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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

#161

Post by colemickens »

e40 wrote: post #118
scrollaway wrote: post #48

If you like Mr. Robot, you should watch Person of Interest. POI is a pre-snowden series about a world "in which the NSA has a system which spies on every american citizen in order to fight terrorism" (sounds familiar?). The show begins with the weak premise of "help us fight crimes we predict will happen", but don't be fooled by its appearance of a run-of-the-mill CBS show. Without spoiling it too much, I do want to…

If you like Mr. Robot, you should watch Person of Interest. I strongly disagree. You could maybe say that about season 1. It devolved into a pretty crappy show after that and I bailed completely by season 3.

The last two seasons went all in on the tech/super-AI plots and dropped the "crime-fight-of-the-week" tedium. I'm actually pretty happy to see it talked about so well here. The last season was kind of emotional and definitely struck at my techie core.

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

#162

Post by anexprogrammer »

rasz_pl wrote: post #155
gonehome wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been confused by the positive comments it has gotten from people in tech - I found it unwatchably bad and that it actually got worse (not better) as time went on. Everything from the 'machine' itself, to the cringe acting and writing, dumb tech concepts (woman who 'speaks' for the machine) and all their vigilante killings that only happen in New York. I couldn't take it. Watch Halt and Catch Fire - it's a thousa…

Halt and Catch Fire - where ibm mainframes boot into dos, quality stuff

...and Amigas run DOS too (Joe learning programming recently) with no Sidecar attached.

There are some silly slips, and I doubt they'd mostly be running on C64s, but overall it gets the feel of the period pretty well.

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

#163

Post by WickyNilliams »

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)

It was supposed to be obvious, I think. Dramatic irony. Elliott even calls you (the viewer) out on it in the first episode of season 2. He says he doesn't trust you anymore because you didn't tell him something you knew. I love how they handled it with the cheeky nod

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

#164

Post by 3chelon »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #144
3chelon wrote: post #2

I would be interested to see if the downloads of Kali Linux have shown any significant spike since Season 2.0 was released.

One of the developers hosting Kali posted about it here once. Basically he remembers one morning waking and seeing that traffic had spiked and he was really puzzled about it. Up until he clued in to the fact that a certain episode of Mr Robot (where Kali Linux figured prominently and was advertised quite profusely) had been aired the previous night. So yes, there has definitely been a spike in Kali Linux downloads ov…

Excellent. I kind of thought it must be true. Suddenly everyone's a script kiddie running aircrack-ng and no-one's home wifi is safe anymore!

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

#165

Post by pawadu »

lost_name wrote: post #55
binarymax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks really interesting, thanks for the recommendation. Do you know off hand if it is available on Netflix or Amazon?

https://www.justwatch.com (not my site, just a handy tool)

wow, that _was_ a handy tool!

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

#166

Post by touristtam »

scrollaway wrote: post #103
gonehome wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been confused by the positive comments it has gotten from people in tech - I found it unwatchably bad and that it actually got worse (not better) as time went on. Everything from the 'machine' itself, to the cringe acting and writing, dumb tech concepts (woman who 'speaks' for the machine) and all their vigilante killings that only happen in New York. I couldn't take it. Watch Halt and Catch Fire - it's a thousa…

Well, de gustibus non est disputandum right? :) I watch a ton of TV and I honestly think Person of Interest is the best show I've ever watched. It may not have the production value of Game of Thrones, the suspense of Breaking Bad or the comedy of .. um.. Seinfeld? but [rest of this comment rot13'd for spoilers] vg vf gur bayl fubj V'ir rire jngpurq gung chyyf bss fhpu n fzbbgu "traer fjvgpu" sebz cebprqheny gb fpvrap…

You have watched a lot of TV? What about things like Sons of Anarchy, the Soppranos or Oz? Or even the unfinished Profit?

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

#167

Post by touristtam »

jorgecastillo wrote: post #135
scrollaway wrote: post #48

If you like Mr. Robot, you should watch Person of Interest. POI is a pre-snowden series about a world "in which the NSA has a system which spies on every american citizen in order to fight terrorism" (sounds familiar?). The show begins with the weak premise of "help us fight crimes we predict will happen", but don't be fooled by its appearance of a run-of-the-mill CBS show. Without spoiling it too much, I do want to…

I myself like the Silicon Valley series way more than any of those two.

Have you tried "Halt and Catch Fire"?

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

#168

Post by touristtam »

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…

> '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=Bmz67ErIRa4 and at least that was entertaining.

Hacker (film) was painful to watch. So much cheesyness.

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

#169

Post by touristtam »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #27

I think the lesson non-hackers need to take away from Mr Robot is that hacking is as psychological as it is technological. You could have the greatest firewall known to man and just one stupid or disgruntled employee with too much admin access and it may as well be the Great Wall which Genghis Khan simply walked around. Otherwise society at large is poised to think of hacking in the laziest Hollywood depictions: -- -…

Ye I would recommend reading The Art of Deception from Mitnick for those non techies. :)
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