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Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

hackers-1995.vercel.app

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Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#71

Post by T3OU-736 »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #35
Zaskoda wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hated this movie the first time I watched it. And the second. The third time I let go of the need for things to be realistic and took it all in as an artistic representation and snap ... I loved it. One could argue that I loved it all along given that I watched it so many times... but there was a distinct moment where I let go and that's when I was able to see just how wonderful this movie really is.

There are some niche 3D file system browsers/shells out there, but none as captivating as what's shown in the movie (or the linked "animated experience") that I can find.

Not quite filesystem navigation, but SGI IRIX's Performance CoPilot software had an IrixGL (OpenGL's precursor) UI for monitoring things like memory state, CPU/storage loads, etc.

The PCP is absolutely nowhere _near_ the graphical wizardry of the state of this app, and the overlay of executing code atop a given directory structure is quite beautiful (practicality be damned), but I can see the inspiration.

I do wonder if, on a modern Linux system with SELinix, this model (code accessing a directory) is actually closer to viable? SELinux's contexts/labels for subjects overlaying with the same for objects can, I imagine, be visualized. The normal access patterns would be way too overwhelming, I think - but exceptions/policy violations? :ponder:

Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#72

Post by dylan604 »

trentnix wrote: post #60
Forgeties79 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s also important to remember that there are tons of terrible practicals out there, we just don’t think of them because they were bad and forgettable. Lots of great CG too that you likely never recognized as CG. Sicario is littered with examples. You’d be hard pressed to call out even most of them.

That's true on there being lots of terrible practical effects out there. The parent lauded Raiders of the Lost Ark for its practical effects. In contrast, Last Crusade was a great movie that had a few practical effects that were terrible. The scene with the tank going over the edge of the cliff is so bad and so fake that I could help rewind and pause to laugh at it when I was a kid.

The going over the cliff scene is a drop in the bucket to Raiders' melting faces or sticking with Last Crusade's fast aging scene

Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#73

Post by kriro »

A+ app, I turned on sound and was not disappointed.

Love the movie, got a spray can and sprayed my whole keyboard army green after watching it then realized I can't 10 finger type. What a golden age of interesting young people in computer security. Roughly one year later (iirc), I read "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" which might have been my most influential IT related read. It's probably tied with "Man-Computer Symbiosis" :)

Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#74

Post by StopTheWorld »

runjake wrote: post #48

I grew up hacking in the 1980s and I watched this movie and I totally hated it. Me and the hackers around me were more like War Games, but with skateboards and BMX bikes. On our best days, I likened us to the characters in the movie Sneakers, but no way, they were far more elite than us. Then this Hackers movie came out and it seemed like a laughable clown caricature of hacker culture. It was insulting, like I imagin…

The writer of Hackers, Rafael Moreu, went to New York 2600 meetings and talked to various members of MoD (a hacker group which had a book written about them by a local New York reporter, Joshua Quittner, who later worked for Wired and then Time/Pathfinder if anyone remembers that).

The names and handles of the movie reflect this - Cereal Killer, Plague, Joey, Razor - all handles of local New York people. Phreak in a sense too. Some of the kids went to Stuyvesant high school, where scenes were filmed. The kid getting raided in his shower happened locally. The plant worker almost getting shot by a flare gun held by people trashing happened locally. As did other things.

Some other national things made it in, like the Hacker's manifesto written by an LoD member.

Some things were invented for the movie. There was no attractive 19 year old Angelina Jolie type hacking along with the boys as shown in the movie. These guys were not rollerblading through Manhattan together. There was no Cyberdelia nightclub everyone hung out at, although some of the guys might have gone together once in a while to the nightclubs popular at the time (The Tunnel /Limelight / Palladium / Club USA / Webster Hall).

Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#75

Post by GJim »

riffraff wrote: post #58
GJim wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sellout trash A trifle offtopic, but..... In the 1990's and for us Gen-X'ers, the worst thing you could do was to sell out; to take the mans money instead of keeping your integrity. Calling people and bands 'sell outs' (sometimes without justification!) was to insult them. With the rise of 'influencers' the opposite appears to be the case; people go out of their way to sell out and are praised for doing so. This is…

This is insightful. But I'm not sure it's completely true, I think people just have shifted their perception of what selling out means. Content creators on YouTube, for example, get criticized when they literally sell their brand to a larger conglomerate. It seems people do not complain if they do sponsorizations tho.

> Content creators

I'd argue the very words creating "content" implies something commercial is already in mind and is a driver, rather than just doing your own thing online and not caring (such showing a video of your band/hobby on YouTube in case anybody is interested).

To a Gen-X'er, the former sounds like they are already a sell out :-)

I certainly agree with you that perceptions have shifted.

Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#76

Post by ganoushoreilly »

nickthegreek wrote: post #29

I highly recommend the 88 films 4k blu-ray release for those who love Hackers. I recently was able to purchase an unopened VHS tape as well. I have a brand new VCR coming so I can have a proper experience.

I have a couple copies of the laserdiek variants, always felt like the best tech to show homage.

Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#77

Post by JaggedJax »

Love it, what a great throwback, especially with the OST.

In Firefox is there a way to play this without FF popping up the search box on every key press? Maybe there's a way for the JS to override the default FF search functionality?

Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#79

Post by trentnix »

xnorswap wrote: post #67
trentnix wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true on there being lots of terrible practical effects out there. The parent lauded Raiders of the Lost Ark for its practical effects. In contrast, Last Crusade was a great movie that had a few practical effects that were terrible. The scene with the tank going over the edge of the cliff is so bad and so fake that I could help rewind and pause to laugh at it when I was a kid.

Isn't the very worst aspect of that very scene, the CGI part rather than the practical effects part? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np4OojYGixI Sure, the tank rolling at the bottom looks a bit like a model, but it isn't nearly as jarring as the part where the shot of the guy in the tank looks like it came from another world entirely and has been badly edited in on top.

It's the guy in the tank that breaks it. Pretty sure it's just a dummy.

Re: Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

#80

Post by anthk »

Ironically aestheticically wise the best hackers (as in the original sense) would just depict a half busy and utterly boring plan9/9front desktop and tons of physical (and digital books). Forget about ricing (except for constrast and readability, such as using Zukitre instead of Adwaita for GTK). Usability first.
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