We’re a few episodes into the fifth season of HBO’s hit comedy series Silicon Valley, and the network has already announced that it is renewing the show for a sixth season. HBO announced the return of Richard Hendricks and company on its official Medium account, alongside news of a second season for the Bill Hader-led dark comedy series Barry, which debuted the same day as Silicon Valley’s fifth season premiere.
“While Barry has delighted audiences with its deft interplay of comedy and drama, Silicon Valley remains as brilliantly and frighteningly prescient as ever,” Amy Gravitt, executive vice president, HBO Programming, said. “We’re thrilled that these two smart, funny shows are returning for another season.”
We just keep coming back for more. #Season6 #SiliconValleyHBO pic.twitter.com/nn7unqfN9F
— Silicon Valley (@SiliconHBO) April 12, 2018
Silicon Valley follows a group of five programmers who create a startup company in the tech epicenter that gives the series its title. The series is a collaboration between Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head, King of the Hill) and Alec Berg (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Barry) and is an Emmy winner and Golden Globe nominee.
Its eight-episode fifth season debuted on March 25 with a timely jab at current tech events, as the opening credits poked fun at Facebook’s purported role in influencing the 2016 presidential election. The show picks up where Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) and the rest of the team at Pied Piper left off in their attempts to deliver a “new internet.” We wouldn’t be surprised to see future episodes dive further into the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Joining show creators Judge (also executive producer), John Altschuler, and Dave Krinsky for season five are executive producers Alec Berg, Clay Tarver, Michael Rotenberg, Tom Lassally, Jim Kleverweis, and Jamie Babbit; co-executive producers Anthony King, Graham Wagner and Ron Weiner; and consulting producers Carrie Kemper, Carson Mell, Jonathan Dotan, Todd Silverstein, and Josh Lieb.
The current season is the first without T.J. Miller, who played Erlich Bachman, the founder of the tech incubator where the fictional startup Pied Piper was formed. Jian Yang, played by Jimmy O. Yang, seems to have stepped up to fill his place, taking a more prominent role on the series. In addition to Yang and Middleditch, the series’ regular cast also includes Zach Woods, Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Starr, Josh Brener, Amanda Crew, Matt Ross, and Suzanne Cryer.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.