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Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative
- VilleSalonen 1y agoThe link points to a Full HD Blu-ray review. Here is the review for the highest quality 4K Blu-ray review: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Sneakers-4K-Blu-ray/343185/ https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Sneakers-4K-Blu-ray/343185/
- pbhjpbhj 1y agoI was surprised to read they're not affiliated with Blu-ray RTM (registered trade mark) - I guess Blu-ray RTM are unusually choosing not to bite the hand that feeds them. https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK0080955774A https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00...
- happycube 1y agoFun fact, the DVD Forum just shut down so the DVD trademark is all but unenforced now.
- gittes 1y agoGreat movie! So many big named actors in it! The director also did Field of Dreams!
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoI'm not a fan of baseball, but I liked Field of Dreams (at the age I was back when it would have made it to Australian TV).
- johnwalkr 1y agoI am a fan of baseball, and in 2021, there was a real MLB game played at the original filming location. It started with Kevin Costner leading the players out of the cornfield.
- jprd 1y agoI had goosebumps, they nailed it.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoThis is kinda way off-topic, but that feeling of the "bringing back" something that had been lost to time that Field of Dreams provides, I get the same thing from the movie Midnight in Paris. Like a literally palpable warm, comforting, everything-is-alright feeling (mostly from the Salvador Dali encounter).
- pier25 1y agoAnd the music is by none other than James Horner. He's a legend in film scoring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Horner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Horner
- dang 1y agoRelated. Others? Sneakers – The Team's Demands [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41493927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41493927 - Sept 2024 (2 comments) Sneakers Film Promotional Floppy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38585213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38585213 - Dec 2023 (54 comments) No-more-secrets: recreate the decryption effect seen in the 1992 movie Sneakers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36799776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36799776 - July 2023 (257 comments) Happy 30th anniversary to ‘Sneakers,’ a cult classic that was ahead of its time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32788136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32788136 - Sept 2022 (47 comments) Cracking the Code: Sneakers at 30 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31378418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31378418 - May 2022 (76 comments) Memories of the “Sneakers” Shoot (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29840802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29840802 - Jan 2022 (198 comments) Sneakers: Robert Redford, River Phoenix nerd out in 1992’s prescient caper - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620095 - Dec 2021 (7 comments) Sneakers (1992), the Film - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26111977 - Feb 2021 (2 comments) Tool Recreating the “Decrypting Text” Effect Seen in the Movie “Sneakers” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11643270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11643270 - May 2016 (54 comments) Sneakers - movie about pen testing, crypto/nsa, espionage, and deception (1992) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6196379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6196379 - Aug 2013 (5 comments) What it was like shooting the movie Sneakers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4498985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4498985 - Sept 2012 (46 comments) Sneakers (Film, 1992) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499298 - July 2010 (1 comment) Joybubbles: the blind phreaker whom Whistler was based off of in Sneakers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1443241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1443241 - June 2010 (1 comment)
- jph 1y agoSneakers and Setec Astronomy became my go to for example encryption code for years. If you're not familiar with Setec Astronomy, you're in for a treat. <3
- ghostDancer 1y agoI think you keep too many secrets.
- sixtram 1y agoThe question is, can you guarantee my safety?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- glimshe 1y agoSetec Astronomy is also the name, obviously inspired by the movie, of a successful MIT Puzzle Hunt group.
- jmuguy 1y agoI think you mean cootys rat semen.
- lantastic 1y agoClearly you didn't read my socrates note.
- dpifke 1y ago"Setec Astronomy" is the SSID of my home wifi network. The password is the missile launch code from War Games.
- Bluestein 1y agoFeatured here often.- ... particularly sadly, at Earl Jones' passing.- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41493927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41493927 Greatest movie :) PS. The quote on "goowill not being something the government does" reads so poignant now ...
- Karellen 1y agoPart of my headcanon for Sneakers is that Agent Abbot (Jones) is actually Admiral Greer (Jones' character from The Hunt for Red October/Patriot Games/Clear and Present Danger), set a bit earlier in his career, and going under a codename while working CyberOps for NSA ;-)
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoIronically, I think this movie is better suited to being watched on VHS quality.
- beeflet 1y agoI just watch it with my eyes closed
- jpecar 1y agoIndeed, sound mix is rather amazing. Incredible stereo picture and depth, something you seldom hear in modern movies.
- legostormtroopr 1y agoIt sounds like a cocktail party.
- tbyehl 1y agoThat was very good, Bish. Remind me to make you an honorary blind person.
- InsideOutSanta 1y agoIf you have a high-quality digital version of a movie, you can use one of the CRT shaders from modern emulators to make it look like any old TV you want.
- VMG 1y agothe audio quality of the popular streaming versions is pretty bad
- voxadam 1y agoMy voice is my passport. Verify Me.
- zehaeva 1y agoI totally say this under my breath every time I have to enter sensitive information while other people are around.
- devoutsalsa 1y agoThis is always the first thing I remember about the movie... COOTYS RAT SEMEN "No, I don't." "No. No." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GutJf9umD9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GutJf9umD9c
- nullify88 1y agoHeavily referenced in Uplink, the hacker video game by Introversion Software.
- richrichardsson 1y agoJust before I left the UK in 2018 there was starting to become this trend for voice verification on some services, in one particular one I had to go through the setup of (perhaps it was Virgin Media? I forget), they had me say "My voice is my passport" to train it on how I sound. I smiled to myself.
- ccheever 1y agoI work at a company whose legal name is Monterey's Coast, Inc.
- cantrecallmypwd 1y agooystermen coast ;) amnesty scooter coyote smartens economy tasters
- sneak 1y agoHere I was thinking I was clever also naming one of my companies an anagram of that phrase.
- inanutshellus 1y ago1. relevant username ... since 2010. you found your thread for sure 2. hey man you can still be clever, you just... also have birds-of-your-feather out there. :D
- nullc 1y agoAnd now we know who founded cooties rat semen.
- aa-jv 1y agoI never understood the love for this movie, it just seems lame to see all of these caricatures being created that reinforce hacker stereotypes - and not even in a good way.
- duxup 1y agoCompared to stereotypes I thought it was an interesting mishmash of lively / different characters.
- glimshe 1y agoThe movie was partially responsible for creating the stereotype. This was 1992 and hacker culture wasn't yet mainstream.
- aa-jv 1y agoHacker culture was quite mainstream in the 80's, already. This was a refactoring of it. War Games and Tron and other movies got there first. I think that's the reason I don't have the affinity for this movie that many do - it created incorrect stereotypes which still persist today.
- glimshe 1y agoThe movies you mentioned were far from any type of hacker culture. They were much more about the power of computers, then a mysterious machine people knew little about.
- aa-jv 1y agoWar Games is literally about a hacker. Tron is literally about a hacker. Sneakers is about spooks wanting to be hackers and hackers wanting to be spooks. Sneakers is the point where the militarization of hackers became mainstream.
- duxup 1y agoI feel like those films were sort of "along side" the hacker world. Sneakers to me was more on point.
- nullify88 1y agoThere are some great stills from that movie. In particular the close up of a person's face with reflections of computer text in glasses often sticks with me. I know Timecop also has a similar scene just after the time jump. I think it looks really cool. My brain is weird.
- firefax 1y agoI always liked how they framed the gun being jammed into Gregor's back at the opera, the entire scene carries a certain tension that modern films often fail to sustain or rely on things like explosions or handcannons rather than a .38 and a well acted angry whisper that you will be quietly exiting this theater or your brains will be exiting your fucking skull that is a much more accurate depiction of what it's like to operate under non-official cover. Sadly, the movie really shows it's age when the "cultural attaché" starts lecturing Robert Redford's character that "our countries are friends now". It's hard to suspend disbelief watching it nowadays. To swing the discussion back to cinematography: I'm going to avoid spoilers despite it being an older movie since a disturbing amount of folks in the hacker scene have not seen it but the later scene in the tunnel, arm extended was another great cinematic... shot :-)
- peeters 1y ago> Sadly, the movie really shows it's age when the "cultural attaché" starts lecturing Robert Redford's character that "our countries are friends now". It's hard to suspend disbelief watching it nowadays But it's set in the past, when relations between the countries were much friendlier. Do you have trouble suspending disbelief during fictional movies set in WWII, because the U.S. and Germany are now allies?
- firefax 1y ago>But it's set in the past, when relations between the countries were much friendlier. Do you have trouble suspending disbelief during fictional movies set in WWII, because the U.S. and Germany are now allies? Were they?
- sgt 1y agoAnyone noticed that streaming services start to compromise on quality? With Netflix it's been like that for a while. Apple TV+ seems to be the best. I really want to get into Blu-ray now, looking for a decent player.
- nullify88 1y agoI mostly see a lot of stuttering. Either during high action scenes or when there's little happening at all. It's especially noticable on HBO / MAX at 4k DV. I assumed it was due to aggressive encoding.
- voxadam 1y agoLife is great on the high seas. I've spent nearly 16 years "Passing the Popcorn" and couldn't be happier.
- pimeys 1y agoSome butter with your popcorn? Here let me pass.
- dmos62 1y agoQuestion: what's the streaming budget for the big platforms? Can they offer 50-100 mbps? For example, a 70 gb video for a 2.5 hour movie would need 67 mbps to stream. Having access to a rip like that for a popular movie (meaning new or classic) is normal "on the high seas" and it has a detectable difference on my budget-tier setup compared to a ~20 gb rip. I'm wondering if streaming platforms can afford to offer something like that.
- russelg 1y agoSony Bravia Core has movies up to 80mbps.
- xienze 1y agoSure, they could. But given that the average consumer really doesn’t care that much about picture quality (DVD _still_ outsells Blu-ray for example), why would they bother? Increased storage and bandwidth costs, for what exactly? To cater to the small group of consumers that have good enough hardware (and eyes) to distinguish/care about 20Mb versus 100Mb? Those people are probably buying physical media anyway.
- stuaxo 1y ago"The dialog is clear, sharp, stable, and easy to follow." if we didn't already know it was an older film this would be the thing that nailed it.
- b112 1y agoThat, and its cousin the shaky cam. "Let's make things difficult to see and hear. That makes for better cinema!" Jackie Chan once discussed action scenes in US movies versus his movies. Western films: cut before the punch lands, maybe cut a few more times. Hong Kong moves: just show the action in one scene.
- nullify88 1y agoA great example of this is Hard Boiled 1992, the Hospital Shootout. I think audiences are beginning to appreciate continuous scenes and are becoming more frequent in western films. The most recent one I can think of is John Wick 4, when it goes top down. Some of the recent Michael Bay movies are so aggressive when it comes to cuts, the average shot length must be 2 or 3 seconds.
- RHSeeger 1y agoMichael Bay are basically not worth watching for me. Things move around the screen too fast to know what's going on. The Transformers movies are especially bad due to it because it can be hard to tell which robots are on which side; and , if you're bouncing all over the screen so you never get a chance to focus on one, it becomes impossible.
- myself248 1y agoI once sat in on a TV production class, early in the schoolyear before my schedule got sorted out and it turned out I couldn't take it. So I was in it for one day. But the teacher had the incoming students do a very simple exercise: He turned on some broadcast TV, and told us all to bang our fists on our desks every time there was a scene cut. Then he changed the channel a few times. Soap opera. Newscast. PBS. Cartoons. Movie. Commercial break. Our hands were sore by the end of it, but it stuck with me -- every time I watch older or foreign cinema, I am cognizant of how much longer the shots are.
- pragmatick 1y agoWhat's the relevance of this?
- mortarion 1y agoThe best movie about physical pentesting and grayhat hacking in general.
- geerlingguy 1y agoIt was the previous generation's "Mr. Robot"
- somat 1y agoThat first phone trunk scene in particular stands out as one of the finest hacking scenes in cinema.
- duxup 1y agoSneakers is a popular show with folks interested in tech. If you haven't seen it I think it is worth a try. Great cast, from that exciting age of computers when everything felt like it was just on the edge of possible. Even for folks not of that time, the cast and script are so good it's worth a watch.
- inanutshellus 1y agohacker movie news on hacker news. seems pretty straight-forward...
- Cyphase 1y agoWhen I was a kid we had a VHS recording of Sneakers, with the beginning of an episode of Letterman at the end. I remember my mom liking it. Fond memories. I need to watch it again. A couple of scenes: Carl: We've got customers. Martin: Shoes? Carl: Expensive. Martin: *fixes tie* Look busy, guys. And another: *after apparently inconveniencing Liz, the group is walking out* Cosmo: We'll call you a cab. Liz: "Thank you. This is my last computer date." *Cosmo stops walking, falling behind* Cosmo: "Wait." *the group stops and turns* Cosmo: "A computer matched her with him? I don't think so." *Liz's face falls as Cosmo's henchman start slowly walking up behind her.* *dramatic music as we cut and zoom in to Cosmo's face* Cosmo: "Marty." *Cosmo turns and runs toward his office*
- sbarre 1y agoI saw Sneakers when it first came out in theatres and at the time I was in high school and working part-time in a shoe store.. I had learned from the store owner that you can tell so much from someone's shoes, often more than from their clothes. Combined with that line in this very formative movie (for me), I still to this day can't help but check someone's shoes when I first meet them.
- Ntrails 1y ago> you can tell so much from someone's shoes You can make educated guesses based on apparel of all sorts - but you are always guessing.
- AStonesThrow 1y agoYes but many times, these can be quite valuable inferences. Shoes are indeed a valuable source of information about a person. I knew at least one BH case manager who really paid attention to them. Shoes are expensive, very durable, and typically one of those items that people have only a few pairs of. So while someone can easily change their outfit to match a situation, place, or mood for the day, they may be less likely to change their shoes to match more than a basic purpose. And shoes tend to accumulate evidence of where someone's been. Are they muddy, dusty, spit-polished? Personally, I own about five pair of shoes. I have a pair of Oxford dress shoes, a very nice pair of white New Balance with hook-and-loop, some hiking boots I picked up at JC Penney, and a few others. My clothing, on the other hand, is mostly Adidas and Columbia and some tee shirts, but I don't own any Adidas or Columbia shoes. So you can tell a lot about me, no matter what I'm wearing, by studying my shoes for a while. I met another BH professional who said he owned 52 pairs of Crocs. He said that he'd kicked an addiction habit, but it seems he traded something unhealthy for perhaps a less-detrimental dependence on collecting shoes. To each his own, I suppose, and surely a lot of information could be gleaned about this fellow if you paid attention to which pair of Crocs he'd selected for the day.
- losthobbies 1y agoI love this movie so much. I know there are parts that don't make sense but everyone in it is excellent and it's very quotable. "Practice, Practice, Practice" "You...won't know...who to trust" "No more secrets" The soundtrack is great too.
- duxup 1y agoThe parts of the soundtrack are on one of my coding playlists.
- croes 1y agoBest keypad hacking tutorial
- polycaster 1y agoI’m sorry, but could someone please elaborate on the significance of this post?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoSneakers is a very popular movie in the HN community. It's a great movie, well written, well cast, well acted, suspenseful, interesting, funny. It beautifully captures the golden age.
- happycube 1y agoBTW the writers also previously wrote WarGames, and you can see a lot of the same fingerprints...
- toomuchtodo 1y agoHacker culture.
- SamuelAdams 1y agoAwesome, now do one for the Die Hard series, particularly Live Free or Die Hard. I know the first Die Hard is 4k, but the others are not.
- meifun 1y agoThis movie helped me: 1. Relate to a blind student in our school when they could hear things differently than the rest of us. 2. Realize that social engineering is thing and I tried to practice it in high school to gain access to computer rooms where the "fancy" computers were. 3. Realize that a government can steal or in general can be sneaky/secretive.
- ethbr1 1y ago> Realize that social engineering is thing and I tried to practice it in high school to gain access to computer rooms where the "fancy" computers were. We realized that door bolts are easy to manually jimmy if not precision-fit. Thankfully, our computer lab overseer was a hacker at heart, congratulated us, and got the door fixed. I miss the 90s.
- meifun 1y agoAgreed. I talked my way into the server room several times by different night janitors at my old high school back in 1996. I told them I was there to do maintenance and it wasn't entirely untrue but I was there for running wires and setting up new Macs as part of my class load.
- cestith 1y agoI had a teacher in high school who asked me how secure the data on our lab network was. I asked if I could show her without getting in trouble for knowing how to do something. About fifteen seconds later I asked her if the directory we were looking at had all her tests for the year in it. It was, and for anything not requiring an essay-style answer it also had the keys. This one really isn’t impressive to any sophisticated user. They removed the shell from the user menu list of programs, but they left the shell-to-DOS functionality enabled in a few programs they left enabled. The shared drive directory structure was straightforward to navigate, and being DOS had no real security once the user was at a prompt. Many of us would spend our in-class lab time playing Scorched Earth or other games installed into hidden directories the students had created.
- imacomputertoo 1y ago
- xattt 1y agoRe: negative re-masters I can’t help but notice that a number of older and very prominent shows on streaming services are clearly ripped from a video cassette. For example, the older Simpsons episodes on Disney Plus. Some of the episodes have very prominent dot crawl which is unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for. I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to video tape. Were studios really that reckless with their properties?
- sgt 1y agoSpeaking of, I am desperately trying to get hold of Then Came Bronson that is of reasonable quality. Great and well known TV-series that came out in 1969. It's simply impossible to get a good rip though. The only copy that exists (as far as I know) came from a VHS recording of a TV-channel in the 1980s. But surely the film rolls still exist?
- bayindirh 1y ago> But surely the film rolls still exist? I just watched a video revealing that many multichannel masters of big artists have gone up in flames in a big warehouse fire in 2008 [0] [1], and a comment told that a film company burnt down their silent film archive to get insurance money. So, I don't bet. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9eXk4o35UI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9eXk4o35UI [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-m...
- MrRadar 1y agoA while ago I found a few episodes of a 1950s crime drama/noir series called M Squad (the M is for "murder") on Youtube. I don't recall exactly how but probably because someone mentioned it was a direct inspiration for short-lived Police Squad series and later the Naked Gun films. Anyways, I went to see if there was an official DVD release of it, and there was but several of the episodes were sourced from off-air TV recordings from reruns in the 1980s because those were the only copies the distributor could find! They were originally planning to release the set without them but asked fans if they could source copies which is how they ended up with those recordings. I didn't end up purchasing it because even the episodes where they had a better quality source weren't mastered particularly well to the point where several reviews said they were borderline unwatchable due to the image getting crushed into murky darkness thanks to the noir lighting and DVD MPEG-2 compression.
- owlninja 1y agoPlenty of good Sneakers comments, but I was also excited to learn from this article that Uncle Buck has also recently gotten the same treatment! https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Uncle-Buck-4K-Blu-ray/342214/#Review https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Uncle-Buck-4K-Blu-ray/342214/...
- zimpenfish 1y agoAlso "Live At Pompeii"[0] (although to my disappointment, it's the cinema version with the DSOTM studio clips - my original experience was the Laserdisc and VHS versions which omitted those because IMO they're not interesting and just get in the way. I'd probably watch "Pink Floyd: DSOTM: BTS" as a standalone thing but it has no place, for me, in "Live At Pompeii".) [0] https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/pink-floyd-at-pompeii-mcmlxxii/ https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/pink-floyd-at-pompeii-mc...
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoI listen / watch Live At Pompeii every now and then. My son used to enjoy it when he was between four and ten-ish. Those deep bass parts of Echoes are magic, when the camera is panning past the speaker stacks.
- dymax78 1y agoThe newly released blu-ray includes both the 85-minute and 60-minute cuts.
- zimpenfish 1y agoExcellent news, ta
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- nailer 1y agoSneakers could absolutely be remade with the box being a quantum computer. ‘No more secrets’ being breaking all the pre-quantum encryption.
- api 1y agoI wouldn't fully remake it. It's a classic. Just watch it with that explanation in mind. It makes it more plausible. Maybe what the mathematician did was crack a gigantic outstanding problem in scaling quantum computers that allowed e.g. extraordinarily effective quantum noise reduction at scale.
- nailer 1y agoI do the same thing with Prometheus - I watch the Weyland TED Talk before the film and view the film as a man that considers himself a god trying to meet god.
- api 1y agoThat movie was so weird. It had flashes of brilliance but also a really dumb "idiot ball" plot in a lot of ways. Astronauts would never be as stupid as they're depicted in that film, things like "oh gee I think I'll take my helmet off around all this potential biohazard." It also doesn't really work in the Alien universe at all. It would have been much better had it been set in an entirely different 'verse, maybe even its own things. IMHO the Alien canon should be: Alien, Alien Romulus, and Aliens, in that order (since Romulus is in fact supposed to occur between those other two in-world). Maybe the sequel to Romulus (and Aliens) could be an updated adaptation of the William Gibson script that begins when Rain reaches the "non-Weyland colony" (which would kinda fit with Gibson's script). My opinion on Interstellar is similar. It had brilliant moments (and visuals!) but overall I didn't like it. I couldn't get past things like: okay, so we are in a kind of semi post-collapse world apparently run by milquetoast descendants of the Heritage Foundation. Where exactly did they get a starship? Did they just have, like, a warp drive sitting around up on concrete blocks in someone's lawn? What? Also they had to lift off from Earth with chemical rockets, but somehow they're able to lift off from much larger planets later without thinking about delta-V budget at all. Sorry but if you're gonna say it's hard sci-fi it's gotta at least try to know something about physics and have coherent world building. Yes I'm a sci-fi geek.
- jackgavigan 1y agoOne of the great things about Sneakers is that the McGuffin's core concept still holds up as reasonably credible 30+ years later. I first saw this movie in the mid-90s, and it sparked a mild fascination with how cryptography (specifically, RSA) works, that arguably influenced my career path. Fun fact: Leonard Adleman (the A in RSA) drafted the words and slides used for the lecture scene: https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/ https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/
- nickpeterson 1y agoI love the joke about being snubbed for mathematical consulting at the oscars.
- ynniv 1y ago"There isn't a government on this planet that wouldn't kill us all for that thing"
- zombot 1y agoBy now they just declare encryption illegal and order backdoors everywhere.
- ecairns 1y agoI was a CS major at the University of Washington in the mid 90s. In one of my intro courses we were touching on public key cryptography and this movie came up. The professor mentioned that Adelman was a consultant on the movie and that he was a notoriously slow replier to email. Like you would get a reply weeks or months after you sent an email to him. But, if you asked a question about this movie you'd get a reply to your email almost immediately.
- wdr1 1y ago> Fun fact: Leonard Adleman (the A in RSA) drafted the words and slides used for the lecture scene: https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/ https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/ One of the few movies to have a mathematical consultant in the credits!
- int0x21 1y agoI was pretty sad the other day when I chose 'Setec Astronomy' for a trivia team name & nobody got the reference
- kstrauser 1y agoI have a sticker for it on my laptop. You're not alone out there.
- Dowwie 1y agomy voice is my passport
- pwrrr 1y agoOne of my favorite hacker movies! Saw it in at the cinema and numerous times on dvd. Will definetely get this. The comment about the shoes, stick with you ;)
- MiscIdeaMaker99 1y agoThis came out when I was in high school and it's been one of my favorite movies ever since. I still watch it from time to time.
- ednite 1y agoDefinitely in my top 5, if not first. Feels right seeing so much appreciation for it here—very fitting for HN.
- iancmceachern 1y agoLove this movie! So many iconic San Francisco scenes!
- fitsumbelay 1y agovery cool movie love the e-commerce website for online purchase of said movie
- jack_pp 1y agoWonder how fast we're gonna get the torrent LE: weird, my local private torrent has a 4k version from 18 April while the site had it on 22 April
- psanford 1y agoI was shocked when I rewatched this recently just how good the cryptography technobabble is in this movie. Specifically the scene where the professor is presenting on breaking public key cryptography. The very first thing he mentions is a number field sieve. Nice work hiring whatever cryptography consultant that got for this scene.
- ckozlowski 1y agoIt was none other than Leonard Adleman of RSA fame.
- bink 1y agoI think the only part that really pulled me out of the movie was when they were testing the device and it was decrypting a dial-up feed random character by random character on the screen. It wasn't "Hackers" bad but it was still pretty unbelievable.
- ynniv 1y agoOnce you accept that a movie isn't a documentary, Hackers is a lot of fun. The editor of 2600 consulted on it (and lent his nym)
- rbanffy 1y agoThe soundtrack is much, much, better.
- ineptech 1y agoAgreed, just saw the remaster in a theater and it holds up surprisingly well. What seemed like glaring inaccuracies in 1995 now seem like whimsical visualizations and over the top silliness. Except of course "It's got a 28.8 bps modem". The other thing I noticed was that it is chock-full of gender non-conformity. Not in the plot, but visually - almost every hacker character wears androgynous clothing or makeup or something along those lines. The over-representation of trans people in computer security is a common trope now and I wonder if Hackers was the first time that was depicted in media.
- greasegum 1y agoAll I remember from seeing this as a kid is that, in the final scene, River Phoenix asks the hot government agent for her phone number. The number she gives is a real non-555 number--pretty sure it was 818 area code?. You could call that number and hear a message from the character for many years. Was this the only movie ever to do this?
- reverendsteveii 1y agoYou're gonna love the answer to that. Disney's 1994 family holiday treat, The Santa Clause, starred Tim Allen as a guy who (I'm remembering this as I'm typing it and holy cow) sort of kills Santa Claus by startling him into falling off the roof. He then puts on the Santa suit and becomes the archetype himself. But in that movie, there's an off-hand reference to a phone number: 1-800-SPANK-ME, meant entirely sarcastically. Turns out, either that was already a real number or some enterprising pornographer recognized that there's no such thing as bad publicity, and precocious youngsters who called the line after watching the movie were invited to pay $5/minute for "the hottest phone line in America". https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/santa-clause-deleted-scene-1800spankme/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/santa-clause-deleted-scene...
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- ethbr1 1y agoTossing a few ARG links here, since the heyday of larger games (and especially ones with PTSN connectivity) is old enough some HNs might not have experienced them. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119174/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119174/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternate_reality_games https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternate_reality_ga... It's a shame too, as they were unique. Would love to see a nationally-accessible Meow Wolf tie-in. PS: ilovebees
- schlauerfox 1y agoI really enjoyed the original Valve's Portal BBS you could dial into Aperture Science and read on the history. The writers at Valve really wrote some great silly backstory about a shower curtain company developing quantum portals, as some sort of tool to get in and out of showers. I'm not sure that's cannon anymore though.
- voodooEntity 1y agoOne of my absolute favorite movies. Got the dvd still and did recently just watch it again.
- myvoiceismypass 1y agoOne of my favorite fun facts about Sneakers is that their headquarters was the upper level at the Fox Theatre in Oakland! I think about that every time I go to a show there now.
- joshstrange 1y agoI cannot hear the word "verify" and/or "passport" without saying "My voice is my passport, verify me" under my breath.
- MisterTea 1y agoHeard a Verizon tech on a phone call to tech-tech (tech^2?) support and the automated attendant stated "Repeat after me, my voice is my password" and the tech responded "my voice is my password" then had to wait on hold. Felt a little dystopian.
- pavlov 1y agoThe design of Blu-ray.com makes me nostalgic for a web where 12px Verdana was the obvious ideal body font, margins were an optional luxury, and Mac OS X Aqua-style shiny blue-gray gradients behind a menu bar were the height of sophistication. (You want just a little bit of blue glow at the bottom of the gradient for that translucent 3D effect that Steve Jobs called "lickable".)
- pier25 1y agoThat "change the world" scene in the Cray computer room still gives me the chills: https://youtu.be/coDtzN6bXAM https://youtu.be/coDtzN6bXAM
- keevitaja 1y agothere's a nice app that "emulates" this movie https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets
- pixelmonkey 1y agoI really love “Sneakers.” It’s one of the best classic “hacker” films. This essay also does a nice job of breaking down a scene you might not have otherwise noticed, which has some lovely filmmaking technique and subtle sound design at play: https://slate.com/culture/2012/09/searching-for-playtronics.html https://slate.com/culture/2012/09/searching-for-playtronics.... The ensuing despair over how to proceed is interrupted by the voice of Whistler (David Strathairn, Bay Area native), the team’s blind technician. “What did the road sound like?” he asks. “Did you go over any speed bumps? Gravel? How about a bridge?” I nearly stood up in the theater from excitement. I’d never seen anything like it: the geography of San Francisco turned into a puzzle to be solved.