Comment by herodoturtle

21 days ago

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!

28 comments

herodoturtle

Reply
INTPenis  20 days ago

Hackers inspired me to start digging around on my FreeBSD laptop and learn how to setup a bitmap image as boot splash, just like the kids in the movie all had their own custom boot image.

Just a few years later I dropped out of school and started my career, haven't looked back since.

My first boss who gave me my first chance, and my 2nd job through referral, he dropped out of 7th grade to start his own business. He was once interrogated by police, and they had brought in some experts from a big ISP, and these "experts" had no idea what he was talking about. :D

Wild years...

rbanffy  21 days ago

> 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.

  • telesilla  20 days ago

    I had just started getting an interest in computers and went to the cinema with my boyfriend at the time who was (and remains) a classic computer programmer. I remember sitting in the cinema with him, both of us laughing hysterically at the ridiculousness of it all. I felt like I was in the in-crowd to understand the film was all artefact and fashion, but for all that it captured something accurate about the community's need for belonging, in spite of the anarchic messaging. I feel that hasn't changed much and maybe it's why we still love this movie, along with Sneakers, Silicon Valley, Office Space and War Games. Maybe it's also why coder movies like The Social Network and Ex Machina don't resonate as community favourites because they don't bring an inclusive experience.

    • jerkstate  19 days ago

      The ad campaign was super campy, there were print ads in comic books, I remember making fun of it before the movie came out - this can’t be any good, they are going to misrepresent computer geeks, it’s going to be stupid. Of course as a teen I didn’t think it was authentic enough but over time I look at it with more respect. I showed it to my 10 year old not too long ago (forgot that there was a little nudity, oh well) and I was proud of claiming the culture it represented. The thirst for knowledge, the irreverence for authority, all of the different kinds of people making a community based on shared interest and respect, all night hackathons, the adults who just don’t get it - and yeah, the music and the fashion. That’s the stuff that matters, not a hacker using a Mac or goofy technical gibberish, and that’s the stuff they got right. It was a special moment in time, and I’m glad the movie is around to encapsulate it.

jghn  21 days ago

> 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.

harel  21 days ago

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  21 days ago

    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

  • obloid  20 days ago

    I've never seen Hackers. It was War Games for me, too.

    • cainxinth  20 days ago

      I love them both but they are entirely different. War Games was going for a degree of verisimilitude. Hackers is extremely stylized.

  • Der_Einzige  20 days ago

    War games was an excellent film. Hackers was a terrible film. Not sure why people are celebrating such a cheesy film.

    Also no one remembers cloak and dagger.

    • harel  20 days ago

      Because War Games didn't have Jolie in it. Maybe that? It was rather awful. A one-watcher.

lokimedes  21 days ago

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.

krd8ssb  20 days ago

Man, I didn't see hackers for the first time until probably 5 years after I wrote my first line of code. I still watch it to this day but I got started when I saw "wavy colored text" in an AOL chat room. Yup, colored sup and sub text. Fascinated me as an 11/12 year old and I picked up Visual Basic 5. Good times