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Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

One of the best hacker movies ever. The involvement of Leonard Adleman (the A in RSA) in the movie [1].

He said: "I would do the scene if my wife Lori could meet [Robert] Redford"

[1] https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/

I transcribed the great number theory jargon from the film-- which your link describes but fails to include in its entirety-- in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31379273

In contrast, Hackers had a mix of "that's how it's down, IRL" and wholly created fantasy hacking. Both were entertaining films, imo, albeit with entirely different approaches to hacking.

Thanks for that, it’s interesting. It seems that his involvement was just for the one lecture scene though? The movie itself is chock full of references to nerd, hacker, conspiracy, and security knowledge. Anyone know how they did all the research for this film?

Many writers/studios get a technical consultant. Sometimes your writer friend will ask for help, other times you'll get an introduction from some VFX house you're working for and others it's your wife's-friends-husbands-boss.

I’d love to watch the directors commentary, but it looks like I need to get some legacy media for that.

I have a pretty high quality blu-ray, it's not just on legacy media.

EDIT: it occurs to me that "legacy media" means "not available through streaming/rental services/stores", my bad.

You could argue it's legacy media if you can pass it on to your descendants...

As always, legacy means "it makes money and it works and it has customers", as opposed to the new thing that may or may not work or make money.

lol. I sent that post and didn’t think twice about it, but of course you are right! I’ve started to think of physical media as “legacy”, but it is not of course!

How much they listen to their consultants differs a lot, and it shows in the production output.

Two Chiefs of Staff of the United States Air Force guest starred in Stargate SG-1, General Michael E. Ryan and General John P. Jumper,

while SG-1 was getting technical advice from Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office.

For example, Silicon Valley, had a handful of co-producers who went to niche tech conferences like dweb camp and got attendees on consulting contracts for the upcoming seasons they were writing.

I presume the conference circuit was still where they picked up the contacts in 1992

Coincidentally, staff of the internet archive co-produced and sponsored dweb camp :)

The screenwriters Lawrence Laskar and Walker Parkes talk about the research for Sneakers and War Games on a recent episode of Star Talk with Neal DeGrasse Tyson:

https://startalkmedia.com/show/how-storytelling-prevented-nu...

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