Silicon Valley - Season 4 - Spoilers to date

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Only 4?!? C'mon!

 

I was re-watching the Jin-yang smart fridge episode.. and caught a screen cap of Gilfoil hacking the fridge:



I'll save you the trouble.. here's the video the youtube code links to:

HTML:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

 

It kind of fell off later down the road but it was a great show.

 

As I was typing that in - I was thinking - this had better not be .............. damn!!

 

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Great wrap up, so many call backs.

 

Crazy that's the way that Ehrlich goes out. Just stranded in Tibet and strung out on opium so he probably won't even realize where he is.

The rest of the episode really stressed me out, with the guys just constantly trying and failing to find a way to save the data. Seeing "Anton" strewn all over the road was the last straw.

But then Guilfoyle's trolling of Jin Yang ends up saving the day! (Although it was pretty unbelievable that the smart fridge manufacturer wouldn't immediately push a new firmware update to get rid of that offensive video playing on the screen.) But I guess the whole point is that it proved the concept of a decentralized internet, so they're back in business. Can't wait to see how Richard screws it up next season.

 

I can believe it; appliance manufacturers are notoriously bad about updating firmware. More than that, it's not a bug that's causing a problem.

 

Except its a highly offensive video that would cause massive outrage and bad publicity. And it would have a negative impact on sales since potential customers would see that video and decide they don't want that playing in their kitchen. So I think in this kind of situation, the appliance manufacturer would have their software folks working 24/7 until this got fixed.

And besides, they already had a working firmware version, so it should be pretty simple to just change the name to make the appliances think it's an upgrade, and then push out the same old firmware that was on them to begin with.

 

I don't remember seeing any indication that the offensive video was playing anywhere but fridge zero.

 

They showed a montage of it playing everywhere, including a row of fridges in a store.

 

Or, the boys will run home, create another firmware update without the offending video or any trace of Gilfoil's prank, and re-upload it to their fridge.. and then all the other fridges will see that new version as an update and automatically install the new firmware. Buy the time the manufacturer figures it out, all the fridges will be fixed AND running their code.

 

By the way, it's really not a "distributed internet" right? It's just "distributed storage".

 

Thanks, I remember that now that you've reminded me.

Still doesn't bother me, though. How long did it take Samsung to update their exploding cell phones? It took longer for them to admit there was a problem than Piper needed to pass the acceptance test.

 

They are currently using it for storage as a proof of concept, but the fact that it works proves that it is viable for storing and distributing all web content, thus making fixed servers and fiber backbones obsolete.

 

You can count on Richard to always make the worst decision possible and somehow get bailed out every time. Sometimes he pees me off in this show more than he does when he's doing those seemingly constant phone company ads. I hate those.

 

Richard has really turned into a dick. He has become my least favorite character. That scene at the end between he and Gavin gave me the impression that Richard is turning into a Gavin and will likely take on even more of Gavin's traits as Pied Piper becomes more successful.

 

Except that they are sort of sitting on top of the existing network. Using its infrastructure. So, it is hard to say how groundbreaking it truly is. Or efficient. If there is no central index of the database then each query has to pass through until it finds what it is looking for which may be broken into multiple places then find its way back. Supposedly, it is a torrent without any controlling server.

 

I would be pretty pissed to see my data usage spike from something I didn't do similar to that SETI groupware idea except in that case it was a voluntary install.

 

That's the whole point. The idea is that everyone has a cell phone and there is so much wireless bandwidth available out there, that it doesn't make sense to have all web data stored on physical servers with a wired broadband connection. Instead, using a fraction of the storage on everyone's phones, and a fraction of the available wireless bandwidth, they can replace the physical infrastructure of the existing internet.

 

Still sounds like just distributed storage to me. The world is still mostly wired. You're not going to replace "the internet" with millions of cell phones on flaky cell tower connections.