I would highly suggest checking out Halt and Catch Fire. It's a period piece, but I think it captures the spirit of Northern California. The first 2 seasons are in Texas before they jump ship to San Francisco.

H&CF is a great series and switches gears every season. The final season has some of the most beautifully written and acted character moments I've ever seen on TV. I finished it almost aching for the characters on the show and I rarely ever have a strong reaction to TV.

ditto. Its starts off with a young ex-IBM executive trying to build the first IBM compatible machine and everything that goes with launching the new product. Later seasons go into things like server farms, early gaming, and social networking.

really underrated show.

I really like the historical/tech story lines but the soap-opera interpersonal relationships wrecked it for me. The whole "broken imperfection" thing often goes to far and really detracts from the story.

You might like this documentary on the origins of National Semiconductor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCbRZGDV-ws

I agree. It feels like it's trying to be a film festival movie about a tumultuous relationship and "complicated" hero/heroine that just has the beginning of the personal computer age as a backdrop.

Based on the founding of Compaq

It also draws from the book 'Soul of a New Machine' about Data General's a few years before Compaq.

The 'adventure addiction' scene, for example.

I really enjoyed that series. Early in my career I spent 6 months in Dallas in the early 80s, same space-time as the first 2 seasons. They captured working in a "tech" company in Dallas perfectly.

I love how H&CF talked about innovations of the 80s-90s that we think of as revolutions now that they have taken off: online games, social network, streaming, time-sharing/cloud computing.

I thought that show went off the rails when spoiler the dude set the van full of hardware on fire

That's at the end of the first season, which was weaker than the subsequent ones, really.

Likewise, it's a great series, very well written, sad to see it so unknown and underrated...

I kind of have this feeling for most of Mike Judge's stuff. I think we've all been in an Office Space situation. Being from the same part of Texas that King Of The Hill is based on, I totally know people that I could swear Judge based the characters off of for the show. At this point, Idiocracy should be moved from the comedy category and into the prophecy/documentary category.

I agree with most of your comment except Idiocracy - while sometimes funny it is a trite classist argument, already made in various form centuries ago ("the poor are inferior and reproduce quickly, ergo each generation will be lesser than the previous").

While in reality e.g. IQ score baselines keep getting adjusted to account for the fact that kids keep getting better and better scores as time goes on[0].

The world is not getting dumber and if it is there is no evidence for it and plenty against it.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence

It's as if public education, improved nutrition and healthcare, better means of travel, better communication, etc. result in making the population smarter. Who would have thought that if everyone got some of the advantages only the wealthy had in the past that things would turn out better?

I love Silicon Valley as much as I loathe Big Bang Theory. Talk about a show that plays to what "regular" people think nerds are like. I am absolutely dumbfounded how popular it is. Then again, Chuck Lorre has a track record for that type of garbage...

> I love Silicon Valley as much as I loathe Big Bang Theory.

Big Bang Theory: Purposelessly inaccurate in ways that upset you.

Silicon Valley: Purposefully accurate in ways that upset you.

If it has a "studio audience" laugh track, I'm out.* If the joke is funny, I don't need a laugh track to tell me about it. If it's not funny, it's not funny, and a laugh track doesn't make it funny. If it's so esoteric of a joke that I missed, then I missed it. Silicon Valley has a lot of these. "Is it Apple Maps bad?" There was one about Theranos that if you had no idea what Theranos is/was, then you'd never have a chance to understand the insult.

*with the occasional rule breaking exception

Seinfeld had a laugh track also, and still managed to be one of the funniest and most original shows on television, breaking major ground for its time. Don't blame Big Bag Theory's gaping inadequacies on the laugh track; the writers, actors, and producers are largely at fault.

>Seinfeld had a laugh track also, and still managed to be one of the funniest and most original shows on television, breaking major ground for its time.

People keep saying that, but what it really that funny and original? I'll take e.g. MASH any day.

I haven't seen Seinfeld yet but I intend to.

"Whoever is first to do something isn't likely to be the best at it, simply because everyone that comes after is building on their predecessors' work. Named after the sitcom Seinfeld, which many people won't watch any more because everything about it has been copied." https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunn...

Yeah, though I'm not sure about that (Seinfeld not being appreciated because it was a pioneer show).

I still find funny very manny pioneering shows -- heck, even back to Charlie Chaplin, ‎Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy, and all kinds of 80s and even 70s sitcoms.

Has anyone published seinfeld without the laugh track? Im really curious about that now.

Most of it was shot in front of a live audience so there is no version without the laugh track.

Laugh tracks are of their time. It's unfair to pick TBBT out as a bad show because it has a laugh track. TBBT is a bad show because it's a bad show. There are plenty of good "laugh track" shows - old ones.

While my reply was to a comment about BBT, I never mentioned it. I don't care what it is, but if a laugh track is used like that, then I'm not a fan of it. It's the final part of the equation of pandering to the lowest common denominator. I understand why they choose to do it. Without it, they'd have a fraction of the fan base. With it, they have/had the highest watched show. So clearly, the numbers don't lie; it's a good show. <ducks>

>Laugh tracks are of their time. It's unfair to pick TBBT out as a bad show because it has a laugh track.

No, it's a bad show because it's badly written, cliche, and lowest common denominator humor, just with nerds as subjects instead of some regular families as per usual.

I used to like BBT, but lately it has devolved into the characters just being mean to each other all the time. You are spot on with your comment, too.

The quip that made me "Hmm" on BBT was "How often are you laughing with the characters? And how often are you laughing at them?"

Oh there's other problems too, real needs (really, real people) would say "it's cold as hoth out there", on BBT they would say "it's cold as hoth, the ice planet from star wars", which tells you who the real audience is

You could laugh at the characters and the show still be good (if the characters deserve to be laughed at). The important thing is the quality of the joke.

You could, but to me it's the difference between "laughing at funny nerds" and "laughing at nerds."

The latter just feels cheap.

I normally pause and read the chuck lore production thing after the show. Its always stupid brainless drivel, very fitting.

I really enjoy watching The Big Bang Theory. I think that you’re being overly cynical.

Hackers is best enjoyed, IMHO, if you interpret it as a hyperbole of the media stereotype of the hacker culture of the era. I tend to revisit it every year and have grown to appreciate it more and more with time.

Also, Sneakers and The Net.

Hackers is my secret joy.

The more you rewatch it, the more you realize it knew exactly how over the top it was being, and is doing so with a wink and grin.

And there are far too many truely geeky Easter eggs in there to say it's oblivious. Technicolor rainbow, indeed.

I love Hackers. I also love snickering at all of the technical lapses throughout the movie. 28.8 kbaud? Yeah...you're streaming that 3d Gibson interface over that... Yeah, I know, they had to Hollywood it up, but still...

Hackers is, in my opinion, something that was written by someone who was very knowledgable about the subject matter and directed by someone who very clearly was not. Every spoken line of dialogue in that movie is pretty accurate and realistic - it's only when you get to the direction and the visuals that things get wacky.

> every Steve Jobs movie

how about "the pirates of silicon valley"? I feel it's _by far_ the best movie made involving his figure, likely because it came out earlier.

I feel it is a bit contrived, the plot is

"AAAAaaaaaah! here is this completely benign part of the software development cycle that we are dramatizing because the sky is falling and our company won't survive!!!!!"

Every episode

So like what happens every week on many actual startups?