[HN Gopher] Hackers (1995) Animated Experience
___________________________________________________________________
Hackers (1995) Animated Experience
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 319 points
Date : 2026-02-06 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hackers-1995.vercel.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackers-1995.vercel.app)
| enkonta wrote:
| This movie had an unreasonable influence on me as a kid...as
| cheesy as it is, it still holds up as one of my top ten favorite
| movies.
| trentnix wrote:
| It's my favorite movie of all time, even though it's one of
| those movies that I don't expect anyone else to like. It's just
| a shot of joyful nostalgia right into my veins every time I
| watch it.
|
| Explorers, the Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix movie from the
| mid-80s, is my #2 for the same reasons.
| shon wrote:
| +1 for explorers
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is Explorers the one with the Rollscanhardly joke?
|
| Stand By Me is in my top 5 for the same reasoning. I grew up
| in very small town out in the boonies where my friends and I
| would go exploring in the woods/creeks just without finding a
| body.
| trentnix wrote:
| Yep that's Explorers!
|
| I was a bit too young for Stand By Me. The subject matter
| was just too serious for me at that age. But I also grew up
| in a small town in the country where exploring was a normal
| thing.
|
| I would meet kids from college that were from much larger
| towns and they'd complain "I grew up in so-and-so and
| there's NOTHING for kids to do there!"
|
| I'd think to myself, "you have no idea what you're talking
| about. I used to go to your town to do stuff!"
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| The movie is obviously technical garbage but one thing it did
| well was capture that early hacker counterculture spirit. I
| think a lot of us can appreciate that for the warm blanket it
| is and forgive its technical accuracy and story flaws.
| jghn wrote:
| I find this and Starship Troopers to fit in a similar niche
| for me. When I first saw them I found them very cringey,
| horrible, couldn't stand it. Hackers for the reasons being
| discussed here. ST because of how bastardized it was from the
| source material.
|
| But over time I grew to love both of them. In both cases I
| started to appreciate how they weren't trying to be faithful
| representations, but rather capture a particular ethos in a
| cheesy & over the top way. And both of them I think hit their
| mark well in that regard.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Bastardized? It's satire and not at all subtle about it.
| You can of course argue that it's poorly executed satire,
| but judging it based on how faithful it is to the source
| material is rather missing the point.
| jghn wrote:
| I think you're the one who missed the point, as in you
| missed *my* point.
|
| When I first saw Starship Troopers, I disliked it because
| it wasn't faithful to the book. Over time I came to
| appreciate it for what it actually was, and now think it
| is fantastic.
|
| Likewise, with Hackers I initially disliked it due to how
| inaccurate and unrealistic it was. I came to appreciate
| it for what it actually was over time, and now think it
| is fantastic.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Yeah, my bad. For some reason I read your comment really
| carelessly.
| stevekemp wrote:
| > I think you're the one who missed the point
|
| Yes, I would like to know more ..
| wredcoll wrote:
| What is it with people feeling compelled to talk about
| starship troopers movie being different (lesser) than the
| book?
|
| Like, there's not that much to the book. It's a decently
| written "joins the military" story with a couple of well
| developed characters and one unique idea about sci-fi
| warfare (the suits spending most of their time jumping,
| which in retrospect would just make you a giant target...)
|
| None of this is bad, it's just like, there's dozens of
| other mil-sci-fi books and yet everyone has to jump in and
| go "but the book is better!!!"
| nickjj wrote:
| > I think a lot of us can appreciate that for the warm
| blanket it is and forgive its technical accuracy and story
| flaws.
|
| This is how I feel about it too. I've watched it a good 8-10
| times over the decades and enjoy it every time.
| mpeg wrote:
| It's surprisingly accurate in terms of how weird and cringy
| the 90s / early 00s hacker culture was, I too was obsessed
| with the movie and it led me to obscure irc channels, e-zines
| and eventually a whole career in tech
| Sharlin wrote:
| It's not really even technical garbage. From many throwaway
| lines it's clear that the writers actually knew their stuff.
| They just chose to not make a hacking movie based on realism
| (because boring) but based on the zeitgeist, the computer
| tropes of the 80s and early 90s, and the concept of
| "cyberspace" as envisioned by Gibson and made its way to the
| collective consciousness. In a time when virtual reality and
| 3D graphics were at peak cool, yet most people had no
| experience with computer networks, or even computers at all.
|
| "Cyberspace [...] A graphic representation of data abstracted
| from the banks of every computer in the human system.
| Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace
| of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city
| lights, receding." - _Neuromancer_
| ethinton wrote:
| That's delightful - thanks for sharing!
|
| Undoubtedly a film that inspired a generation.
| trentnix wrote:
| The animation is cool, but I just wanted to note for Hackers fans
| and movie nerds that the scenes inside the "Gibson" that this
| animates were actually done via practical effects.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I really love how kids today are so inundated with 3D CGI that
| when they see well done practical shots like this and my other
| go to favorite of the submarines in Hunt For Red October it is
| immediately assumed as CGI as well. Then again, adults are no
| less fooled either. The size of the sets is also surprising but
| makes sense when the size of a film cameras used defined the
| scales. The HBO intro is another example that makes the rounds.
| GJim wrote:
| > it is immediately assumed as CGI
|
| Remember seeing _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ , watching Indiana
| Jones being dragged under a lorry by his whip and thinking
| "wow, that's a brilliant stunt"?
|
| Remember (or did you forget) seeing the latest Indiana Jones
| film with a CGI motorbike and a CGI Indiana Jones jumping
| onto a moving train?
|
| One will always be more impressive than the other.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| 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.
| trentnix wrote:
| 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.
| xnorswap wrote:
| 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.
| trentnix wrote:
| It's the guy in the tank that breaks it. Pretty sure it's
| just a dummy.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| autoexec wrote:
| Even terrible practical effects can be weirdly charming
| though.
| bilekas wrote:
| Hack the planet. This is such a call back and what a nice touch
| to add the sound to it too. That whole OST is incredible, I still
| pull orbital and prodigy into my current work playlists. What a
| fun movie.
| alexjplant wrote:
| I, too, have such a work playlist entitled "Hack the
| Mainframe." It's got this type of stuff along with 90s/early
| 2000s breakbeat songs that ended up shoehorned into car and
| techno thriller movies at the time. I know a lot of this music
| was reviled as sellout trash at the time but I was too young to
| know any better when I first heard it and think it still holds
| up phenomenally well.
| GJim wrote:
| > 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 a massive change in the cultural
| landscape which perhaps many born in the 2000's aren't aware
| of. (Being aware of this helps give some perspective to Gen-X
| media and films like hackers).
| jghn wrote:
| In a sense, society sold out
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I feel that statement is still hedging too much.
|
| Society sold out.
| riffraff wrote:
| 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.
| GJim wrote:
| > 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.
| the_af wrote:
| I agree with you and I find the term "creating content"
| awful, even though I'm forced to use it because it's
| something people immediately understand.
|
| "Content creator"... what happened to artist, playwright,
| painter, hobbyist, etc? It makes it seem as if they were
| making stuff for a corporation to sell.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| That is what is happening though. It's an accurate
| description. These _are_ cases of making content for
| corporations to sell ads against.
| the_af wrote:
| It is what's happening in _some_ cases, not all. Also,
| language shapes thought, so we _encourage_ this to happen
| if we frame it as "content creation". It's something to
| push against.
|
| Note it's not even relevant whether something is
| commercial. Art can be commercial and not be just
| "content". A musician is not a "content creator" which
| happens to create content in the shape of music.
| "Content" implies it doesn't really matters, what matters
| is engagement and the platform (and advertisers, etc).
| It's not healthy to think of hobbies, art, and
| entertainment as _exclusively_ about this. Imagine if
| Oscar Wilde, Herman Melville, Alan Moore, etc had been
| thought of merely as "content creators".
|
| This is not a new idea. Stallman was already pushing back
| against this "content" term decades ago.
| burningChrome wrote:
| This is exemplified in Wayne's World product scene. I later
| found out none of the companies shown in the scene had paid
| for their products to be in the scene. Its also one of the
| most iconic scenes from the movie.
| dualogy wrote:
| > 90s/early 2000s breakbeat songs
|
| Can recommend such a mix, too. Gather select works of The
| Chemical Brothers, The Dust Brothers, Bassbin Twins, Crystal
| Method, DJ Krush, Dub Pistols, Lunatic Calm, Meat Katie...
| and you're Somewhen Else during it. Works for commutes/trips,
| too.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| > The Chemical Brothers (a), The Dust Brothers (b)
|
| I had a couple of Dust Brothers (a) cassettes before they
| changed their name after getting a call from the other Dust
| Brothers (b).
|
| Still can't believe they knowingly copied another band's
| name "because it sounded cool". Isn't coming up with a shit
| name half the fun? "I need a handle man".
| Zaskoda wrote:
| 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.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| I've flipped that switch for book adaptations.
|
| I let go of fanboying on what Hollywood "did to" the story
| and instead just decided to be thankful something I love was
| given a new medium / audience / interpretation... and voila!
| now I have two things to love.
|
| It's still fun to point out where things could've been done
| differently, but instead of actually disliking the film(s)
| because of those things, it's just another mechanism that
| lets me talk to my friends about something. Much more fun
| than riding home in silence in any case. ;)
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I actually really liked the live action adaptation of
| Cowboy Bebop, and was disappointed at it's cancellation.
|
| Unpopular opinion amongst those who grew up on the anime,
| but I was late to the anime so my childhood-integrity isn't
| dependent upon requiring a faithful one to one retelling
| (or whatever would satisfy those folks - possibly nothing).
|
| I enjoyed the "Hollywood" Ghost in the Shell as a stand-
| alone 'thing', unrelated to the manga / anime. The ending
| is quite on the nose; ultra-formulaic where formulaic has
| no place.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| 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.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Nice little blog post that looks at these interfaces in the
| movie:
|
| https://scifiinterfaces.com/2023/12/11/hackers/
| T3OU-736 wrote:
| 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:
| kstrauser wrote:
| I adore it. And some of the representations are the best I've
| seen anywhere. Kids exploring for the fun of exploring, not
| to hurt anyone but just to learn? The clock whirling at 4AM
| while someone hyperfocuses on code? The way they tease each
| other but genuinely respect their abilities? It's beautiful.
| the_af wrote:
| > _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._
|
| I never managed to reach your third time. Once was enough for
| me, at the time, to decide it was an awful movie which didn't
| have anything to do with hackers or computers and which was
| terribly overacted, and that was that. Filed under yet
| another "Hollywood just doesn't get it", subsection "so bad
| it's embarrassing".
|
| Much later I realized I had missed a cult classic. Oh well. I
| still think it's a bad movie, but I'm ok with other people
| loving it... maybe that's my growth moment.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I love it, but I know it's bad, but I also think it was
| intentionally what it is, which makes it good or even
| great.
|
| If you can unlock that teenage feeling of wonder at the
| potential size and scope of the world and, at the right age
| at the right time, feeling like that world is your oyster,
| that's the feeling in which to watch this movie.
|
| I refuse, however, to get into that feeling-zone for other
| 'high school' movies; they're stupid...
| tptacek wrote:
| I remember being at Summercon before this movie opened and
| Ericb addressing hotel conference room we were seated in
| talking about how Iain Softley had directed Backbeat and how
| happy he was that he was doing this movie and that you had to
| get in the right headspace to understand what it was going
| for.
|
| (I think the movie is wildly overrated just as a piece of
| storytelling; the hacker fan-service in it is just fine, they
| clearly got some tfile kids to consult with the script.)
| strictnein wrote:
| > "tfile kids"
|
| Not familiar with that term, and my googling has failed.
| What does it refer to?
| dspearson wrote:
| http://textfiles.com/
|
| people familiar with the culture
| browningstreet wrote:
| Tried to watch it for the first time recently. Didn't make it
| past 20 minutes... feel like I had to be there when it was
| fresh back in the day.
| omnibrain wrote:
| Try reading Masters of Deception first, to get in the right
| mood.
| RobRivera wrote:
| Discovered the Hackers ost on a /mu/ thread. So many bangers.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| There's another two soundtracks!
|
| https://www.discogs.com/release/1423591-Various-
| Hackers%C2%B...
|
| https://www.discogs.com/release/131024-Various-Hackers%C2%B3
| kristianp wrote:
| Thanks, what a great resource discogs is. Here's the 1st
| one for completeness:
|
| https://www.discogs.com/release/29127-Various-Hackers-
| Origin...
|
| It's frustrating that often tracks from soundtracks like
| this aren't available on Spotify, such as Phoebus Apollo.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I have this OST and the Mortal Kombat one as well on CD
| (mentioned together since they both have the same song,
| "Halcyon + On + On" on them!). When I went to a 2600 meetings
| in Seattle in 1999, I listened to the Hacker's soundtrack in
| my car on the way, of course. I gave one of the people I met
| there a ride and we had a laugh when he saw the case in my
| car. (I feel like I have a story for every song. Thanks for
| indulging me.)
| wredcoll wrote:
| Mortal Kombat ost had a ridiculous influence on my
| childhood music tastes, another absolutely amazing sound
| track is The Saint, check out the artists involved.
| rsync wrote:
| "That whole OST is incredible, I still pull orbital and prodigy
| into my current work playlists."
|
| The best music, in my opinion, in the movie is not on the
| soundtrack and it is:
|
| Guy Pratt - Combination
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_7N8NsU4jQ
| kstrauser wrote:
| I took my kid to Def Con. We were walking up to the convention
| center and there were a few hundred people milling around out
| front. To embarrass my kid, I shouted "hack the planet!" loudly
| toward the crowd. Probably a good 50% of the bystanders shouted
| it back at me.
|
| My people.
| TheSilva wrote:
| Sadly, looking through the code, doesn't show up any "GARBAGE"
| file easter egg to be found.
|
| Amazing stuff, nevertheless!
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Thanks, I've been looking for 5 minutes and was about to
| rewatch the movie to see where it's supposed to be !
| TheSilva wrote:
| I mean, you should totally go and rewatch it, don't let me
| stop you from enjoying again the movie!
| ordinarily wrote:
| Awhile I made something really dumb:
| https://www.warpstream.com/etc/terminal you can enter a
| 'gibson' command.
| maqp wrote:
| Nice touch with the IP :D
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| This is really slow for me on my laptop. Does it need a P6 to
| run? I heard those have a killer refresh rate.
| linsomniac wrote:
| You need to run it on a RISC architecture, but that would be
| too much machine for you.
| vq wrote:
| It may or may not change everything.
| jghn wrote:
| only if you have a 28.8 bps [sic] modem!
| drivers99 wrote:
| and triple the RAM
| jayd16 wrote:
| Yeah. RISC is good.
| shon wrote:
| The Gibson! Very cool. did you make this?
|
| I made a Tron lightcycle game: https://new.af/tron
|
| Now that AI accelerates dev so much, I suspect we'll get to see a
| lot of cool throwbacks.
| swah wrote:
| That runs super smoothly!
| shon wrote:
| Thanks! working on multiplayer now...
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| While we're at it, I remember an atari st game that was like
| the tron lightcycle as "Trek4".
|
| Did it really exist ?
| shon wrote:
| Hmm I had an ST. I think I vaguely remember this. Was it a PD
| game or commercial?
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Only thing I can remember is a blue 31/2 floppy with
| "trek4" handwritten on it so it must have been "found" by
| my relative that owned the st at the time.
| kayge wrote:
| Was it maybe called Surround? Try looking up Atari catalog #
| CX2641 and see if it brings back any more memories :)
| vor_ wrote:
| > Now that AI accelerates dev so much
|
| Then where's the massive explosion of software?
| diggyhole wrote:
| It's in the place I put the thing that one time!
| jgavris wrote:
| They're trashing our rights!
| par wrote:
| They're trashing!!
| sophacles wrote:
| Hack the planet!
| skibz wrote:
| We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless.
| jghn wrote:
| I couldn't find the garbage file. I'm such a failure, now Davinci
| is going to overturn all the oil tankers
| echelon_musk wrote:
| > _Uh, the accounting subdirectory in the Gibson is working
| really hard._
|
| > _We got one person online, the workload is enough for like
| ten users. I think we 've got a hacker._
| par wrote:
| > Never fear, I is here.
|
| > Out of the way you hapless techno weenie.
| racl101 wrote:
| The little boat tipped over.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| > _Okay, okay, we need proof that we were here._
|
| Really missed opportunity to place a garbage file in here
| somewhere!
| rbanffy wrote:
| Me neither, but there is a suspicious empty space close to one
| of the corners...
| bitwize wrote:
| "Okay, we need proof that we were here... right uh... Okay, yeah,
| Garbage, gimme Garbage."
|
| My wife and I both love this movie. I thought it was cheesy and
| unrealistic when it dropped, but it's reflective of a mid-90s era
| when technology was something to be excited about and there was a
| lot of hype about "cyberspace" and such nonsense. That's also
| when I got into internetworking, Linux, and all that stuff. And
| electronic music. _Hackers_ made people with my interests seem
| way cooler and sexier than we really were.
| gritspants wrote:
| As far as 90's cyber films go it was probably The Net that had
| the most realistic vision of the future. Workin from home,
| ordering pizza.
| bitwize wrote:
| I realized the other day that _Hackers_ doesn 't really have
| a depiction of _the_ social milieu of the elite hacker--the
| BBS. But _The Net_ kinda does. So, point to _The Net_.
| pjmlp wrote:
| "RISC architecture is gonna change everything." :)
| apgwoz wrote:
| Easily the most quoted part of the film, aside from "Hack the
| planet!!!!" ... but also an amazing prediction! All the devices
| in our pockets are RISC machines. That did change everything.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I was going for the books initially, but isn't as much fun.
|
| Regarding RISC, kind of, there have been compromises in the
| instruction sets.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I feel like god!
| thr0waway001 wrote:
| Me: [thinking about how to get with the hot Romulan looking
| chick]
|
| Me also: yah RISC is good!
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yeah, that scene is interesting. :)
| stewartjarod wrote:
| LOVELY :D
| nickthegreek wrote:
| 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.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I have a couple copies of the laserdiek variants, always felt
| like the best tech to show homage.
| sophacles wrote:
| The proper experience is to copy it onto an old VHS, worn out
| and a bit stretched in places. Play it for the umpteenth time
| on a 1980s VCR feeding a fuzzy old tv in the basement for
| background noise (and a killer sound track) as you beat your
| head against a crt monitor wondering why your code won't
| compile.
|
| Bonus points if you pause to watch the movie and wonder "how
| have I seen this movie countless times and only just now
| noticed there's a 6th hacker in the 'main' crew?".
| LandoCalrissian wrote:
| Easily my biggest guilty pleasure movie, warts and all, I still
| love it.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| My wife, who isn't into that culture at all, knows how I feel
| about Hackers.
|
| Every now and then when the opportunistic situation arises,
| she'll announce at me: "Crash and Burn".
| aenis wrote:
| very cool. i made my own version of the final wargames sequence.
| now, whenever i am in a boring meeting i am adding something to
| the game mechanics.
| 0xcb0 wrote:
| I love it. Hack the planet. Thank you so much.
| benrutter wrote:
| This is awesome, and remimds of my favourite fact which is that
| the jurrasic park unix system was actually _a real unix system
| running a real file browser_. File browsers ended up converging
| om a more useful, but way less cool design[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer
| echelon_musk wrote:
| > _You 're gonna love New York. It's the city that never sleeps._
| KeybInterrupt wrote:
| Yeah! Hack the Planet :D
| axus wrote:
| The addressing on that hex dump is all over the place.. and not
| even byte-aligned!
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| This is good progress but the 1995 movie is still superior.
|
| There many details in the movie, like the sound of electricity
| going through the circuit, the camera path is more like a spline
| with rotations in more axis, etc.
|
| It does perform really good on mobile.
| runjake wrote:
| 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
| imagine Big Bang Theory is to many.
|
| Then I went to the Bay Area, and hung out at places like New Hack
| City and 2600 meetings, and I loved those people and the movie
| made more sense:
|
| - War Games was a movie for 1980s hackers.
|
| - Hackers was a movie about 1990s hackers.
|
| So I re-watched the movie. I still hated it. But, I get it.
|
| And no, I've no idea which movies are a similar anthem for
| 2000s/2010s hackers. Let me know.
| cerebrum01 wrote:
| If you like wargames and hackers, you might wanna check out
| Colossus. There's Halt and Catch Fire too though it's a TV
| show.
|
| There's a list of similar films at the bottom of
| https://telehack.com/telehack.html
| riffraff wrote:
| I haven't watched it, but I seem to recall "Mr Robot" was
| widely praised by techies too.
| runjake wrote:
| Yes! Forgot about Mr Robot, which was absolutely fantastic.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Yes, I've watched that TV show through twice and will
| probably do it again.
|
| Great on the technicals and also a complete mind fuck.
| StopTheWorld wrote:
| 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).
| runjake wrote:
| Oh man, Limelight!
|
| LoD and MoD's heydays were more in the 1980s. By the first
| year or two of the 1990s, both were pretty much defunct, if
| my memory serves.
|
| I was acquainted with several members of both groups, and I
| don't remember them really resembling the Hackers movies in
| appearance or personality. But I lost touch with them in
| about 1989-1990 or so, due to the next phase of my life
| kicking off.
| StopTheWorld wrote:
| In July 1992 five MoD members were charged with hacking,
| and they were basically defunct as an active hacking group
| after that. LoD was mostly defunct even before that,
| although the movie used the Mentor's manifesto. New York
| LoD members, or those affiliated with them, had been busted
| in July 1987. So yes, a lot of the 1995 movie was covering
| stuff that had happened from the 1980s up until mid-1992.
| When the movie was released, some of the MoD members were
| on probation and not allowed to associate with one another
| until probation ended. The busts, trials, prison terms, and
| probations were all happening around the time the movie was
| being written, filmed and released.
| somethingsome wrote:
| I really loved 'Track Down' (2000), if you want to try. The
| film depict maybe more 1980-1990 though
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| In Australia that was titled 'Hackers 2' and was very
| disappointing - until I learned the backstory and have since
| read Ghost in the Wires. It's still a totally different thing
| to Hackers, but it's a good addition to the zeitgeist.
| RRRA wrote:
| Now add a flashing red box with:
|
| /root/.workspace/garbage
|
| (was that it?) and a VJ mode that scrolls around to the beat and
| you have something for the next party!
| mackman wrote:
| OK who is gonna turn this into a functional terminal emulator for
| me?
| clickety_clack wrote:
| I want to visualize real data this way for when business users
| come over to my desk and ask for something.
| shmerl wrote:
| Not exactly, but there is cool retro term:
| https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term
| JCattheATM wrote:
| This is really cool! Thanks for making and sharing.
| kriro wrote:
| 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" :)
| JaggedJax wrote:
| 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?
| pja wrote:
| Doesn't do that for me. Have you got some oddball extension
| installed or something?
| JaggedJax wrote:
| Found that this is a Firefox setting, maybe it's not (no
| longer) defaulted to on.
|
| "Search for text when you start typing"
|
| I have to say, I do like this setting enabled, but can see
| how it conflicts with the page. And let's be fair, how much
| time and I saving over having to press Ctrl+F when I want to
| search a page?
| anthk wrote:
| I like Wargames much more. Still, people is right that we should
| take the 'hacking' (cracking) scenes artistically, as a metaphor
| on what's happening inside the mind of a cracker.
| thr0waway001 wrote:
| If a movie ever had the balls to show real hacking people would
| see how utterly f cking boring and uncool it looks.
|
| It's like prog rock. By and large, hot chicks are interested in
| bands like Motley Crue and Bon Jovi.
|
| But prog rock never got chicks wet. It was always music by
| nerds for other nerds.
|
| I think a realistic movie about hacking would be the same. By
| and large.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The most interesting thing to show in film would be social
| engineering aspects. The actual hacking of spending time on
| the computer is always going to be boring command line stuff.
| At least Mr. Robot used real commands.
| anthk wrote:
| 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.
| fvv wrote:
| wonderful
| par wrote:
| Damn dude this hurts. My friend took his own life last year, and
| Hackers was our absolute favorite movie back in high school. I
| mean even as late as 2022 we were messaging each other the Hacker
| manifesto, hack the planet, you know all the good stuff. Sam
| Singh, you would've loved this man. I miss you homie. hack the
| planet.
| blahaj wrote:
| Sorry for your loss.
|
| "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone
| here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may
| never hear from them again... I know you all...
|
| after all, we're all alike.
| par wrote:
| Thank you. And you know, it's those quotes and concepts that
| really stuck me with, about how we were all in it together.
| And not to get off topic, but i'm so sad and disheartened to
| see what tech has become since those days.
| blahaj wrote:
| i feel you
| herodoturtle wrote:
| I've probably watched Hackers over a hundred times. My all time
| favourite movie. My first crush as a young teenager was Burn. It
| led to a career in software. So many kindred spirits on this
| thread - makes me smile.
|
| And after 30+ years of watching Hackers, it only occurred to me
| recently that the biggest noob in the movie Joey beat the Gibson,
| twice. Sure he had assistance the second time, but still poetic
| imho.
|
| Hack the planet <3
|
| You're in the butter zone now, baby!
| jghn wrote:
| > You're in the butter zone now, baby!
|
| I've seen the movie countless times. It was only last year that
| I learned it was "butter zone" and not "border zone". And I
| never understood why Nikon called it "border zone" as it made
| no sense in context. But I also had never heard the term
| "butter zone". So there you go.
| par wrote:
| "im a real wild child i'm a wild one, im a wild one!!"
| arvid-lind wrote:
| aaaah! joey! joey! thank you everybody!
| racl101 wrote:
| "I'm not an addict. Can I get some more coffee?"
| rbanffy wrote:
| > crush as a young teenager was Burn
|
| Who hadn't?
|
| I was a young adult back then, but the sense of adventure in
| the movie brought my memories of BBSs and creative misuse of
| telephone lines, X.400 networks, and dial-out modems. Fun
| times.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| "Check this out guys, this is insanely great, it's got a 28.8
| BPS modem!"
| lokimedes wrote:
| Yeah, me too. And I gobbled up the Phreak culture from my
| danish small town life, dreaming of late eighties AT&T
| escapades with my crew of cool street kids... RISC is good.
| harel wrote:
| For me that was War Games that got me into this world and
| career. Always felt like I owe Broderick a Raspberry Pie or
| something
| dylan604 wrote:
| The use of the soda can pull tab to ground the receiver to
| get a dial tone was my moment as I was a noob phreaker well
| before being a hacker. How many kids watching that movie
| would even know what was happening today? Would they even
| know what he picks up off the ground let alone the actual
| phreaking
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| This absolutely made my week! (I still have the Hackers movie
| poster framed in my office.)
| erickhill wrote:
| Oh dang I made it to the end of the grid/world. Got scared in the
| darkness and retreated back to the light.
| evan_ wrote:
| This is great, is there any way to just have it fly around
| autonomously?
| dylan604 wrote:
| That could be a fun screen saver
| syx wrote:
| Last month they had a rerun of the movie at the cinema in Dublin
| (IE) and went to see it with a friend. It was such a surreal
| experience because after watching it on my laptop so many times I
| could hear the laughter and the jokes of the audience on the
| cheesy hacking scenes, it was like watching the movie in 4D, I
| enjoyed it a lot!
|
| I even brought my PowerBook Duo 280c along with me
| Panino wrote:
| Watching with a big public group of people you mostly don't
| know _but maybe should_ is a special experience. This may
| depend on region, but in the US there used to be frequent
| midnight openings for superfans like myself. People dress up in
| costumes, local shops hand out prizes and it 's an _event_. Saw
| Phantom Menace this way, LOTR, Watchmen, and maybe others, but
| I haven 't seen a midnight opening offered in years. Maybe the
| theater managers are swimming in the pool on the roof.
| waldopat wrote:
| Phenomenal work!
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I never saw this movie back in the day, but now I want to.
|
| Just listening to Halcyon & On & On is putting a lump in my
| chest. That era in time was just so fantastic and I don't think
| it's just because I was 21 and utopian.
|
| I think I could perma stay in 1995/96, Groundhog Day style. Just
| relive those same "halcyon" days over and over perfecting and
| absorbing everything over and over.
|
| "We have to go back!"
| jus3sixty wrote:
| Some of you tough tech guys are talking a lot of sh$@ but I bet
| you couldn't hack a Gibson.
| k6hkUZtLUM wrote:
| Hack the Planet!
| RazerWazer wrote:
| You have now become The Plague.
| iberator wrote:
| question: does anyone know if there are ueri/bios with sound and
| animationa AVALIBLE for pc somehow?
|
| As in train station hacking scene
|
| 2. Monitor inside the glasses. was it real?
| Grosvenor wrote:
| Yes. There were early models available with 320x200 or 640x480
| rez.
|
| They didn't have accelerometers, so it was just a dumb screen
| on your face.
| lchengify wrote:
| I was so proud of myself in college when I could finally name all
| those books in the bar scene.
| k2enemy wrote:
| I remember writing to the govt (DoD maybe? I don't remember
| exactly) asking for a copy of the rainbow books and getting a
| surprise a few months later when a heavy box showed up at my
| parents' door! I no longer have them, but have fond memories of
| poring over orange, green, teal, and a few others.
| elric wrote:
| I miss the time when rollerblades seemed like the ideal mode of
| transport.
|
| My ankles don't.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I've been inline skating ten years now, and the last three
| years been doing long outdoor skates, 43km a couple of weeks
| ago.
|
| It is the ideal move of transport! (if cars were less common
| and hills less steep).
|
| I've got weak ankles from rolling them regularly playing other
| sports, but the inline boots strap em in nice and tight.
|
| If you need some motivation, or just like to watch some decent
| skating, check out The Stuttering Skater on YouTube. I'm
| nowhere near even thinking about being that good, but he's
| great to watch weaving through NYC traffic.
| ericskiff wrote:
| This is so lovely! If the original author is here in the
| comments, some feature requests that would absolutely make my
| day, presumably from easiest to hardest :)
|
| I love this so much, thank you for sharing!
|
| * Slow down the motion to about .5 of what it is currently, with
| easing/acceleration on the speed to emulate the camera dolly and
| jib effects used in the film
|
| * Add a random motion setting that allows me to run it full
| screen just sliding through the aisles, banking around turns,
| flying up and then back down the aisles.
|
| * optionally lock the framerate to 24fps to give it a film feel
|
| * optional shaders on the main viewport to emulate lens
| distortion, film grain, etc
|
| * raytracing with reflectivity on the glass, refraction,
| diffusion, etc.
| hackrmn wrote:
| Thanks for this gem!
|
| This brings back _memories_! I think I won't even stand out from
| the crowd here mentioning me and the gang watched the hell out of
| the VHS back when, in our circle it was a different world than I
| suppose even for people in the West who loved it. We're so far
| removed this became a cult classic long before it became cult
| classic everywhere else. Needless to say, Angelina Jolie's
| character made quite an impression on this young mind :-) Damn,
| quotes from this movie live rent-free in my head. I was already
| quite a fan of Orbital when I saw Hackers for the first time. It
| was also at the end of "Mortal Kombat", by the way -- but Hackers
| used it marginally better still IMO.
|
| Hacker had HEART, man. It was cheesy but the feeling it left in
| an entire sub-culture of a generation, cannot be underestimated.
| I am reading some of the other stories here, and it brings smile
| to my face knowing me and my gang weren't the only ones the movie
| imprinted on.
|
| Woha, this isn't woodshop class?!
| caust1c wrote:
| > FYI man, alright. You could sit at home, and do like absolutely
| nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day.
| 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's
| livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!
| shmerl wrote:
| Cool. The only thing that's missing are keys for turning /
| rotating.
|
| Would be nice to get one from Johnny Mnemonic too.
| nirav72 wrote:
| The 1990s depiction of a filesystems in movies like Hacker or
| Disclosure was just weird. Then you had products like Microsoft
| Bob.
| racl101 wrote:
| YO THIS IS ZERO COOL!
| k2enemy wrote:
| I highly recommend Hackers Curator for fans of the movie [0]
| Outstanding interviews with cast and crew, prop projects, etc.
|
| [0] https://hackerscurator.com
| stack_framer wrote:
| I wish there was a way to straighten myself out after I drag with
| the mouse or use the A/D keys to move left or right. I was
| expecting to be able to turn left or right, and weave through the
| servers (or whatever they are), as opposed to drifting left/right
| and eventually getting stuck.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| So friggin' cool. Well done.
| avsn wrote:
| This movie changed my life. Saw it when I was probably 7-8 years
| old for the first time and been watching and rewatching it ever
| since. The actors, the soundtrack, the costumes, everything is
| perfect in this film. Huge inspiration.
| ryan42 wrote:
| god wouldn't be up this late...
| _joel wrote:
| Can I run this on my new pentium pro laptop, or is it RISC only?
| invader wrote:
| Awesome! Brings me back into my teenage years when I was
| rewatching the movie on VHS hundreds of times, especially the
| cyberspace surfing sequences - all covered by the epic
| soundtrack. Orbital still sounds fresh in my ears after all these
| years.
|
| I was also so inspired by this Gibson supercomputer interface
| when I created my little game prototype for js13k games contest
| 10 years ago:
|
| https://invadium.itch.io/cybergrid-13
|
| Now I think I should've used flight mechanics like in flight
| simulators instead of walking, but the cyberspace and viruses are
| still there. Maybe I will refresh it one day to give a more
| Hacker-like ambient flight feeling.
| ultrahax wrote:
| 12 year old me watched this movie and immediately went out and
| bought colored floppy disks so I too could hack the planet.
| Simpler times.
| MrCurryCasino wrote:
| Such a crap, corny movie. Cliche dialogues. Didn't age well,
| typical 90s techbabblebullshit drivel.
|
| Strange days OTOH...
| intothemild wrote:
| I see where youre coming from. But oh when you embrace the
| cliche of it all.. it's amazing
| unicorn_cowboy wrote:
| It's fun to live out 90s hacker fantasies.
|
| _types furiously_
|
| [ACCESS DENIED]
|
| _types double furiously_
|
| [ACCESS GRANTED]
|
| _dramatic turn to camera_
|
| "I'm in."
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Am I the only one who vehemently despised this movie?
| vidalakistrajk wrote:
| Hi guys! Original creator here. I had no idea this was trending
| here until some people on LinkedIn wrote to me!!! I will try to
| make the garbage files hunt easter egg. This was an idea that
| started all of this but I couldn't get it to work nicely and I
| definitely didn't expect this much traction!
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