Ask HN: What did you think of the hacking in Skyfall? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What did you think of the hacking in Skyfall?

I do think that most hacking scenes in movies\tv shows and the language used in them is generally terrible. I'm not sure that hacking will ever make interesting viewing for the masses.

That said, I did like the futuristic looking GUI's actually. I didn't think they were completely rediculous but still looked pretty cool, I mean, the audience need something to look at. A man talking nonsense about polymorphic obfuscation probably isn't enough on its own.

Is it possible to even make GUI's like the ones in Skyfall and slap them on real applications? Can WPF make things look that good? I'd be interested to know what tools are needed to build GUI's that look like that.

The fact that Q can break the encryption method he himself invented should embarrass him.

The hacking scenes in most movies are atrocious. Remember that movie Hackers back in the 90's? There's a few scenes where they hack into a supercomputer using (at best) 28.8bps modems on Mac laptops and they're presented with GUI's that represent them graphically flying through a filesystem while searching for some files.

It's like tangue says, geeks in front of a shell just wouldn't be sexy enough.

If you don't write code I'm sorry to disappoint you, but in real life one cannot "rotate" and "zoom in" certain parts of an algorithm.

Atrocious like (99.99% of) the rest.

I've stopped letting myself get frustrated over this a while ago. The intention of basically all movies are to entertain. And for those that do not know otherwise, shiny beeping flying objects floating around on a screen conveying 'logic' and 'paths' will always be more comprehensible compared to a command prompt.

I enjoyed the movie but was enraged by the hacking scenes. Besides the UI (a mix of Space Invaders and Minority Report), I found M especially dumb to connect her laptop to the mainframe. I guess a movie showing a bunch of geeks in front of Eclipse or a shell won't be sexy enough.

Spoiler Alert

I was disappointed by pretty much everything "M" did.

First, she said that in order to ensure a smooth transition with the new director, she gave up the operative that would become the main villain. Ok, this might make sense, if she had him scapegoated before parliament or had him arrested for conducting illegal operations. But no, she gave him to hostile foreign operatives. So unless the new director was trying to buddy up with the enemy, how the fuck would that smooth things over? Sounds like she's just a traitor. Even if it did make sense, she still basically said she ended his life so she could keep her job.

Later on something even worse happens. She was testifying before a panel, once again trying to keep her job, and she receives information about an imminent terrorist attack. So, having this information, she proceeds to let the attack take place, because as she said, she was afraid it would make her look bad in front of the panel. As a result, several people are killed, but everyone pretends not to notice that it was entirely her fault.

Other than the fact that her character turned into a terrorist mole, it was the best bond film in a long time.

They make it seem like a walk in the park and that anyone can do it...

Like most movies...

With game-like interface.

Same that I thought about the hacking in Swordfish. Enough said.

The digital breadcrumbs on the map of the UK made me smile

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