[HN Gopher] Sneakers (1992) - 4K makeover sourced from the origi...
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Sneakers (1992) - 4K makeover sourced from the original camera
negative
Author : bredren
Score : 354 points
Date : 2025-05-06 06:15 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.blu-ray.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.blu-ray.com)
| VilleSalonen wrote:
| The link points to a Full HD Blu-ray review. Here is the review
| for the highest quality 4K Blu-ray review: https://www.blu-
| ray.com/movies/Sneakers-4K-Blu-ray/343185/
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I was surprised to read they're not affiliated with Blu-ray RTM
| (registered trade mark) - I guess Blu-ray RTM are unusually
| choosing not to bite the hand that feeds them.
|
| https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00...
| happycube wrote:
| Fun fact, the DVD Forum just shut down so the DVD trademark
| is all but unenforced now.
| gittes wrote:
| Great movie! So many big named actors in it! The director also
| did Field of Dreams!
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I'm not a fan of baseball, but I liked Field of Dreams (at the
| age I was back when it would have made it to Australian TV).
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I am a fan of baseball, and in 2021, there was a real MLB
| game played at the original filming location. It started with
| Kevin Costner leading the players out of the cornfield.
| jprd wrote:
| I had goosebumps, they nailed it.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Sneakers - The Team 's Demands [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41493927 - Sept 2024 (2
| comments)
|
| _Sneakers Film Promotional Floppy_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38585213 - Dec 2023 (54
| comments)
|
| _No-more-secrets: recreate the decryption effect seen in the
| 1992 movie Sneakers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36799776 - July 2023 (257
| comments)
|
| _Happy 30th anniversary to 'Sneakers,' a cult classic that was
| ahead of its time_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32788136 - Sept 2022 (47
| comments)
|
| _Cracking the Code: Sneakers at 30_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31378418 - May 2022 (76
| comments)
|
| _Memories of the "Sneakers" Shoot (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29840802 - Jan 2022 (198
| comments)
|
| _Sneakers: Robert Redford, River Phoenix nerd out in 1992's
| prescient caper_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620095
| - Dec 2021 (7 comments)
|
| _Sneakers (1992), the Film_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111977 - Feb 2021 (2
| comments)
|
| _Tool Recreating the "Decrypting Text" Effect Seen in the Movie
| "Sneakers"_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11643270 - May
| 2016 (54 comments)
|
| _Sneakers - movie about pen testing, crypto /nsa, espionage, and
| deception (1992)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6196379
| - Aug 2013 (5 comments)
|
| _What it was like shooting the movie Sneakers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4498985 - Sept 2012 (46
| comments)
|
| _Sneakers (Film, 1992)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499298 - July 2010 (1
| comment)
|
| _Joybubbles: the blind phreaker whom Whistler was based off of
| in Sneakers_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1443241 -
| June 2010 (1 comment)
| shelled wrote:
| Hey dang, do you do this manually or semi-manually or is it
| just automated from your a/c?
| dang wrote:
| Semi-manually, so I'm glad you included that option :)
|
| This question comes up a lot - here's an answer that goes
| over it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40564558
| kleiba wrote:
| StackOverflow has this feature that when you write a new
| question, it tries to fuzzy-match that up against existing
| questions. I wonder if an approach similar to yours, using
| search, could be employed on HN as well to reduce the
| number of dupes?!
|
| This would be helpful especially for those cases where the
| same story gets covered on multiple places on the internet
| and so URL matching doesn't help.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Wonder if ML could help automate merging of duplicate (or
| similar topic) threads? (I don't know much about ML)
| irjustin wrote:
| LLM's would be absolutely amazing at this actually. With
| their current ability - it's basically their sweet spot.
| esafak wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_linkage
| mosselman wrote:
| Wow that is cool! Any chance you could share that Arc
| extension?
| dang wrote:
| I'd have to do brain surgery on it first, to disentangle
| all the moderation-only code from code that would be
| generally useful, but yes I'd love to do this someday. It
| makes reading HN (and posting) so much easier from a
| desktop browser (if you like keyboard shortcuts, that
| is).
| ctxc wrote:
| I was kinda hoping it was manual (sorry). I was fired up at
| the opportunity to build something tiny that solves a pain,
| but...man you have a solid setup there :D
| jph wrote:
| Sneakers and Setec Astronomy became my go to for example
| encryption code for years. If you're not familiar with Setec
| Astronomy, you're in for a treat. <3
| ghostDancer wrote:
| I think you keep too many secrets.
| sixtram wrote:
| The question is, can you guarantee my safety?
| glimshe wrote:
| Setec Astronomy is also the name, obviously inspired by the
| movie, of a successful MIT Puzzle Hunt group.
| jmuguy wrote:
| I think you mean cootys rat semen.
| lantastic wrote:
| Clearly you didn't read my socrates note.
| dpifke wrote:
| "Setec Astronomy" is the SSID of my home wifi network.
|
| The password is the missile launch code from _War Games_.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Featured here often.-
|
| ... particularly sadly, at Earl Jones' passing.-
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41493927
|
| Greatest movie :)
|
| PS. The quote on "goowill not being something the government
| does" reads so poignant now ...
| Karellen wrote:
| Part of my headcanon for _Sneakers_ is that Agent Abbot (Jones)
| is actually Admiral Greer (Jones ' character from _The Hunt for
| Red October_ / _Patriot Games_ / _Clear and Present Danger_ ),
| set a bit earlier in his career, and going under a codename
| while working CyberOps for NSA ;-)
| Bluestein wrote:
| That is just so spot on :)
|
| (There's a whole James Earl Jones "pluriverse" out there,
| ain't it? ...)
| tclancy wrote:
| Same!
| Bluestein wrote:
| Your username is very relevant!
| tclancy wrote:
| Ha, sadly I was born with it rather than being inventive.
| Bluestein wrote:
| A win is a win is a win :)
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Ironically, I think this movie is better suited to being watched
| on VHS quality.
| beeflet wrote:
| I just watch it with my eyes closed
| jpecar wrote:
| Indeed, sound mix is rather amazing. Incredible stereo
| picture and depth, something you seldom hear in modern
| movies.
| legostormtroopr wrote:
| It sounds like a cocktail party.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| If you have a high-quality digital version of a movie, you can
| use one of the CRT shaders from modern emulators to make it
| look like any old TV you want.
| VMG wrote:
| the audio quality of the popular streaming versions is pretty
| bad
| voxadam wrote:
| My voice is my passport. Verify Me.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| This is always the first thing I remember about the movie...
|
| COOTYS RAT SEMEN
|
| "No, I don't."
|
| "No. No."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GutJf9umD9c
| sneak wrote:
| One of my cover/shell companies for privacy purposes is an
| anagram of that phrase. :D
| sgt wrote:
| Let me guess your password...
|
| "Too many secrets"
| nullify88 wrote:
| Heavily referenced in Uplink, the hacker video game by
| Introversion Software.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Just before I left the UK in 2018 there was starting to become
| this trend for voice verification on some services, in one
| particular one I had to go through the setup of (perhaps it was
| Virgin Media? I forget), they had me say "My voice is my
| passport" to train it on how I sound. I smiled to myself.
| chedabob wrote:
| I had to do it on either Atom Bank or Starling (signed up for
| both at a similar time).
|
| Monzo also have you recite something but it's something far
| less exciting like "My name is X and I bank with Monzo".
| al_borland wrote:
| Charles Schwab does this, but tweaked it to, "my voice is my
| password."
|
| https://www.schwab.com/voice-id
| zehaeva wrote:
| I totally say this under my breath every time I have to enter
| sensitive information while other people are around.
| ccheever wrote:
| I work at a company whose legal name is Monterey's Coast, Inc.
| cantrecallmypwd wrote:
| oystermen coast ;)
|
| amnesty scooter
|
| coyote smartens
|
| economy tasters
| lantastic wrote:
| comatose sentry
|
| necessary motto
| sneak wrote:
| Here I was thinking I was clever also naming one of my
| companies an anagram of that phrase.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| 1. relevant username ... since 2010. you found your thread
| for sure
|
| 2. hey man you can still be clever, you just... also have
| birds-of-your-feather out there. :D
| nullc wrote:
| And now we know who founded cooties rat semen.
| aa-jv wrote:
| I never understood the love for this movie, it just seems lame to
| see all of these caricatures being created that reinforce hacker
| stereotypes - and not even in a good way.
| glimshe wrote:
| The movie was partially responsible for _creating_ the
| stereotype. This was 1992 and hacker culture wasn 't yet
| mainstream.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Hacker culture was quite mainstream in the 80's, already.
| This was a refactoring of it. War Games and Tron and other
| movies got there first.
|
| I think that's the reason I don't have the affinity for this
| movie that many do - it created incorrect stereotypes which
| still persist today.
| glimshe wrote:
| The movies you mentioned were far from any type of hacker
| culture. They were much more about the power of computers,
| then a mysterious machine people knew little about.
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like those films were sort of "along side" the
| hacker world. Sneakers to me was more on point.
| digger495 wrote:
| _incorrect_ stereotypes?
|
| Stereotyping isn't inherently bad, it's just lazy. That
| having been said, I think Sneakers gets them all _correct_.
| duxup wrote:
| Compared to stereotypes I thought it was an interesting
| mishmash of lively / different characters.
| throw7 wrote:
| Do you love the movie Hackers? I submit there are two camps of
| moviegoing nerds: those who love Sneakers and those who love
| Hackers. I will admit though, many many years later I softened
| to the sheer goofness of Hackers (which offput me much
| initially).
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I love both, for similar but different reasons. Hackers
| captures the naive idea of the scene really quite well. It's
| goofiness allows the naivety to remain, past the overwrought
| characters and Hollywood's downright misunderstanding.
|
| It feels like it's accidentally great.
|
| But then again, maybe it just tickles to the surface the
| sense of wonder I had way back then.
| myself248 wrote:
| Accidentally great, yeah. If I allow myself to believe that
| the producers of _Hackers_ knew they were making a spoof of
| Hollywood hackers in general, I can sit back and enjoy it
| as a masterpiece.
|
| But at the time, that was not at all clear. And I'm still
| not actually convinced. It certainly wasn't marketed as a
| comedy; it seemed to be drinking the same drama-aid as The
| Net and other breathless wankery at the time. In which case
| it's a terrible movie that only becomes watchable as an
| exhibit of wankery.
|
| This feels like a special case of "suspension of
| disbelief".
| bink wrote:
| It's really hard to believe that anyone took "The Plague"
| seriously as a character.
| myself248 wrote:
| You haven't watched movies with my grandma.
|
| Edit to add: Now consider the age and tech-savvy of most
| lawmakers.
| nullc wrote:
| I really disliked hackers when it came out, except for
| the sound track. Never saw it again until some twentieth
| anniversary watch party, and from that distance saw it
| for what it was and found it amusing. ... I still
| wouldn't call it a great movie, but enjoyable enough or
| at least I now get why people like it.
|
| Certainly far better than The Net, as low of a bar as
| that is.
| nullify88 wrote:
| There are some great stills from that movie. In particular the
| close up of a person's face with reflections of computer text in
| glasses often sticks with me. I know Timecop also has a similar
| scene just after the time jump. I think it looks really cool.
|
| My brain is weird.
| firefax wrote:
| I always liked how they framed the gun being jammed into
| Gregor's back at the opera, the entire scene carries a certain
| tension that modern films often fail to sustain or rely on
| things like explosions or handcannons rather than a .38 and a
| well acted angry whisper that you will be quietly exiting this
| theater or your brains will be exiting your fucking skull that
| is a much more accurate depiction of what it's like to operate
| under non-official cover.
|
| Sadly, the movie really shows it's age when the "cultural
| attache" starts lecturing Robert Redford's character that "our
| countries are friends now". It's hard to suspend disbelief
| watching it nowadays.
|
| To swing the discussion back to cinematography:
|
| I'm going to avoid spoilers despite it being an older movie
| since a disturbing amount of folks in the hacker scene have not
| seen it but the later scene in the tunnel, arm extended was
| another great cinematic... _shot_ :-)
| peeters wrote:
| > Sadly, the movie really shows it's age when the "cultural
| attache" starts lecturing Robert Redford's character that
| "our countries are friends now". It's hard to suspend
| disbelief watching it nowadays
|
| But it's set in the past, when relations between the
| countries _were_ much friendlier. Do you have trouble
| suspending disbelief during fictional movies set in WWII,
| because the U.S. and Germany are now allies?
| firefax wrote:
| >But it's set in the past, when relations between the
| countries were much friendlier. Do you have trouble
| suspending disbelief during fictional movies set in WWII,
| because the U.S. and Germany are now allies?
|
| Were they?
| sgt wrote:
| Anyone noticed that streaming services start to compromise on
| quality? With Netflix it's been like that for a while. Apple TV+
| seems to be the best. I really want to get into Blu-ray now,
| looking for a decent player.
| nullify88 wrote:
| I mostly see a lot of stuttering. Either during high action
| scenes or when there's little happening at all. It's especially
| noticable on HBO / MAX at 4k DV. I assumed it was due to
| aggressive encoding.
| voxadam wrote:
| Life is great on the high seas. I've spent nearly 16 years
| "Passing the Popcorn" and couldn't be happier.
| pimeys wrote:
| Some butter with your popcorn? Here let me pass.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Question: what's the streaming budget for the big platforms?
| Can they offer 50-100 mbps? For example, a 70 gb video for a
| 2.5 hour movie would need 67 mbps to stream. Having access to
| a rip like that for a popular movie (meaning new or classic)
| is normal "on the high seas" and it has a detectable
| difference on my budget-tier setup compared to a ~20 gb rip.
| I'm wondering if streaming platforms can afford to offer
| something like that.
| russelg wrote:
| Sony Bravia Core has movies up to 80mbps.
| xienze wrote:
| Sure, they could. But given that the average consumer
| really doesn't care that much about picture quality (DVD
| _still_ outsells Blu-ray for example), why would they
| bother? Increased storage and bandwidth costs, for what
| exactly? To cater to the small group of consumers that have
| good enough hardware (and eyes) to distinguish/care about
| 20Mb versus 100Mb? Those people are probably buying
| physical media anyway.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Is it self-evident to you that that's not cost-
| prohibitive with what people pay today?
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Capitalism doesn't care whether it's cost-prohibitive.
|
| It needs to make extra money or lose money in order to
| affect change.
| sgt wrote:
| How is the life on the private tracking seas? I mean, I'm
| asking for a friend.
| sixothree wrote:
| I would describe Disney as barely 720p when used in any web
| browser.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Seems to vary between shows. Been watching Andor on a good
| system (LG OLED 4K) and it's spectacular. No compression
| artifacts or splotchy dark areas.
| GCUMstlyHarmls wrote:
| That might be a DRM thing, I know some streamers will only
| send 720 to Linux x Browser combos.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Yeah. I see overcompression on a lot of shows. Dark scenes and
| star fields tend to make it obvious. Three Body Problem was the
| worst -- I imagine it would have been consistently visually
| spectacular if they hadn't compressed it to shit. I've seen it
| on Apple TV too though-- e.g. really visible on Silo title
| screens. Love, Death and Robots on Netflix quality was great.
| dmos62 wrote:
| In my experience, HDR format makes the most difference.
| There's a dramatic difference between HDR10 and DV.
| sgt wrote:
| And sometimes you just hear it. They compromise on
| everything, and a lot of people won't complain if the audio
| quality is low.
| dylan604 wrote:
| We actually had the opposite idea, where we'd steal a few
| kbps from the video to increase the audio. If you hear
| poorly compressed audio, the video feels bad too. Hearing
| clean audio made the video feel better. However, this was
| way back in the early days where 700kbps total bitrate were
| on the high end pre-AAC
| myself248 wrote:
| Disney's Coco did it for me. There were so many scenes with
| so much visual detail, streaming compression absolutely
| wrecked it. I've seen it on Blu-ray since and it's an
| entirely different experience.
|
| How they allowed the release to streaming without manually
| adjusting the compression for those scenes, I don't
| understand, but someone was slacking.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| They all give you "4k", but ATV+ has by far the best bit rate.
| hudo wrote:
| Netflix is "4K Ultra HD: Up to 7 GB per hour". Blu ray is 25GB
| per side, so max 50GB for 2 layers. Typical movies are 35-50GB.
| So, BR, and think even DVD still looks much better than any
| streaming service!
| criddell wrote:
| Sony's streaming service is 80 Mbps or 36 GB per hour.
|
| We're going to have to disagree about DVDs though. They look
| awful on modern (big) televisions.
| alias_neo wrote:
| > Blu ray is 25GB per side, so max 50GB for 2 layers
|
| Are pressed Blu-Rays limited compared to writeable ones?
|
| I have 100GB BDXL blanks (single-sided) I use as one of the
| archives for my family photos/videos.
|
| Couldn't a film BluRay also be 100GB on a single side?
| voxadam wrote:
| Plenty of movies have been released on BD100.
|
| Very out of date list: https://forum.blu-
| ray.com/showthread.php?t=294596
|
| On a site that I am a member of there are nearly 1300 BD100
| rips available.
| sgt wrote:
| A lot more practical than having to deal with physical
| media. I'd even pay them for it, to have that kind of
| premium access.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Interesting. I was looking back at my BluRay collection
| (physical) the other day, looking for a UHD movie to test
| with, and in my memory, all BDs with UHD, but to my
| surprise, very few of them were actually UHD, with most
| just being HD (1080p). I doubt there's in in my
| collection that are BD100; could I even play them?
| Currently using a PS5 as my BD player, and PS4 and PS3
| before that.
| fredoralive wrote:
| A PS5 can play UHD Blu-Ray, PS3 and PS4 (even the Pro)
| can't.
|
| UHD discs are fairly noticeable at a distance as they
| usually use black disc cases instead of blue. They're
| somewhat niche (if Blu-ray wasn't already niche) and
| often sell at a premium, so I suspect unless you've been
| seeking them out you won't have them barring the odd
| multi format bundle.
| fredoralive wrote:
| 100GB discs won't work on standard Blu-Ray players, the
| basic standard predates BDXL discs. Ultra HD 4K player can
| play them.
| sgt wrote:
| And Netflix HD (1080) is hardly what one would expect. It may
| be technically 1080p but the bit rate is often quite low.
| Most people don't notice or care.
| stuaxo wrote:
| "The dialog is clear, sharp, stable, and easy to follow." if we
| didn't already know it was an older film this would be the thing
| that nailed it.
| bbarnett wrote:
| That, and its cousin the shaky cam.
|
| "Let's make things difficult to see and hear. That makes for
| better cinema!"
|
| Jackie Chan once discussed action scenes in US movies versus
| his movies. Western films: cut before the punch lands, maybe
| cut a few more times. Hong Kong moves: just show the action in
| one scene.
| nullify88 wrote:
| A great example of this is Hard Boiled 1992, the Hospital
| Shootout.
|
| I think audiences are beginning to appreciate continuous
| scenes and are becoming more frequent in western films. The
| most recent one I can think of is John Wick 4, when it goes
| top down.
|
| Some of the recent Michael Bay movies are so aggressive when
| it comes to cuts, the average shot length must be 2 or 3
| seconds.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Michael Bay are basically not worth watching for me. Things
| move around the screen too fast to know what's going on.
| The Transformers movies are especially bad due to it
| because it can be hard to tell which robots are on which
| side; and , if you're bouncing all over the screen so you
| never get a chance to focus on one, it becomes impossible.
| myself248 wrote:
| I once sat in on a TV production class, early in the
| schoolyear before my schedule got sorted out and it turned
| out I couldn't take it. So I was in it for one day.
|
| But the teacher had the incoming students do a very simple
| exercise: He turned on some broadcast TV, and told us all
| to bang our fists on our desks every time there was a scene
| cut.
|
| Then he changed the channel a few times. Soap opera.
| Newscast. PBS. Cartoons. Movie. Commercial break.
|
| Our hands were sore by the end of it, but it stuck with me
| -- every time I watch older or foreign cinema, I am
| cognizant of how much longer the shots are.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Modern live music edits are like this as well. When the
| guitarist is rocking a solo, I don't want to see the back
| up singers or the lead singer in rapid fire edits. I want
| to see the guitarist.
|
| The top down John Wick scene had me flabbergasted in the
| theater. The choreography, the camera tracking, the flame
| thrower like shells from the shotgun all just made for one
| incredible scene that as you say definitely goes against
| modern editorial styles.
| nullify88 wrote:
| It's a beautiful scene, and I had to buy Hong Kong
| Massacre after I read it was an inspiration for that
| scene. Its got some good beats to shoot to.
| rjmunro wrote:
| Reminds me of Adolescence on Netflix - 4 episodes, each
| nearly an hour, with no cuts.
| ripe wrote:
| > Some of the recent Michael Bay movies are so aggressive
| when it comes to cuts
|
| An excellent episode of Every Frame A Painting is "Michael
| Bay --- What is Bayhem?" It explains in detail in what way
| those particular movies are poorly made.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2THVvshvq0Q
| xattt wrote:
| Gasland was unwatchable for me.
| pragmatick wrote:
| What's the relevance of this?
| mortarion wrote:
| The best movie about physical pentesting and grayhat hacking in
| general.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It was the previous generation's "Mr. Robot"
| sgt wrote:
| In a movie format, like they used to. Not a series that
| keeps on going... seemingly never ending.
| bink wrote:
| And no real questions about the reliability of the
| narrator.
| somat wrote:
| That first phone trunk scene in particular stands out as one
| of the finest hacking scenes in cinema.
| duxup wrote:
| Sneakers is a popular show with folks interested in tech.
|
| If you haven't seen it I think it is worth a try. Great cast,
| from that exciting age of computers when everything felt like
| it was just on the edge of possible.
|
| Even for folks not of that time, the cast and script are so
| good it's worth a watch.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| hacker movie news on hacker news. seems pretty straight-
| forward...
| Minor49er wrote:
| It appears to be a subtle announcement that the film has been
| restored and will be rereleased on Blu-Ray soon
| Cyphase wrote:
| When I was a kid we had a VHS recording of Sneakers, with the
| beginning of an episode of Letterman at the end. I remember my
| mom liking it. Fond memories. I need to watch it again.
|
| A couple of scenes: Carl: We've got customers.
| Martin: Shoes? Carl: Expensive. Martin: *fixes
| tie* Look busy, guys.
|
| And another: *after apparently inconveniencing
| Liz, the group is walking out* Cosmo: We'll call you a
| cab. Liz: "Thank you. This is my last computer date."
| *Cosmo stops walking, falling behind* Cosmo: "Wait."
| *the group stops and turns* Cosmo: "A computer matched
| her with him? I don't think so." *Liz's face falls as
| Cosmo's henchman start slowly walking up behind her.*
| *dramatic music as we cut and zoom in to Cosmo's face*
| Cosmo: "Marty." *Cosmo turns and runs toward his office*
| sbarre wrote:
| I saw Sneakers when it first came out in theatres and at the
| time I was in high school and working part-time in a shoe
| store..
|
| I had learned from the store owner that you can tell so much
| from someone's shoes, often more than from their clothes.
|
| Combined with that line in this very formative movie (for me),
| I still to this day can't help but check someone's shoes when I
| first meet them.
| Ntrails wrote:
| > you can tell so much from someone's shoes
|
| You can make educated guesses based on apparel of all sorts -
| but you are always _guessing_.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Yes but many times, these can be quite valuable inferences.
|
| Shoes are indeed a valuable source of information about a
| person. I knew at least one BH case manager who really paid
| attention to them.
|
| Shoes are expensive, very durable, and typically one of
| those items that people have only a few pairs of. So while
| someone can easily change their outfit to match a
| situation, place, or mood for the day, they may be less
| likely to change their shoes to match more than a basic
| purpose.
|
| And shoes tend to accumulate evidence of where someone's
| been. Are they muddy, dusty, spit-polished?
|
| Personally, I own about five pair of shoes. I have a pair
| of Oxford dress shoes, a very nice pair of white New
| Balance with hook-and-loop, some hiking boots I picked up
| at JC Penney, and a few others. My clothing, on the other
| hand, is mostly Adidas and Columbia and some tee shirts,
| but I don't own any Adidas or Columbia shoes. So you can
| tell a lot about me, no matter what I'm wearing, by
| studying my shoes for a while.
|
| I met another BH professional who said he owned 52 pairs of
| Crocs. He said that he'd kicked an addiction habit, but it
| seems he traded something unhealthy for perhaps a less-
| detrimental dependence on collecting shoes. To each his
| own, I suppose, and surely a lot of information could be
| gleaned about this fellow if you paid attention to which
| pair of Crocs he'd selected for the day.
| piker wrote:
| BH professional?
| lsaferite wrote:
| My best guess is Behavioral Health
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Shoes are expensive, very durable, and typically one of
| those items that people have only a few pairs of.
|
| Maybe that used to be true, but modern shoes while
| expensive are not very durable, and most people have
| several pairs today.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Expensive shoes are still a good indicator of social
| status.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Other way around. The clothes you wear are a method of
| communication you're actively engaging in whether you're
| aware of it or not. This is a really _useful_ thing to be
| aware of, since it lets you craft narratives in other
| people 's heads.
| heyflyguy wrote:
| I still remember that goofy looking run, haha
| sgt wrote:
| Dude, your mom just wanted to see Robert Redford. The guy was a
| chick magnet.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| > _" A computer matched her with him? I don't think so."_
|
| When I first watched this movie, I felt like this was a weak
| moment in the film. "Computer dating" at the time was laughably
| bad, so seeing a character regard it as infallible ruined the
| immersion.
|
| With age and experience, I now see that some people just throw
| themselves behind certain technologies, and fail to find flaw.
| So maybe this character was just a misguided computer dating
| evangelist, blind to the technology's failings.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Keep in mind the script was from a top-shelf writer who
| worked on it for ages. It's established earlier in the film
| that the crew think it's completely plausible a computer
| dating service would set the two of them up.
|
| "...Fellas. Fellas, look at this man's trash. He's not
| looking for "buff." The man who folded this tube of
| Crest...is looking for someone...meticulous. Refined. _Anal_.
| ...What? "
|
| I think Cosmo's comment - note he's extremely vain, how he
| dresses, his office is practically a modern art gallery, he's
| got the organization's Cray sitting on display, etc - just
| further shows how vain he is, thinking someone as attractive
| as Liz couldn't possibly be a good match for a nerd like
| Werner, when it's established that they're actually quite
| alike/compatible.
|
| One could imagine that Liz also obeys all speed limits and
| comes to complete stops at every stop sign...
| Karellen wrote:
| Marty: Organised crime? Cosmo: Trust me, it ain't that
| organised!
| cwe wrote:
| I've always hated the thing about computer dating. Why would
| that have been so unreasonable?
| Cyphase wrote:
| A couple of potential answers:
|
| * It's not about computers and them (Liz and Werner). It's
| about Cosmo.
|
| * Computer dating is about algorithms and pattern matching.
| Cosmo didn't have any suspicion of Liz and Werner going on a
| date; even if he saw a type-mismatch, humans are complex and
| multi-faceted. But when he learned a computer program
| ostensibly made the match, his alarm bells went off.
| losthobbies wrote:
| I love this movie so much. I know there are parts that don't make
| sense but everyone in it is excellent and it's very quotable.
|
| "Practice, Practice, Practice" "You...won't know...who to trust"
| "No more secrets"
|
| The soundtrack is great too.
| duxup wrote:
| The parts of the soundtrack are on one of my coding playlists.
| croes wrote:
| Best keypad hacking tutorial
| polycaster wrote:
| I'm sorry, but could someone please elaborate on the significance
| of this post?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Sneakers is a very popular movie in the HN community. It's a
| great movie, well written, well cast, well acted, suspenseful,
| interesting, funny.
|
| It beautifully captures the golden age.
| happycube wrote:
| BTW the writers also previously wrote WarGames, and you can
| see a lot of the same fingerprints...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Hacker culture.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Awesome, now do one for the Die Hard series, particularly Live
| Free or Die Hard.
|
| I know the first Die Hard is 4k, but the others are not.
| meifun wrote:
| This movie helped me:
|
| 1. Relate to a blind student in our school when they could hear
| things differently than the rest of us.
|
| 2. Realize that social engineering is thing and I tried to
| practice it in high school to gain access to computer rooms where
| the "fancy" computers were.
|
| 3. Realize that a government can steal or in general can be
| sneaky/secretive.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Realize that social engineering is thing and I tried to
| practice it in high school to gain access to computer rooms
| where the "fancy" computers were._
|
| We realized that door bolts are easy to manually jimmy if not
| precision-fit.
|
| Thankfully, our computer lab overseer was a hacker at heart,
| congratulated us, and got the door fixed.
|
| I miss the 90s.
| meifun wrote:
| Agreed. I talked my way into the server room several times by
| different night janitors at my old high school back in 1996.
| I told them I was there to do maintenance and it wasn't
| entirely untrue but I was there for running wires and setting
| up new Macs as part of my class load.
| imacomputertoo wrote:
| I saw this movie as a kid when it came out on vhs. it blew me
| away! I loved the blind guy. He was amazing. That part where he
| listens to the sounds on the road to determine where they took
| Robert Redford. You're right, it made blind people cool.
| xattt wrote:
| Re: negative re-masters
|
| I can't help but notice that a number of older and very prominent
| shows on streaming services are clearly ripped from a video
| cassette.
|
| For example, the older Simpsons episodes on Disney Plus. Some of
| the episodes have very prominent dot crawl which is unacceptable
| for a digital format that you pay for.
|
| I also can't imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the
| show was composited to video tape. Were studios really that
| reckless with their properties?
| sgt wrote:
| Speaking of, I am desperately trying to get hold of Then Came
| Bronson that is of reasonable quality. Great and well known TV-
| series that came out in 1969. It's simply impossible to get a
| good rip though.
|
| The only copy that exists (as far as I know) came from a VHS
| recording of a TV-channel in the 1980s. But surely the film
| rolls still exist?
| bayindirh wrote:
| > But surely the film rolls still exist?
|
| I just watched a video revealing that many multichannel
| masters of big artists have gone up in flames in a big
| warehouse fire in 2008 [0] [1], and a comment told that a
| film company burnt down their silent film archive to get
| insurance money.
|
| So, I don't bet.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9eXk4o35UI
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-
| fire-m...
| MrRadar wrote:
| A while ago I found a few episodes of a 1950s crime
| drama/noir series called M Squad (the M is for "murder") on
| Youtube. I don't recall exactly how but probably because
| someone mentioned it was a direct inspiration for short-lived
| Police Squad series and later the Naked Gun films.
|
| Anyways, I went to see if there was an official DVD release
| of it, and there was but several of the episodes were sourced
| from off-air TV recordings from reruns in the 1980s because
| those were the only copies the distributor could find! They
| were originally planning to release the set without them but
| asked fans if they could source copies which is how they
| ended up with those recordings. I didn't end up purchasing it
| because even the episodes where they had a better quality
| source weren't mastered particularly well to the point where
| several reviews said they were borderline unwatchable due to
| the image getting crushed into murky darkness thanks to the
| noir lighting and DVD MPEG-2 compression.
| esafak wrote:
| I recall reading that they assumed TV shows did not have as
| much long-term value as films.
| itisit wrote:
| > Were studios really that reckless with their properties?
|
| The first two seasons of Monty Python's Flying Circus were
| almost erased because the BBC wanted to reuse the broadcast
| tapes. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.cracked.com/article_42008_monty-pythons-
| flying-c...
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Were studios really that reckless with their properties?
|
| Some were. Once the film made its money in the theaters it was
| then put in a vault and forgotten about. The theaters were
| supposed to return the release prints but sometimes the
| projectionist would "lose" them. The studio vault those films
| sat in sometimes catch fire or water leaks in. If the originals
| are destroyed then hopefully a few release prints are floating
| around in the hands of theaters, individuals (where those lost
| prints end up), or television stations. If not, then its gone
| forever.
| MrRadar wrote:
| It doesn't even take destruction of the property to keep
| media locked up forever, sometimes even just IP rights. For
| example original Brave Little Toaster film has never seen an
| official release in HD because it was produced as a joint
| venture and nobody has (apparently) been willing or able to
| hammer out a deal between the various rights holders for a
| new home video or streaming release.
|
| In 2023 a 4K scan of a theatrical print was uploaded to
| Youtube and despite the slightly rough state of the print it
| remains the best quality you can view the film today. There's
| even a pinned comment under the video from the original
| director thanking the person who uploaded it to Youtube for
| preserving their film!
| bravoetch wrote:
| There are several Star Wars film projects that are collecting
| old film print, negatives, laser disc, etc and using that to
| remake the original releases. Gemini is very good at listing
| off all these projects, if you're interested.
| gnomesteel wrote:
| Shows like The Simpsons that were only made for broadcast never
| had a film negative. It was likely mastered to analog tape.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| They're solidly pre-digital. Somewhere, the individual frames
| were drawn/painted on cel, were they not? In principle,
| remastering should still be possible.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Assuming the cels weren't lost or destroyed. Or auctioned
| off to fans/collectors, as was often done:
| https://www.animationconnection.com/original-production-
| cels
|
| In fact there's an episode of the Simpson's where Bart buys
| an Itchy & Scratchy animation cel and is disappointed when
| it's just a segment of Itchy's arm (or something like
| that).
|
| EDIT: https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Itchy_%26_Scratchy_anim
| ation_c...
|
| The cel had Scratchy's arm, and it was in the episode "Lady
| Bouvier's Lover" (S05 E21).
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Guilty as charged! This brings back a memory from around
| 1980.
|
| I ordered an animation cel from Original Animation Art
| (Starshine Group).
|
| You had to mail them a check and a description of what
| you were looking for, and hope for the best.
|
| The first one they sent me was a little bit better than
| Scratchy's arm, but not by much. I returned it and asked
| for something with the entire character in it.
|
| They sent Daffy Duck nearly off the edge of the frame
| with a nasty scowl. Not fun to look at.
|
| For the third try, I asked if I could please have
| something with the character smiling and in the center of
| the frame. And they sent a wonderful cel of Porky Pig
| from A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur's Court!
|
| It looks very much like this one, but only Porky and not
| the background:
|
| https://www.comic-mint.com/chuck-jones/a-connecticut-
| rabbit-...
|
| That cel must have been from the same scene as mine, as
| some elements of it are identical, particularly his right
| hand holding the torch.
|
| Many years later I bought the DVD of this movie, stepped
| through it and found the exact frame with my cel. Too
| cool!
| gnomesteel wrote:
| I shouldn't have said never had a film negative. They
| likely scanned hand-drawn cells to film, then transferred
| that to tape. At the time they likely saw the NTSC tape as
| the master.
| rbanffy wrote:
| The same way that today we rescan originals at 4 or 8K is
| also telling we aren't thinking about 16K or 32K with 30
| bits per hyperspectral channel.
|
| Even though you need really great quality originals to
| make it work.
| neckro23 wrote:
| It would take a ton of work, especially for a show as long-
| running as The Simpsons. The original materials probably
| aren't even available anymore.
|
| I _believe_ the reason they were able to remaster lots of
| old Japanese anime OVAs in HD is because the animation was
| recorded to film first. I wouldn 't be surprised if the
| Simpsons just used videotape instead.
| al_borland wrote:
| I believe Technology Connections on YouTube did a video on film
| vs video where he touched on this. Film was much more
| expensive, and people weren't always thinking about remasters
| 30 years later. If something was being shot just to air on TV,
| sometimes VHS was all they did.
| etempleton wrote:
| Film begins degrading immediately even if well stored.
| Television was seen as largely disposable and was treated as
| such.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The X-Files went the opposite way: The streaming release was
| remastered from higher quality originals that had been prepared
| ahead of time for the eventual arrival of higher resolution TV.
|
| I'm not surprised that some shows were never archived at higher
| quality, though. The entertainment industry has a lot of people
| who just want to get their job done and go home, just like any
| other industry. Many classic series were not instant classics,
| they were shoestring operations trying to get a product out the
| door on too little budget. Getting anything across the finish
| line was the objective, not archiving the highest quality for
| future generations.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > The entertainment industry has a lot of people who just
| want to get their job done and go home, just like any other
| industry.
|
| I think another reason, in addition to yours, is that the
| entertainment industry sees their products are disposable, or
| _want_ them to be disposable. This way they can pull the
| drain plug from the pool, so they can pump in new content
| into it. Otherwise, listening same good old songs will
| inevitably eat into profitability of the new releases,
| because you can watch /listen for so long in a given time.
|
| BTW, I don't share the same views with "the entertainment
| industry". You can't get the good old albums from my cold,
| dead hands.
| anjel wrote:
| Residuals as quite lucrative potenial income stream argue
| to the contrary.
| happycube wrote:
| That made me think of Law and Order (since I remember
| reading that day players want to get on those shows for
| the residuals), and I saw a relatively early episode of
| SVU on a rerun that looked freshly shot.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I work in gaming and this is very much the same attitude,
| though it is starting to change: with things like Xbox Game
| Pass, there are now theoretically revenues to be skimmed
| from older releases via subscription revenues, so there is
| at least lip service paid to proper archiving of working
| files and source code. It's still tough to make the case
| not to phone home or rely on publisher-hosted services.
| kranke155 wrote:
| The new X files HD/4K version looks preposterous! Ridiculous!
| I've been watching them recently and I was blown away by how
| good they were.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| I know most productions now run so tight they rent their
| stuff, so once the edit is done and shipped most of the raw
| footage is all purged. No outtakes or extra footage exist.
| Actors prefer this for their image, studios will not pay to
| store any of it, but what a loss.
| rbanffy wrote:
| A case for having a couple LTO-9 drives on hand.
| rbanffy wrote:
| We knew HD TV was coming since the days of the first analog
| demos (1125i, IIRC). It's also a matter of budget to shoot in
| high quality film, shoot widescreen, and get any SFX/VFX at
| least recomposed. Entire series of Dr Who were lost to
| originals being reused.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you look close at the early silent movies: the campfires are
| burning the film from even older movies that are thus
| completely lost.
| bredren wrote:
| Sometimes it happens by accident. See the 2008 Universal
| Studios fire, which destroyed music and film masters:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire
| bayindirh wrote:
| ...and is covered up for years.
| ornornor wrote:
| Same for older family guy episodes also on Disney +... maybe
| it's a Disney + thing where they can't be bothered?
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > I also can't imagine the film masters were trashed, or that
| the show was composited to video tape.
|
| Happens more than you'd think (in the past, at least - it's
| obviously much easier now with digital storage.) Couple of
| examples I remember off the top of my head:
|
| re: Adrian Maben making a Director's Cut DVD of "Live In
| Pompeii"[0]
|
| "While searching in the French and English film laboratories
| for the unused negative we learnt of a disaster. On the
| initiative of the French Production Company, MHF Productions,
| the 548 cans of 35mm negative and prints of the rushes had been
| stored at the Archives du Film du Bois d'Arcy outside Paris.
| One of the employees, a certain Monsieur Schmidt, "le
| Conservateur," unfortunately decided that he wanted to make
| extra storage space on his shelves for more recent films and
| that the Floyd footage was without interest or value. The 548
| cans of negative and the prints of the Pink Floyd unused rushes
| and outtakes were incinerated."
|
| re: Dr Who missing episodes[1]
|
| "Further erasing of Doctor Who master videotapes by the
| Engineering Department continued into the 1970s. Eventually,
| every master videotape of the programme's first 253 episodes
| (1963-69) was destroyed or wiped. The final 1960s master tapes
| to be erased were those for the 1968 serial Fury from the Deep,
| in August 1974."
|
| [0] https://www.brain-damage.co.uk/other-related-
| interviews/adri...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Sometimes accidents happen for things
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire
| toyg wrote:
| _> can't imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the
| show was composited to video tape_
|
| The first few seasons were meant to be just a segment inside a
| sketch-based tv show (i.e. some of the most disposable, worst-
| aging, least-resyndicated material that tv studios will ever
| produce) and the budget was very small.
| wk_end wrote:
| Nothing that anyone's watching on Disney+ was from The Tracy
| Ullman Show. And by the second or third season of the show
| proper it was already a bona fide cultural phenomenon, so one
| would hope (hah) Fox might've been a bit forward thinking by
| then. Alas.
| happycube wrote:
| Yup, one would think the Simpsons would have been fully HD
| remastered by now.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| What you're referring to came before "the first few seasons".
| Season 1 and onward are the standalone TV show, spun off from
| the Tracey Ullman Show shorts.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I also can't imagine the film masters were trashed, or that
| the show was composited to video tape.
|
| So many shows very much were composited to analog video tape. I
| personally worked on edit sessions where multiple film-to-tape
| transfers were composited to 1" then BetacamSP then digital
| formats like DigiBeta and everything that followed. I get it is
| hard to grok for eople without direct experience only ever
| knowing digital comping with modern software packages without
| ever hitting tape. But us ol'timers remember the pain
|
| > Were studios really that reckless with their properties?
|
| yes. while it might not have been done out of malice, but just
| lack of future thinking. for a studio making the first season
| of an animated title, they might not have even considered their
| show would be so successful. also, there's no way that they
| could have predicted HD=>4K and digital streaming. they are
| only human and just trying to stay on schedule with barely
| enough time to meet deadlines. meeting air date deadlines are
| much more strict than whatever dot release your PM is pushing
| for in whatever software product you might be working.
| jboggan wrote:
| This is spot on. I had a friend working on early streaming
| license deals, and a typical pattern was getting the
| streaming rights to a show and then going on a lengthy
| adventure to find a higher quality master, if any existed. If
| you see bad transfers or old SD resolution in a digital
| format I want you to know that someone tried but the
| originals were in fact lost.
| dylan604 wrote:
| In the early days of streaming, content owners only had
| what they had sitting on the shelves. Most of those were SD
| masters that were formatted for broadcast. In the US, that
| meant 30i sources. Most TV was shot on 24p film,
| transferred to 30i in a telecine, edited without any regard
| to that film cadence, and that was that. The
| opening/closing songs were typically cut from that same
| footage, and doing an inverse telecine on that content was
| a nightmare. Everyone of us that dealt with that to supply
| the early days of streaming content had "so much fun".
|
| Content owners suddenly had a vested interest in making
| their content look better, and now there's a way to get
| compensated to have better sources made to provide to those
| streaming platforms. To find the original film from old SD
| TV shows would be very rare. Feature films have been
| scanned from negative many many times. I was part of
| scanning a studio's entire library to HD. They've since
| gone back and scanned (or are scanning) again for 4k. Each
| time the scan is done, money is spent (and it's not cheap).
|
| Now, the streaming platforms have the clout to refuse
| "subpar" sources now, and can demand that these
| restorations are the preferred source
| doublerabbit wrote:
| O/T: I've discovered that the animation studio I had a gig
| for has shut it's doors recently to liquidation.
|
| They had a killer render archival server with archives from
| 2000-onwards show casing what the studio had studio made.
| Cartoons, Movies; a collection of praised possessions.
|
| It pains me to think that the studio has handed this over to
| the liquidators only for it to be shredded and now how many
| OG copies have now been destroyed.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'd assume the hard drives live now in someone's basement.
| A lot of people save things like that from destruction.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just because you buy content on the auction block does
| not mean you own the rights to release that content.
| You've only purchased the physical media, not the rights.
| I know someone that has been down that very road after
| purchasing stuff from an auction after the death of a
| studio.
| rbanffy wrote:
| They might be unable to release it, but they can still
| preserve it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| for what purpose? waiting for the copyright to expire,
| and then hope to cash in on it in the public domain?
|
| if the content is unreleased, there's other
| complications. you'd then be using the likeness of any
| talent involved whether that's their voice performance
| for animated content or for live action their full
| person. you'll be susceptible to those issues for
| releasing it.
| RajT88 wrote:
| For sure, Matt Groening and co. had no idea how much of a
| phenomenon The Simpsons was going to be early on.
| coreyo wrote:
| amusing that the studios do all this work in contracts to
| make sure they have rights as long as they possibly can and
| then they forget to take care of the physical media
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| They're at their best when they're reckless... it gets so much
| worse. There was a 4th tv network in the 1950s that died quite
| soon, and they had a Jackie Gleason show of their own that is
| now lost to time. At some point in the early 1960s, they had a
| board meeting to discuss what to do with the accumulation of
| taped archives (quadruplex I guess?), and the lawyer spoke up
| "I'll take care of it". He loaded them up into his car that
| weekend and dumped them in the river.
|
| If they were only careless, one might be relieved that there
| was no intention of being so destructive. Often though, they're
| criminally negligent or malevolent. And that was back when
| things were easy... now days they have to contend with digital
| materials that need a petabyte array.
| rbanffy wrote:
| We might need to build faster than light ships and great
| radio telescopes to get those broadcasts recorded.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Tell me you haven't worked in entertainment without actually...
|
| My experience in entertainment has given me the following
| perspective: _be happy anything gets made_. The entire industry
| is so awash in drugs, egos, and money that pushing ANYTHING out
| the door is an accomplishment.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Funny some of the best "home theater" experiences I have lately
| are VHS tapes which, when decoded by something Dolby Pro Logic
| compatible, have a great 5.1 soundtrack.
|
| Contrast that to DVD-era 5.1 soundtracks which are usually
| nerfed because they are afraid you'll play them on a 2 channel
| system or Blu Ray-era 5.1 soundtracks which are nominally 7.1
| or 9.1 but are illegible on any sound system whatsoever because
| modern movies don't care if you can understand what the actors
| say. You're going to watch with the subtitles on anyway. But
| heck, even downmarket platforms like Tubi are crammed with
| subtitled Italian crime dramas and subprime anime, so every
| cloud has a silver lining.
| hylaride wrote:
| Over the years I've met several people that worked in the
| cartoon industry because where I live (Toronto) used to be an
| outsourcing market for many 1980s/1990s cartoons.
|
| The vast majority of the people that commissioned them,
| including very successful series, wanted it done as fast as
| possible to get it to TV ASAP. Often they had toys lines up for
| Xmas that needed to be synced up with schedules. I know people
| that had worked on some very famous cartoons, including the
| 1980s Ninja Turtles, Care Bears, etc and the studios
| commissioning them were very willing to take errors,
| substandard, and otherwise less than ideal work to get it to
| market on time (much to the frustration of the artists who were
| being treated like factory line workers). They did say the
| creators of Ren and Stimpy were fantastic to work for and they
| had all sorts of fun Easter eggs added.
|
| Anyways, it does not surprise me that a lot of the work from
| this era was not taken care of, especially some of the more
| forgettable episodes of popular shows. A lot of the early
| licensed work on Netflix was obviously copied from DVD/Blue
| Rays at the time, too. It can be a lot of work to properly deal
| with aspect ratios, colour correction, de-interlacing, as well
| as upscaling the very low analog resolutions.
|
| Maybe AI can get good enough to fix it now, though.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Does it need to be fixed though? If children got on with it
| then, why cannot we now?
| happycube wrote:
| Because children watched them on 13"-25" tube TV's that
| were _designed_ to make those imperfections look acceptable
| (for the time), that a modern display blows up to
| proportions never seen during production even with the best
| studio displays of the era.
|
| semi-related: I'm visiting my parents with a Sony OLED, and
| the frame interpolation made parts of Monty Python and the
| Holy Grail look like it was shot on an HD video camera.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| > I also can't imagine the film masters were trashed, or that
| the show was composited to video tape.
|
| I obviously can't speak for a level of acclaim something like
| The Simpsons, but more broadly speaking: creating something is
| fun but being sentimental and treating projects as precious is
| something that is increasingly burdensome with each day that
| passes.
|
| Let's say I do the following:
|
| 1) I take a photograph of a flower
|
| 2) I remove dust spots, adjust saturation and a few other
| settings in post-production
|
| 3) I crop and resize it
|
| With each step, copies of the image are made.
|
| After that, I export to several file types.
|
| Then consider that one photo shoot might have 15 photos of that
| same subject alone, with minor or small "in camera" settings
| changed. Then add different angles + in camera setting changes.
| Then add all of the _other_ subjects I shot that day.
|
| Should I keep everything from every change? Would anyone truly,
| _genuinely_ care about seeing some...particularly unremarkable
| image of a flower captured by a complete "nobody"? I'm not
| Ansel Adams after all. Most people probably don't even care
| about the finished product. It feels arrogant to presume that
| anyone would be that into my work. The whole idea of having a
| fan base just feels...preposterous. I might be okay, or even
| good at creating some specific sort of thing, but retaining
| high resolution, originals is just kind of insane. Unless
| you've got some kind of public validation by way of taking in
| millions and millions of dollars, or you're a household name
| with a team of people assisting you, it just feels almost
| humiliating to think that anybody would be clamoring to see
| your work decades later.
|
| Maybe other people who do creative things feel differently. I
| just tend to assume that even with something as time intensive
| as animation, in the heat of the moment, someone like Matt
| Groening thought that people probably wouldn't remember The
| Simpsons decades afterward. There's a kind of secret hope in
| creation, in hoping that maybe others will enjoy it, but it
| feels pompous to entertain the notion that you should treat it
| like some kind of artifact.
|
| To put it in developer terms, suppose that someone would be
| interested in combing through the archives of our GitHub repos
| for some random side-project we worked on 20 years earlier.
| "Wow! Version 0.2.44! This was _before_ he took out all of
| those crazy comments talking about the famous bug. It 's so
| _cool_ to be able to see this code in its original state! " It
| just doesn't happen. Maybe some other professionally-minded
| person glances at some iteration because they are trying to
| discern why or how you did some specific thing, but it's not
| like we expect our software to be _beloved_ the way someone
| might think of a world-renowned film. It 'd be amazingly
| gratifying, but what are the chances?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for
|
| > Were studios really that reckless with their properties?
|
| These corporations could not care less, it's just money to
| them. Streaming services will take your money and ship you
| "high definition" nonsense that's so horribly compressed it has
| artifacts in 90% black frames.
|
| If you want quality, you need to find the obsessives out there
| who will not be satisfied unless they have the absolute best
| version of everything. These are the people who will track down
| and scan the negatives the company left lying around to rot
| using equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars.
|
| https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/
|
| These people really put these billion dollar corporations to
| shame.
| owlninja wrote:
| Plenty of good Sneakers comments, but I was also excited to learn
| from this article that Uncle Buck has also recently gotten the
| same treatment!
|
| https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Uncle-Buck-4K-Blu-ray/342214/...
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Also "Live At Pompeii"[0] (although to my disappointment, it's
| the cinema version with the DSOTM studio clips - my original
| experience was the Laserdisc and VHS versions which omitted
| those because IMO they're not interesting and just get in the
| way. I'd probably watch "Pink Floyd: DSOTM: BTS" as a
| standalone thing but it has no place, for me, in "Live At
| Pompeii".)
|
| [0] https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/pink-floyd-at-pompeii-
| mc...
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I listen / watch Live At Pompeii every now and then. My son
| used to enjoy it when he was between four and ten-ish.
|
| Those deep bass parts of Echoes are magic, when the camera is
| panning past the speaker stacks.
| dymax78 wrote:
| The newly released blu-ray includes both the 85-minute and
| 60-minute cuts.
| nailer wrote:
| Sneakers could absolutely be remade with the box being a quantum
| computer. 'No more secrets' being breaking all the pre-quantum
| encryption.
| api wrote:
| I wouldn't fully remake it. It's a classic. Just watch it with
| that explanation in mind. It makes it more plausible.
|
| Maybe what the mathematician did was crack a gigantic
| outstanding problem in scaling quantum computers that allowed
| e.g. extraordinarily effective quantum noise reduction at
| scale.
| nailer wrote:
| I do the same thing with Prometheus - I watch the Weyland TED
| Talk before the film and view the film as a man that
| considers himself a god trying to meet god.
| api wrote:
| That movie was so weird. It had flashes of brilliance but
| also a really dumb "idiot ball" plot in a lot of ways.
| Astronauts would never be as stupid as they're depicted in
| that film, things like "oh gee I think I'll take my helmet
| off around all this potential biohazard."
|
| It also doesn't really work in the Alien universe at all.
| It would have been much better had it been set in an
| entirely different 'verse, maybe even its own things.
|
| IMHO the Alien canon should be: Alien, Alien Romulus, and
| Aliens, in that order (since Romulus is in fact supposed to
| occur between those other two in-world). Maybe the sequel
| to Romulus (and Aliens) could be an updated adaptation of
| the William Gibson script that begins when Rain reaches the
| "non-Weyland colony" (which would kinda fit with Gibson's
| script).
|
| My opinion on Interstellar is similar. It had brilliant
| moments (and visuals!) but overall I didn't like it. I
| couldn't get past things like: okay, so we are in a kind of
| semi post-collapse world apparently run by milquetoast
| descendants of the Heritage Foundation. Where exactly did
| they get a starship? Did they just have, like, a warp drive
| sitting around up on concrete blocks in someone's lawn?
| What? Also they had to lift off from Earth with chemical
| rockets, but somehow they're able to lift off from much
| larger planets later without thinking about delta-V budget
| at all. Sorry but if you're gonna say it's hard sci-fi it's
| gotta at least try to know something about physics and have
| coherent world building.
|
| Yes I'm a sci-fi geek.
| tillinghast wrote:
| > Astronauts would never be as stupid as they're depicted
| in that film, things like "oh gee I think I'll take my
| helmet off around all this potential biohazard."
|
| My head-canon explanation for this is that a good portion
| of the crew specifically were _not_ astronauts -- they
| were experts in their field (geology, anthropology,
| etc.). And true-to-form, they were dismissive of other
| experts telling them NO, NO DO NOT REMOVE YOUR HELMET.
| And once the first few were exposed the others decided
| well, if there 's a problem with it we're already screwed
| anyway.
| jackgavigan wrote:
| One of the great things about _Sneakers_ is that the McGuffin 's
| core concept still holds up as reasonably credible 30+ years
| later.
|
| I first saw this movie in the mid-90s, and it sparked a mild
| fascination with how cryptography (specifically, RSA) works, that
| arguably influenced my career path.
|
| Fun fact: Leonard Adleman (the A in RSA) drafted the words and
| slides used for the lecture scene:
| https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/
| nickpeterson wrote:
| I love the joke about being snubbed for mathematical consulting
| at the oscars.
| ynniv wrote:
| "There isn't a government on this planet that wouldn't kill us
| all for that thing"
| ecairns wrote:
| I was a CS major at the University of Washington in the mid
| 90s. In one of my intro courses we were touching on public key
| cryptography and this movie came up. The professor mentioned
| that Adelman was a consultant on the movie and that he was a
| notoriously slow replier to email. Like you would get a reply
| weeks or months after you sent an email to him. But, if you
| asked a question about this movie you'd get a reply to your
| email almost immediately.
| wdr1 wrote:
| > Fun fact: Leonard Adleman (the A in RSA) drafted the words
| and slides used for the lecture scene:
| https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/
|
| One of the few movies to have a mathematical consultant in the
| credits!
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Interstellar, and Kip Thorne being another one. Though he was
| a producer.
| istillwritecode wrote:
| They spelled Len's name wrong in the credits. :/
| jamesdwilson wrote:
| You might be right, but keep in mind actors often adopt
| variations for their names and may not even be consistent.
| int0x21 wrote:
| I was pretty sad the other day when I chose 'Setec Astronomy' for
| a trivia team name & nobody got the reference
| kstrauser wrote:
| I have a sticker for it on my laptop. You're not alone out
| there.
| Dowwie wrote:
| my voice is my passport
| pwrrr wrote:
| One of my favorite hacker movies! Saw it in at the cinema and
| numerous times on dvd. Will definetely get this.
|
| The comment about the shoes, stick with you ;)
| MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote:
| This came out when I was in high school and it's been one of my
| favorite movies ever since. I still watch it from time to time.
| ednite wrote:
| Definitely in my top 5, if not first. Feels right seeing so much
| appreciation for it here--very fitting for HN.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Love this movie! So many iconic San Francisco scenes!
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| very cool movie love the e-commerce website for online purchase
| of said movie
| jack_pp wrote:
| Wonder how fast we're gonna get the torrent
|
| LE: weird, my local private torrent has a 4k version from 18
| April while the site had it on 22 April
| psanford wrote:
| I was shocked when I rewatched this recently just how good the
| cryptography technobabble is in this movie. Specifically the
| scene where the professor is presenting on breaking public key
| cryptography. The very first thing he mentions is a number field
| sieve. Nice work hiring whatever cryptography consultant that got
| for this scene.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| It was none other than Leonard Adleman of RSA fame.
| bink wrote:
| I think the only part that really pulled me out of the movie
| was when they were testing the device and it was decrypting a
| dial-up feed random character by random character on the
| screen. It wasn't "Hackers" bad but it was still pretty
| unbelievable.
| ynniv wrote:
| Once you accept that a movie isn't a documentary, Hackers is
| a lot of fun. The editor of 2600 consulted on it (and lent
| his nym)
| rbanffy wrote:
| The soundtrack is much, much, better.
| myself248 wrote:
| Oh yeah. It snapped me out of immersion the first time too.
|
| But upon reflection, I find it forgivable, because if you
| think about what it would've taken to make it accurate, and
| then enough narrative to explain it to the fraction of the
| audience not up on the technical details, you've got a recipe
| for 15 minutes of yawns.
|
| The story is no more or less valid for that directorial
| shorthand, and it could easily be replaced with an authentic
| scene if you really wanted to. It would break the pacing but
| not the plot.
| bravoetch wrote:
| There are a couple of command line play-things to recreate
| that effect, here's one:
|
| https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets
| agar wrote:
| Little known fact: in the late '00s, PGP Corp had developed a
| free standalone "Viewer" to decrypt email if you didn't have
| the full PGP email product installed (the onboarding process
| walked you through initial key generation and publication on
| a keyserver).
|
| The decryption process showed the encrypted PGP Message block
| and used a similar Sneakers-inspired animation to transform
| it into your plaintext email. It was incredibly cool and I
| remain sad that the product never saw the light of day.
| thephyber wrote:
| > ... OF GAUSSIAN PROPRTIONS!
| greasegum wrote:
| All I remember from seeing this as a kid is that, in the final
| scene, River Phoenix asks the hot government agent for her phone
| number. The number she gives is a real non-555 number--pretty
| sure it was 818 area code?. You could call that number and hear a
| message from the character for many years.
|
| Was this the only movie ever to do this?
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| You're gonna love the answer to that. Disney's 1994 family
| holiday treat, The Santa Clause, starred Tim Allen as a guy who
| (I'm remembering this as I'm typing it and holy cow) sort of
| kills Santa Claus by startling him into falling off the roof.
| He then puts on the Santa suit and becomes the archetype
| himself. But in that movie, there's an off-hand reference to a
| phone number: 1-800-SPANK-ME, meant entirely sarcastically.
| Turns out, either that was already a real number or some
| enterprising pornographer recognized that there's no such thing
| as bad publicity, and precocious youngsters who called the line
| after watching the movie were invited to pay $5/minute for "the
| hottest phone line in America".
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/santa-clause-deleted-scene...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Tossing a few ARG links here, since the heyday of larger games
| (and especially ones with PTSN connectivity) is old enough some
| HNs might not have experienced them.
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119174/
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternate_reality_ga...
|
| It's a shame too, as they were unique. Would love to see a
| nationally-accessible Meow Wolf tie-in.
|
| PS: ilovebees
| schlauerfox wrote:
| I really enjoyed the original Valve's Portal BBS you could
| dial into Aperture Science and read on the history. The
| writers at Valve really wrote some great silly backstory
| about a shower curtain company developing quantum portals, as
| some sort of tool to get in and out of showers. I'm not sure
| that's cannon anymore though.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I think that still is (per Portal 2), but some of the
| original details aren't - like how Cave Johnson poisons
| himself, and how much his excellent decision-making was
| influenced by said poisoning.
|
| https://www.moddb.com/games/portal/features/aperture-
| science... is a transcript of https://combineoverwiki.net/w
| iki/File:ApertureScience.com_ba....
| voodooEntity wrote:
| One of my absolute favorite movies.
|
| Got the dvd still and did recently just watch it again.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| One of my favorite fun facts about Sneakers is that their
| headquarters was the upper level at the Fox Theatre in Oakland! I
| think about that every time I go to a show there now.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I cannot hear the word "verify" and/or "passport" without saying
| "My voice is my passport, verify me" under my breath.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Heard a Verizon tech on a phone call to tech-tech (tech^2?)
| support and the automated attendant stated "Repeat after me, my
| voice is my password" and the tech responded "my voice is my
| password" then had to wait on hold. Felt a little dystopian.
| pavlov wrote:
| The design of Blu-ray.com makes me nostalgic for a web where 12px
| Verdana was the obvious ideal body font, margins were an optional
| luxury, and Mac OS X Aqua-style shiny blue-gray gradients behind
| a menu bar were the height of sophistication. (You want just a
| little bit of blue glow at the bottom of the gradient for that
| translucent 3D effect that Steve Jobs called "lickable".)
| pier25 wrote:
| That "change the world" scene in the Cray computer room still
| gives me the chills:
|
| https://youtu.be/coDtzN6bXAM
| keevitaja wrote:
| there's a nice app that "emulates" this movie
| https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets
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