Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tloewald | Hacker News Reader

I particularly hate unrealism which is hopelessly unnecessary, such as showing people using ridiculously bad faux search engines and email clients, or results displays that rub your face in the result: SUSPECT IDENTIFIED with one result on the screen, vs. a list of results the person has to interpret.

Gnome vs. KDE is probably the least technical thing they've gotten right in the show. There were a couple of minor howlers in the most recent episode, unfortunately (up until then, no significant lapses I've noticed -- staggering for a TV show).

View on HN

As the Gnome-KDE bit unfolded, my first reaction was, "Guffaw! What a silly detail! That's not proving any thing. And no one would expect to bond with a stranger over that."

But that is not a flaw or limitation in the writing -- it's helping to characterize Tyrell as a bit of douche. This goes beyond the typical 'ssh' or 'wget' screengrab (which only provides some mechanistic plausibility in achieving a plot-point.). The Gnome-KDE bit defines character. It's brilliant.

>or results displays that rub your face in the result: SUSPECT IDENTIFIED with one result on the screen, vs. a list of results the person has to interpret.

That's the entire point, though - telling the viewer who the villain is quickly (and, most importantly, cost effectively) to get to the part where the hero busts down their door. Designing the UIs realistically and eating up valuable screen time with analysts poring over the data would be a waste of money in most cases.

Also, realistic design increases the chances of someone actually suing for copyright infringement or something.

Realistic design doesn't cost more; using actual sites may get you fired, but altering them sufficiently is cheaper than building whole b.s. displays from scratch.

I think the "tell the viewer who the villain is quickly" is correct in terms of the director/writer's intention, but in fact the word is "badly".

Realistic web design means hiring someone who knows how to design websites, or redesign them, and budgeting that. It might also mean translating the results into whatever digital effects workflow they use, because I doubt there are any actual applications being run or sites being shown.

Also bear in mind the relationship between camera distance and screen resolution, and that the design requirements for UIs intended to be used by someone physically sitting inches away from the screen, and the composition of elements in a scene for television or film, which may place the viewer halfway across the room in terms of perceived distance, are necessarily different. Text that would be normal sized on the web might not even be legible when the viewer sees it, much less be capable of leading the viewer's attention.

FWIW I mostly agree with you, it's absurd for anyone who's technically competent, but still not as simple a matter as getting it realistic versus getting it wrong, rather of not boring the viewer with tedium and visual clutter.

Just to add to your comments: technically, shooting screens close enough for more realistic computer use was actually a problem ten years ago, but today any decent camera can do it.

IP ADDRESS FOUND : 593.102.340

It always bugged me. Does anyone know why realisators spend so much energy into making faux computer interfaces in almost every movie/show ?

The showrunners don't want to get in trouble when armies of fans type in stuff from screencaps. It's like how cars in movies have fake license plate numbers and telephone numbers all start with 555.

RFC 5737 reserves three different IPv4 ranges under the name TEST-NET precisely for these types of purposes (nominally documentation).

Note: Not all phone numbers that start with 555 are fake. In particular, 555-5555 is not reserved for fictional use:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number)

right -- the phone number 8675309 ("Jenny") is often a target because it was used in a song.

See, for example, http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/phreak/jenny07.txt

Using a real phone number, license plate number, IP address, or physical address in a show/movie/song has the potential to provoke throngs of fans into malicious, or merely inconsiderate, actions -- prank calls, ping bombs, or simply visiting and not cleaning up after yourself (which is what led to the Goonies house closing: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/g... )

Reply on news.ycombinator.com