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Hackers (1995) Animated Experience
- lchengify 9mo agoI was so proud of myself in college when I could finally name all those books in the bar scene.
- k2enemy 9mo agoI 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.
- enkonta 9mo agoThis 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.
- trentnix 9mo agoIt'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.
- shon 9mo ago+1 for explorers
- dylan604 9mo agoIs 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.
- trentnix 9mo agoYep 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!"
- chrisfosterelli 9mo agoThe 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.
- jghn 9mo agoI 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.
- Sharlin 9mo agoBastardized? It's satire and not at all subtle about it. You can of course argue that it's poorly executed satire, but judging it based on how faithful it is to the source material is rather missing the point.
- jghn 9mo agoI think you're the one who missed the point, as in you missed *my* point. When I first saw Starship Troopers, I disliked it because it wasn't faithful to the book. Over time I came to appreciate it for what it actually was, and now think it is fantastic. Likewise, with Hackers I initially disliked it due to how inaccurate and unrealistic it was. I came to appreciate it for what it actually was over time, and now think it is fantastic.
- Sharlin 9mo agoYeah, my bad. For some reason I read your comment really carelessly.
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- ethinton 9mo agoThat's delightful - thanks for sharing! Undoubtedly a film that inspired a generation.
- trentnix 9mo agoThe 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.
- dylan604 9mo agoI 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.
- GJim 9mo ago> 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.
- Forgeties79 9mo agoI 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.
- trentnix 9mo agoThat'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.
- bilekas 9mo agoHack 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.
- alexjplant 9mo agoI, 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.
- Spastche 9mo agoI was never into this kind of music back in the day, but I had heard A LOT of it from PSX games. going back to it as an adult, I freakin' love it
- GJim 9mo ago> 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).
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- TheSilva 9mo agoSadly, looking through the code, doesn't show up any "GARBAGE" file easter egg to be found. Amazing stuff, nevertheless!
- whynotmaybe 9mo agoThanks, I've been looking for 5 minutes and was about to rewatch the movie to see where it's supposed to be !
- TheSilva 9mo agoI mean, you should totally go and rewatch it, don't let me stop you from enjoying again the movie!
- ordinarily 9mo agoAwhile I made something really dumb: https://www.warpstream.com/etc/terminal https://www.warpstream.com/etc/terminal you can enter a 'gibson' command.
- maqp 9mo agoNice touch with the IP :D
- fred_is_fred 9mo agoThis is really slow for me on my laptop. Does it need a P6 to run? I heard those have a killer refresh rate.
- linsomniac 9mo agoYou need to run it on a RISC architecture, but that would be too much machine for you.
- shon 9mo agoThe Gibson! Very cool. did you make this? I made a Tron lightcycle game: https://new.af/tron https://new.af/tron Now that AI accelerates dev so much, I suspect we'll get to see a lot of cool throwbacks.
- swah 9mo agoThat runs super smoothly!
- shon 9mo agoThanks! working on multiplayer now...
- whynotmaybe 9mo agoWhile we're at it, I remember an atari st game that was like the tron lightcycle as "Trek4". Did it really exist ?
- shon 9mo agoHmm I had an ST. I think I vaguely remember this. Was it a PD game or commercial?
- whynotmaybe 9mo agoOnly 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.
- kayge 9mo agoWas it maybe called Surround? Try looking up Atari catalog # CX2641 and see if it brings back any more memories :)
- vor_ 9mo ago> Now that AI accelerates dev so much Then where's the massive explosion of software?
- diggyhole 9mo agoIt's in the place I put the thing that one time!
- jghn 9mo agoI couldn't find the garbage file. I'm such a failure, now Davinci is going to overturn all the oil tankers
- echelon_musk 9mo ago> 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.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo ago> Okay, okay, we need proof that we were here. Really missed opportunity to place a garbage file in here somewhere!
- rbanffy 9mo agoMe neither, but there is a suspicious empty space close to one of the corners...
- bitwize 9mo ago"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.
- gritspants 9mo agoAs 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.
- bitwize 9mo agoI 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.
- pjmlp 9mo ago"RISC architecture is gonna change everything." :)
- apgwoz 9mo agoEasily 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.
- thr0waway001 9mo agoMe: [thinking about how to get with the hot Romulan looking chick] Me also: yah RISC is good!
- pjmlp 9mo agoYeah, that scene is interesting. :)
- stewartjarod 9mo agoLOVELY :D
- nickthegreek 9mo agoI 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.
- ganoushoreilly 9mo agoI have a couple copies of the laserdiek variants, always felt like the best tech to show homage.
- nickthegreek 9mo agoI didn’t know it was released on laserdisc! Looks like the going rate is around $100 US.
- sophacles 9mo agoThe 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?".
- kstrauser 9mo agoWho’s that? The girl laughing as they rack up the score and declare a tie, then we never see her again? Or how about when you realize you never see Phreak again once he makes his call from the jail?
- sophacles 9mo ago> The girl laughing as they rack up the score and declare a tie Yes exactly.
- LandoCalrissian 9mo agoEasily my biggest guilty pleasure movie, warts and all, I still love it.
- BLKNSLVR 9mo agoMy wife, who isn't into that culture at all, knows how I feel about Hackers. Every now and then when the opportunistic situation arises, she'll announce at me: "Crash and Burn".
- aenis 9mo agovery 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.
- 0xcb0 9mo agoI love it. Hack the planet. Thank you so much.
- benrutter 9mo agoThis 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer
- echelon_musk 9mo ago> You're gonna love New York. It's the city that never sleeps.
- KeybInterrupt 9mo agoYeah! Hack the Planet :D
- axus 9mo agoThe addressing on that hex dump is all over the place.. and not even byte-aligned!
- 29athrowaway 9mo agoThis 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.
- vidalakistrajk 9mo agoThis is a coded scene made by one developer and the other is a multimillion dollar studio project... :D
- runjake 9mo agoI 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.
- cerebrum01 9mo agoIf 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 https://telehack.com/telehack.html
- riffraff 9mo agoI haven't watched it, but I seem to recall "Mr Robot" was widely praised by techies too.
- StopTheWorld 9mo agoThe 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).
- RRRA 9mo agoNow 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!
- mackman 9mo agoOK who is gonna turn this into a functional terminal emulator for me?
- clickety_clack 9mo agoI want to visualize real data this way for when business users come over to my desk and ask for something.
- shmerl 9mo agoNot exactly, but there is cool retro term: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term
- ua709 9mo agoClaude Code. There are no more software engineers. Apparently...
- JCattheATM 9mo agoThis is really cool! Thanks for making and sharing.
- kriro 9mo agoA+ 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" :)
- JaggedJax 9mo agoLove 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?
- pja 9mo agoDoesn’t do that for me. Have you got some oddball extension installed or something?
- JaggedJax 9mo agoFound 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?
- kalleboo 9mo agoYou can also type / to start searching which is one less keystroke than Command-F
- anthk 9mo agoI 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.
- thr0waway001 9mo agoIf 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.
- dylan604 9mo agoThe 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.
- anthk 9mo agoIndeed; music wise for actual hacking (old meaning) it would be some 9front setup (either themeless defaults or something bland with yellow background for terminal windows, as if they were mundane sticky notes) and Muzak; for cracking either industrial metal or some progresive Jazz which would still sound cool and elegant in some parts. For really odd hacks and cracks the music from Twin Peaks wuold be ideal. For the cool stuff, well, the Demoscene it's like that. Or stuff from https://t3x.org https://t3x.org, or the small tools from gopher://hoi.st and tons of weird 9front new tools such as the GeFS filesystem, the future gpufs, using remote devices as if they were the local ones in the computer and whatnot. Ditto with Subleq and EForth which is perfect foror something like Jarre.
- Der_Einzige 9mo agoIt was sad to realize that my parents, who are utterly obsessed with rush, were the incels of their generation.
- anthk 9mo agoIronically 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.
- fvv 9mo agowonderful
- par 9mo agoDamn 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.
- blahaj 9mo agoSorry 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.
- ddtaylor 9mo agoAs ytcracker says: Lost a lot of my people to drugs and jail And suicide cause we do or die Thats the way this thing goes with my crew and i But i guess that we all keep it moving right Terminal eternally but you know that i ain't sick Out here idling on my nick While i go ahead and do another magic trick I'm sorry for your loss. I've lost many to all of these. The worst is someone I was in federal prison with and would hang out with daily. He got out and got on Fentanyl and was so messed up he literally burned alive after his house caught on fire. Rest in piece Daniel.
- throaway54 9mo agoytcracker still the greatest 2/26/2026 NES forever (9'.')9 (9'.')-o
- herodoturtle 9mo agoI’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!
- jghn 9mo 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.
- par 9mo ago"im a real wild child i'm a wild one, im a wild one!!"
- arvid-lind 9mo agoaaaah! joey! joey! thank you everybody!
- racl101 9mo ago"I'm not an addict. Can I get some more coffee?"
- rbanffy 9mo 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 9mo agoI 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.
- myvoiceismypass 9mo agoThis absolutely made my week! (I still have the Hackers movie poster framed in my office.)
- erickhill 9mo agoOh dang I made it to the end of the grid/world. Got scared in the darkness and retreated back to the light.
- evan_ 9mo agoThis is great, is there any way to just have it fly around autonomously?
- dylan604 9mo agoThat could be a fun screen saver
- syx 9mo agoLast 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
- Panino 9mo agoWatching 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.
- kstrauser 9mo agoIn San Francisco, DNA Lounge has an annual event where they decorate the whole place as Cyberdelia. I never miss it if I can help. A couple years ago my friend and I dressed as FBI agents. It was great fun.
- waldopat 9mo agoPhenomenal work!
- cmrdporcupine 9mo agoI 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!"
- jus3sixty 9mo agoSome of you tough tech guys are talking a lot of sh$@ but I bet you couldn’t hack a Gibson.
- k6hkUZtLUM 9mo agoHack the Planet!
- RazerWazer 9mo agoYou have now become The Plague.
- iberator 9mo agoquestion: 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?
- Grosvenor 9mo agoYes. 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.
- elric 9mo agoI miss the time when rollerblades seemed like the ideal mode of transport. My ankles don't.
- BLKNSLVR 9mo agoI've been inline skating ten years now, and the last three years been doing long outdoor skates, 43km a couple of weeks ago. It is the ideal move of transport! (if cars were less common and hills less steep). I've got weak ankles from rolling them regularly playing other sports, but the inline boots strap em in nice and tight. If you need some motivation, or just like to watch some decent skating, check out The Stuttering Skater on YouTube. I'm nowhere near even thinking about being that good, but he's great to watch weaving through NYC traffic.
- binarynate 9mo agoRollerblade technology has come a long way since then! Modern skates are much more comfortable and often use bigger wheels that make it easier to roll over rougher terrain and go fast. I get around Chicago almost exclusively through a combination of inline skates & trains (it's easy to wear skates on the trains here).
- ericskiff 9mo agoThis 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.
- greggman65 9mo agoI think this is a good example of something you can vibe-code today. (though maybe not as good) I went to gemini, picked "cavnas". used this prompt > There's a famous CG scene in the movie Hackers where they "Hack the Gibson". It shows a bunch of translucnt cubes with glowing edges. The textures on the cubes are live computer text. The camera slowly flyies between the cubes tilting gracfully and it searches for the main one. > Reproduce this scene in Javascript. Be sure to include each of those features > 1. live computer text which you can simulate by drawing to a canvas offscreen and uploading to a texture, adding more output as it goes. You can even use "function.toString()" of the code you write as input > 2. a post processing step so we get a glow > You can probably use three.js for this Here's the result. https://codepen.io/greggman/pen/XJKPBZW https://codepen.io/greggman/pen/XJKPBZW No, it's not as good as the site linked above and it's unlikely it would be. On other hand, it got this far on the first try. Maybe a few more iterations and it could get the stuff you want.
- hackrmn 9mo agoThanks 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?!
- caust1c 9mo ago> 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!
- bradfa 9mo agoCereal is my favorite character! Especially the random shouting.
- kstrauser 9mo agoCereal leaves the room. He’s gone for like 15 seconds. Mom pops her head in: “Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Cereal has.” That always cracks me up. Like he had to have walked out of the room, spun on his heel, and marched straight into the kitchen and raided the fridge. He couldn’t have taken more than 5 breaths after leaving before he was eating something.
- shmerl 9mo agoCool. The only thing that's missing are keys for turning / rotating. Would be nice to get one from Johnny Mnemonic too.
- nirav72 9mo agoThe 1990s depiction of a filesystems in movies like Hacker or Disclosure was just weird. Then you had products like Microsoft Bob.
- racl101 9mo agoYO THIS IS ZERO COOL!
- k2enemy 9mo agoI highly recommend Hackers Curator for fans of the movie [0] Outstanding interviews with cast and crew, prop projects, etc. [0] https://hackerscurator.com https://hackerscurator.com
- stack_framer 9mo agoI 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.
- iJohnDoe 9mo agoSo friggin’ cool. Well done.
- avsn 9mo agoThis 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.
- ryan42 9mo agogod wouldn't be up this late...
- _joel 9mo agoCan I run this on my new pentium pro laptop, or is it RISC only?
- invader 9mo agoAwesome! 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 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.
- ultrahax 9mo ago12 year old me watched this movie and immediately went out and bought colored floppy disks so I too could hack the planet. Simpler times.
- MrCurryCasino 9mo agoSuch a crap, corny movie. Cliché dialogues. Didn't age well, typical 90s techbabblebullshit drivel. Strange days OTOH...
- intothemild 9mo agoI see where youre coming from. But oh when you embrace the cliche of it all.. it's amazing
- senko 9mo agoFun fact: "right here, right now" sample in eponymous Fatboy Slim song is Angela Basset trying to make Ralph Fiennes come to his senses and forget Juliette Lewis.
- ok123456 9mo agoIt was an MTV move made for teenagers. People thought it was silly and had dumb technobabble when it was released. "RISC is good." If you objected to the premise or technical content of the movie, you weren't the intended audience. Hollywood tried to make a bunch of computer movies at the time and had to figure out how to make things on a computer seem exciting, even though in reality, it's just someone sitting and typing for long periods. The producers decided on 3D mainframes and artistically rendered hacker tools (some macintosh progz at the time were not too far off). At least at the time, they were up to the task of using some creativity to address the challenges of making a compelling, at least visually if not intellectually, movie set in a place and time with technology that effectively shrinks time and space. Now they simply set all their movies before smartphones existed.
- BLKNSLVR 9mo agoDisagree on Hackers, agree on Strange Days. Skunkanansie cameo too.
- unicorn_cowboy 9mo agoIt's fun to live out 90s hacker fantasies. types furiously [ACCESS DENIED] types double furiously [ACCESS GRANTED] dramatic turn to camera "I'm in."
- throwaway314155 9mo agoAm I the only one who vehemently despised this movie?
- vidalakistrajk 9mo agoHi guys! Original creator here. I had no idea this was trending here until some people on LinkedIn wrote to me!!! I will try to make the garbage files hunt easter egg. This was an idea that started all of this but I couldn't get it to work nicely and I definitely didn't expect this much traction!
- dijit 9mo agoI found an RSA private key while wandering around, hope its not used for anything ;)
- h33t-l4x0r 9mo agoRumor is, it will get you into the pentagon. But you have to guess the ip.
- vidalakistrajk 9mo agoI hope not! But if you find any use for it please let me know ;)
- Vicinity9635 9mo ago[flagged]
- noperand 9mo agoHACK THE PLANET! This is great! You seem to have folks leveraging XSS against the leaderboard (classic!). Of course, the JSON is available via https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/api/leaderboard?limit=1000&offset=0 https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/api/leaderboard?limit=1000&o...). XSS in the top entry (purportedly completed in -1e+129ms) might be firing since I get redirected to the Hacker's Manifesto included in Phrack (issue #7, released 1986-09-25) ;-) ``` { "scores": [ { "alias": "\u003Cimg onerror='document.location = `https://phrack.org/issues/7/3#article https://phrack.org/issues/7/3#article`' src=a\u003ESHOUTSOUTTOPHRACK\u003C/img\u003E", "time_ms": -1e+129 } ...OTHER ATTEMPTS FOLLOW... ``` Regardless, thanks for sharing! Very cool!
- dkga 9mo agoHACK THE PLANET! Have to rewatch the movie tonight!
- ctxcode 9mo agoThat's so awesome :D thanks for making this. amazing.
- caseysoftware 9mo agoWhen I interviewed at Okta (May 2016), I created users Dade Murphy and Kate Libby and then hit the docs to check something.. and the docs included Dade Murhpy already. Once I joined, I had theories on who wrote it and got it on my first try. :)
- tracerbulletx 9mo agoI went to see hackers in 35MM at the Academy Museum and the director said when he saw the script his immediate thought was, computers are going to be the new electric guitars. He framed the whole movie around the crew as sort of a punk band where computers were their instrument and tool of creative expression and fun, and I thought that was awesome. Also btw, all of the visualizations of the gibson were practical effects. they actually built stacks of glass towers and projected the light on them and had a camera track flying through it in a warehouse.
- millzlane 9mo agoAnyone else on the fan Facebook group? Ceralkiller is on there.
- MrCurryCasino 9mo ago[dead]
- cardamomo 9mo agoWhat contemporary films, TV, it books scratch the same itch as "Hackers." Folks are mentioning Mr. Robot. What else?
- dewarrn1 9mo agoTangential, but Darknet Diaries has been running a "hacker history" series to kick off 2026, starting with this one: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/168/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/168/. The "Hackers" movie gets a few call-outs.
- bpiroman 9mo agovery cool
- flanbiscuit 9mo ago“Do you remember where I put that thing that one time” is a line that pops up in my head so often. I don’t remember the last time I saw this film and this is the 2nd time that it’s popped back up into my life recently, so it’s a sign that I need to watch it.
- alecsm 9mo agoRight in the feels. I wish I could go back in time to watch the movie for the first time.
- dollylambda 9mo agoCrash + Burn <3
- dollylambda 9mo agoI love the ethos of this movie. That it was about hacking and building things for fun, not for money and profit. This to me is what hacking and programming has always been about. It's too bad that overinflated salaries and the hype that if you go into software you will make a lot of money has watered down the culture to an extent. And now, with the advent of AI and vibe coding, it's been increasingly difficult (for me) to maintain that sense of newness and enjoyment in the craft when I see million line AI diffs. Along the lines of ethos, there's also the narrative of freedom of information and anti big money corporation (the plague). I hope that this energy to fight the system and tyranny of control the system represents never dies. Particularly as we watch the darkness of a tyrannical government continue to unfold here in the U.S.
- carverauto 9mo agothis would be an interesting kubernetes explorer, similiar to the DWM file explorer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer is the source available?
- damethos 9mo agoTime to re-re-re-re-N-watch this!
- claytonaalves 9mo agoI miss this David Gilmour track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-eZSIn9kHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-eZSIn9kHA
- Steelclearance 9mo agoGood job, thanks for sharing! Should I be looking at the code for easter eggs? :)
- Kon5ole 9mo agoA silly movie but I love it so much. Such nostalgia too. In the spirit of hackers I have to share this - I just asked Claude 4.6 to make a file system browser that works kinda like this, and it took 5 minutes to make something that actually works. Directories as skyscrapers with files as text on the side, moving around by wasd. It uses three.js and a browser so it's just a toy of course but still, I can navigate my filesystem like they do in Hackers (1995) and it was a 5 minute interaction with a computer, using natural language. Another few hours and I'm sure I can copy garbage files too. I've never felt more obsolete but still had to laugh. What a time to be alive!
- lordspace 9mo agoNice!!!