9 ms·
Snowden’s Rubik’s Cube
- orblivion 10y agoI just watched the trailer. Clichéd brilliant patriotic dude saves the day. Bonus: Movie OS. This is gonna be such a great bad movie.
- dsfuoi 10y agoActor's forced Snowden deep voice is hilarious. He's trying so hard, and yet it sounds like a 12 year old trying to sound older. Also expect at least two forced action/drama scenes that never happened. They are staging the Hong Kong hotel meeting, of which real footage exists, as if it were an action scene.
- kuschku 10y agoWait for the french/german TV miniseries remake in a few years (not anything announced yet, but you just know one will be made), it will likely have a higher quality and accuracy.
- deepnet 10y agoCitizen Fours version of the Hong Kong meeting uses no cinematic devices to convey the palpable excitement. Poitras's film contrasts the complete lack of 'action scene' with the consequences facing the protagonists. Conveyed only by their attempts to suppress their mounting unease and the fight to calmly apply the opsec - the tension unbearably mounts second by second, the effect of distant sounds implies the real dangers. Snowden's emotions are brutally felt, his lament at his loss left no dry eyes. The stillness and unmoving camera style conveys more terror and excitement than jump cuts or explosive choreography can. https://citizenfourfilm.com/ https://citizenfourfilm.com/
- Biganon 10y agoA movie similar to Primer would have been so cool
- krapp 10y agoWhere Snowden goes back in time and reveals American military and intelligence secrets to preempt its transformation into a global surveillance and military superpower?
- enraged_camel 10y agoI think he meant in terms of technical accuracy. Primer is one of those rare movies that got time travel right.
- JadeNB 10y agoHow do you know …?
- philovivero 10y agoI just went back and watched it again, and I remember the way it happened in parallel.
- cousin_it 10y agoFor starters, it's the only time travel movie that explains why time travel doesn't drop you somewhere in deep space where the Earth used to be.
- krapp 10y agoBut the real answer to that is "because time travel is a dramatic device." This is just as true for Primer as it is for all fictional scenarios involving time travel. Unless the story is about how time travel would "really" send you spinning off into space, the rules are whatever the plot requires. It may be that the "science" behind Primer appears more coherent and reasoned out than H.G. Wells' Time Machine, but it's still fairy dust.
- makip 10y agoI find Primer interesting for the relatable human story. What are they doing with this knowledge and why? Even Primer is fairy dust. The plot makes enough up to suspend your disbelief. For instance, I just made a rule up for my hypothetical new movie: travelling through time drops the traveler in the same location of the frame of reference they inhabit. This is always a fixed location relative to the Earth if the traveller is static relative to the Earth, and hence in the same frame of reference.
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoInteresting, I hadn't realized this was a cube already in existence. Neat! I've broken a few rubix cubes in my day and so many of them have hallow squares so I'm not surprised you could hide stuff in one. Hell if you customize one you can probably get it to hold a huge amount of data.
- da5is 10y agoThese cubes actually come completely apart to replace the springs. You could probably put a good 4-5 micro-SD cards in the middle plastic ball, but it's not exactly a quick operation. But, yeah, quite a bit of empty space in them.
- tamana 10y agoSprings in a Rubik's cube?
- da5is 10y agoYes, they provide the tension when you rotate the cube. The speed cubes come with different springs that can make it looser or tighter - in the center is this white ball that houses the springs where you screw in the center tiles. If it wasn't such a pain to open back up, I'd take some pics of that part of it. You can see the white ball on the official site here: https://rubiks.com/store/product/rubiks-speed-cube https://rubiks.com/store/product/rubiks-speed-cube (disclaimer - the original article is mine)
- stordoff 10y ago> Hell if you customize one you can probably get it to hold a huge amount of data. Even without customising it, 200GB on a single microSD card is no small amount of data.
- cmrx64 10y agoThis movie looks like is has a good chance of doing a better job than even The Imitation Game at ruining and fundamentally misrepresenting a topic I care about and a person I respect.
- curiousgal 10y agoThe Imitation Game was bad?
- bigdubs 10y agoIt was better than "Enigma" certainly but it still wasn't as high fidelity as it could have been.
- justratsinacoat 10y agoWell, it wasn't good. Turing's actual story is actually more interesting than the whole-cloth fantasy that The Imitation Game wound up being.
- BookmarkSaver 10y agoI'm just surprised that they didn't depict one of the most dramatic moments of his life (his death). I mean, suicide by poisoned apple? Maybe they didn't show it because it isn't 100% confirmed, but that event could basically have been ripped from a movie script into real life.
- Caprinicus 10y agoIt isn't even confirmed that he killed himself, let alone by apple. He was using potassium cyanide to electroplate spoons and could have died by inhaling the fumes. The apple was not even tested for cyanide. I'm glad that they at least omitted that because we genuinely have no idea what happened.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Johnny555 10y agoI'm sure you could grind out more space for the SD card with a Dremel tool to make it fit more seamlessly. Or you could pop out a piece and you'd have room for dozens of MicroSD cards inside the pieces.
- tamana 10y agoWhy do Rubik's cubes have removable center tiles?
- phpnode 10y ago"They" don't, this model does
- tripa 10y agoTo be fair, most do. To be meta-fair, most means those who have a brand name (those you could distinguish when you buy).
- Johnny555 10y agoThe Speed Cube has the removable center tiles to allow the tension to be adjusted: https://rubiks.com/blog/how-to-customise-the-rubiks-speed-cube https://rubiks.com/blog/how-to-customise-the-rubiks-speed-cu...
- da5is 10y agoAlso to make it much easier to grease the cube - if you do it as you stack the rows, you can get much more even distribution (and the cube will fly afterwards).
- corndoge 10y agoAll Rubik's cubes have removable center tiles covers; they're usually difficult to remove without the help of an Xacto knife or similar. Under each tile is a screw; unscrewing these will allow you to take the center cubes off. After removing all the other non-center cubes, once you take the center 'cubes' off (they aren't really cubes, actually more like plates) it's easier to grease your cube up.
- teekert 10y agoFirst time the actual character is more handsome than the actor ;)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- atmosx 10y agoHah! First thing I noticed! :-)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- discardorama 10y agoI'm sure the nerds here will find ample opportunities to tear this movie apart, but keep in mind that the "average American" (a) doesn't know much about Snowden, other than "he stole secrets and hid in commie Russia, so he must've been working for them", and (b) just believes what the government says. To counter the powerful voice of the government, you need an equally powerful voice like Hollywood. Maybe this movie will make the average American think more about the issue, and it might even cause some to change their views about Snowden. If it does, this movie has served its purpose, and kudos to Stone.
- Vexs 10y agoI agree. I like ripping on these as much as the next guy, but as long as it gets people talking that's enough. Also, one of the best ways to learn something is to find out that the teacher was wrong. People love that.
- atmosx 10y agoThis movie is made by Oliver Stone right? Judging by prior work like The Doors (Jim Morrison) and Alexander (Alexander the Great) I don't have high hopes. Oliver Stone likes to destroy characters on the big screen paying attention to the flaws rather than the charisma of his charactes. Jesus, I didn't remember a single battle scene from the movie "Alexander" and this guy went from Greece to India on horse battling his way out. He is considered one of the biggest strategic minds in history. He was the only leader I recall who changed the faith of battles consistently by making swift, unexpected moves with his cavalry hitting the enemy where he least expected it. Being gay[2] is not the reason why Alexander was named "Great". [1] In the case of Alexander he admitted that it was a huge failure, but I'm not sure if by failure he and I mean the same thing, probably not. [2] Sexual relationships amongst men were a very natural thing in ancient Greece, especially between soldiers. Indeed Alexander was married twice AFAIK.
- toyg 10y agoNo director is perfect. Oliver Stone had a few duds, but he also made some excellent movies: JFK, Any Given Sunday, Platoon, Talk Radio, Wall Street... If you have to criticize him, you could say that his recent movies have not been up to the bar he set in the '90s -- but it definitely was a very high bar. I'm much more worried about Gordon-Levitt playing Snowden, from the trailer he looks pretty bland.
- stordoff 10y agoThis raises an interesting question: how did Snowden get the documents out of the NSA? I don't recall reading much about how this was accomplished. Has that been discussed/reported anywhere?
- avar 10y agoWasn't he working from home from Hawaii as a contractor with a remote login and could easily transfer data from NSA systems at his leisure? Isn't this whole framing of a Jason Bourne-esque exfiltration of the data just a myth? Aside from Snowden you don't have to elaborately hide an SD card in a Rubik's cube. Just strick it in a condom and shove it. From what I've read security against this sort of exfiltration is focused on disabling USB ports and the like. Not trying to detect something the size of an SD card leaving the building. They're not doing a full cavity search or giving you an MRI each time you enter/exit.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 10y ago> Aside from Snowden you don't have to elaborately hide an SD card in a Rubik's cube. Just strick it in a condom and shove it. Or just use a spy coin. The UK pound coin version is pretty good, but will stop working when we change our coins. Coins are handy because you carry them in your pockets, so they avoid xray checks at airports.
- deepnet 10y agoSnowden wasn't 'on-site', AFAIK he had remote access as a private contractor. One of Snowden's main revelations was how little oversight there was. He was motivated to come forward by the abuses he saw the NSA database put to, rather than its mere existence. Snowden has reported his colleagues reguarly exfiltrated 'dirty pictures' from the NSA database. Snowden says 'nudies' were a 'commodity' traded around his colleagues. If one can trivially sneak out dirty pics without oversight then... Of course if Snowden could do it for the best of reasons, it is hard to believe moles and foriegn agents don't have similar access.
- ipsin 10y agoIf you X-rayed the cube with the card on top or bottom, I wonder if the card would be distinguishable? I imagine that, if the cube was on one of the sides, it'd be practically impossible to see.
- 05 10y agoSeeing how the cube is mostly plastic and SD cards have metal contacts, it should be very visible.
- voidiac 10y agoMost cubes I've seen seem to have metal springs.
- Vexs 10y agoOn the side, you might see a slightly brighter line. Here's an xray of a uSD card: http://rusolut.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/msd1xray.jpg http://rusolut.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/msd1xray.jpg And an xray of a rubiks cube: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4138/4859926370_10d2a0d071.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4138/4859926370_10d2a0d071.jpg Overall, doubt you could see it without looking very carefully.
- imrehg 10y agoI just had some teeth X-rays at a pretty regular dental clinic here in Taiwan. They were showing me the results and explaning what they have found. I was totally amazed how thing that look super-light tiny shadows for me at one place they say "we must check", while elsewhere they were "nothing". What you see totally depends on the expertise you have and I think it wouldn't be hard at all to spot things that for us outsiders are just "maybe a little bit lighter".
- patrickg_zill 10y agoRURIC: Redundant Userspace RAID of Inexpensive Cubes
- beeboop 10y agoOn its surface, the movie appears to be praising Snowden. I am convinced it is intentionally shitty and is deliberately overly praiseful of Snowden so that viewers will find it annoying. The net result is that people leave with a negative opinion of Snowden the person. It just looks so over-the-top terrible from the trailer alone.
- waynecochran 10y ago"especially considering that cube wasn’t released until 2013" This cube is different than those released in the 1970s?
- bigdubs 10y agoIt's largely the same, the speed cube just replaces the stickers with plastic tiles. The internals are also tweaked to make it easier to spin and to make it resist "popping" where the cube would jettison some pieces if you were moving it too fast / hard.
- sopooneo 10y agoThe colors are embedded tiles rather than stickers, and it's made to allow the sides to twist faster and more smoothly. https://rubiks.com/store/product/rubiks-speed-cube https://rubiks.com/store/product/rubiks-speed-cube
- throw88889 10y agoThe cube sequence doesn't make sense to me. What kind of guard will let a cube not pass through the system like that? If I were that guard I would find that cube throw highly suspicious. And while we are at it, wouldn't it be easier to hide the microSD card under the tongue for example? And lastly, where exactly are you supposed to stick that card into in the facility? Even low-level security companies glue all USB/card reader inputs.