8 ms·

They Live

132 points by dchest 12y ago

mrxd 12y ago
I liked the documentary version of this post better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOINEXp0B8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOINEXp0B8
- tylermauthe 12y ago
  Agreed -- no attribution given to Žižek either.
  - zevyoura 12y ago
    Attribution for the premise of They Live?
    - ad_hominem 12y ago
      First line of Moxie's post: "The 1988 film They Live is one of the last great masterpieces to come out of the hollywood left." First sentence spoken in Zizek video: "They Live from 1988 is definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood left."
  - gojomo 12y ago
    I doubt Marlinspike needed Zizek to discover They Live.
  - moxie 12y ago
    I loved They Live before the pervert's guide to ideology, but you're right that this post is probably derivative of the latter. It's just a daily blog post that we're doing as part of Winter Break Of Code, and wasn't really "meant" for the front page of HN, so I'm surprised to see it in a place like this. For what it's worth, I wasn't trying to write an analysis of They Live, and was just using it as a tongue-in-cheek back drop for a different question.
- Animats 12y ago
  Yes. It's a great concept. Then they threw in zombie-like aliens in hopes the movie would sell. The concept is from the Illuminatus trilogy. (http://www.boogles.com/local/Illuminati/fnord.text http://www.boogles.com/local/Illuminati/fnord.text) Fnord!
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    No it isn't, it's been around a lot longer than that. I love the Illumintus books, but they're a rehash of existing concepts. I suggest you check out Guy Debord's Society of the spectacle; as well as the book, there's a film which is available in full on Youtube and narrated by Debord himself. Of course such ideas had been floating around in philosophy for longer than that, but Debord's work was very current when the first Illuminatus trilogy was written around 1975. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
grandalf 12y ago
Have been thinking of something similar lately: A fictitious newspaper with headlines that illustrate the propaganda aspect of our news orgs. Headlines like: - Foreign leader lacks dignity - US institutions solid - Life in the 3rd world is horrible - Life in the 3rd world is meaningless/scary - Something some politician said was important. - Politician's legacy is important - Foreign institutions/economy shaky - Foreign unemployment soars - Life in foreign city dangerous - Election in foreign country rigged - Arcane details about silly political spat matter - US institutions beyond reproach - Firms are not beyond reproach - Sports matter - Storm with name nears - Three cheers for successful US company - You know buzzwords so you are informed about science - You know buzzwords so you are informed about technology - Token story about the EU
- alexose 12y ago
  Given that many legitimate news articles are generated programmatically, it might just be a matter of publishing the templates :)
- mason240 12y ago
  That seems so cynical you just as easily pass it off as a parody of being cynical.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - grandalf 12y ago
    I'm not cynical. It only seems cynical if you believe those things to be true. We do not have much official government propaganda in the US simply b/c we don't need it -- the private firms deliver a mix of stories designed to make the reader feel like life is pretty good while feeling informed, justified ire about this and that.
    - Chlorus 12y ago
      Here are the headlines on washingtonpost.com[0]. They sure do look like they're making blindly xenophobic, nationalistic claims to bolster my faith in the government /s : Obama scraps bid to raise taxes on ‘529’ plans How one family went from no debt to owing more than $1 million *Why the snow forecast for New York City was so bad, and what should be done "US institution beyond reproach" You don't read many newspaper articles, do you? Ever hear of this thing called 'Watergate'? [0]http://www.washingtonpost.com/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/ as it was on 1/27/2015 @ 6:00PM UTC-7
nickik 12y ago
I love whispersystems and use there products. This post gives a real inside into the mind of of many hackers, specially in the last couple of years. You spend so much time with Alice and Bob and because its intresting you think about it even when talking to normal people and this might be a harmful way to think when actually trying to build a relationship. Moxie has probebly felt this more then most, and I want to take this change to thank him and the rest of the people working on these systems. I hope that we do meet on that beach and that classical liberals are equally welcome even if we do support global capitalism :)
conformal 12y ago
they live is one of the best john carpenter films, and that includes the epic 10-minute on-concrete wrestling match before keith david will don the glasses. being extremely entertained to see a blog entry about they live aside, making privacy simple is super hard. similarly, making people care about privacy is super hard. killing the aliens is even harder. ubiquitous surveillance has a pretty obvious response in the long run: ubiquitous encryption.
- grecy 12y ago
  I've not seen the movie (yet) but reading the description on the blog was enlightening for me. I don't fit into Western Society at all - I couldn't care less for consumerism, sports, mass media, smartphones, etc. etc. and I've always thought it's because I can see the truth behind stuff, where other people just see the glitter on the surface covering up the ugly truth. Now I know I've just been wearing a pair of these sunglasses my whole life.
  - Chlorus 12y ago
    You sure are a special snowflake. Thank you for sharing your insights with the rest of the world. Do you have a newsletter? I would like to subscribe to it! Your fresh, humble insights are a beacon to us all, who have to contend with the dumb sheeple on a daily basis.
    - grecy 12y ago
      newsletter? no. Blog about driving around the world following my dreams and passions? yes. http://theroadchoseme.com http://theroadchoseme.com (yes, I know you were joking. I'm not :) )
  - tomsthumb 12y ago
    Most of us think that we now live in totally atheist, post-ideological times, and cynically view the big 20th century movements like communism and fascism as totally failed and outdated. But it's exactly when we think we exist outside ideology that we are actually in it. It's inherent in the way that we construct our reality and stage our desires. And this is also reflected in cinema. In a consumerist capitalist society, you think you are free by being able to enjoy life and buy things like a Starbucks frappuccino, when actually, you are following an obscene and deep command to ”ENJOY.” -- Slavoj Žižek are you sure you're wearing glasses?
javajosh 12y ago
"They Live" is a fun movie, and like Marxism, it certainly taps inot the vague, nearly universal "everything is wrong" vibe that affects nearly everyone but especially young adults. Other examples: The Matrix. Philip Dick and Stanislaw Lem (perhaps the most underrated SF author ever) made careers out of this emotion. For a modern incarnation on Netflix, check out Black Mirror, particular "15 Million Merits"[1]. Powerful stuff. When I step back and look at the world, for all of our terrible mistakes, we (the western capitalist states) really are the good guys, because personally and politically, overwhelmingly, we really do despise the despots, and the racists, and the needless violence and barbarism that rises to power in too many places in the world. More than once we've spilled blood and spent money not to benefit ourselves, but to stop something evil from happening to others. And no, this doesn't excuse the fact that we've spilled even more blood for our own selfish ends, be they resources or the assertion of misguided idealism. Consumerism, unlike unjust war, is a trickier beast to slay. Why? Because it's good in one important way! Consumption really does drive an economy, which is good for people's bellies, and well-fed people are pretty happy (watch Triumph of the Will[2] and notice how often Riefenstahl shows food and people eating). The urge to consume, and all the messaging that goes into it, are manipulative, but it manipulates us into wealth. (Heaven help us all when even the elite can't ignore the externalities of this approach, particularly WRT climate!) We will soon see if virtual goods can thread this needle. >Once we’ve put on the glasses, what do we do? Where are the aliens, and how do we start killing them? As anti-authoritarian as I am, I still can't get behind killing anyone. Maybe it's naive, but I really believe in non-violent (not passive) resistance. Ghandi, MLK, Aung Yung Suu Kyi - they show us the remarkable power of patience, love, and unyielding persistence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8
- kghose 12y ago
  I'm not sure anyone tried a really Marxist society on any scale. I think the hippie communes were getting there. Any communist/marxist country (basically any country with the word "Democratic" in its name) was basically state capitalist. The state (a small number of elites) owned the means of production with the people as inefficient, unmotivated labor.
getdavidhiggins 12y ago
One of the great advantages of having supreme mastery of any field is - you gain the ability to not partake in that field of your own volition. Others still in the apprenticeship stages don't have that luxury, because they need to learn - they need to absorb as much information as possible, and they can't afford to simply opt out of learning more. In terms of a specific symbol that identifies hacker/privacycare types there is things like the glider symbol. Also, loose and informal groups like Telecomix, and Anonymous are usually a sign someone has opted out of the matrix and knows the game is rigged. Cory Doctory makes the analogy that general purpose computers are going to get inadvertently infected/compromised no matter how hard you try. Once a computer is connected to the public Internet - it is a sitting duck, and exposed. We can lock it down, but it is still speaking to the packet switched net, which, by design - is going to be toxic. I don't know how to protect my devices. A lot of the problems are too systemic, and need massive changes in policy and law to get systems trusted again. Worth reading/watching: Everything is broken:https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1 https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1 Telecomix: http://telecomix.org/ http://telecomix.org/ Redesigning a Broken Internet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J_9EFGFR-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J_9EFGFR-Y Hacker Emblem: http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/ http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/
- nickik 12y ago
  Its a economic war. Sitting on the switch and sniffing cleartext is easy and cheap. Compromising every enduser point and the aggregating all the data is much, much harder. More risk of detection, less reliablity and it needs constant uptake because of software and hardware updates. The NSA is not able to do this at the moment and they do everything they can to avoid having to do it thatway. Keep with the words of Snowden "Secure crypto properly developed", if we can make that happen we can increase worrying about end user devices. -Prio 1: Secure Crypt -Prio 2: Good secure, crypto code -Prio 3: Secure Enduser devices
zmap01 12y ago
>years of avoiding products from Google I found this passage quite confusing as TextSecure is wholly reliant on proprietary Google services. Is there any chance that will be resolved soon, Moxie?

132 points by dchest 12y ago

mrxd 12y ago

I liked the documentary version of this post better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOINEXp0B8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBOINEXp0B8

tylermauthe 12y ago
Agreed -- no attribution given to Žižek either.
- zevyoura 12y ago
  Attribution for the premise of They Live?
  - ad_hominem 12y ago
    First line of Moxie's post: "The 1988 film They Live is one of the last great masterpieces to come out of the hollywood left." First sentence spoken in Zizek video: "They Live from 1988 is definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood left."
- gojomo 12y ago
  I doubt Marlinspike needed Zizek to discover They Live.
- moxie 12y ago
  I loved They Live before the pervert's guide to ideology, but you're right that this post is probably derivative of the latter. It's just a daily blog post that we're doing as part of Winter Break Of Code, and wasn't really "meant" for the front page of HN, so I'm surprised to see it in a place like this. For what it's worth, I wasn't trying to write an analysis of They Live, and was just using it as a tongue-in-cheek back drop for a different question.
Animats 12y ago
Yes. It's a great concept. Then they threw in zombie-like aliens in hopes the movie would sell. The concept is from the Illuminatus trilogy. (http://www.boogles.com/local/Illuminati/fnord.text http://www.boogles.com/local/Illuminati/fnord.text) Fnord!
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  No it isn't, it's been around a lot longer than that. I love the Illumintus books, but they're a rehash of existing concepts. I suggest you check out Guy Debord's Society of the spectacle; as well as the book, there's a film which is available in full on Youtube and narrated by Debord himself. Of course such ideas had been floating around in philosophy for longer than that, but Debord's work was very current when the first Illuminatus trilogy was written around 1975. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

grandalf 12y ago

Have been thinking of something similar lately: A fictitious newspaper with headlines that illustrate the propaganda aspect of our news orgs. Headlines like: - Foreign leader lacks dignity - US institutions solid - Life in the 3rd world is horrible - Life in the 3rd world is meaningless/scary - Something some politician said was important. - Politician's legacy is important - Foreign institutions/economy shaky - Foreign unemployment soars - Life in foreign city dangerous - Election in foreign country rigged - Arcane details about silly political spat matter - US institutions beyond reproach - Firms are not beyond reproach - Sports matter - Storm with name nears - Three cheers for successful US company - You know buzzwords so you are informed about science - You know buzzwords so you are informed about technology - Token story about the EU

alexose 12y ago
Given that many legitimate news articles are generated programmatically, it might just be a matter of publishing the templates :)
mason240 12y ago
That seems so cynical you just as easily pass it off as a parody of being cynical.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- grandalf 12y ago
  I'm not cynical. It only seems cynical if you believe those things to be true. We do not have much official government propaganda in the US simply b/c we don't need it -- the private firms deliver a mix of stories designed to make the reader feel like life is pretty good while feeling informed, justified ire about this and that.
  - Chlorus 12y ago
    Here are the headlines on washingtonpost.com[0]. They sure do look like they're making blindly xenophobic, nationalistic claims to bolster my faith in the government /s : Obama scraps bid to raise taxes on ‘529’ plans How one family went from no debt to owing more than $1 million *Why the snow forecast for New York City was so bad, and what should be done "US institution beyond reproach" You don't read many newspaper articles, do you? Ever hear of this thing called 'Watergate'? [0]http://www.washingtonpost.com/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/ as it was on 1/27/2015 @ 6:00PM UTC-7

nickik 12y ago

I love whispersystems and use there products. This post gives a real inside into the mind of of many hackers, specially in the last couple of years. You spend so much time with Alice and Bob and because its intresting you think about it even when talking to normal people and this might be a harmful way to think when actually trying to build a relationship. Moxie has probebly felt this more then most, and I want to take this change to thank him and the rest of the people working on these systems. I hope that we do meet on that beach and that classical liberals are equally welcome even if we do support global capitalism :)

conformal 12y ago

they live is one of the best john carpenter films, and that includes the epic 10-minute on-concrete wrestling match before keith david will don the glasses. being extremely entertained to see a blog entry about they live aside, making privacy simple is super hard. similarly, making people care about privacy is super hard. killing the aliens is even harder. ubiquitous surveillance has a pretty obvious response in the long run: ubiquitous encryption.

grecy 12y ago
I've not seen the movie (yet) but reading the description on the blog was enlightening for me. I don't fit into Western Society at all - I couldn't care less for consumerism, sports, mass media, smartphones, etc. etc. and I've always thought it's because I can see the truth behind stuff, where other people just see the glitter on the surface covering up the ugly truth. Now I know I've just been wearing a pair of these sunglasses my whole life.
- Chlorus 12y ago
  You sure are a special snowflake. Thank you for sharing your insights with the rest of the world. Do you have a newsletter? I would like to subscribe to it! Your fresh, humble insights are a beacon to us all, who have to contend with the dumb sheeple on a daily basis.
  - grecy 12y ago
    newsletter? no. Blog about driving around the world following my dreams and passions? yes. http://theroadchoseme.com http://theroadchoseme.com (yes, I know you were joking. I'm not :) )
- tomsthumb 12y ago
  Most of us think that we now live in totally atheist, post-ideological times, and cynically view the big 20th century movements like communism and fascism as totally failed and outdated. But it's exactly when we think we exist outside ideology that we are actually in it. It's inherent in the way that we construct our reality and stage our desires. And this is also reflected in cinema. In a consumerist capitalist society, you think you are free by being able to enjoy life and buy things like a Starbucks frappuccino, when actually, you are following an obscene and deep command to ”ENJOY.” -- Slavoj Žižek are you sure you're wearing glasses?

javajosh 12y ago

"They Live" is a fun movie, and like Marxism, it certainly taps inot the vague, nearly universal "everything is wrong" vibe that affects nearly everyone but especially young adults. Other examples: The Matrix. Philip Dick and Stanislaw Lem (perhaps the most underrated SF author ever) made careers out of this emotion. For a modern incarnation on Netflix, check out Black Mirror, particular "15 Million Merits"[1]. Powerful stuff. When I step back and look at the world, for all of our terrible mistakes, we (the western capitalist states) really are the good guys, because personally and politically, overwhelmingly, we really do despise the despots, and the racists, and the needless violence and barbarism that rises to power in too many places in the world. More than once we've spilled blood and spent money not to benefit ourselves, but to stop something evil from happening to others. And no, this doesn't excuse the fact that we've spilled even more blood for our own selfish ends, be they resources or the assertion of misguided idealism. Consumerism, unlike unjust war, is a trickier beast to slay. Why? Because it's good in one important way! Consumption really does drive an economy, which is good for people's bellies, and well-fed people are pretty happy (watch Triumph of the Will[2] and notice how often Riefenstahl shows food and people eating). The urge to consume, and all the messaging that goes into it, are manipulative, but it manipulates us into wealth. (Heaven help us all when even the elite can't ignore the externalities of this approach, particularly WRT climate!) We will soon see if virtual goods can thread this needle. >Once we’ve put on the glasses, what do we do? Where are the aliens, and how do we start killing them? As anti-authoritarian as I am, I still can't get behind killing anyone. Maybe it's naive, but I really believe in non-violent (not passive) resistance. Ghandi, MLK, Aung Yung Suu Kyi - they show us the remarkable power of patience, love, and unyielding persistence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8

kghose 12y ago
I'm not sure anyone tried a really Marxist society on any scale. I think the hippie communes were getting there. Any communist/marxist country (basically any country with the word "Democratic" in its name) was basically state capitalist. The state (a small number of elites) owned the means of production with the people as inefficient, unmotivated labor.

getdavidhiggins 12y ago

One of the great advantages of having supreme mastery of any field is - you gain the ability to not partake in that field of your own volition. Others still in the apprenticeship stages don't have that luxury, because they need to learn - they need to absorb as much information as possible, and they can't afford to simply opt out of learning more. In terms of a specific symbol that identifies hacker/privacycare types there is things like the glider symbol. Also, loose and informal groups like Telecomix, and Anonymous are usually a sign someone has opted out of the matrix and knows the game is rigged. Cory Doctory makes the analogy that general purpose computers are going to get inadvertently infected/compromised no matter how hard you try. Once a computer is connected to the public Internet - it is a sitting duck, and exposed. We can lock it down, but it is still speaking to the packet switched net, which, by design - is going to be toxic. I don't know how to protect my devices. A lot of the problems are too systemic, and need massive changes in policy and law to get systems trusted again. Worth reading/watching: Everything is broken:https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1 https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1 Telecomix: http://telecomix.org/ http://telecomix.org/ Redesigning a Broken Internet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J_9EFGFR-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J_9EFGFR-Y Hacker Emblem: http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/ http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/

nickik 12y ago
Its a economic war. Sitting on the switch and sniffing cleartext is easy and cheap. Compromising every enduser point and the aggregating all the data is much, much harder. More risk of detection, less reliablity and it needs constant uptake because of software and hardware updates. The NSA is not able to do this at the moment and they do everything they can to avoid having to do it thatway. Keep with the words of Snowden "Secure crypto properly developed", if we can make that happen we can increase worrying about end user devices. -Prio 1: Secure Crypt -Prio 2: Good secure, crypto code -Prio 3: Secure Enduser devices

zmap01 12y ago

>years of avoiding products from Google I found this passage quite confusing as TextSecure is wholly reliant on proprietary Google services. Is there any chance that will be resolved soon, Moxie?