Miss Misery on hacking Mr Robot and the Missing Sense of Fun Are you lolling dolefully? Then I'll continue. The TV show Mr. Robot deals with the life and adventures of Elliot Alderson, a twenty-something New York devop and cyber-vigilante. He and his circle of chums, seeking to inflict revenge on a mega-corporation for a hushed-up industrial accident, stumble towards bringing e- …
And no mocked-up-for-cinema GUIs, of the type often seen in films to build tension by racing a progress bar against the bad guys breaking into the computer room.
There's also a fun bit where a rich executive is driven out of her automated home by people taking control of all the IoT gadgets within.
I enjoyed the first season, second season was a bit slow to get started, will watch the third season when it appears.
They had a guy who was basically responsible for making the hacking look authentic. He did a talk at DefCon I believe - most of the 'onscreen' animation is recorded in flash because that's the easiest way to make it authentic - someone can tap away at a keyboard and the letters would appear at the right time, and never a typo in sight!
If you can find the talk it's really good to hear how 'respectful' of real hacking the directors and such were. Rather than being a case of them not listening to what would make sense and pass for 'real' they actually listened to genuine hackers for inputs. As such, there's even a few sneaky shout outs to various hacker groups and such in the series too.
Technical accuracy???
who gets on a private plane to fly to a remote lights out DC and fiddle with some servers that are being hacked? if its that important either have remote kvm access, out of band access even if its by dial up, or have someone at the DC that can either turn something off or is skilled enough to stop the attack. Its cheaper and quicker than driving to an airport, getting on a private plane and then getting to the DC at the other side. even with dial up out of band i'd be able to sort a remote server or network device quicker than the drive to an airport from an office.
i struggled to watch the show as its full of other inaccuracies. never made it past (i think) episode 4.
Having worked for Aviva back when it was called Norwich Union, I sometimes needed to access a server located in the "lights-out"* DC on the outskirts of Norwich. Remote access was set up so that you would be automatically logged out after 15 minutes. Unfortunately, NU's infrastructure was so shite at the time that 15 minutes was hardly enough time to log in and do more than issue two or three actions (i.e. move mouse, wait 30 seconds to see mouse finally moving close to where you wanted it to be on the remote screen, click mouse - go make a cuppa in the hope that it might have done something by the time you got back).
It was often far quicker in the long run to catch the regular private NU bus service between the city and the DC, and then make the changes in person.
* There were ALWAYS people in the DC - it was NEVER lights-out!
no outside remote access for the admins yet the hackers had complete remote control. The inference is that the systems where public facing, so we have a super secure DC that's open to the internet with no remote admin access requiring a techie to get on a plane and console into a system to access the cli and do stuff to it. if that was the scenario in the finance (PCI/DSS) or gov't (IL3) places i've worked in people would be fired and changes made. No remote admin access would fail the accreditation.
to the chap from Norwich, surely riding a bus across town is quicker than going to the airport and catching a flight?
re $TLA's i'm sure multiple redundant systems would ensure waiting for a tech to arrive was part of the plan but i'm also sure services where not left vulnerable to exploit awaiting a techie to fix something.
"who gets on a private plane to fly to a remote lights out DC and fiddle with some servers that are being hacked?"
Well, one of my relatives for one, though it's more usually a ticket handed over at the airport for a scheduled flight and a hire car arranged by $TLA, hotel where someone else pays the bill and a rather free hand with expenses. Such jobs do actually exist and are rather well paid as compensation for having no life beyond occasional hookups in hotels.
who gets on a private plane to fly to a remote lights out DC and fiddle with some servers that are being hacked? if its that important either have remote kvm access, out of band access even if its by dial up, or have someone at the DC that can either turn something off or is skilled enough to stop the attack. Its cheaper and quicker than driving to an airport, getting on a private plane and then getting to the DC at the other side. even with dial up out of band i'd be able to sort a remote server or network device quicker than the drive to an airport from an office.
Uhm, you've clearly never dealt with remote hands, aten-based IPMI (which they all are and garbage and prone to failure) or general shit hitting the fan with critical hardware/software before on complicated issues. I've done everything but the private plane bit, and frankly in the show it wasn't clear if it was a private plane or chartered. When shit really hits the fan even true OOB management can and does fail - and is often a pain in the arse to arrange in cages, which this clearly was. Sometimes it really is just easier to show up and fix it.
Technical accuracy ?!
You are kidding right ?
Please tell me you are kidding.
Sure, there are no "It's Unix. I know this" moments of clunkery, but to anyone who actually knows a thing or two about the tech world portrayed, the "technical accuracy" is only as accurate as the science technobabble in Star Trek.
It sure sounds sufficiently plausible to anyone who doesn't actually understand the words, but to anyone who does it's simply laughable.
Having said that, I am well aware that lawyers say the same thing about shows such as Boston Legal, Suits and The Good Wife, for example.
The principle difference between Mr Robot and those shows however is that those other shows feature sharply written dialog and compelling characters that you actually want to spend time with, together with the bonus of an occasional genuine plot surprise or well crafted (in the writing and the portrayal) emotional hit.
Unlike Mr Robot which leans relies on its trumped up so-called technical accuracy, characters and story lines clumsily and obviously drawn by committee to hit "edgy" and "social" hot buttons and tediously signposted "surprises" that leave you hoping until the last minute that the obvious "reveal" about to come isn't going to be as obvious as it looks and will hold some genuine revelation. But it doesn't.
"I thought it was about an actual robot"
The original *was* about an actual robot. (#) Meanwhile, they didn't even bother including the robot factory in the TV version.
(#) Or did we all assume that this was the case and did the author secretly intend him to be a man in a convincing-looking robot suit fulfilling some deep-seated psychological need without telling us? Or is it more likely that no-one ever thought about characters developed solely to fulfil the premise of an early-80s video game all that deeply? We may never care...
Although I did get distracted a few times with more lightweight things such as Lucifer and The Grand Tour, I have finished the first two seasons of Mr Robot and have found it enjoyable.
Rami Malek plays an excellent hacker and Christian Slater is very good in his role too (I won't spoil). I found Angela's dour expressions a little bit annoying at times, and Darlene's brattish behaviour can be a little OTT at times, but in general is spot on.
Halfway through series 2 it does get a little weird, with one episode starting off as a flashback in the form of an 80's style US sitcom, whilst another episode features Angela, a girl and an old-school telephone..... but stick with it - it is worthit, although it can be a little hard to binge watch as it is very full on.
As someone who's had a really out there experience (not due to drugs but tiredness - I walked home thinking I was in some real life game of CS to the point at which I was imagining seeing my ammo number in one corner of my vision), I can imagine the whole 80's sitcom thing actually happening to some body.
I wouldn't want to put off these streaming media companies from creating their own content. They do seem a bit more accepting of risks with what they make.
Mr Robot a bit like a lot of these shows is pretty good but it's not great. I've watched the first series and have the second on a watchlist but it might be a while before I get to it.
I've felt the same about a few others that they have really great production values but I've just not found them compelling (Vikings, Walking Dead).
But I hope they keep trying becasue eventually they're going to make something as good as The Wire or Deadwood again.
I'm really enjoying The Expanse right now and I'm told Narcos and WestWorld are worth a watch too.
The Expanse and Westworld are very good. More modestly, I find Dark Matter and Killjoys to be cheap and cheerful galaxy-hopping fun - they both start to find their stride after the first few episodes, and really get into the swing of things in their second seasons.
Whilst lots of episodes in the first season of Person of Interest are redundant ('investigation of the week'), season two and beyond is superb.
only problem
Well, that, and the Guns.
The way the guns work so flawlessly even when in the flaky hands of drunks and morons or drunk morons will need an unbreakable Command, Control and Communication system with almost to Planck-scale precision and resolution.
But, this cannot exist given the amount of unchecked skulduggery and shenanigans that drives the story.
In my opinion it's one of the most original tv show for a long time. These days and I'm not complaining it's usually a comic book adaption or the same actors playing the same sort of characters in different settings.
It is hard to watch but that's down to the excellent screenwriting where it lulls you into thinking one thing and then throws you a curve ball and to top that off you try and anticipate in season two where it's going to go only to find yourself wrong yet again.
My only concern is that like a lot of other tv shows I don't think it will have a conclusion worthy of the series as a whole, in fact I don't think they know where it will end as I don't think they thought it would be a success.
All that said I don't think it's for everyone, it takes a bit of investment from the viewer unlike a lot of other good shows where you just watch and enjoy.
For fans of the random stuff that Channel 4 put on on All4, I recommend 'Heartless' - a tale of pouty bisexual Danish energy vampires (and witches, obviously). A very gothic high-school, ancient curses, people bursting into flames, it has everything you could want and more. It follows the US mode of having good looking 20-something actors as high school students.
(I've used those UIs. They were current at filming, I was impressed)
But, no, thanks Mr Robot. I have an angsty 20 something living in house, and I was given one as a second for a few months. I will happily wait for more Anthony Hopkins. Now, if only 'flix will cough up more Black Mirror. (*love* those).
It maybe a bit grinchy for some people at some point but then you also have to remember that you're most likely someone with a background or deeper interest in IT which means that you'll approach some of the plot holes differently.
Even so... It's not something I'd go out to watch, have to agree that Hill Street Blues looks much better in comparison, and even that had a really high dose of "soap" for me, especially near the seasons where Furillo & Davenport started to become a very strange couple.
Still... I can't help get the impression that this series could very well be a much better message towards the general audience that "please use a password which isn't too easily guessable" than any written study can do. At least I hope so.
> To my ignorant Windows programmer eyes, the Unixish technical dope looks on the button.
But it is purely gratuitous. The techy detail "revealed" does nothing to further the plot - except for the small number of individuals who crave recognition "Ooooh! he said Linux that proves it is mainstream, respectable, and recognises me as a fellow-hacker, since I downloaded Kali [ p.s. I had to look that one up ] too."
As for dropping a RPi into the plot - that is as cynical as having a A-star-plus celeb with a walk-on part and then promoting the show as "starring .... "
I found the first series really hard to watch (skipping many episodes) and didn't even bother checking series 2. Not just because the drug-induced stupor makes it difficult to determine what is true, nor just because everything is mumbled, but mainly because it just wasn't a very good story: technology neither withstanding nor bystanding.
You can be a hacker and also use drugs (if you don't care about your body) - but you need the "right" ones. Those creating strange virtual wolds in your brain could make you a fashionable painter and maybe some kind of musician - but not an hacker or any other role where your brain has to work fast and correctly - this world is not Dune. Otherwise you may believe you hacked the Kremlin, when you just installed Windows 3.1 on your new shiny laptop.
Then, what the script writes take is another matter...
"difficult to determine what is true"
May I disrespectfully advise you to avoid works like Kurosawa's Rashomon, then?
The whole point of an unreliable narrator is that he is, well, unreliable. Granted, Rashomon is a little different, in that there are (counts) five of them, and their stories don't match except in very, very broad strokes ("a samurai is dead" is more or less all we *know* for sure), but that just makes it worse. In the end, our view of what actually happened in Rashomon probably tells us more about ourselves than it does about the events in the story.
There's a collection of short stories by Len Deighton, "Declarations of War", I can highly recommend it.
One of the stories is about two veterans meeting and talking about one specific event. They both are accurate about all the facts, but due to their different perception of the event while they lived through it, they tell two entirely different stories. Without being actually contradicting.
"But it is purely gratuitous. The techy detail "revealed" does nothing to further the plot..."
That's true, but lack of that detail often goes hand-in-hand with other types of sloppiness. So while I agree that it's not a feature that makes or breaks the show, it is nonetheless a feature that demonstrates that the effort is being made.
Note, haven't seen any episodes myself, so I don't know how well I'd receive it upon watching. Maybe I too would switch over to another show for relief. Leverage is a show I don't get tired of.
I found Mr Robot very good and also found the hidden fantastic gem "Halt and Catch Fire".
I tried slowing down some of the command line stuff show in Mr Robot, most of it made some sense. Mr Robot's brain does jump about a bit and I like some of the surprises that I got caught out on.
The writing team is clearly up-to-date on events and techniques in cybersecurity. And for that they deserve praise, compared to other TV and cinema outings which claim to have called in expert advice (looking at you 'Blackhat' - a Michael Mann movie too!).
Season 2 is definitely flakier than the near perfect Season 1, and I have no idea what the two scantily-clad Scandis are up to apart from looking very pretty indeed.
But looking forward to Season 3.
"From which palaver you will have deduced I didn't like it."
It's obvious why you didn't like it, you're a girly. This review reminds me of another review of 'Ex Machina' by MaryAnn Johanson ref. She didn't get it either. For instance she has this to say: "Nathan has obviously perfected artificial humanish skin, so why isn’t Ava entirely covered with it, instead of merely her face and hands?". Well, as any male SF reading techie would know .. so we could see her parts, silly ...
Oh man, that is epic comedy material, and those comments, she really can't see anything but conspiracy no matter how eloquently people point out how utterly wrong she is. The film is phenomenal, out of all the subtle and not so subtle themes she only focuses on the "gender" of the robot and the main character being a white knight.
MaryAnn is off on similar vein regarding 'Ghost in the Machine'. The whitewashing, the cultural misappropriation, says Scarlett Johansson is the least offensive thing about the movie. It takes dedication to find offence of a movie about a synthetic organism hot chick who can do kung-fu and we all get to see her parts :)
I'm surprised to see so many likes - I practically had to force myself through all of HaCF after season one, and I didn't even like that one all that much either. To me it seems to be a character drama* that uses (an alternative version of) the modern history of computing merely as a disposable backdrop, with the added "twist" that the protagonists apparently invented pretty much all of it by themselves, before everyone else (then managed to screw each other out of the proceeds. Again.). I'm not sure what I expected, but this seems to be a show about clashing egos, not tech tomfoolery. We're simply watching JR, Sue Ellen and Bobby all over again, except (ZOMG!) s/oil/IT. And as fun as 'Dallas' was in my teens, I certainly wouldn't bother watching it today.
* which can still work admirably by the way, if it's used to mercilessly parody stereotypes fond to us IT folks - as demonstrated in "The IT Crowd" or more recently in "Silicon Valley". HaCF on the other hand takes itself horribly seriously with next to no actual tech content (but lots of buzzwords), successfully destroying (for me) all the fun in the process. That said, if you like it, by all means, absolutely, do carry on...
Why is it that USian TV series just go on and on and on?
I personally can't be bothered with this nonsense. On the other hand has anyone been watching Letterkenny? It's a hoot but seems to have stopped at the episode titled "Rave". This was a total LOL!
Think quality of a Father Ted type script in a farm setting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterkenny_(TV_series)
I do not often watch American TV series. I find them longwinded and each episode can often be rather dull. If people are talking about it in a few years time, it was something special.
Mr.Robot season 1 was excellent, for an American series, and incorporated some decent technical storyline, almost in a Scandinavian-Noir style attempt at detail. I would recommend that season and urge people to watch it and give it a chance before judging by simply the first couple of episodes.
Season2 I gave up on, much like the reviewer. Perhaps I am missing out, but I will live.
Watch season1 - it pulls together well and is one of the most accurate representations on-screen of a network and security specialist human being, with life problems (don't we all?) that gave a satisfying sense of perspective, unlike most American TV series.
Gets quite twisted and weird.
Not sure why this review is so late coming as season 2 must have ended about a year ago. Btw, don't wait for these companies to get there shit together with what they offer you, I'd recommend going straight to an indexing site like www.primewire.ag for free (in the spirit of the shows hacks)
If you'd recalled for a bit longer you'd have remembered that Blofeld went tranny in Diamonds are Forever yonks ago.
When will hackers (and the TV shows that feature them) realize that computer savvies just aren't cool any more? No-one is impressed because everyone has had a letter from their bank saying that some plonkers have stolen personal information (again) and had to deal with the nonsense arising from that act.
And if I never hear another CSIclone tech blither about IP addresses as though they were meaningful in this era of mega ISPs it will be four octets of years too soon.
Now get off my lawn. I've a Gibson to unhaxxor.
After a few episodes I was going "Oh no...don't tell me...please...don't do a (insert movie trope here) on me...noooooo!"
And they did. Lazy.
I watched it to the end but I lost interest.
I too much prefer HaCF even if it does play very fast and loose with computing history. At least some of the characters are likeable.
I never viewed Mr Robot as being a story about hackers, it's a story about mental illness, revenge and power. The "techie bits" are entirely incidental to the plot and used to make it look good to non educated eyes, or windows user educated eyes :)
I loved season one, season two however did a thing midway through that I absolutely loathe as lazy story telling. I sort of lost interest at that point.
> I never viewed Mr Robot as being a story about hackers, it's a story about mental illness, revenge and power, RealBigAl
Speak for yourself. I thought giving Eliot a substance abuse problem, a skitzoid girlfriend problem and two invisible friends was over doing the alienated social outcast genius trope a bit much. And of course having fsociety meet-up daily in the same video arcade would never work in real life. They would be only able to communicate by IRC from different countries, if not different continents.
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