been some moments in a few episodes that are kinda clever or funny but every season has been worse than the one before it. That also matches everyone's statements about what "going down hill" means.
Kind of like House of Cards.
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Was cool as fuck now it sucks shit. TJ Miller does seem like a cunt though, even I would ride out the cash cow to paycheck land as long as they allow this bag of shit to keep going. I think this show suffers from what many shows suffer from. Had a strong first season and story then they didn't know where to go from now they are just making up shit and it's dumb.
Do you work in software development at all? In a startup?
That wasn't jumping the shark at all, I see that every single day. That was the joke and it was 100% accurate.
Yeah you should see some of the UIs we make until the dedicated UX team gets ahold of them (or until we start actually following their spec.) They're god awful. It was also a jab at engineers who want to expose every single knob and dial to the end user simply because as the engineer you think you'd see a use case for it in the future. There is a reason companies like Apple are so successful and it is because they create intuitive UIs. It isn't a "spend 5 dollars" problem.
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you guys also make make compression companies at 12x the theoretical maximum?
Oh you just make something 5% better than what already exists. Sure in that scenario fuck it, who cares start over again.
But it wasn't even a joke in the show. It was a hard reboot. Not one person who saw it including all the investors, all his competitors, Gavin Belson, nobody said "dude just make a new UI, seriously it would take 10 minutes to make this thing work"
In this fantasy world it really was just too good for people to understand it was good. They based an entire episode off of trying to teach people how to use it. Their only choice was to start over again back in the garage of Ulrich's house.
We understand there's a joke to be made there, but the writers didn't. It wasn't a joke, it was breaking the realism to reset the show. Just like they did in season 2.
They set the whole episode up that they were worried about some hacker was going to fuck over their shit when they were doing the compression for the Porn company, so they went full hard line wired internet. But the joke was "this guy fucks" comes in and sets his Tres Commas tequila down on the delete key (cus they made them use FTP, that's the joke). Except he sets it down on the laptop which isn't plugged in to the wired LAN so the realism is lost for the sake of resetting them back to square one again.
Oh you just make something 5% better than what already exists. Sure in that scenario fuck it, who cares start over again.
But it wasn't even a joke in the show. It was a hard reboot. Not one person who saw it including all the investors, all his competitors, Gavin Belson, nobody said "dude just make a new UI, seriously it would take 10 minutes to make this thing work"
In this fantasy world it really was just too good for people to understand it was good. They based an entire episode off of trying to teach people how to use it. Their only choice was to start over again back in the garage of Ulrich's house.
We understand there's a joke to be made there, but the writers didn't. It wasn't a joke, it was breaking the realism to reset the show. Just like they did in season 2.
They set the whole episode up that they were worried about some hacker was going to fuck over their shit when they were doing the compression for the Porn company, so they went full hard line wired internet. But the joke was "this guy fucks" comes in and sets his Tres Commas tequila down on the delete key (cus they made them use FTP, that's the joke). Except he sets it down on the laptop which isn't plugged in to the wired LAN so the realism is lost for the sake of resetting them back to square one again.
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You still don't get it. There wasn't a joke to be made, that entire scenario was reality and not a fantasy world.
They did make plenty of jokes around it though.
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no, you still don't get it. you think people throw away world changing technological breakthroughs all the time cus they are too dumb to change their UI?
Yes, engineer's make shit UIs. They think every setting, knob and control dial should be readily available to the End User.
If you think your amazing app gets rejected cus that's just what happens, you are the bro app guy. Or more accurately, you are the "Dude where did I park?" App guy working as a cashier at the store where Richard buys the margarita maker. Your tech is just so earth shatteringly awesome that the world simply isn't ready for it, and great apps like that gets ignored and tossed aside in silicon valley all the time.
there's no way on earth that this hypothetical compression algorithm is lost due to ineptitude, not something of this scale.
Yes, engineer's make shit UIs. They think every setting, knob and control dial should be readily available to the End User.
If you think your amazing app gets rejected cus that's just what happens, you are the bro app guy. Or more accurately, you are the "Dude where did I park?" App guy working as a cashier at the store where Richard buys the margarita maker. Your tech is just so earth shatteringly awesome that the world simply isn't ready for it, and great apps like that gets ignored and tossed aside in silicon valley all the time.
there's no way on earth that this hypothetical compression algorithm is lost due to ineptitude, not something of this scale.
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BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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When you guys are making these posts, do you ever think about whether anyone would actually want to read what you are typing?
Let's debate in walls of text whether a joke is funny or not. Awesome. People are going to love reading this.
Let's debate in walls of text whether a joke is funny or not. Awesome. People are going to love reading this.
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Alex
Still a Music Elitist
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I thought the shit UI joke was funny. That's a real thing that comes up all the time. The software our company makes was made for developers and as we've grown we've had to make it easier to use and are working on redesigning the UI. All the tech savvy power users hate it but we're trying to sell to a lot of oblivious people these days that can barely handle drag and drop.
Enzee
Trakanon Raider
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It wasn't gonna get lost.. others had similar compression, and were on track to have the same level of compression as them. By the time they found funding for, and actually re-designed the app from the ground up with a better UI in mind, someone else who started with a better UI would have narrowed the gap on the actual compression. The strength of their specific app wasn't just the compression, it was how their entire platform integrated with it. It wasn't a simple reskin of the UI they needed, it was an overhaul of the entire program from the ground up, that was the problem. They didn't have the funds for that anymore.
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wrong on just about every account. They were the only real middle out compression platform that could scale, and that could achieve those crazy compression numbers. everyone elses tech was waaay behind. They showed this repeatedly throughout the show.
there's literally no need to redesign the platform from the ground up with a better UI in mind. it would literally only take stealing the UI from any basic media library app of which there are hundreds of thousands of examples and just using that instead of the retarded shit they went with.
a blank white page with 5 buttons/icons, one that looks like movies, one that looks like Music, and one that looks like pictures, a 4th icon showing the upload button, and a 5th little cog which has become the universal symbol for settings is all that platform needed to function and become a multibillion dollar platform. You could make it even simpler and just have 1 button that says "library" and you sub divide music/movies/tv/pictures/etc within the library.
It was a simple reskin and they bungled it just so they could reset the show. it's called jumping the shark.
there's literally no need to redesign the platform from the ground up with a better UI in mind. it would literally only take stealing the UI from any basic media library app of which there are hundreds of thousands of examples and just using that instead of the retarded shit they went with.
a blank white page with 5 buttons/icons, one that looks like movies, one that looks like Music, and one that looks like pictures, a 4th icon showing the upload button, and a 5th little cog which has become the universal symbol for settings is all that platform needed to function and become a multibillion dollar platform. You could make it even simpler and just have 1 button that says "library" and you sub divide music/movies/tv/pictures/etc within the library.
It was a simple reskin and they bungled it just so they could reset the show. it's called jumping the shark.
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Khane
Got something right about marriage
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Someone clearly doesn't pay attention to anything in the actual show this thread is about.
Every one in here who bitches about one thing or another not being realistic and being stupid never bitches about the one thing that was actually unrealistic and stupid.
A tequila bottle on a delete button deleting every file from an FTP server.
Every one in here who bitches about one thing or another not being realistic and being stupid never bitches about the one thing that was actually unrealistic and stupid.
A tequila bottle on a delete button deleting every file from an FTP server.
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14k dollars (that they spent on fake users) is more than the $5 dollars it would of cost for a simple UI. and $5 bucks is an overestimate, i spent 2 seconds on google and found every image and file you would need to build a UI to make the platform work, for $0.00.
But that's besides the point, they go weeks/months at a time with 0 dollars income working for free, when it suits the story. I don't know how they pay for things like food or cell phone service since they are always broke or on the verge of getting funding/runway for another few weeks when they fuck it away again. Good thing the writers were smart enough to have urlich had enough success to buy the house outright from an earlier venture, so they can at least not worry about having to pay rent.
there is no explanation that rationally explains the platform failing other than the writers needed yet another hard reboot back to square one and that's how they decided to do it. In season two when they did the same thing, sacrificed realism to make a joke that resulted in them getting reset, it gave most of us a reason to pause, but we continued watching hoping it was a one time error, small price to pay for a joke. In season three they did the same thing, except this time sacrificed not only realism but any humor whatsoever in what was simply painful and insulting to watch, the shark was jumped. It became clear that resetting back to square one was the true motive for each season, and anything and everything would be sacrificed to achieve it. realism? fuck it. Character development? fuck it. story progession? fuck it. Even Humor, the thing comedies are based on? fuck it. it's not as important as reducing the show back to 5 guys in a garage failing to make a company for the Nth time.
But that's besides the point, they go weeks/months at a time with 0 dollars income working for free, when it suits the story. I don't know how they pay for things like food or cell phone service since they are always broke or on the verge of getting funding/runway for another few weeks when they fuck it away again. Good thing the writers were smart enough to have urlich had enough success to buy the house outright from an earlier venture, so they can at least not worry about having to pay rent.
there is no explanation that rationally explains the platform failing other than the writers needed yet another hard reboot back to square one and that's how they decided to do it. In season two when they did the same thing, sacrificed realism to make a joke that resulted in them getting reset, it gave most of us a reason to pause, but we continued watching hoping it was a one time error, small price to pay for a joke. In season three they did the same thing, except this time sacrificed not only realism but any humor whatsoever in what was simply painful and insulting to watch, the shark was jumped. It became clear that resetting back to square one was the true motive for each season, and anything and everything would be sacrificed to achieve it. realism? fuck it. Character development? fuck it. story progession? fuck it. Even Humor, the thing comedies are based on? fuck it. it's not as important as reducing the show back to 5 guys in a garage failing to make a company for the Nth time.
Enzee
Trakanon Raider
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The aggravating thing about this discussion, is I agree with your conclusion that the show has weak writing with resetting everything.. just none of your reasoning for that specific example. You keep acting like a good UI is just something you can pull off google.. it's not.. at all. There's a reason large companies have entire departments dedicated to just that one thing. Graphic design and usability is a real thing that is VERY important. It wasn't the actual LOOK of the UI that was the problem, they didn't give them a damn DOS prompt without any graphics, ffs. It was that the entire thing was not setup to be user friendly to an average joe at any level from the start.
The basic premise of 'UI redesign costs money, we don't have money, no one will give us money if we don't prove we made a good product already' was one of the few times their writing actually did make sense realistically. They had already established that his great compression was only one part of a successful product. It didn't trump everything else. Richard turning down funding for all kinds of ridiculous reasons is where the lazy writing tended to come in.
The basic premise of 'UI redesign costs money, we don't have money, no one will give us money if we don't prove we made a good product already' was one of the few times their writing actually did make sense realistically. They had already established that his great compression was only one part of a successful product. It didn't trump everything else. Richard turning down funding for all kinds of ridiculous reasons is where the lazy writing tended to come in.