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 hated this movie the first time I watched it. And the second. The third time I let go of the need for things to be realistic and took it all in as an artistic representation and snap... I loved it. One could argue that I loved it all along given that I watched it so many times... but there was a distinct moment where I let go and that's when I was able to see just how wonderful this movie really is.
There are some niche 3D file system browsers/shells out there, but none as captivating as what's shown in the movie (or the linked "animated experience") that I can find.
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, 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
I think it’s also important to remember that there are tons of terrible practicals out there, we just don’t think of them because they were bad and forgettable. Lots of great CG too that you likely never recognized as CG. Sicario is littered with examples. You’d be hard pressed to call out even most of them.
That's true on there being lots of terrible practical effects out there. The parent lauded Raiders of the Lost Ark for its practical effects. In contrast, Last Crusade was a great movie that had a few practical effects that were terrible. The scene with the tank going over the edge of the cliff is so bad and so fake that I could help rewind and pause to laugh at it when I was a kid.
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.
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.
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].
Only thing I can remember is a blue 3½ floppy with "trek4" handwritten on it so it must have been "found" by my relative that owned the st at the time.
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.
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.
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.
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 hated this movie the first time I watched it. And the second. The third time I let go of the need for things to be realistic and took it all in as an artistic representation and snap... I loved it. One could argue that I loved it all along given that I watched it so many times... but there was a distinct moment where I let go and that's when I was able to see just how wonderful this movie really is.
There are some niche 3D file system browsers/shells out there, but none as captivating as what's shown in the movie (or the linked "animated experience") that I can find.
Nice little blog post that looks at these interfaces in the movie:
https://scifiinterfaces.com/2023/12/11/hackers/
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, 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).
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.
In a sense, society sold out
> 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
This is really cool! Thanks for making and sharing.
OK who is gonna turn this into a functional terminal emulator for me?
I couldn't find the garbage file. I'm such a failure, now Davinci is going to overturn all the oil tankers
> 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!"
+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.
I think it’s also important to remember that there are tons of terrible practicals out there, we just don’t think of them because they were bad and forgettable. Lots of great CG too that you likely never recognized as CG. Sicario is littered with examples. You’d be hard pressed to call out even most of them.
That's true on there being lots of terrible practical effects out there. The parent lauded Raiders of the Lost Ark for its practical effects. In contrast, Last Crusade was a great movie that had a few practical effects that were terrible. The scene with the tank going over the edge of the cliff is so bad and so fake that I could help rewind and pause to laugh at it when I was a kid.
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.
> You're gonna love New York. It's the city that never sleeps.
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.
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
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.
While we're at it, I remember an atari st game that was like the tron lightcycle as "Trek4".
Did it really exist ?
Hmm I had an ST. I think I vaguely remember this. Was it a PD game or commercial?
Only thing I can remember is a blue 3½ floppy with "trek4" handwritten on it so it must have been "found" by my relative that owned the st at the time.
That runs super smoothly!
Thanks! working on multiplayer now...
It's in the place I put the thing that one time!
They’re trashing our rights!
The addressing on that hex dump is all over the place.. and not even byte-aligned!
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.
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.
Easily my biggest guilty pleasure movie, warts and all, I still love it.
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.
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.
It may or may not change everything.
only if you have a 28.8 bps [sic] modem!
Yeah. RISC is good.
Yeah! Hack the Planet :D
That's delightful - thanks for sharing!
Undoubtedly a film that inspired a generation.
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!
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.
LOVELY :D
"RISC architecture is gonna change everything." :)
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 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.
I love it. Hack the planet. Thank you so much.