Snowden’s Rubik’s Cube

https://da5is.com/snowdens-rubik-s-cube-79274593806b

by ssclafani • 10 years ago

185 83 10 years ago

orblivion• 10 years ago

I just watched the trailer. Clichéd brilliant patriotic dude saves the day. Bonus: Movie OS. This is gonna be such a great bad movie.

dsfuoi• 10 years ago

Actor's forced Snowden deep voice is hilarious. He's trying so hard, and yet it sounds like a 12 year old trying to sound older.

Also expect at least two forced action/drama scenes that never happened.

They are staging the Hong Kong hotel meeting, of which real footage exists, as if it were an action scene.

kuschku• 10 years ago

Wait for the french/german TV miniseries remake in a few years (not anything announced yet, but you just know one will be made), it will likely have a higher quality and accuracy.

deepnet6• 10 years ago

Citizen Fours version of the Hong Kong meeting uses no cinematic devices to convey the palpable excitement.

Poitras's film contrasts the complete lack of 'action scene' with the consequences facing the protagonists.

Conveyed only by their attempts to suppress their mounting unease and the fight to calmly apply the opsec - the tension unbearably mounts second by second, the effect of distant sounds implies the real dangers.

Snowden's emotions are brutally felt, his lament at his loss left no dry eyes.

The stillness and unmoving camera style conveys more terror and excitement than jump cuts or explosive choreography can.

https://citizenfourfilm.com/

Biganon• 10 years ago

A movie similar to Primer would have been so cool

krapp2• 10 years ago

Where Snowden goes back in time and reveals American military and intelligence secrets to preempt its transformation into a global surveillance and military superpower?

BinaryIdiot• 10 years ago

Interesting, I hadn't realized this was a cube already in existence. Neat!

I've broken a few rubix cubes in my day and so many of them have hallow squares so I'm not surprised you could hide stuff in one. Hell if you customize one you can probably get it to hold a huge amount of data.

da5is3• 10 years ago

These cubes actually come completely apart to replace the springs. You could probably put a good 4-5 micro-SD cards in the middle plastic ball, but it's not exactly a quick operation. But, yeah, quite a bit of empty space in them.

tamana2• 10 years ago

Springs in a Rubik's cube?

stordoff2• 10 years ago

Hell if you customize one you can probably get it to hold a huge amount of data.

Even without customising it, 200GB on a single microSD card is no small amount of data.

cmrx64• 10 years ago

This movie looks like is has a good chance of doing a better job than even The Imitation Game at ruining and fundamentally misrepresenting a topic I care about and a person I respect.

curiousgal• 10 years ago

The Imitation Game was bad?

bigdubs2• 10 years ago

It was better than "Enigma" certainly but it still wasn't as high fidelity as it could have been.

justratsinacoat• 10 years ago

Well, it wasn't good. Turing's actual story is actually more interesting than the whole-cloth fantasy that The Imitation Game wound up being.

notatoad• 10 years ago

It was an entertaining movie. Just don't expect any actual history.

jonnathanson• 10 years ago

It gets a fair amount of hate on HN for taking narrative liberties with Turing's actual life story. I won't deny that it does, and anyone who's genuinely interested in Alan Turing would do better to read about him and his work.

But the movie is a dramatization, not a documentary. Because of that, it got the general, non-CS-major public to care about Alan Turing. I'd say that's a pretty decent accomplishment.

I actually had a conversation with my mom about Alan Turing after she saw the movie. That's saying something. She still needs help browsing the web beyond AOL. She thought computers were "unhealthy" and borderline "dangerous" until very recently. I'm pretty sure she thinks her router contains the entire Internet on it. These are the kinds of people who need to be exposed to Turing, and "Imitation Game" breaks through to them. Great. I'll take that as a net-positive.

jewbacca• 10 years ago

It basically took the stock 80s movie plot of the ragtag bunch of misfits saving their community center from being shut down by greedy real-estate developers, and dressed it up as a 40s period piece.

Imagine if they told the story of the Normandy invasion as being a squad of GIs pulling one over on mean old man Eisenhower, saving the day by inventing the flat-bottom motorized landing craft.

That said, the small amount of stuff set in the future about Turing's persecution was well done.

hisham_hm• 10 years ago

Besides all points presented in other replies, two other problems with the movie come to mind:

* They presented Turing's characacter as the generic caricature of the pedantic genius, kind of like The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon. Other reports I read on Turing's personality didn't match that at all.

* Holywood seems adamant to have a romantic man-and-woman relationship going along with the story, even if it had to be a platonic one since the lead character is famously gay.

jonathankoren2• 10 years ago

I think the thing that pissed people off was the was naming the computer Christopher instead of Victory by inventing this idea that Turing had a childhood crush he never got over.

I don't know though. I've never seen it. There's a whole section on Wikipedia if you care.

Mahn• 10 years ago

So basically like every modern movie loosely based on actual real life events. Then again, movies are almost always designed to entertain and munch popcorn, not so much to inform.

h0p5c0tch• 10 years ago

Based on a true story. Names, dates, and events have been changed...

rdiddly• 10 years ago

Yes thank God someone came along to shoehorn all this boring stuff into a product! Now that it can make money, it actually MEANS something!

ape4• 10 years ago

Both films have somebody finishing a test in an incredibly short time.

Johnny5552• 10 years ago

I'm sure you could grind out more space for the SD card with a Dremel tool to make it fit more seamlessly.

Or you could pop out a piece and you'd have room for dozens of MicroSD cards inside the pieces.

tamana2• 10 years ago

Why do Rubik's cubes have removable center tiles?

phpnode• 10 years ago

"They" don't, this model does

tripa• 10 years ago

To be fair, most do.

To be meta-fair, most means those who have a brand name (those you could distinguish when you buy).

Johnny5552• 10 years ago

The Speed Cube has the removable center tiles to allow the tension to be adjusted:

https://rubiks.com/blog/how-to-customise-the-rubiks-speed-cu...

da5is3• 10 years ago

Also to make it much easier to grease the cube - if you do it as you stack the rows, you can get much more even distribution (and the cube will fly afterwards).

corndoge• 10 years ago

All Rubik's cubes have removable center tiles covers; they're usually difficult to remove without the help of an Xacto knife or similar. Under each tile is a screw; unscrewing these will allow you to take the center cubes off. After removing all the other non-center cubes, once you take the center 'cubes' off (they aren't really cubes, actually more like plates) it's easier to grease your cube up.

teekert• 10 years ago

First time the actual character is more handsome than the actor ;)

atmosx4• 10 years ago

Hah! First thing I noticed! :-)

discardorama2• 10 years ago

I'm sure the nerds here will find ample opportunities to tear this movie apart, but keep in mind that the "average American" (a) doesn't know much about Snowden, other than "he stole secrets and hid in commie Russia, so he must've been working for them", and (b) just believes what the government says. To counter the powerful voice of the government, you need an equally powerful voice like Hollywood. Maybe this movie will make the average American think more about the issue, and it might even cause some to change their views about Snowden. If it does, this movie has served its purpose, and kudos to Stone.

Vexs2• 10 years ago

I agree. I like ripping on these as much as the next guy, but as long as it gets people talking that's enough. Also, one of the best ways to learn something is to find out that the teacher was wrong. People love that.

atmosx4• 10 years ago

This movie is made by Oliver Stone right? Judging by prior work like The Doors (Jim Morrison) and Alexander (Alexander the Great) I don't have high hopes.

Oliver Stone likes to destroy characters on the big screen paying attention to the flaws rather than the charisma of his charactes. Jesus, I didn't remember a single battle scene from the movie "Alexander" and this guy went from Greece to India on horse battling his way out. He is considered one of the biggest strategic minds in history. He was the only leader I recall who changed the faith of battles consistently by making swift, unexpected moves with his cavalry hitting the enemy where he least expected it. Being gay[2] is not the reason why Alexander was named "Great".

[1] In the case of Alexander he admitted that it was a huge failure, but I'm not sure if by failure he and I mean the same thing, probably not.

[2] Sexual relationships amongst men were a very natural thing in ancient Greece, especially between soldiers. Indeed Alexander was married twice AFAIK.

toyg• 10 years ago

No director is perfect. Oliver Stone had a few duds, but he also made some excellent movies: JFK, Any Given Sunday, Platoon, Talk Radio, Wall Street...

If you have to criticize him, you could say that his recent movies have not been up to the bar he set in the '90s -- but it definitely was a very high bar.

I'm much more worried about Gordon-Levitt playing Snowden, from the trailer he looks pretty bland.

cromwellian• 10 years ago

Stone directing doesn't give me high hopes for documentary realism and adherence to facts.

jonathankoren2• 10 years ago

Oliver Stone also like to make every movie about Vietnam, and how the government lies and manipulates. Even his movies that apparently aren't about Vietnam reflect his Vietnam experience.

rurban• 10 years ago

Snowden was a favorite to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival at an early Out of Competition slot. Stone himself requested an early slot. In the end he didn't get it, so this is a hint that the movie lacks something.

On the other side Laura Poitras new Assange documentary "Risk" screens in the Quinzaine (Directors fortnight) competition.

B1FF_PSUVM• 10 years ago

To counter the powerful voice of the government, you need an equally powerful voice like Hollywood.

They're separate?

discardorama2• 10 years ago

Often they're the same. But once in a while a director like Stone will go his own way, luckily for us.

thangalin• 10 years ago

https://youtu.be/XEVlyP4_11M?t=1355

Average Americans know nothing about Snowden.

stordoff2• 10 years ago

This raises an interesting question: how did Snowden get the documents out of the NSA? I don't recall reading much about how this was accomplished. Has that been discussed/reported anywhere?

avar• 10 years ago

Wasn't he working from home from Hawaii as a contractor with a remote login and could easily transfer data from NSA systems at his leisure? Isn't this whole framing of a Jason Bourne-esque exfiltration of the data just a myth?

Aside from Snowden you don't have to elaborately hide an SD card in a Rubik's cube. Just strick it in a condom and shove it.

From what I've read security against this sort of exfiltration is focused on disabling USB ports and the like. Not trying to detect something the size of an SD card leaving the building. They're not doing a full cavity search or giving you an MRI each time you enter/exit.

DanBC• 10 years ago

Aside from Snowden you don't have to elaborately hide an SD card in a Rubik's cube. Just strick it in a condom and shove it.

Or just use a spy coin. The UK pound coin version is pretty good, but will stop working when we change our coins. Coins are handy because you carry them in your pockets, so they avoid xray checks at airports.

deepnet6• 10 years ago

Snowden wasn't 'on-site', AFAIK he had remote access as a private contractor.

One of Snowden's main revelations was how little oversight there was.

He was motivated to come forward by the abuses he saw the NSA database put to, rather than its mere existence.

Snowden has reported his colleagues reguarly exfiltrated 'dirty pictures' from the NSA database. Snowden says 'nudies' were a 'commodity' traded around his colleagues.

If one can trivially sneak out dirty pics without oversight then...

Of course if Snowden could do it for the best of reasons, it is hard to believe moles and foriegn agents don't have similar access.

EthanHeilman• 10 years ago

Years before Snowden it was revealed that recorded sex was traded around the NSA. In 2008 it was revealed that NSA employees made mix tapes of phone sex they recorded:

Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator’s computer. "Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy’," Faulk told ABC News. - Wired: NSA Snooped on Innocent Americans’ Private Calls from Iraq, Former Operators Charge https://www.wired.com/2008/10/we-snooped-on-i/

cookiecaper3• 10 years ago

Do the people with that kind of access simply not understand the power they have? If Snowden had access, surely there are at least dozens of other 20-somethings running around able to read the correspondence of almost anyone in the country. Are we to believe that they really are so self-disciplined the only thing they'll look at are nude photos? Why haven't we seen industrial and political fallout from these guys?

ipsin• 10 years ago

If you X-rayed the cube with the card on top or bottom, I wonder if the card would be distinguishable? I imagine that, if the cube was on one of the sides, it'd be practically impossible to see.

05• 10 years ago

Seeing how the cube is mostly plastic and SD cards have metal contacts, it should be very visible.

voidiac• 10 years ago

Most cubes I've seen seem to have metal springs.

Vexs2• 10 years ago

On the side, you might see a slightly brighter line. Here's an xray of a uSD card:

http://rusolut.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/msd1xray.jpg

And an xray of a rubiks cube:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4138/4859926370_10d2a0d071.jpg

Overall, doubt you could see it without looking very carefully.

imrehg• 10 years ago

I just had some teeth X-rays at a pretty regular dental clinic here in Taiwan. They were showing me the results and explaning what they have found. I was totally amazed how thing that look super-light tiny shadows for me at one place they say "we must check", while elsewhere they were "nothing". What you see totally depends on the expertise you have and I think it wouldn't be hard at all to spot things that for us outsiders are just "maybe a little bit lighter".

patrickg_zill• 10 years ago

RURIC: Redundant Userspace RAID of Inexpensive Cubes

beeboop• 10 years ago

On its surface, the movie appears to be praising Snowden. I am convinced it is intentionally shitty and is deliberately overly praiseful of Snowden so that viewers will find it annoying. The net result is that people leave with a negative opinion of Snowden the person. It just looks so over-the-top terrible from the trailer alone.

waynecochran• 10 years ago

     "especially considering that cube wasn’t released 
     until 2013"

This cube is different than those released in the 1970s?

bigdubs2• 10 years ago

It's largely the same, the speed cube just replaces the stickers with plastic tiles. The internals are also tweaked to make it easier to spin and to make it resist "popping" where the cube would jettison some pieces if you were moving it too fast / hard.

sopooneo• 10 years ago

The colors are embedded tiles rather than stickers, and it's made to allow the sides to twist faster and more smoothly. https://rubiks.com/store/product/rubiks-speed-cube

throw888892• 10 years ago

The cube sequence doesn't make sense to me.

What kind of guard will let a cube not pass through the system like that? If I were that guard I would find that cube throw highly suspicious.

And while we are at it, wouldn't it be easier to hide the microSD card under the tongue for example?

And lastly, where exactly are you supposed to stick that card into in the facility? Even low-level security companies glue all USB/card reader inputs.

Snowden’s Rubik’s Cube

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