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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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. ;)
> 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.)
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.
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.
"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...
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.
> 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!
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?".
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].
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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" :)
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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.
> 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.
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
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
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.
"im a real wild child i'm a wild one, im a wild one!!"
aaaah! joey! joey! thank you everybody!
"I'm not an addict. Can I get some more coffee?"
"Check this out guys, this is insanely great, it's got a 28.8 BPS modem!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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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.
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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.
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. ;)
> 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.
"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
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.
> 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).
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> 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.
Discovered the Hackers ost on a /mu/ thread. So many bangers.
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
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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.)
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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> 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!
I couldn't find the garbage file. I'm such a failure, now Davinci is going to overturn all the oil tankers
Me neither, but there is a suspicious empty space close to one of the corners...
> 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.
> Never fear, I is here.
> Out of the way you hapless techno weenie.
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> Okay, okay, we need proof that we were here.
Really missed opportunity to place a garbage file in here somewhere!
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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> 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.
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.
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.
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+1 for explorers
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.
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.
> 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.
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Sadly, looking through the code, doesn't show up any "GARBAGE" file easter egg to be found.
Amazing stuff, nevertheless!
Awhile I made something really dumb: https://www.warpstream.com/etc/terminal you can enter a 'gibson' command.
Nice touch with the IP :D
Thanks, I've been looking for 5 minutes and was about to rewatch the movie to see where it's supposed to be !
I mean, you should totally go and rewatch it, don't let me stop you from enjoying again the movie!
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
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.
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.
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.
I highly recommend Hackers Curator for fans of the movie [0] Outstanding interviews with cast and crew, prop projects, etc.
[0] https://hackerscurator.com
OK who is gonna turn this into a functional terminal emulator for me?
I want to visualize real data this way for when business users come over to my desk and ask for something.
Not exactly, but there is cool retro term: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term
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?
Doesn’t do that for me. Have you got some oddball extension installed or something?
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?
> You're gonna love New York. It's the city that never sleeps.
Can I run this on my new pentium pro laptop, or is it RISC only?
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.
> Now that AI accelerates dev so much
Then where's the massive explosion of software?
While we're at it, I remember an atari st game that was like the tron lightcycle as "Trek4".
Did it really exist ?
Was it maybe called Surround? Try looking up Atari catalog # CX2641 and see if it brings back any more memories :)
Hmm I had an ST. I think I vaguely remember this. Was it a PD game or commercial?
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That runs super smoothly!
Thanks! working on multiplayer now...
I highly recommend the 88 films 4k blu-ray release for those who love Hackers. I recently was able to purchase an unopened VHS tape as well. I have a brand new VCR coming so I can have a proper experience.
I have a couple copies of the laserdiek variants, always felt like the best tech to show homage.
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?".
It's in the place I put the thing that one time!
They’re trashing our rights!
They're trashing!!
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The 1990s depiction of a filesystems in movies like Hacker or Disclosure was just weird. Then you had products like Microsoft Bob.
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
I miss the time when rollerblades seemed like the ideal mode of transport.
My ankles don't.
The addressing on that hex dump is all over the place.. and not even byte-aligned!
Some of you tough tech guys are talking a lot of sh$@ but I bet you couldn’t hack a Gibson.
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.
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).
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.
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I really loved 'Track Down' (2000), if you want to try. The film depict maybe more 1980-1990 though
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
I haven't watched it, but I seem to recall "Mr Robot" was widely praised by techies too.
Yes! Forgot about Mr Robot, which was absolutely fantastic.
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?!
god wouldn't be up this late...
This is really slow for me on my laptop. Does it need a P6 to run? I heard those have a killer refresh rate.
You need to run it on a RISC architecture, but that would be too much machine for you.
Yeah. RISC is good.
It may or may not change everything.
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I was so proud of myself in college when I could finally name all those books in the bar scene.
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.
YO THIS IS ZERO COOL!
Easily my biggest guilty pleasure movie, warts and all, I still love it.
Oh dang I made it to the end of the grid/world. Got scared in the darkness and retreated back to the light.
So friggin’ cool. Well done.
This is great, is there any way to just have it fly around autonomously?
That could be a fun screen saver
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?
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.
Cool. The only thing that's missing are keys for turning / rotating.
Would be nice to get one from Johnny Mnemonic too.
This is really cool! Thanks for making and sharing.
That's delightful - thanks for sharing!
Undoubtedly a film that inspired a generation.
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.
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" :)
Hack the Planet!
Phenomenal work!
"RISC architecture is gonna change everything." :)
Me: [thinking about how to get with the hot Romulan looking chick]
Me also: yah RISC is good!
Yeah, that scene is interesting. :)
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.
I feel like god!
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Yeah! Hack the Planet :D
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!"
This absolutely made my week! (I still have the Hackers movie poster framed in my office.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
You have now become The Plague.
LOVELY :D
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!
wonderful
I love it. Hack the planet. Thank you so much.
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.