4 ms·

Source Code in TV and Films

112 points by xvirk 11y ago

thomasfl 11y ago
I miss more art projects using source code. Movies is one of the few exceptions.
jgrahamc 11y ago
Funny to see my Tumblr get voted up on HN. Here's a Wired article explaining the genesis: http://www.wired.com/2014/01/movie-fake-code/ http://www.wired.com/2014/01/movie-fake-code/ I tried to follow its success with "Better Living Through Microcontrollers" which didn't take off for some reason :-) http://bltuc.tumblr.com/ http://bltuc.tumblr.com/
vipul20 11y ago
In Interstellar(2014 Movie), Matthew McConaughey chases an Indian Surveillance drone and hacks it through his laptop in which, all the instructions were in Sanskrit (It was a 1-2 second glimpse of the screen so don't know exactly what was there or whether it was in Devnagari).
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
The most amusing ones are where the submitter has stated how absurd the code is for the situation. Like the Spanish Ministry of Culture video telling people to become programmers, where complete jibberish (asdfghjkl kind of thing) is being typed.
kozukumi 11y ago
Join us at http://www.reddit.com/r/itsaunixsystem http://www.reddit.com/r/itsaunixsystem for more like this :)
jfroma 11y ago
I'm a software developer who likes to read conde but I must confese something when i'm watching a sci-fi movie and some computer stuff/hack is shown I do not pay much attention to that specific detail, I really like to believe the lie of the movie. I really enjoy to read these blogpost after the fact, about these easter eggs and how someone figure out what is the conde shown and how unrelated to the scene it is, but I don't do it during the movie just because I don't feel the urge.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  What is conde?
  - mikestew 11y ago
    I'm going to assume ESL and a typo when typing "code". That or autocorrect gone wrong.
ytch 11y ago
http://hackoftheday.securitytube.net/2013/04/my-code-made-it-to-hollywood-movie.html http://hackoftheday.securitytube.net/2013/04/my-code-made-it... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502878 This is also an interesting story on this topic.
dbcooper 11y ago
I'm a fan of "Access Main Computer File" - a collection of fictional computer interfaces from cinema. http://accessmaincomputerfile.net/ http://accessmaincomputerfile.net/
- omnibrain 11y ago
  https://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/ https://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/ is a blog dedicated to fictional computer interfaces.
ChrisArchitect 11y ago
from the creator, a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7006317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7006317
danparsonson 11y ago
Not code exactly but I noticed this gem in the climactic scene of Elysium (spoiler alert!): http://imgur.com/xZSnKro http://imgur.com/xZSnKro During reboot, the space station flashes up a BIOS POST screen and detects the four attached IDE devices :-) (screen cap from https://youtu.be/30BTQ6B4Y6M https://youtu.be/30BTQ6B4Y6M)
DannyBee 11y ago
Some movies care, some don't. It's very hit or miss. When The Internship was being filmed, I got asked numerous times for appropriately licensed code for a given scene. They would tell me what the scene was about, i would go and find code that made sense for it. You would think nobody would care about that in a comedy. Some of the bug fixing people are doing here and there (some was cut, some was not) is actually me fixing bugs in the same code in vim. They wanted it to look completely real. Interestingly, the people i've worked with who have cared the most about getting stuff right are actually the Silicon Valley (TV show) folks.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Silicon Valley is easily my favourite comedy and arguably favourite TV show of the last few years. I live in the North of the UK so I have no idea how accurate it is in terms of culture but it certainly does a fantastic job on the technical accuracy.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    They work with a ton of technical consultants. The number of legal things they've went well into the weeds to get right was impressive.
- vanderZwan 11y ago
  > Interestingly, the people i've worked with who have cared the most about getting stuff right are actually the Silicon Valley (TV show) folks. Shouldn't be surprising since Mike Judge used to be a programmer himself.
omnibrain 11y ago
The first two seasons of Alias did a decent job in the depiction of computers, computer use and code.
Vexs 11y ago
As per the usual, there's a relevant xkcd. https://xkcd.com/1451/ https://xkcd.com/1451/ Seeing any sort of code, hacking, programming or just about anything computer related in movies is always interesting, I've always thought it would be an interesting experiment to try and create a visual one-click method of "hacking" movie style. The closest I've seen is zANTI, a phone app with fairly basic MITM exploits, and stuff like shellshock- all of which can be done with a couple buttons. I mean, you can never get away from the versatility of a terminal, but sometimes blinkenlights are cool.
outworlder 11y ago
This one is interesting. It actually gives the appearance of having something to do with the subject matter. http://moviecode.tumblr.com/post/80751023812/from-hack-quantum-lisp-that-appears-to-have http://moviecode.tumblr.com/post/80751023812/from-hack-quant...
- Roodgorf 11y ago
  And whoever wrote it out took the time to follow syntax. Although I think this is actually Scheme? Defining a function in Lisp is slightly different if I recall.
  - FungalRaincloud 11y ago
    At least in the variants of lisp I've used, defining a function would be done using defun, not define, so yeah, probably.
  - outworlder 11y ago
    Also, Lisp dialects tend to use 'nil' for false and 't' for true. Schemes usually use #f and #t There's the convention of using "?" for predicates. Lisp usually would use 'p'. As in 'stress?' vs 'stress-p' So yeah, most likely a form of Scheme. Which can be considered as a 'Lisp' dialect, so not exactly wrong either.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Although I think this is actually Scheme? Defining a function in Lisp is slightly different if I recall. Scheme is a Lisp, though it is not Common Lisp.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
  I just saw The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo the other day. The hacker is supposed to be researching a series of cold case murders... and when we see her typing, she's messing with a big-assed sql query with multiple joins and realistic-looking column names. Wouldn't be shocked if that did come from a real law enforcement database. Was slightly surprised. Even serious movies (ones that want to be taken seriously) seem to stumble on this stuff.
Brajeshwar 11y ago
Here is one from CSI:Cyber, "A Firmware that can burn printers." It is plain HTML. https://twitter.com/brajeshwar/status/581169913412382720 https://twitter.com/brajeshwar/status/581169913412382720
- juliangregorian 11y ago
  It seems like CSI always has the most laughable faux code/terminology. I've heard that writers have internal competitions to see who can get the most ridiculous dialogue in, "gui interface in visual basic" etc.
andypants 11y ago
So few of these have syntax highlighting!

112 points by xvirk 11y ago

I miss more art projects using source code. Movies is one of the few exceptions.

Funny to see my Tumblr get voted up on HN. Here's a Wired article explaining the genesis: http://www.wired.com/2014/01/movie-fake-code/ http://www.wired.com/2014/01/movie-fake-code/ I tried to follow its success with "Better Living Through Microcontrollers" which didn't take off for some reason :-) http://bltuc.tumblr.com/ http://bltuc.tumblr.com/

vipul20 11y ago

In Interstellar(2014 Movie), Matthew McConaughey chases an Indian Surveillance drone and hacks it through his laptop in which, all the instructions were in Sanskrit (It was a 1-2 second glimpse of the screen so don't know exactly what was there or whether it was in Devnagari).

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

The most amusing ones are where the submitter has stated how absurd the code is for the situation. Like the Spanish Ministry of Culture video telling people to become programmers, where complete jibberish (asdfghjkl kind of thing) is being typed.

kozukumi 11y ago

Join us at http://www.reddit.com/r/itsaunixsystem http://www.reddit.com/r/itsaunixsystem for more like this :)

jfroma 11y ago

I'm a software developer who likes to read conde but I must confese something when i'm watching a sci-fi movie and some computer stuff/hack is shown I do not pay much attention to that specific detail, I really like to believe the lie of the movie. I really enjoy to read these blogpost after the fact, about these easter eggs and how someone figure out what is the conde shown and how unrelated to the scene it is, but I don't do it during the movie just because I don't feel the urge.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
What is conde?
- mikestew 11y ago
  I'm going to assume ESL and a typo when typing "code". That or autocorrect gone wrong.

ytch 11y ago

http://hackoftheday.securitytube.net/2013/04/my-code-made-it-to-hollywood-movie.html http://hackoftheday.securitytube.net/2013/04/my-code-made-it... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502878 This is also an interesting story on this topic.

dbcooper 11y ago

I'm a fan of "Access Main Computer File" - a collection of fictional computer interfaces from cinema. http://accessmaincomputerfile.net/ http://accessmaincomputerfile.net/

omnibrain 11y ago
https://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/ https://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/ is a blog dedicated to fictional computer interfaces.

ChrisArchitect 11y ago

from the creator, a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7006317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7006317

danparsonson 11y ago

Not code exactly but I noticed this gem in the climactic scene of Elysium (spoiler alert!): http://imgur.com/xZSnKro http://imgur.com/xZSnKro During reboot, the space station flashes up a BIOS POST screen and detects the four attached IDE devices :-) (screen cap from https://youtu.be/30BTQ6B4Y6M https://youtu.be/30BTQ6B4Y6M)

DannyBee 11y ago

Some movies care, some don't. It's very hit or miss. When The Internship was being filmed, I got asked numerous times for appropriately licensed code for a given scene. They would tell me what the scene was about, i would go and find code that made sense for it. You would think nobody would care about that in a comedy. Some of the bug fixing people are doing here and there (some was cut, some was not) is actually me fixing bugs in the same code in vim. They wanted it to look completely real. Interestingly, the people i've worked with who have cared the most about getting stuff right are actually the Silicon Valley (TV show) folks.

noir_lord 11y ago
Silicon Valley is easily my favourite comedy and arguably favourite TV show of the last few years. I live in the North of the UK so I have no idea how accurate it is in terms of culture but it certainly does a fantastic job on the technical accuracy.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  They work with a ton of technical consultants. The number of legal things they've went well into the weeds to get right was impressive.
vanderZwan 11y ago
> Interestingly, the people i've worked with who have cared the most about getting stuff right are actually the Silicon Valley (TV show) folks. Shouldn't be surprising since Mike Judge used to be a programmer himself.

omnibrain 11y ago

The first two seasons of Alias did a decent job in the depiction of computers, computer use and code.

Vexs 11y ago

As per the usual, there's a relevant xkcd. https://xkcd.com/1451/ https://xkcd.com/1451/ Seeing any sort of code, hacking, programming or just about anything computer related in movies is always interesting, I've always thought it would be an interesting experiment to try and create a visual one-click method of "hacking" movie style. The closest I've seen is zANTI, a phone app with fairly basic MITM exploits, and stuff like shellshock- all of which can be done with a couple buttons. I mean, you can never get away from the versatility of a terminal, but sometimes blinkenlights are cool.

outworlder 11y ago

This one is interesting. It actually gives the appearance of having something to do with the subject matter. http://moviecode.tumblr.com/post/80751023812/from-hack-quantum-lisp-that-appears-to-have http://moviecode.tumblr.com/post/80751023812/from-hack-quant...

Roodgorf 11y ago
And whoever wrote it out took the time to follow syntax. Although I think this is actually Scheme? Defining a function in Lisp is slightly different if I recall.
- FungalRaincloud 11y ago
  At least in the variants of lisp I've used, defining a function would be done using defun, not define, so yeah, probably.
- outworlder 11y ago
  Also, Lisp dialects tend to use 'nil' for false and 't' for true. Schemes usually use #f and #t There's the convention of using "?" for predicates. Lisp usually would use 'p'. As in 'stress?' vs 'stress-p' So yeah, most likely a form of Scheme. Which can be considered as a 'Lisp' dialect, so not exactly wrong either.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Although I think this is actually Scheme? Defining a function in Lisp is slightly different if I recall. Scheme is a Lisp, though it is not Common Lisp.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
I just saw The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo the other day. The hacker is supposed to be researching a series of cold case murders... and when we see her typing, she's messing with a big-assed sql query with multiple joins and realistic-looking column names. Wouldn't be shocked if that did come from a real law enforcement database. Was slightly surprised. Even serious movies (ones that want to be taken seriously) seem to stumble on this stuff.

Brajeshwar 11y ago

Here is one from CSI:Cyber, "A Firmware that can burn printers." It is plain HTML. https://twitter.com/brajeshwar/status/581169913412382720 https://twitter.com/brajeshwar/status/581169913412382720

juliangregorian 11y ago
It seems like CSI always has the most laughable faux code/terminology. I've heard that writers have internal competitions to see who can get the most ridiculous dialogue in, "gui interface in visual basic" etc.

andypants 11y ago

So few of these have syntax highlighting!