The third season of HBO’s Silicon Valley is now under way and if you caught the first episode, you would have noticed a snippet of Pied Piper’s valuable compression code towards the end of the show. Turns out this code actually compiles, though the output isn’t what you might expect.
Back in 1894, Olaus Henrici invented a machine called the Harmonic Analyser. Way ahead of its time, it could pick out all the individual frequencies that make up complex sound waves — a technique we now rely on for everything from compressed audio to digital images.
Streaming video is the future. Well, it’s the present, but the future too. And as resolutions increase, it’s going to be a tougher and tougher proposition to pipe all that data to your screen of choice in a timely fashion. Fortunately, the new H.265 standard has been approved by the…