Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/

by todsacerdoti • 6 months ago

612 287 6 months ago

hackers-1995.vercel.app

enkonta• 6 months ago

This 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.

trentnix5• 6 months ago

It'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.

shon4• 6 months ago

+1 for explorers

dylan6047• 6 months ago

Is 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.

chrisfosterelli2• 6 months ago

The 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.

jghn8• 6 months ago

I 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.

nickjj• 6 months ago

I think a lot of us can appreciate that for the warm blanket it is and forgive its technical accuracy and story flaws.

This is how I feel about it too. I've watched it a good 8-10 times over the decades and enjoy it every time.

mpeg• 6 months ago

It's surprisingly accurate in terms of how weird and cringy the 90s / early 00s hacker culture was, I too was obsessed with the movie and it led me to obscure irc channels, e-zines and eventually a whole career in tech

Sharlin3• 6 months ago

It's not really even technical garbage. From many throwaway lines it's clear that the writers actually knew their stuff. They just chose to not make a hacking movie based on realism (because boring) but based on the zeitgeist, the computer tropes of the 80s and early 90s, and the concept of "cyberspace" as envisioned by Gibson and made its way to the collective consciousness. In a time when virtual reality and 3D graphics were at peak cool, yet most people had no experience with computer networks, or even computers at all.

"Cyberspace […] A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding." – Neuromancer

ethinton• 6 months ago

That's delightful - thanks for sharing!

Undoubtedly a film that inspired a generation.

trentnix5• 6 months ago

The 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.

dylan6047• 6 months ago

I 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.

GJim3• 6 months 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.

jshier• 6 months ago

The practical effects are immediately obvious in the 4K remaster, which looks amazing. Still look great though!

bilekas• 6 months ago

Hack 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• 6 months ago

I, 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.

GJim3• 6 months 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).

dualogy• 6 months ago

90s/early 2000s breakbeat songs

Can recommend such a mix, too. Gather select works of The Chemical Brothers, The Dust Brothers, Bassbin Twins, Crystal Method, DJ Krush, Dub Pistols, Lunatic Calm, Meat Katie... and you're Somewhen Else during it. Works for commutes/trips, too.

Spastche• 6 months ago

I 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

Zaskoda• 6 months ago

I hated this movie the first time I watched it. And the second. The third time I let go of the need for things to be realistic and took it all in as an artistic representation and snap... I loved it. One could argue that I loved it all along given that I watched it so many times... but there was a distinct moment where I let go and that's when I was able to see just how wonderful this movie really is.

inanutshellus• 6 months ago

I've flipped that switch for book adaptations.

I let go of fanboying on what Hollywood "did to" the story and instead just decided to be thankful something I love was given a new medium / audience / interpretation... and voila! now I have two things to love.

It's still fun to point out where things could've been done differently, but instead of actually disliking the film(s) because of those things, it's just another mechanism that lets me talk to my friends about something. Much more fun than riding home in silence in any case. ;)

hnuser123456• 6 months ago

There are some niche 3D file system browsers/shells out there, but none as captivating as what's shown in the movie (or the linked "animated experience") that I can find.

kstrauser7• 6 months ago

I adore it. And some of the representations are the best I’ve seen anywhere. Kids exploring for the fun of exploring, not to hurt anyone but just to learn? The clock whirling at 4AM while someone hyperfocuses on code? The way they tease each other but genuinely respect their abilities? It’s beautiful.

the_af3• 6 months ago

I hated this movie the first time I watched it. And the second. The third time I let go of the need for things to be realistic and took it all in as an artistic representation and snap... I loved it.

I never managed to reach your third time. Once was enough for me, at the time, to decide it was an awful movie which didn't have anything to do with hackers or computers and which was terribly overacted, and that was that. Filed under yet another "Hollywood just doesn't get it", subsection "so bad it's embarrassing".

Much later I realized I had missed a cult classic. Oh well. I still think it's a bad movie, but I'm ok with other people loving it... maybe that's my growth moment.

tptacek3• 6 months ago

I remember being at Summercon before this movie opened and Ericb addressing hotel conference room we were seated in talking about how Iain Softley had directed Backbeat and how happy he was that he was doing this movie and that you had to get in the right headspace to understand what it was going for.

(I think the movie is wildly overrated just as a piece of storytelling; the hacker fan-service in it is just fine, they clearly got some tfile kids to consult with the script.)

browningstreet• 6 months ago

Tried to watch it for the first time recently. Didn’t make it past 20 minutes… feel like I had to be there when it was fresh back in the day.

nailer• 6 months ago

I’ve said this before on hating news but the best movie that stands up is sneakers.

Just imagine somebody has invented a quantum computer with a production process that has a very high error rate so a second one can’t be easily produced.

RobRivera2• 6 months ago

Discovered the Hackers ost on a /mu/ thread. So many bangers.

echelon_musk3• 6 months ago

There's another two soundtracks!

https://www.discogs.com/release/1423591-Various-Hackers%C2%B...

https://www.discogs.com/release/131024-Various-Hackers%C2%B3

drivers993• 6 months ago

I have this OST and the Mortal Kombat one as well on CD (mentioned together since they both have the same song, "Halcyon + On + On" on them!). When I went to a 2600 meetings in Seattle in 1999, I listened to the Hacker's soundtrack in my car on the way, of course. I gave one of the people I met there a ride and we had a laugh when he saw the case in my car. (I feel like I have a story for every song. Thanks for indulging me.)

rsync• 6 months ago

"That whole OST is incredible, I still pull orbital and prodigy into my current work playlists."

The best music, in my opinion, in the movie is not on the soundtrack and it is:

Guy Pratt - Combination

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_7N8NsU4jQ

devinegan• 6 months ago

They did include this track on the 25th anniversary edition of the soundtrack titled "One Combination"

wrennes• 6 months ago

There are 3 'official' soundtracks with various tracks from the movie and some inspired by. BUT on the 2020 double disk reissue, the second disk carries may of Pratt's tracks, including Combination..

kstrauser7• 6 months ago

I took my kid to Def Con. We were walking up to the convention center and there were a few hundred people milling around out front. To embarrass my kid, I shouted "hack the planet!" loudly toward the crowd. Probably a good 50% of the bystanders shouted it back at me.

My people.

hoyd• 6 months ago

Sounds like something I would do too. Awesomeness

TheSilva2• 6 months ago

Sadly, looking through the code, doesn't show up any "GARBAGE" file easter egg to be found.

Amazing stuff, nevertheless!

whynotmaybe3• 6 months ago

Thanks, I've been looking for 5 minutes and was about to rewatch the movie to see where it's supposed to be !

TheSilva2• 6 months ago

I mean, you should totally go and rewatch it, don't let me stop you from enjoying again the movie!

ordinarily• 6 months ago

Awhile I made something really dumb: https://www.warpstream.com/etc/terminal you can enter a 'gibson' command.

maqp• 6 months ago

Nice touch with the IP :D

fred_is_fred• 6 months ago

This is really slow for me on my laptop. Does it need a P6 to run? I heard those have a killer refresh rate.

linsomniac• 6 months ago

You need to run it on a RISC architecture, but that would be too much machine for you.

vq• 6 months ago

It may or may not change everything.

jayd16• 6 months ago

Yeah. RISC is good.

shon4• 6 months ago

The Gibson! Very cool. did you make this?

I made a Tron lightcycle game: https://new.af/tron

Now that AI accelerates dev so much, I suspect we'll get to see a lot of cool throwbacks.

swah• 6 months ago

That runs super smoothly!

shon4• 6 months ago

Thanks! working on multiplayer now...

whynotmaybe3• 6 months ago

While we're at it, I remember an atari st game that was like the tron lightcycle as "Trek4".

Did it really exist ?

shon4• 6 months ago

Hmm I had an ST. I think I vaguely remember this. Was it a PD game or commercial?

kayge• 6 months ago

Was it maybe called Surround? Try looking up Atari catalog # CX2641 and see if it brings back any more memories :)

vor_• 6 months ago

Now that AI accelerates dev so much

Then where's the massive explosion of software?

sadeshmukh• 6 months ago

Obligatory sshtron reference: https://github.com/zachlatta/sshtron

diggyhole• 6 months ago

It's in the place I put the thing that one time!

jgavris• 6 months ago

They’re trashing our rights!

par5• 6 months ago

They're trashing!!

jghn8• 6 months ago

I couldn't find the garbage file. I'm such a failure, now Davinci is going to overturn all the oil tankers

echelon_musk3• 6 months 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.

par5• 6 months ago

Never fear, I is here.
Out of the way you hapless techno weenie.

ChrisArchitect• 6 months ago

Okay, okay, we need proof that we were here.

Really missed opportunity to place a garbage file in here somewhere!

rbanffy2• 6 months ago

Me neither, but there is a suspicious empty space close to one of the corners...

bitwize2• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

As 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.

bitwize2• 6 months ago

I 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.

pjmlp3• 6 months ago

"RISC architecture is gonna change everything." :)

apgwoz• 6 months ago

Easily 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.

pjmlp3• 6 months ago

I was going for the books initially, but isn't as much fun.

Regarding RISC, kind of, there have been compromises in the instruction sets.

dylan6047• 6 months ago

I feel like god!

kstrauser7• 6 months ago

For me it's "Never fear. I... is here."

thr0waway0012• 6 months ago

Me: [thinking about how to get with the hot Romulan looking chick]

Me also: yah RISC is good!

pjmlp3• 6 months ago

Yeah, that scene is interesting. :)

stewartjarod• 6 months ago

LOVELY :D

nickthegreek3• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

I have a couple copies of the laserdiek variants, always felt like the best tech to show homage.

nickthegreek3• 6 months ago

I didn’t know it was released on laserdisc! Looks like the going rate is around $100 US.

sophacles3• 6 months ago

The 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?".

kstrauser7• 6 months ago

Who’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?

LandoCalrissian• 6 months ago

Easily my biggest guilty pleasure movie, warts and all, I still love it.

BLKNSLVR9• 6 months ago

My 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• 6 months ago

very 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• 6 months ago

I love it. Hack the planet. Thank you so much.

benrutter• 6 months ago

This 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

echelon_musk3• 6 months ago

You're gonna love New York. It's the city that never sleeps.

KeybInterrupt• 6 months ago

Yeah! Hack the Planet :D

axus• 6 months ago

The addressing on that hex dump is all over the place.. and not even byte-aligned!

29athrowaway• 6 months ago

This 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.

vidalakistrajk3• 6 months ago

This is a coded scene made by one developer and the other is a multimillion dollar studio project... :D

runjake3• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

If 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

riffraff2• 6 months ago

I haven't watched it, but I seem to recall "Mr Robot" was widely praised by techies too.

runjake3• 6 months ago

Yes! Forgot about Mr Robot, which was absolutely fantastic.

BLKNSLVR9• 6 months ago

Yes, I've watched that TV show through twice and will probably do it again.

Great on the technicals and also a complete mind fuck.

StopTheWorld2• 6 months ago

The 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).

runjake3• 6 months ago

Oh man, Limelight!

LoD and MoD's heydays were more in the 1980s. By the first year or two of the 1990s, both were pretty much defunct, if my memory serves.

I was acquainted with several members of both groups, and I don't remember them really resembling the Hackers movies in appearance or personality. But I lost touch with them in about 1989-1990 or so, due to the next phase of my life kicking off.

somethingsome• 6 months ago

I really loved 'Track Down' (2000), if you want to try. The film depict maybe more 1980-1990 though

BLKNSLVR9• 6 months ago

In Australia that was titled 'Hackers 2' and was very disappointing - until I learned the backstory and have since read Ghost in the Wires. It's still a totally different thing to Hackers, but it's a good addition to the zeitgeist.

lll-o-lll• 6 months ago

I was a 90’s hacker (teenager in the early 90’s deep into “hacking”). “Hackers” was clearly a movie for teenagers and released in the 90s, so it stands to reason that it captured some of that cultural moment. I did love it.

However, Sneakers was also released at around the same time, and that really captured my imagination and had a real lasting impact on my life. Hackers was fun, but Sneakers was aspirational.

47282847• 6 months ago

I've no idea which movies are a similar anthem for 2000s/2010s hackers. Let me know.

I really like Halt And Catch Fire but it doesn’t count since it also depicts the 80s. So, since Mr. Robot already got its mention, how about Silicon Valley? ;-)

RRRA• 6 months ago

Now 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• 6 months ago

OK who is gonna turn this into a functional terminal emulator for me?

clickety_clack• 6 months ago

I want to visualize real data this way for when business users come over to my desk and ask for something.

shmerl2• 6 months ago

Not exactly, but there is cool retro term: https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term

ua709• 6 months ago

Claude Code. There are no more software engineers. Apparently...

JCattheATM• 6 months ago

This is really cool! Thanks for making and sharing.

kriro• 6 months ago

A+ 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" :)

JaggedJax2• 6 months ago

Love 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• 6 months ago

Doesn’t do that for me. Have you got some oddball extension installed or something?

JaggedJax2• 6 months ago

Found 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?

anthk3• 6 months ago

I 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.

thr0waway0012• 6 months ago

If 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.

dylan6047• 6 months ago

The 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.

anthk3• 6 months ago

Indeed; 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, 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_Einzige4• 6 months ago

It was sad to realize that my parents, who are utterly obsessed with rush, were the incels of their generation.

anthk3• 6 months ago

Ironically 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• 6 months ago

wonderful

par5• 6 months ago

Damn 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.

blahaj2• 6 months ago

Sorry 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.

par5• 6 months ago

Thank you. And you know, it's those quotes and concepts that really stuck me with, about how we were all in it together. And not to get off topic, but i'm so sad and disheartened to see what tech has become since those days.

ddtaylor2• 6 months ago

As 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.

throaway543• 6 months ago

ytcracker still the greatest 2/26/2026 NES forever (9'.')9 (9'.')-o

herodoturtle• 6 months ago

I’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!

jghn8• 6 months 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.

par5• 6 months ago

"im a real wild child i'm a wild one, im a wild one!!"

arvid-lind• 6 months ago

aaaah! joey! joey! thank you everybody!

racl1013• 6 months ago

"I'm not an addict. Can I get some more coffee?"

rbanffy2• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

I 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.

doublerabbit• 6 months ago

"Check this out guys, this is insanely great, it's got a 28.8 BPS modem!"

lokimedes• 6 months ago

Yeah, me too. And I gobbled up the Phreak culture from my danish small town life, dreaming of late eighties AT&T escapades with my crew of cool street kids… RISC is good.

harel3• 6 months ago

For me that was War Games that got me into this world and career. Always felt like I owe Broderick a Raspberry Pie or something

dylan6047• 6 months ago

The use of the soda can pull tab to ground the receiver to get a dial tone was my moment as I was a noob phreaker well before being a hacker. How many kids watching that movie would even know what was happening today? Would they even know what he picks up off the ground let alone the actual phreaking

Der_Einzige4• 6 months ago

War games was an excellent film. Hackers was a terrible film. Not sure why people are celebrating such a cheesy film.

Also no one remembers cloak and dagger.

obloid• 6 months ago

I've never seen Hackers. It was War Games for me, too.

jimt1234• 6 months ago

- I'm Crash Override. - You're the moron that's been invading my turf?!

jagged-chisel• 6 months ago

Not sure why, but my favorite is:

- I thought you was black, man. YO THIS IS ZERO COOL!

INTPenis• 6 months ago

Hackers inspired me to start digging around on my FreeBSD laptop and learn how to setup a bitmap image as boot splash, just like the kids in the movie all had their own custom boot image.

Just a few years later I dropped out of school and started my career, haven't looked back since.

My first boss who gave me my first chance, and my 2nd job through referral, he dropped out of 7th grade to start his own business. He was once interrogated by police, and they had brought in some experts from a big ISP, and these "experts" had no idea what he was talking about. :D

Wild years...

stevenhubertron• 6 months ago

We would have been good friends then. My and my friend group watched it so many times.

shaunxcode• 6 months ago

I listen to the hackers soundtrack regularly when coding. It’s ideal.

cbdevidal• 6 months ago

Absolute classic, especially Halcyon

thedrexster• 6 months ago

Hack the planet! <3

jmtame• 6 months ago

Joey! One more 'dude' and I'll slap the %#!% out of you!

cainxinth3• 6 months ago

Trust your technolust!

krd8ssb• 6 months ago

Man, I didn't see hackers for the first time until probably 5 years after I wrote my first line of code. I still watch it to this day but I got started when I saw "wavy colored text" in an AOL chat room. Yup, colored sup and sub text. Fascinated me as an 11/12 year old and I picked up Visual Basic 5. Good times

myvoiceismypass• 6 months ago

This absolutely made my week! (I still have the Hackers movie poster framed in my office.)

erickhill• 6 months ago

Oh dang I made it to the end of the grid/world. Got scared in the darkness and retreated back to the light.

evan_• 6 months ago

This is great, is there any way to just have it fly around autonomously?

dylan6047• 6 months ago

That could be a fun screen saver

syx• 6 months ago

Last 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• 6 months ago

Watching 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.

kstrauser7• 6 months ago

In 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• 6 months ago

Phenomenal work!

cmrdporcupine• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

Some of you tough tech guys are talking a lot of sh$@ but I bet you couldn’t hack a Gibson.

k6hkUZtLUM• 6 months ago

Hack the Planet!

RazerWazer• 6 months ago

You have now become The Plague.

iberator• 6 months ago

question: 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• 6 months ago

Yes. 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.

lchengify• 6 months ago

I was so proud of myself in college when I could finally name all those books in the bar scene.

k2enemy2• 6 months ago

I 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.

elric• 6 months ago

I miss the time when rollerblades seemed like the ideal mode of transport.

My ankles don't.

BLKNSLVR9• 6 months ago

I'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• 6 months ago

Rollerblade 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• 6 months ago

This 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• 6 months ago

I 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

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• 6 months ago

Thanks 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• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

Cereal is my favorite character! Especially the random shouting.

kstrauser7• 6 months ago

Cereal 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.

shmerl2• 6 months ago

Cool. The only thing that's missing are keys for turning / rotating.

Would be nice to get one from Johnny Mnemonic too.

nirav72• 6 months ago

The 1990s depiction of a filesystems in movies like Hacker or Disclosure was just weird. Then you had products like Microsoft Bob.

racl1013• 6 months ago

YO THIS IS ZERO COOL!

k2enemy2• 6 months ago

I highly recommend Hackers Curator for fans of the movie [0] Outstanding interviews with cast and crew, prop projects, etc.

[0] https://hackerscurator.com

stack_framer• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

So friggin’ cool. Well done.

avsn• 6 months ago

This 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• 6 months ago

god wouldn't be up this late...

_joel• 6 months ago

Can I run this on my new pentium pro laptop, or is it RISC only?

invader• 6 months ago

Awesome! 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

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• 6 months ago

12 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• 6 months ago

Such a crap, corny movie. Cliché dialogues. Didn't age well, typical 90s techbabblebullshit drivel.

Strange days OTOH...

intothemild• 6 months ago

I see where youre coming from. But oh when you embrace the cliche of it all.. it's amazing

senko• 6 months ago

Fun 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• 6 months ago

It 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.

BLKNSLVR9• 6 months ago

Disagree on Hackers, agree on Strange Days.

Skunkanansie cameo too.

unicorn_cowboy• 6 months ago

It'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• 6 months ago

Am I the only one who vehemently despised this movie?

BLKNSLVR9• 6 months ago

Yes, you are the only one who is wrong ;)

vidalakistrajk3• 6 months ago

Hi 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• 6 months ago

I found an RSA private key while wandering around, hope its not used for anything ;)

h33t-l4x0r• 6 months ago

Rumor is, it will get you into the pentagon. But you have to guess the ip.

vidalakistrajk3• 6 months ago

I hope not! But if you find any use for it please let me know ;)

noperand• 5 months ago

HACK 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&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`' src=a\u003ESHOUTSOUTTOPHRACK\u003C/img\u003E", "time_ms": -1e+129 } ...OTHER ATTEMPTS FOLLOW... ```

Regardless, thanks for sharing! Very cool!

dkga• 6 months ago

HACK THE PLANET! Have to rewatch the movie tonight!

ctxcode• 6 months ago

That's so awesome :D thanks for making this. amazing.

caseysoftware• 6 months ago

When 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• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

Anyone else on the fan Facebook group? Ceralkiller is on there.

cardamomo• 6 months ago

What contemporary films, TV, it books scratch the same itch as "Hackers." Folks are mentioning Mr. Robot. What else?

dewarrn1• 6 months ago

Tangential, but Darknet Diaries has been running a "hacker history" series to kick off 2026, starting with this one: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/168/. The "Hackers" movie gets a few call-outs.

bpiroman• 6 months ago

very cool

flanbiscuit• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

Right in the feels.

I wish I could go back in time to watch the movie for the first time.

dollylambda2• 6 months ago

Crash + Burn <3

dollylambda2• 6 months ago

I 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.

cainxinth3• 6 months ago

It was right in the tagline: “Their only crime was curiosity.”

acuozzo• 6 months ago

Taken straight from The Mentor: https://phrack.org/issues/7/3

carverauto• 6 months ago

this would be an interesting kubernetes explorer, similiar to the DWM file explorer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer is the source available?

damethos• 6 months ago

Time to re-re-re-re-N-watch this!

claytonaalves• 6 months ago

I miss this David Gilmour track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-eZSIn9kHA

Steelclearance• 6 months ago

Good job, thanks for sharing! Should I be looking at the code for easter eggs? :)

Kon5ole• 6 months ago

A 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• 5 months ago

Nice!!!

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

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