tv hack

A one-minute NCIS scene in which two characters type on the same keyboard to fight off a hacker. It is widely mocked as absurd TV hacking.

A 1983 interview clip in which David Bowie questions MTV VJ Mark Goodman about why the channel played so few videos by black artists.

The Mentor (Loyd Blankenship) reads his 1986 essay "The Conscience of a Hacker" at H2K2 in 2002 and adds his own insight about its backstory.

Linus Tech Tips warns against cheap Android TV boxes, many of which ship with preinstalled malware. It looks at several boxes and suggests safer alternatives such as Chromecast and Nvidia Shield.

The BotHack NetHack bot wins the game for the first time with no cheats or human intervention, in a run lasting about 3.5 hours. The description links the source code and the dumplog.

A short clip from the 1995 film Hackers in which the characters attempt to hack the Gibson supercomputer, shown with flashy stylized visuals of digital intrusion.

A comedic Kung Fury spinoff in which Hackerman demonstrates 'hacking' household objects through time. It parodies 1980s hacker tropes.

A short CSI clip in which characters try to track a killer's IP address by writing a Visual Basic GUI. It is a famous example of absurd TV hacking.

The scene from the 2001 film Swordfish in which Hugh Jackman's character is forced to hack while under pressure. The clip is widely known for its absurd depiction of hacking.

A clip from Charlie Brooker's BBC show Screenwipe showing how reality TV uses editing to manufacture emotion and narrative. It demonstrates how the same footage can be cut to give very different impressions.

Tantacrul analyzes how stock music in reality TV uses blunt, repeated tropes to manipulate viewers, comparing it to nature documentaries. He ties it to ideas of reification and cultural homogenization.

A compilation of the hacking scenes from the 1995 film Hackers, featuring flashy visualizations of computer intrusion.

A one-minute clip from the 1995 film Hackers in which characters trade technobabble about RISC architecture changing everything.

A 2017 Apple TV commercial for the iPad Pro in which a kid asks "What's a computer?" while using the tablet. It pitches the all-screen iPad Pro as something that goes beyond what people think of as a computer.

A HOPE X talk giving an in-depth explanation of how elevators work, from their history in hacker culture to using their control systems to bypass building security. It covers features and abilities of elevators that most people never see.

Owen Maitzen's animated hour-long introduction to Hackenbush, a simple combinatorial game, and how its strategy leads to surreal numbers and the roots of the number system.

An overview of the PTVS 2.0 beta feature for debugging Python and C/C++ together in one session in Visual Studio.

Joe Grand recounts being hired to hack a Trezor One hardware wallet and recover $2 million of cryptocurrency. He describes three months of experimentation, voltage glitching, failures and high-stakes attempts with only one chance to get it right.

Technology Connections explains the early history of analog color television, from the 1954 start of modern color broadcasting, and how shadow masks work in CRTs. It is the first in a series on how analog color TV works.

Jeff Geerling looks at a Sharp NEC commercial display with a slot for a Raspberry Pi Compute Module. It is a large screen without built-in smart TV features or tracking.

WIRED's Andy Greenberg drives a Jeep on a highway while two hackers take control of it remotely over the internet. They manipulate the car and then cut the engine. The video accompanies the 2015 article on the Jeep Cherokee hack.

John Sotos, a physician and former Intel chief medical officer, argues at DEF CON 25 that genetic diseases are exploitable vulnerabilities in the genome. He warns that CRISPR and related tools will make malicious genome hacks and targeted bioweapons feasible.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science explains how electrophoretic e-paper displays work and how he modified the driver firmware and waveform lookup tables of a 4.2-inch panel to reach roughly 3Hz partial refresh. It covers the tweakable constants in the refresh process and touches on colored e-ink microcapsules.

A clip from the BBC series Britain from Above showing UK peak power demand. It shows a grid engineer preparing for the surge as millions put the kettle on when a popular show ends.

A 33c3 talk by marcan on reverse engineering the PS4 hardware to run Linux with 3D acceleration. It covers how the console differs from a PC and includes a story about tunneling PCIe over RS-232.

A 57-minute account of Clifford Stoll's tracking of a KGB-linked hacker through Lawrence Berkeley Lab computers in 1986, the story of The Cuckoo's Egg. It covers the FBI and Chaos Computer Club involvement.

Jonathan Schiefer interviews Larry Wall, creator of Perl, in a 33-minute conversation. Wall discusses his self-designed linguistics degree and how language and programming overlap.

The fail0verflow team (bushing, marcan, sven) present console hacking at 27C3, covering Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 exploits. They explain how the PS3 was cracked after Sony removed Other OS.

Jake Thackray performs the folk song Molly Metcalfe, which opens with an explanation of the traditional northern English sheep-counting system (yan, tan, tethera). It is a short, witty piece of British folk songwriting.

A DEF CON 23 talk by Marc Rogers and Kevin Mahaffey walking through the architecture of the Tesla Model S, what Tesla got right and wrong, and how the interconnected systems can be hacked. It also covers the data the car collects.

Samy Kamkar demonstrates OpenSesame, a device that opens many fixed-code garage doors in seconds by exploiting a newly found attack, built around a Mattel toy. The video explains the attack and which brands are affected.

C-SPAN footage of the L0pht hacker collective testifying before the US Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on May 19, 1998. The members discuss internet and computer security weaknesses. The uploader says the media remembered only the claim that they could take down the internet in 30 minutes.

A subtitled edit of the 1987 Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion, in which hijackers interrupted Chicago stations WGN and WTTW.

Theo de Raadt presents pledge, a new OpenBSD security mechanism that kills processes which exceed the system calls they declared they need. The talk was given late at night at Hackfest 2015.

Deviant Ollam's two-hour conference talk explains how elevators work, from the pit and buffers to the car top, controller logic and access-control features. It shows how this knowledge can be used for optimization and for bypassing building security.

Deviant Ollam and Howard Payne give an in-depth DEF CON 22 explanation of how elevators work, from the pit to the penthouse. It covers their control modes and how pen testers use elevators to bypass building security.

Matt Parker explains the history behind NTSC television running at 29.97 frames per second rather than 30, tracing it to the backward-compatible addition of color. He walks through the arithmetic behind the odd ratio.

A one-minute 2012 Microsoft television commercial for Internet Explorer 9, set to Alex Clare's 'Too Close'. It pitches a 'more beautiful web' with fast one-click access to favorite sites.

A very short clip from The Matrix Reloaded in which Trinity runs nmap and then uses an SSH exploit. The scene is notable for showing a real tool.

A very short demo of SmackBook, a hack that used the MacBook Pro's sudden motion sensor so that smacking the sides of the laptop switches desktop spaces.