Live data from Hacker News

The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

blog.adafruit.com

71–80 of 236 posts

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#71

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 cul…

I thought it was a pun on the chemical and the database properties (hydrofluoric acid vs Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability)

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#73
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely remember being able to hack it to display an animation…

The image itself was 320x400 bitmap and the animation was done through palette cycling.

All these years later, there is an answer to years of lounging. Thank you for the closure. :)

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#74

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 s…

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.

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#75
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. While reversing a worm that was unleashed by trolls to sabotage a social-credit/Nosedive-like app, Kate/acidburn finds the encoded string "that place where I put that thing that time," which has to be a reference to their old crew, but she can't let anyone know because the scandal against the social platform company would swing an election. Story unfolds as a mix of tracking down Dade/zerocool, who apparently made money in crypto and disappeared to live on boats and vanlife away from technology, and who may be the one behind the worm. Busting him busts her, so she has to find her old ex and talk him down somehow. He may also be the father of her first kid and she still has unreconciled feelings, and he doesn't know. Homages to the Before Midnight sequels about finding each other again, and the Thurman/Carradine Kill Bill finale.

Working title is, "Defcon 30" Who wants to fund it?

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#76
post #41
post #21

"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."

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#77

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 s…

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.

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#78
post #45
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"RISC architecture is going to change everything"

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.

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#79

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.

Re: The movie Hackers was released 27 years ago

#80
post #2

Hackers and Sneakers are maybe the only decent movies about so-called hackers.

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.
Post reply on HN