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'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

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Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#11

Post by Retr0spectrum »

romanovcode wrote: post #7
agentgt wrote: post #3

I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland. The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good. Th music, the timing of title screen and the…

I don't agree, before even reaching the middle of S01 it was pretty obvious that what "twist" will be in the end. (Obv. hiding for spoilers)

There were some very strong hints about the twist in S01, I'm pretty sure we were meant to know. The S02 "twist" was much less obvious though IMHO. Despite reading theories about it on reddit before the reveal, I still didn't quite believe them.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#12

Post by Retr0spectrum »

enraged_camel wrote: post #10
romanovcode wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree, before even reaching the middle of S01 it was pretty obvious that what "twist" will be in the end. (Obv. hiding for spoilers)

Yeah, not only that but it was also very unoriginal. Straight up lifted from two particular movies in fact.

There were also references to at least one of the "source" movies. It was very deliberate.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#13

Post by danso »

enraged_camel wrote: post #10
romanovcode wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree, before even reaching the middle of S01 it was pretty obvious that what "twist" will be in the end. (Obv. hiding for spoilers)

Yeah, not only that but it was also very unoriginal. Straight up lifted from two particular movies in fact.

But it's a sideshow, the show even plays the same music as a homage. To me what makes it tolerable is that it accepts the twist as a matter of course and jumps right into other interesting plots, including whatever the fuck is going to happen tonight.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#14

Post by agentgt »

romanovcode wrote: post #7
agentgt wrote: post #3

I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland. The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good. Th music, the timing of title screen and the…

I don't agree, before even reaching the middle of S01 it was pretty obvious that what "twist" will be in the end. (Obv. hiding for spoilers)

If it is the twist I think it is that twist is purposely obvious (I hope your not thinking your smarter than the show because of that). I mean that twist happens fairly early.

S02 has far more truly hidden twists.

I mean even in Ex Machina I had some rough idea of what was going to happen in the end but that doesn't make it a bad movie.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#15

Post by wcummings »

They're at least self-aware, in one scene the fsociety crew is watching "Hackers" and one of them comments "I wonder what will ruin the next generations perception of hacker culture" or something like that.

Not my favorite rendition (full disclosure: "Hackers" is my favorite), but they do really drive home the "otherness", which is the core of any "hacker culture" story.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#16

Post by Retr0spectrum »

cmdrfred wrote: post #9
meira wrote: post #5

I didn't watch second season yet, but first season isn't "too real" for me. But it is still a good highly fictional show.

I only watched a few episodes, but the whole "She needs to learn to hack in 24 hours" bullshit was a little too much for me. Everything she was doing could have been a script. There was 0 reason to have her punching in commands like that, and either way that's simply using Linux. 'python hack-it.py' would have sufficed. If you haven't seen it, it wasn't much better than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmz67ErIR…

[SPOILERS]

Except the basic CLI knowledge prepared her for when she needed to run some emergency commands e.g. to restore the network connection. I'll allow them a tiny bit of artistic license here, it certainly added to the tension.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#17

Post by romanovcode »

agentgt wrote: post #14
romanovcode wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree, before even reaching the middle of S01 it was pretty obvious that what "twist" will be in the end. (Obv. hiding for spoilers)

If it is the twist I think it is that twist is purposely obvious (I hope your not thinking your smarter than the show because of that). I mean that twist happens fairly early. S02 has far more truly hidden twists. I mean even in Ex Machina I had some rough idea of what was going to happen in the end but that doesn't make it a bad movie.

Well, OK you've sold me. Gonna watch S02 and rethink my opinion about the show.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#18

Post by mdrzn »

romanovcode wrote: post #7
agentgt wrote: post #3

I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland. The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good. Th music, the timing of title screen and the…

I don't agree, before even reaching the middle of S01 it was pretty obvious that what "twist" will be in the end. (Obv. hiding for spoilers)

You have no idea how it evolve in S02. It's so much more than you can imagine.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#19

Post by cmdrfred »

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #16
cmdrfred wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only watched a few episodes, but the whole "She needs to learn to hack in 24 hours" bullshit was a little too much for me. Everything she was doing could have been a script. There was 0 reason to have her punching in commands like that, and either way that's simply using Linux. 'python hack-it.py' would have sufficed. If you haven't seen it, it wasn't much better than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmz67ErIR…

[SPOILERS] Except the basic CLI knowledge prepared her for when she needed to run some emergency commands e.g. to restore the network connection. I'll allow them a tiny bit of artistic license here, it certainly added to the tension.

If bouncing a network interface is hacking, I'm Captain Crunch. Maybe the other episodes are better, but that ruined it for me.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#20

Post by mdrzn »

cmdrfred wrote: post #19
Retr0spectrum wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[SPOILERS] Except the basic CLI knowledge prepared her for when she needed to run some emergency commands e.g. to restore the network connection. I'll allow them a tiny bit of artistic license here, it certainly added to the tension.

If bouncing a network interface is hacking, I'm Captain Crunch. Maybe the other episodes are better, but that ruined it for me.

I think he wrote "emergency commands" not "hacking commands". Because she's inside the same network, she can send those commands from her cubicle, so she needed to know how to do it.
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