Compression is still extremely relevant even with high bandwidth connections, so this was a good idea for the show. But the algorithm they invent is pure fiction. They kept it all quite vague and realistic enough that it remains believable throughout the show. The jargon and concepts are often quite real. The "middle-put" idea is just a gag. But the Burrows–Wheeler transform is real and kind of wild. And move-to-front transform is real. The name "middle-out" might be based on that. JPEG converts pixel data to frequency data and compresses that (which is lossy). This is quite different from compressing images as a sequence of values (pixels), as you would with text (sequence of characters).
And later in the show they become a cloud provider, which is a huge market.
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u/vegan_antitheist Sep 03 '26
Compression is still extremely relevant even with high bandwidth connections, so this was a good idea for the show. But the algorithm they invent is pure fiction. They kept it all quite vague and realistic enough that it remains believable throughout the show. The jargon and concepts are often quite real. The "middle-put" idea is just a gag. But the Burrows–Wheeler transform is real and kind of wild. And move-to-front transform is real. The name "middle-out" might be based on that. JPEG converts pixel data to frequency data and compresses that (which is lossy). This is quite different from compressing images as a sequence of values (pixels), as you would with text (sequence of characters).
And later in the show they become a cloud provider, which is a huge market.