For the geek who has everything, get them the single best hacking movie ever made. (“WarGames” doesn’t count: It invented the genre and is thus seminal.) “Sneakers” is the tale of a penetration testing team (based out of the then-abandoned Fox theater in downtown Oakland) that gets wrapped up in a dangerous game to capture a clipper chip. Remember clipper chips? Mythical chips capable of instantly breaking any and all encryption? Today we call them Amazon Web Services.
Toe – Book About My Idle Plot on a Vague Anxiety
What geek wouldn’t want some math rock for Christmas? If you’ve got a brainy musician on your list, this is some seriously nerdy rock music from a Japanese powerhouse band. Their work is heavily influenced by math rock, the 1980s and 1990s phenomenon of rock music containing weird time signatures, which required musicians to count a great deal. Toe creates beautiful soundscapes with almost no singing. A perfect gift for the programmer who has a rock band in his or her garage on weekends.
Silicon Valley – The Complete First Season DVDs 
If you haven’t seen “Silicon Valley” yet, and you actually live and work there, you may want to steer clear. The most common comment we’ve heard from the Valley thus far has been “It’s too real.” From the humorously quirky and quotable VCs, to the season finale where the team calculates the most obscene algorithm you have ever considered, “Silicon Valley” is a magnificent sendup of everything programmers and managers in the startup world deal with every day. If you still need more convincing, check out our recaps of the entire first season. This DVD set is the perfect gift for the programmer with a sense of humor. If “The Big Bang Theory” amounts to nerd slapstick, this is the geek humor equivalent of the Coen brothers.
