* Posts by akajohnsmith

3 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Oct 2015

If MR ROBOT was realistic, he’d be in an Iron Maiden t-shirt and SMELL of WEE

akajohnsmith

You need to start attending the hacker scene more. The "overweight bloke" with urine bottles in his parents basement IS THE CLICHE (and it's a holdover from the IT Dude cliche, to boot). The problem is there is no solid stereotype for the mindless masses to latch on to, nothing consistent for Hollywood to spoon out in sloppy formulaic drivel, and so we have the battle of "what is hacker?" where all options are off base (sounds like politics). This is why people KEEP FALLING FOR IT. But hey, tote that profile, keep people on the lookout for fat dudes who smell bad, way to keep people in the dark. When one of those well-built, educated, wealthy hackers shows up at the front desk of your firm, nobody will stop her from walking through the badge door. They'll probably hold it open (after all, she's wearing a dress).

Seriously, go to one of the bigger hacker cons (anything with *at least* a couple thousand, preferably something like DEFCON with tens of thousands, for good statistical distribution) and look around you. Check out each of the presenters. You'll find less of the {OB w/UB in his MB] than you will of averagely diverse people, with the one exception that there are definitely less women, both professionally and criminally, in the scene. Never say never, though, or deserve what you get.

akajohnsmith

Re: Mr. Strawman

You should definitely hang out at more hacker cons. Your sense of humor fits in well. And you'd get a lot of t-shirts to wear!

akajohnsmith

Re: Mr. Strawman

Yeah, the first thing I thought was, "Holy cow, somebody actually did their homework for once - this profile fits like 80% of my paranoid hacker friends". And though some of the technical details are a bit stretched, they are by far the best I've seen so far (although I'll always love Sneakers for a genuine hacker-mindset movie that was pre-hacker-meets-media phase). It was the closest depiction to most of the people I meet in the infosec industry (or outside of it, making a reason for my job to exist). I hope they keep the writers they have for the second season, and keep pushing their accuracy; it's a breath of fresh air from Hollywood's basement (ha, smell that!).