The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago(blog.adafruit.com)
blog.adafruit.com
The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago
https://blog.adafruit.com/2022/09/15/the-movie-hackers-was-released-27-years-ago-today-hackers-popculture-movies/
235 comments
The most realistic character would be the one that is bitter having watched all his hacker friends make boat loads of money, but works some random software engineering job for an unimpressive salary while slowly drinking/eating themselves to death. Maybe it's Joey?
This is an amazing concept. It got me searching through Hackers content on AO3, haha. Thank you for sharing! https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Hackers%20(1995)/works
Yes please! Bet it would have a killer soundtrack too
Would recruit Richard D. James and Max Richter (former FSOL) and maybe Nils Frahm to score it. Floria Sigismondi to direct or at least DP, or Jolie to self direct. Writing team members from For All Mankind and Mr. Robot. Cameos by everyone. Easter eggs by Parker Warner Wright. It's so close to reality already it becomes an ARG pretty fast.
I think Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross would fit perfectly (Social Network, Gone Girl, Girl with Dragon Tattoo, etc).
https://screenrant.com/trent-reznor-atticus-ross-best-movie-...
https://screenrant.com/trent-reznor-atticus-ross-best-movie-...
Definitely needs Underworld and Orbital on there. That movie had such a beautiful soundtrack.
> Ripe fromage. If I were writing the sequel, it would be a series, and it would be about how they grew up and now they all work leading security at platform companies and government agencies.
I used to hang out with a guy who did security freelance work and had a passing resemblance to Matthew Lillard. He like, never slept. He just like, biked around town all night, occasionally pausing at the local co-working space to do some work or play chess with this old Russian dude. There was some shit in his past, I don't know what he did or what was done to him because he never said and I never asked, he only hinted at it. But I kept thinking, man, this guy could totally be a cleaned-up Cereal Killer.
I used to hang out with a guy who did security freelance work and had a passing resemblance to Matthew Lillard. He like, never slept. He just like, biked around town all night, occasionally pausing at the local co-working space to do some work or play chess with this old Russian dude. There was some shit in his past, I don't know what he did or what was done to him because he never said and I never asked, he only hinted at it. But I kept thinking, man, this guy could totally be a cleaned-up Cereal Killer.
It would be interesting if a social media post/idea led to a movie.
I know social media led to the phrase "Get these MFing snakes of my MFing plane!" getting included in the Snakes on a Plane movie.
I think there was a reddit post turned into a movie deal about what if modern U.S. Marines were transported back in time to the Roman era, but I don't think anything has come from it.
Does anyone know of any other social media posts affecting or turning into movies?
I know social media led to the phrase "Get these MFing snakes of my MFing plane!" getting included in the Snakes on a Plane movie.
I think there was a reddit post turned into a movie deal about what if modern U.S. Marines were transported back in time to the Roman era, but I don't think anything has come from it.
Does anyone know of any other social media posts affecting or turning into movies?
I'd watch this. You could swap it around either way, one of the two in the couple go rogue. Depends on who wants to play moody vanlife neo-luddite.
> grew up and now they all work leading security at platform companies and government agencies
The exact opposite of a hacker. If they instead run their own company, built their own products, or open sourced an amazing tool the yeah. Otherwise do we really want a series or movie about their daily stand-ups?
The exact opposite of a hacker. If they instead run their own company, built their own products, or open sourced an amazing tool the yeah. Otherwise do we really want a series or movie about their daily stand-ups?
Sure. A show about a hacker who works a corporate cybersecurity job by day. That would never catch on, would it?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4158110/plotsummary
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4158110/plotsummary
I'll see that and raise you
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_...
:-)
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_...
:-)
I would sign onto this Kickstarter.
Post of the day award!
> Defcon 30
So, it's not an emergency at all. Just for funzies.
So, it's not an emergency at all. Just for funzies.
So .. kinda just a remake of sneakers?
It's the kid. He released the worm
Where do I send my money?
HN has gone full fanfic?
Between Hackers, Masters of Doom, and other rad 90s hacker-coder media, software development really seemed like a much more awesome career than it turned out to be. If I had a time machine I would warn young me that it's really more like a combination of Office Space and Wolf of Wall Street.
It would be awesome to listen to Prodigy or Megadeth while hackin' with the gang though. I'm still down for that if it exists somewhere in the now-corporatized tech industry.
It would be awesome to listen to Prodigy or Megadeth while hackin' with the gang though. I'm still down for that if it exists somewhere in the now-corporatized tech industry.
Hackers shows the career guys as lame and high strung, but the hobbyists (or as Razor and Blade put it, those hacking as a survival trait) as cool and having fun. It's easy for something fun to have the fun sucked out of it when it becomes a career.
I think a part of the hacker sub-culture that Hackers touches on lightly is that you have to make your own space. It's not going to exist for you in some prepackaged easy to consume way and certainly not in a corporation. Cyberdelia was for & by hackers, not a club run by some guy who has a bunch of cookie cutter clubs all over downtown. I don't think this is unique to the hacker sub culture, either.
I think a part of the hacker sub-culture that Hackers touches on lightly is that you have to make your own space. It's not going to exist for you in some prepackaged easy to consume way and certainly not in a corporation. Cyberdelia was for & by hackers, not a club run by some guy who has a bunch of cookie cutter clubs all over downtown. I don't think this is unique to the hacker sub culture, either.
Today at lunch I dyed my hair orange and then went back to my SAP consulting engagement.
> Hackers shows the career guys as lame and high strung, but the hobbyists (or as Razor and Blade put it, those hacking as a survival trait) as cool and having fun.
I think The Plague was having fun.
I think The Plague was having fun.
He was only having fun when he was playing cat and mouse with the hackers (or just playing with Lorraine Bracco). When he was in his office being a boring IT guy, he was not enjoying it, nor was Penn Jillette when the Gibson was under attack and his boss was breathing down his neck. The Plague was having fun, but Eugene Belford was not.
Yes, the whole plot of the movie is his plan to ransom money and get out of the rat race.
the fastest way to make something UNfun, is to get paid for it. Do this excercise. think of any fun activity. then imagine getting paid for it. If you're honest and you know what those jobs are like then you'll quickly find that getting paid for something sucks nearly ALL the fun out it.
Very well put.
The author of American Psycho said this:
> I think that if I had written the book in the past decade, perhaps Bateman would have been working in Silicon Valley, living in Cupertino with excursions into San Francisco or down to Big Sur to the Post Ranch Inn and palling around with Zuckerberg and dining at the French Laundry, or lunching with Reed Hastings at Manresa in Los Gatos, wearing a Yeezy hoodie and teasing girls on Tinder.
> I think that if I had written the book in the past decade, perhaps Bateman would have been working in Silicon Valley, living in Cupertino with excursions into San Francisco or down to Big Sur to the Post Ranch Inn and palling around with Zuckerberg and dining at the French Laundry, or lunching with Reed Hastings at Manresa in Los Gatos, wearing a Yeezy hoodie and teasing girls on Tinder.
I'm surprised he said that as Glamorama would seem an almost perfect fit. Perhaps too perfect.
>Between Hackers, Masters of Doom, and other rad 90s hacker-coder media, software development really seemed like a much more awesome career than it turned out to be.
I think it comes down to the fact that our industry has become rigid and beholden to the university education system. John Carmack and John Romero were both college dropouts. Their stories would probably be impossible today. What we have now is a world of people coloring between the lines and going straight from one set of rules to another. There truly is no more punk rock left in tech.
I think it comes down to the fact that our industry has become rigid and beholden to the university education system. John Carmack and John Romero were both college dropouts. Their stories would probably be impossible today. What we have now is a world of people coloring between the lines and going straight from one set of rules to another. There truly is no more punk rock left in tech.
I think it's because most tech jobs are not in tech. If you work for a bank, you work for bank. If you work for a fashion retailer, you work for a fashion retailer.
I've worked for a big pension fund and it was exactly like one imagines. Many meetings, a quiet office, slow and boring. I've also worked for small tech-focussed companies with technical nerds as founders; they were rather different, with music, dogs, vodka and late nights.
Oh and age matters too: after I had a kid, the late nights and vodka were not something I had the energy for.
I've worked for a big pension fund and it was exactly like one imagines. Many meetings, a quiet office, slow and boring. I've also worked for small tech-focussed companies with technical nerds as founders; they were rather different, with music, dogs, vodka and late nights.
Oh and age matters too: after I had a kid, the late nights and vodka were not something I had the energy for.
I used to think that, too, but be warned: SaaS companies quickly become beholden to the sales org, and all of a sudden, working for a "tech" company becomes working for all the industries you serve. Very few tech companies are pure tech anymore. Basically only the private ones like Valve.
The meeting:work ratio is a decent proxy.
If it's too high, you're not in a technology company in the sense we're idolizing here.
... And I'm also not sure "that" sort of tech company can exist above a certain size. No corporate silo firewall is strong enough to keep the business bullshit at bay.
If it's too high, you're not in a technology company in the sense we're idolizing here.
... And I'm also not sure "that" sort of tech company can exist above a certain size. No corporate silo firewall is strong enough to keep the business bullshit at bay.
Considering Valve's game output I'd say they too have become drunk on easy money being a storefront. (Which isn't all bad, though I'd rather have HL3.)
HL3 = IRL
What part of their story are you referring to? There are lots of indie devs that appear to be having great fun making games and doing well to boot. Valheim, Black Rock Galactic, Celeste, Dead Cells, Papers Please, Stardew Valley, Enter the Gungeon, Don't Starve, Undertale, etc. were all pretty bit hits, certainly made their developers millions of dollars, and AFAIK the developers were having fun making them.
> There are lots of indie devs that appear to be having great fun making games and doing well to boot.
See: the other posters comment about small profitable bootstrapped businesses being the only way to do this now. Successful indie devs are an anomaly. But my point was more that companies are far more risk averse these days than to let a group like Romero et. al. run loose on a new product idea without strict controls in place, and that the types of people selected for by these companies now ensures that.
See: the other posters comment about small profitable bootstrapped businesses being the only way to do this now. Successful indie devs are an anomaly. But my point was more that companies are far more risk averse these days than to let a group like Romero et. al. run loose on a new product idea without strict controls in place, and that the types of people selected for by these companies now ensures that.
I guess I'm not aware of their history. I thought they (Carmack and Romero) were indie bootstrapped business. Their success is being repeated today by 10x to 20x the indie teams, or so it seems to me.
John Carmack was also constantly working on the cutting edge. I think that makes a big difference. IIRC from reading MoD, he was the first person to get true side-scrolling working on an x86 chip, before it was thought to not be powerful enough vs the chips used in consoles at the time. Problem is that most of us just don't get to work on the cutting edge usually. A lot of the software that needs building often doesn't need much in the way of creativity.
There are all kinds of people in tech who are self taught without CS degrees though. I don't think it's that beholden to the universities...at least not like other professions. I think it's simply that people took notice that all the money was being funneled into tech. The MBAs all followed.
Industry, for the most part, needs predictability and scale for it to function well. It's very difficult to accomplish that without at least some rigidity.
Punk rock is small by definition. Once it becomes large it changes to mainstream.
Punk rock is small by definition. Once it becomes large it changes to mainstream.
Are startups the closest you can still get to "punk rock in tech"? I would love for the dream of the 90s to still be alive somewhere...
Startups are the least punk rock thing in tech. Follow patterns and rules to match the expectations of VCs so they give you money... and then they drive what you do.
I'm not saying people should not work in startups - they have their place in the industry. But there is nothing "punk rock" about them.
If you want to break rules and work outside the lines, we have come full circle to the 90s - bootstrapped small businesses are the way to go.
I'm not saying people should not work in startups - they have their place in the industry. But there is nothing "punk rock" about them.
If you want to break rules and work outside the lines, we have come full circle to the 90s - bootstrapped small businesses are the way to go.
Angel / friends / family was always more punk than VC, because VCs literally distill the funding transaction down to a business science.
Unfortunately... because most of the world has taken their eyes off keeping markets competitive, it's less viable now than it once was, because the table stakes capital requirements are larger.
Unfortunately... because most of the world has taken their eyes off keeping markets competitive, it's less viable now than it once was, because the table stakes capital requirements are larger.
The more expensive the Bay Area is to live in, the more the VC approach becomes the only game in town
It very much does exist. Just look for places trying to change the very basics of how the world works by hacking on new technology. You know, the places that naturally attract cypherpunks, people distrustful of 'the system' and the like.
You can also find people with that ethos in corporate places, but they get swarmed out by suits and people who went to coding school because it pays well.
You can also find people with that ethos in corporate places, but they get swarmed out by suits and people who went to coding school because it pays well.
Aside from crypto startups, could you share an example?
The presenters in Defcon seem like they enjoy what they do, for example.
Amen to that. The reality though seems to be that being a really good hacker/reverser, is still a relatively lonely endeavor. Don't get me wrong, high level stuff is absolutely a team endeavor, but it requires hours and hours and hours of extraordinary concentration and effort done mostly by yourself. It's tough (but not impossible) to do that and conventional things like raise a family and maintain a relationship with your spouse or friends.
crypto startups are infested with people desperately attempting to be the system, but they’ve convinced themselves (and each other) that adopting a different aesthetic somehow means their motivations are totally not the same.
A Linux kernel developer ? A lot of those people seem like hackers in every sense of the word. They might not be hacking the Gibson but they are hackers.
I've always felt that an industry or research field goes through multiple stages:
Discovery that it exists -> Fumbling -> Golden Age -> Mechanization
Mechanization is where the bean counters and optimizers get into it and make it into something boring. I'm not a software engineer but I feel like my own field is in the "Mechanization" stage. My solution is I'm just about to leave and never look back because I stopped caring. I still like the original stuff I learned but I don't care about what's become of it.
Honestly, I think who you are as a person is often going to be misaligned with what capitalism and industry does with what looks like your passions, and it's healthy to recognize that and leave while you can. You may be doing software engineering but you're not a software engineer; you're a person and you can reinvent yourself any time you want.
Discovery that it exists -> Fumbling -> Golden Age -> Mechanization
Mechanization is where the bean counters and optimizers get into it and make it into something boring. I'm not a software engineer but I feel like my own field is in the "Mechanization" stage. My solution is I'm just about to leave and never look back because I stopped caring. I still like the original stuff I learned but I don't care about what's become of it.
Honestly, I think who you are as a person is often going to be misaligned with what capitalism and industry does with what looks like your passions, and it's healthy to recognize that and leave while you can. You may be doing software engineering but you're not a software engineer; you're a person and you can reinvent yourself any time you want.
I think many of us believed that for sure we are going to be the cool ones but we actually turned out more like Office Space people. Not everyone is Crash Override.
A lot of us are crash override when we are 16 years old. Life beats it out of us though.
A sequel/followup to Hackers today could be awesome. The characters all got the override beaten out of them by life. Rallied back together for one last mission.
I would liken the portrayal of computer science in Hackers to the portrayal of criminology in Batman Forever
People miss the trees for the forest when complaining about Hackers.
https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Norton-Programmers-Guide-IBM/dp...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NYNEX
https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Norton-Programmers-Guide-IBM/dp...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NYNEX
I wish I could code in the time when there were no deadlines and you could gradually plod away at incredibly complex assembly code while hanging out with some like minded folk. That probably stopped being a thing in the 70s though.
See if there's a local makerspace in your town.
It might not be your exact thing, but you're likely to meet people who know about everything going on in the area.
It might not be your exact thing, but you're likely to meet people who know about everything going on in the area.
[deleted]
I imagine there’s still cool gigs. It’s just not with The Enterprise doing Webscale.
Visit Noisebridge
Part of what made this movie so startling when it came out is it was the first (and really only) film that was plainly aware of hacker subculture at the time and is loaded with easter eggs demonstrating that. It was at once a ridiculous parody of it and an homage to it. It’s like a love letter to small-h hackers.
> loaded with easter eggs
Like a 28.8 Bps modem.
Bps. Not kBps. Just Bps. Perhaps the actor just misread the line and the editors kept it. Still makes me itch to this day.
Like a 28.8 Bps modem.
Bps. Not kBps. Just Bps. Perhaps the actor just misread the line and the editors kept it. Still makes me itch to this day.
I wonder what the highest bandwidth you could get with smoke signals is. Have 288 fires and a bunch of people opening and closing lids on them in 10-second intervals. Awful latency though
e: actually that's probably around the speed of morse code or human speech
e: actually that's probably around the speed of morse code or human speech
yeah, he definitely misread the line and the editor probably didn't catch it. i mean, checking wikipedia, seems like even the very first router/modem had 300 bit/s and that was in the 60s. probably should have been 28KBps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem
The liner notes for the dvd have a chapter named Risk is Good, if you wanna be salty about more stuff.
During Chaos Communication Camp in 2019 we held a veryvery improvised screening of Hackers. The people at the Norwegian hackerspace I was with had never seen the movie, clearly this was a mistake we needed to fix!
For those unaware of CCCamp here are some pictures; http://smtw.de/cccamp19/
We managed to steal^Wborrow the projector screen from an empty workshop tent. Hauled it across a veryvery busy whiskytasting event (called Whiskeyleaks). Got a small projector and then we rigged the sound.
A single concert speaker was our sound source, but we had no AUX cable long enough. So we found a headset with an AUX output on it and chained it together with the AUX cable :)
The end result https://twitter.com/MortenLinderud/status/116502963964076032...
Also had a screening at May Contain Hackers this year, and it was great having 30 people scream "Hack the Planet" during the movie and loudely complain when the RISC line came :)
For those unaware of CCCamp here are some pictures; http://smtw.de/cccamp19/
We managed to steal^Wborrow the projector screen from an empty workshop tent. Hauled it across a veryvery busy whiskytasting event (called Whiskeyleaks). Got a small projector and then we rigged the sound.
A single concert speaker was our sound source, but we had no AUX cable long enough. So we found a headset with an AUX output on it and chained it together with the AUX cable :)
The end result https://twitter.com/MortenLinderud/status/116502963964076032...
Also had a screening at May Contain Hackers this year, and it was great having 30 people scream "Hack the Planet" during the movie and loudely complain when the RISC line came :)
The Hackers soundtrack is the root node of all my electronic music discoveries…
It all started with Orbital, Underworld, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Leftfield…
It all started with Orbital, Underworld, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Leftfield…
I literally listened to Halcyon & on & on for something like 2 years on loop while teaching myself programming in QBasic and assembly language.
Underworld still tours here and there - I've seen them 3 times now.... such a great act!
Completely agree with that. One of the best soundtracks in a film.
Shame about the film!
Shame about the film!
The film was good
Hackers was released September 15, 1995. The newest version of Netscape you could have been using the day it came out was 1.22.
Netscape 2.0 came out three days later (September 18, 1995) and included first support for javascript, java, and plugins.
The Dot-Com craze was just getting started but nobody knew how big it would become. Few worked for Internet startups and nobody had been to a launch party yet. I had registered my first domain name just two months earlier.
What an amazing time (1994-2000) to be alive and just out of school. It was our "Roaring 20's"
Netscape 2.0 came out three days later (September 18, 1995) and included first support for javascript, java, and plugins.
The Dot-Com craze was just getting started but nobody knew how big it would become. Few worked for Internet startups and nobody had been to a launch party yet. I had registered my first domain name just two months earlier.
What an amazing time (1994-2000) to be alive and just out of school. It was our "Roaring 20's"
I was just entering my teens during those years. Few things I remember vividly were
- Hackers (1995)
- Mortal Kombat the Movie (1995) (both of these movies used Orbital's Halcyon +On +On) song and a bunch of other electronic music
- And I remember the Windows 1995 release. That was a HUUUUUGE software release.
- Hackers (1995)
- Mortal Kombat the Movie (1995) (both of these movies used Orbital's Halcyon +On +On) song and a bunch of other electronic music
- And I remember the Windows 1995 release. That was a HUUUUUGE software release.
Iirc, the movie's official website got hacked, saying it was a terrible movie and to go see "The Net" instead. Also, the movie's website got in to some hot water for hosting some kind of hacking information on it.
My wife and I went to a showing of Hackers at DNALounge in 2020 - https://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2020/02-28.html.
They set it up to look like Cyberdelia. After the movie they ran a costume contest. The showing was just weeks before the pandemic truly hit America, and we felt pretty lucky that we made it home with out anything.
They set it up to look like Cyberdelia. After the movie they ran a costume contest. The showing was just weeks before the pandemic truly hit America, and we felt pretty lucky that we made it home with out anything.
Don't click the link please. There's a "special" redirect image when the referer is HN. Just go ahead and copy-paste the link to a new tab.
I was there for that! DNA is one of my favorite places in the world.
Hah. Just yesterday I was contemplating how awful Angelina Jolie's character's handle "Acid Burn" was. Like - who the fuck would choose such nickname for themselves?
Other than that - cult movie. Love it. Awesome soundtrack, not that bad acting and not that bad script for back when computers and internet were hip, not just the usual thing.
"Hackers" caricaturally but still somewhat properly presents the phreaking culture which was and is rather uncommon for non-niche movies, especially from that era.
This movie aged well.
Other than that - cult movie. Love it. Awesome soundtrack, not that bad acting and not that bad script for back when computers and internet were hip, not just the usual thing.
"Hackers" caricaturally but still somewhat properly presents the phreaking culture which was and is rather uncommon for non-niche movies, especially from that era.
This movie aged well.
Both Acid Burn and Zero Cool had handles that came off as self-deprecating. I kind of liked that, as counterpoint to the competitive ego dynamic between them.
Same.
I think we all had some screen names in high school that seem pretty terrible now.
Back when I was sixteen, I hung out with this kind of crowd and most of the usernames were about how dangerous/scary/bad the person was. I thought it would be funny to deliberately choose a username that was the exact opposite of all of that.
Thirty years later, I'm still using it.
Thirty years later, I'm still using it.
I have to admit I'm almost 42 years old and a native English speaker, and until just a few minutes ago I didn't actually know what "munificent" meant. I just looked it up, and based on the thoughtfulness of your comments here, I think it's an appropriate username.
[deleted]
Hey now, I think mine is fine :p
We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!
I thought it was a pun on the chemical and the database properties (hydrofluoric acid vs Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability)
Best movie ever.
For anyone saying it wasn't a realistic depiction - that was on purpose. The hacking scenes are visual metaphors, meant to "spice things up."
An analysis of all hacks in the movie: https://medium.com/h0llyw00d-h4x0rs/hackers-b93e78b95485
For anyone saying it wasn't a realistic depiction - that was on purpose. The hacking scenes are visual metaphors, meant to "spice things up."
An analysis of all hacks in the movie: https://medium.com/h0llyw00d-h4x0rs/hackers-b93e78b95485
Whoever wrote that and I would be great friends.
Everyone knows Angelina Jolie, but did you know Jonny Lee Miller (Zero Cool) has had a prodigious acting career after Hackers?
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001538/
My favorite character of his was Sherlock Holmes in "Elementary"
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001538/
My favorite character of his was Sherlock Holmes in "Elementary"
He's also the owner of the all-time worst American accent, in the not very good movie Mindhunters. Here's a clip from the middle of the movie showing it. There are spoilers for the movie in the clip, but you should probably never see it, so spoiling things isn't such a terrible thing.
https://youtu.be/UACodohFhPs
https://youtu.be/UACodohFhPs
I was into dial-up BBSes when it came out. We always made fun of the noobs who showed up and named themselves after the movie.
Great movie, though. It's one of the few DVDs I've hung onto, even though I haven't watched it in years. Makes me want to skateboard in a datacenter.
Great movie, though. It's one of the few DVDs I've hung onto, even though I haven't watched it in years. Makes me want to skateboard in a datacenter.
I still use "there's a pool on the roof" when meeting someone new to see if I've met one of my own :D
My kid's school has forbidden stairs up to attic storage or something, but the kids think there might be a pool up there for the teachers.
That's awesome! I've used "the pool on the roof must have a leak" a few times as well. That movies has so many one-liner quotes that still live on to this day.
I very regularly refer to the act of writing code as "hacking the Gibson."
I hated it when it came out for its inaccuracy, but man it's just so much fun I'm developing a video game inspired by it!
Actually, I take that back. In terms of culture it was not that far off the mark. I went to college near New York City, and it turned out to be a local hotbed for activity in the MOD/tracker scene. I used to pal around with one guy who was a big deal in the KFMF, and he looked like he could have come right off the set of Hackers. Even used the handle "Phreak" for a bit and had Hackers soundtrack posters on the wall. Because you know, awesomest soundtrack(s) of all time and that.
Actually, I take that back. In terms of culture it was not that far off the mark. I went to college near New York City, and it turned out to be a local hotbed for activity in the MOD/tracker scene. I used to pal around with one guy who was a big deal in the KFMF, and he looked like he could have come right off the set of Hackers. Even used the handle "Phreak" for a bit and had Hackers soundtrack posters on the wall. Because you know, awesomest soundtrack(s) of all time and that.
[deleted]
Hackers is a fun movie. It has a fantastic time capsule soundtrack, fun sets (the arcade, the computer room) and some fun little performances (Matthew Lillard! Fisher Stevens!) It's interesting what the show gets right (little bits of phreaker culture, social engineering) and what it gets wrong (almost everything about how computers actually work). From a realism perspective, Mr. Robot blows this out of the water, but it's still fun.
I listen to the soundtrack while writing code. Gets me fired up!
Hackers and Sneakers are maybe the only decent movies about so-called hackers.
I'd recommend The Internet's Own Boy, Buckaroo Banzai, Real Genius, Office Space, or Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle ahead of Hackers and Sneakers.
Startup.com is pretty good as a movie about startups (I lived just about every minute of that movie, just at a different company) but it doesn't have any actual hackers in it.
I hear Risk and Citizenfour, both about Wikileaks, and Revolution OS, about Linux and the GNU and open-source movements, are pretty good, but I haven't seen them.
The Internet's Own Boy in particular has 8/10 on IMDB, 93% "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes, handily beating both Hackers and Sneakers, and is under a Creative Commons license: https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaro... which
I found it very hard to watch because Aaron was a friend of mine.
The Matrix is nominally about hackers (and even, like Hackers, computer security) but, as with Startup.com, hacking doesn't really enter into the movie much; instead it's all running firefights and magic disguised as computers. Like Hackers and Sneakers, it bears the same relationship to hacking as https://axecop.com/ (a comic scripted by a five-year-old) bears to law enforcement. However, it's enormously more popular than all the movies above, even if its Rotten Tomatoes ranking is lower than The Internet's Own Boy.
I hear Masters of Doom is pretty good but I haven't watched it.
Startup.com is pretty good as a movie about startups (I lived just about every minute of that movie, just at a different company) but it doesn't have any actual hackers in it.
I hear Risk and Citizenfour, both about Wikileaks, and Revolution OS, about Linux and the GNU and open-source movements, are pretty good, but I haven't seen them.
The Internet's Own Boy in particular has 8/10 on IMDB, 93% "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes, handily beating both Hackers and Sneakers, and is under a Creative Commons license: https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaro... which
I found it very hard to watch because Aaron was a friend of mine.
The Matrix is nominally about hackers (and even, like Hackers, computer security) but, as with Startup.com, hacking doesn't really enter into the movie much; instead it's all running firefights and magic disguised as computers. Like Hackers and Sneakers, it bears the same relationship to hacking as https://axecop.com/ (a comic scripted by a five-year-old) bears to law enforcement. However, it's enormously more popular than all the movies above, even if its Rotten Tomatoes ranking is lower than The Internet's Own Boy.
I hear Masters of Doom is pretty good but I haven't watched it.
I'm a huge fan of buckaroo banzai but there is like one scene with a computer in it.
Von Neumann was a hacker since his childhood, not just after computers were invented. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for being a hacker 340 years before computers were invented.
"Sneakers" and "War Games" were my favorites, because they were so realistic and thought-provoking. "Tron" was my favorite from the "magic disguised as computers" category.
I often tell people that if they want to see a fun movie, see Hackers, but if they want to know what hacking is like, see Sneakers.
... though the all-nighter scene in Hackers where they just "flow" out some code while techno plays over the montage is also pretty accurate.
... though the all-nighter scene in Hackers where they just "flow" out some code while techno plays over the montage is also pretty accurate.
I tend to describe Hackers as depicting what coding feels like on the inside.
All those great visuals, the pumping music, it captures the emotion of getting your teeth into a really gnarly problem, and the exuberance of eventually coming up with a solution. People watching over the shoulder of a developer at work are just going to see a bunch of scrolling text and tedious iterations of red, red, red, green, reload, alt-tab, change a thing, wait, red, red, red, green, and so on. But that workflow - if you dig the work - is enthralling. And when you solve the problem, it's worth throwing your hands up with glee, and (internally) belting out a cheesy action hero oneliner.
Not to mention when you are real-time dealing with attackers trying to compromise your systems, the chaos and exasperation and desperate attempts to block them very much match the climactic scene of The Plague and his hapless techno weenies typing "cookie".
I'm probably biased because of my age and the time in my career when I first watched the movie (around the same time as my first job) but to me it still feels like the most authentic silver screen portrayal of what I do. More modern shows often capture the cold, hard reality of the work better, which admittedly is just a bunch of text scrolling on a screen. And there are definitely works that better satirize the office culture, like Office Space and Silicon Valley. But there still hasn't been much that captured the excitement of the time, and can really explain to people outside of the industry why at least a certain subset of 1990s teenagers felt compelled to get into this apparently boring and nerdy career.
I suppose it's very "of its time", because nowadays everyone understands why kids want to get into IT - it's one of the most flexible and lucrative careers there is.
All those great visuals, the pumping music, it captures the emotion of getting your teeth into a really gnarly problem, and the exuberance of eventually coming up with a solution. People watching over the shoulder of a developer at work are just going to see a bunch of scrolling text and tedious iterations of red, red, red, green, reload, alt-tab, change a thing, wait, red, red, red, green, and so on. But that workflow - if you dig the work - is enthralling. And when you solve the problem, it's worth throwing your hands up with glee, and (internally) belting out a cheesy action hero oneliner.
Not to mention when you are real-time dealing with attackers trying to compromise your systems, the chaos and exasperation and desperate attempts to block them very much match the climactic scene of The Plague and his hapless techno weenies typing "cookie".
I'm probably biased because of my age and the time in my career when I first watched the movie (around the same time as my first job) but to me it still feels like the most authentic silver screen portrayal of what I do. More modern shows often capture the cold, hard reality of the work better, which admittedly is just a bunch of text scrolling on a screen. And there are definitely works that better satirize the office culture, like Office Space and Silicon Valley. But there still hasn't been much that captured the excitement of the time, and can really explain to people outside of the industry why at least a certain subset of 1990s teenagers felt compelled to get into this apparently boring and nerdy career.
I suppose it's very "of its time", because nowadays everyone understands why kids want to get into IT - it's one of the most flexible and lucrative careers there is.
Very much agree, many people I've talked to about Hackers don't seem to get this "it shows what it feels like", and get hung up on interpreting details literally, like the favorite complaint "screens don't project a sharp image onto the wall behind you".
I also like Swordfish for this. Him dancing at the keyboard while programming is very much what it feels like when you have a good hack going.
I also like Swordfish for this. Him dancing at the keyboard while programming is very much what it feels like when you have a good hack going.
I suppose it all depends on when you grew up and got into computers. I always thought Hackers feeling/vibe was kind of clowny and not representative of computer enthusiasts and hackers. The hackers I grew up exposed to (mid-80s, early-90s) were not cool kids riding rollerblades with wacky hairstyles saying "duuuuuude" and listening to techno. Wargames and Sneakers were a lot closer to the actual vibe. Normal clothes, quiet, careful and a little paranoid, typing into monochrome terminals, and so on. Maybe the scene changed later, but it just seemed like Hackers was too focused on coolifying and popularizing an activity that wasn't really cool or popular.
I do suspect that the scene changed by the mid-90s. Although, it might also be that the American scene was a bit different from the European scene? It's worth mentioning that the movie Hackers was made by a Brit, and perhaps his vision was more influenced by the European scene at the time, despite the movie being based in NYC?
I came of age during the height of the demo scene in Europe, and enjoyed the pre-warez offshoot where pirated games always included exciting intros/cracktros. So hackers making electronic music and cool visuals was the baseline that every noob had to meet to be "elite". Of course in real life we still all wore "normal clothes" and lived careful, quiet lives - but the dream was to be these rockstars that the movie Hackers turned to 11.
I came of age during the height of the demo scene in Europe, and enjoyed the pre-warez offshoot where pirated games always included exciting intros/cracktros. So hackers making electronic music and cool visuals was the baseline that every noob had to meet to be "elite". Of course in real life we still all wore "normal clothes" and lived careful, quiet lives - but the dream was to be these rockstars that the movie Hackers turned to 11.
For reference, I grew up and got into computers in the mid-80s. Yes, Sneakers and War Games was much more like what my reality was, though even more boring and low key. But, I'm still going to go with Hackers being much more like what I felt like inside. :-)
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
I literally dance at my stand-up desk when I'm deep in some gnarly code. My co-workers make fun of me for it, but also, when I stop dancing they ask me what I figured out.
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The scene where Zero Cool's hacking the TV station, and the LED clock is ticking off minutes every few seconds, is the best and most accurate illustration of "flow" I've ever witnessed.
> I tend to describe Hackers as depicting what coding feels like on the inside.
I'm going to borrow this, it will make many future discussions much shorter than with my current approach of floundering around this sentiment.
I'm going to borrow this, it will make many future discussions much shorter than with my current approach of floundering around this sentiment.
Sneakers really doesn't get enough love, probably because I'm not sure people knew what to make of it. Names so big the billboards couldn't hold them all, but doing things with computers that didn't make sense to your average viewer. So punk, even if half of them are in suits. I love Hackers, but it's like a generational sequel to Sneakers.
I re-watched Sneakers a few months ago based on comments like this. I didn't really enjoy it when it came out and I didn't enjoy it this time either. Not sure why it doesn't work for me.
Truly sorry to hear that. I guess not everything can be for everyone. But maybe there are some movies out there you do enjoy more!
+1 for Sneakers. I'd add the original "The Italian Job" to the list as well.
The bus at the end, right?
What about War Games ?!
War Games resonated with me a lot. That montage of him trying to find the password was great. Looking things up the library, sadistic microfiche, news papers and getting BUZZ ERROR, BUZZ ERROR, BUZZ ERROR over and over. If you'd like to fill your days with that, programming is for you.
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Not a movie but have you seen Mr. Robot?
Fight Club is the same plot in movie form right? Unreliable narrator, secret society (starting with "F") of anarcho-capitalists bent on bringing down Big Credit, cheesy hacking lingo etc?
The creator of the show doesn't hide that Fight Club is an influence.
The hacker stuff is pretty legit though. Characters use Termux on their phones, Kali Linux, python scripts etc
The hacker stuff is pretty legit though. Characters use Termux on their phones, Kali Linux, python scripts etc
I notice no on has mentioned "The Net". With good reason, if I remember correctly.
Just hold down the control key when you click the Pi symbol on this website and BAM instantly you've hacked the FBI database.
It's a great "cheesy movie night" movie. It's aged terribly, Angela is a 1337 hacker because she orders pizza ONLINE!
Sneakers was the better movie. More accurate, better actors, better plot.
Antitrust was fun. Not good, but fun.
What about "Three Days of the Condor"?
I reco the German "23" (not that horrible American flick).
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/
you didn't love swordfish?
I hated it. IIRC, there is this part where the main character is trying to assemble a virus, shouting "compile, compile, please compile... YES!".
I wasn't convinced about this hacker having problems to compile a program...
OR
There is another possible explanation but I have to check dates since I think the movie was released way before the first version of Rust!!!
I wasn't convinced about this hacker having problems to compile a program...
OR
There is another possible explanation but I have to check dates since I think the movie was released way before the first version of Rust!!!
Vulnerability discovery and programming are different skill sets. I've seen terrible code written by talented security researchers.
I liked one bit of that movie, when Hugh Jackman is pacing around muttering "I'm too old for this shit" and finishing a bottle of wine during a coding session.
That "building the worm" scene has got to be my favorite depiction of software development of all time.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=u1Ds9CeG-VY
https://youtube.com/watch?v=u1Ds9CeG-VY
I mean, it got the "% of spoken words that are profanities" part correct.
Why did I just watch that again. I knew it was going to be pure cringe, but I clicked it anyway.
lol -- brilliant. Notice he was using Github Copilot -- that's what all those green blocks are. He' just got the 31337 CLI version.
Oh, man. I forgot how much I hated that particular scene. It was almost as bad as the "60-second crack" scene.
I hated it, personally. The special effects were so bad that I lost my suspension of disbelief; and the ending where John Travolta (it was a long time ago) was part of a super-secret organization that was so secret that no one knew about it nearly made me laugh.
That was not a bad movie. Prior to the movie, I read about the Carnivore and the Magic Lantern program. Then heard them mentioned in the movie, and thought "Ah! Nice".
My dad always used the ball bearing explosion scene to demonstrate his surround sound system to guests :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiHZWeeoEUg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiHZWeeoEUg
The only good part was Halle Berry...
'23' is a great movie. 'Who am I' deserves a mention too.
Do you have any tips for finding 23 with English subtitles? Obviously I'm trying Google (and excluding "Number 23" and attempting to exclude "23 blast" (Google is treating my minus as a plus when excluding both)).
That movie is on Archive.org, so maybe you could try to look for subs for those specific titles.
https://archive.org/details/23-nichts-ist-so-wie-es-scheint-...
https://archive.org/details/Hackers_-_23_part_-II_-
The second one says part II but is the complete movie.
https://archive.org/details/23-nichts-ist-so-wie-es-scheint-...
https://archive.org/details/Hackers_-_23_part_-II_-
The second one says part II but is the complete movie.
I always forget about archive.org, thanks!
Just posted a Sneakers story yesterday:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32858840
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32858840
I still remember being awestruck by Sneakers. It made a lifelong impression on 13(14?) year old me. I'll never forget watching it for the first time.
"Antitrust" was a fun movie as well.
I still remember watching it as a kid when it came out, it’s one of the reasons I got into programming in the first place. The alure of being a ninja hacker to a 8 year old was hard to escape. Funny enough, it took another 6 years until I got my first computer, and another 2 after that when I got access to the internet.
the hackers soundtrack is fantastic and includes some of the best electronic music from the era. the version of halcyon and on is in my opinion almost as good as the original 11 minute 12" uk promo edit [0], which may not have fit on this soundtrack.
in 2020 varese sarabande released an expanded 2xCD of the hackers soundtrack [1]. the second disk includes full length versions of the instrumental electronic music composed for the film by simon boswell [2] but not included on the 1 disk soundtrack and is absolutley essential listening while rollerblading to the payphones at penn station.
[0] https://www.discogs.com/release/42711-Orbital-Halcyon
[1] https://www.discogs.com/release/15991139-Various-Hackers-Ori...
[2] https://www.discogs.com/artist/68855-Simon-Boswell
in 2020 varese sarabande released an expanded 2xCD of the hackers soundtrack [1]. the second disk includes full length versions of the instrumental electronic music composed for the film by simon boswell [2] but not included on the 1 disk soundtrack and is absolutley essential listening while rollerblading to the payphones at penn station.
[0] https://www.discogs.com/release/42711-Orbital-Halcyon
[1] https://www.discogs.com/release/15991139-Various-Hackers-Ori...
[2] https://www.discogs.com/artist/68855-Simon-Boswell
Get with it grandad. we scoot to the Uber while using our iPhone these days.
My local cinema recently showed this and it was great to see it on a big screen, I think the older you are the funnier and more ridiculous it gets. When I was a kid and saw it I was totally inspired seeing them hacking from a payphone outside on the street, I thought it was so cool!
I always wanted the epic boot up sequences like they had in that movie... in Windows for a bit you could change your boot image, but I could never get it to be an animation.....
I've got a dorky 'matrixish' oembootlogo on my desktop cause the bios tool asks for an image. Doesn't animate or anything though. It would be difficult to use the windows 95 pallete animation to do a rotation effect, I think.
I vaguely remember being able to hack it to display an animation…
Type "cookie" you idiot!
This is one of the best lines from any movie ever.
I used it on a much younger co-worker of mine when he was having an issue with a website and it turned out to be a problem with cookies.
It was clear to me from his facial response that he had never seen the movie. It didn't go over well.
I used it on a much younger co-worker of mine when he was having an issue with a website and it turned out to be a problem with cookies.
It was clear to me from his facial response that he had never seen the movie. It didn't go over well.
Back in the 70s there was actually a piece of malware running on the PDP systems of the time called "Cookie Monster" that actually would halt the user's session and display "GIVE ME A COOKIE"; the only way to clear it was to type "cookie". This only worked temporarily, however, and some versions of the program demanded cookies more and more frequently.
The Cookie Monster program was a part of hacker lore, including the Jargon File, at the time of the release of Hackers. I remember recognizing the reference when I saw the movie. Many of the other viruses and malwares in the movie ("Arf Arf Gotcha", the "Da Vinci Virus" being a reference to the Michelangelo virus scare of 1992) were also references to legendary real-world hacker lore. Even Zero Cool's crashing of 1507 systems in one day was a reference to Robert Morris's worm of the late 1980s.
The Cookie Monster program was a part of hacker lore, including the Jargon File, at the time of the release of Hackers. I remember recognizing the reference when I saw the movie. Many of the other viruses and malwares in the movie ("Arf Arf Gotcha", the "Da Vinci Virus" being a reference to the Michelangelo virus scare of 1992) were also references to legendary real-world hacker lore. Even Zero Cool's crashing of 1507 systems in one day was a reference to Robert Morris's worm of the late 1980s.
I used to talk about hacking the Gibson all the time. Gotta bring that back for the anniversary.
Mess with the best, die like the rest
This movie is one of my favorites. It's absolutely hilarious and so so 90s in the best way.
Highly flawed film; bizarre sense of style, ropey acting, terrible culture references, insane computer representations.
All so bad, its agelessly bad, like only a true cult film can be.
But there is one huge redeeming thing for me, and that is I find it a really fun caper.
All so bad, its agelessly bad, like only a true cult film can be.
But there is one huge redeeming thing for me, and that is I find it a really fun caper.
You forgot one redeeming thing: the soundtrack is pure gold.
Yo! Check this out. This is insanely great. It's got a 28.8 bps modem.
One of my favs:
The Plague: We are samurai. The keyboard cowboys. And all those other people who have no idea what's going on are the cattle. Moo.
One of my favs:
The Plague: We are samurai. The keyboard cowboys. And all those other people who have no idea what's going on are the cattle. Moo.
There's a YouTube channel building replicas of the character's laptops.
Lord Nikon's Laptop [1] is really what I consider a true _Cyberdeck_.
P.S. Hackaday is running a Cyberdeck competition [2] if you're into that kind of thing.
[1] https://youtu.be/uxY6CUimZ9M
[2] https://hackaday.io/contest/186672-2022-cyberdeck-contest
Lord Nikon's Laptop [1] is really what I consider a true _Cyberdeck_.
P.S. Hackaday is running a Cyberdeck competition [2] if you're into that kind of thing.
[1] https://youtu.be/uxY6CUimZ9M
[2] https://hackaday.io/contest/186672-2022-cyberdeck-contest
I only watched Hackers for the first time a few years ago and was really happy with it. Do recommend.
Eric Corley was a technical consultant on that movie. Do with that what you may.
I am really curious: what do you find interesting about this movie in comparison with Sneakers (advised by Leonard Alemán [1]) and War Games? I don't remember any takeaway from Hackers.
[1] https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/
[1] https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/
"Risc is good"
"RISC architecture is going to change everything"
One of the most amusing quotes in the movies given how obvious the statement must have seemed at the time. Tanenbaum made a statement hinting at the same development in the famous usenet debate with Torvalds in 1992.
"Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5."
"Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5."
And they were right! Just 20 years too early.
No, no, RISC architecture was already changing everything. I mean, RISC made possible not only the Newton, but also the Alphas that shortly after that powered AltaVista, and the SGIs that powered significant parts of the US nuclear stockpile stewardship program (not to mention some movie visual effects). And arguably without the pressure from RISC we wouldn't have seen the adoption of OoO and the micro-op approach that was already starting to boost CISC performance when the movie came out.
Hackers as a whole and hot pocket guy in The Core will forever be the best (worst?) hacker stereotypes to me.
Hackers is still one of those films that are influential and still resonates to this day. If you haven't seen it yet, I would advise to get the Region B (UK) Blu-ray release from 88 Films since not only it has the better surround mix (5.1 compared to 2.0 on the Shout Factory US release) it also has a director commentary track only seen in the UK release.
It's pretty easy to get a region free Blu-ray player these days.
It's pretty easy to get a region free Blu-ray player these days.
Halycon on and on!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k07cflKCl-Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k07cflKCl-Y
There was a time where I fervently sought all the rainbow books and the hidden knowledge contained within those vibrant tomes of arcane wisdom.
My guilty pleasure. Re-watching it every 4-5 years. Still turning on the soundtrack on repeat for pulling an all-night coding session.
HACK THE PLANET!!!
My wife who is a doctor rented this for us to watch when it first came out on video since I am a programmer. She couldn't understand why I kept rolling my eyes at many scenes. I think she understood when I got her back by renting some hospital drama movie and watched her roll her eyes at all the improbable medical situations it presented.
Absolutely dire film but a good soundtrack.
Did not work for me at the time but pretty much everyone cool was super impressed with it. And why wouldn't they? We were the target audience.
Somehow hacking computer things wasn't as appealing as shooting intelligent bugs. Would you like to know more?
Somehow hacking computer things wasn't as appealing as shooting intelligent bugs. Would you like to know more?
Talk about feeling old. Movies will never be as great as they were in mid/late 90s.
I saw this movie in theaters and reviewed it for my 8th grade newspaper. :)
Just watched it a few days ago, i would argue its the only movie which can visualize it how you feel the flow when you are hacking on something.
Cheesy but fun movie
Simpler times...
Here I am still looking for the pool on the roof.
Working title is, "Defcon 30" Who wants to fund it?