
The Matrix Code Came from Sushi Recipes - tosh
https://www.wired.com/story/the-matrix-code-sushi-recipe/
======
bacon_waffle
Incidentally, we watched The Matrix last night, for the first time in at least
a decade, and were impressed by how well it has held up. I was expecting the
technology references and special effects to make it feel old, but it really
didn't. The way the plot requires a (special?) land line to escape the matrix
felt oddly relevant in the context of today's addictive social media tech...

Tempted to buy a Nokia 8110 4G now, I wonder how hard it would be to port
Signal to it?

~~~
mirimir
I do love it, don't get me wrong. But I wish that they'd explained how humans
were basically used in computing clusters. For running the Matrix. Not as
"batteries", for producing power.

Because, after all, they'd need to be "fed", and wouldn't produce any net
energy. That was in the original screenplay. But they decided that most people
just wouldn't get it. So we got what we got.

Stuff like that ruins (for me) most films that ~rely on ~hard science.
Explosions, for example. They are typically far too slow, with far too much
dancing flame. In reality, they're virtually instantaneous at scales much less
than kilometers. _Saving Private Ryan_ is a notable exception.

~~~
devoply
Zion and Neo are control mechanisms in the Matrix, they are used to control
the one called Smith. They are in the Matrix when they think they have left.
The human batteries story is just a b/s narrative. The best proof of this is
Neo's ability to control the machines outside of the Matrix in the supposed
real world.

~~~
kuroguro
Either that or Neo is not human but a machine with admin rights - no inception
required :)

------
phyalow
_“A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the
speed he took, all the turns he’d taken and the corners he’d cut in Night
City, and still he’d see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic
unfolding across that colorless void. . . . The Sprawl was a long strange way
home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy.
Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the
Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he’d cry for it, cry in his sleep,
and wake alone in the dark... "_

Neuromancer. William Gibson 1984

~~~
bitwize
I think of this bit every time I dream of Rez, which happens a few times a
year.

------
renholder
Anyone else remember back in two-thousand and something or other (back when
CRTs were still supreme), that it was all the rage to have a Matrix-style
code-rain[0] screen-saver or is that just a "me" thing?

[0] - [https://youtu.be/rpWrtXyEAN0](https://youtu.be/rpWrtXyEAN0)

~~~
mysterydip
I definitely remember that on more than a few screens in the college dorms
around that time. Screensavers were a great little bit of self expression
that's no longer in use.

~~~
livueta
I'm still an XScreenSaver fan, mostly because I like having something visually
interesting on my monitors when I lock my workstation to go afk at work. Many
of the engineers I work with do the same. Makes me glad they're not dead
everywhere yet.

Particularly attached to the analog TV one:
[https://youtu.be/VmM1KkFsry0?list=PLbe67PprBSpqM_-
HU49fmIS8n...](https://youtu.be/VmM1KkFsry0?list=PLbe67PprBSpqM_-
HU49fmIS8ncApw4i08)

------
wrs
That hero picture at the top isn’t the Matrix code...it isn’t even kanji...in
fact it’s full of “missing character” boxes. Not impressed, Wired. :)

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Yeah, that's from the Windows ripoff screensaver version. They could have at
least used a screenshot from the real XScreenSaver version, or, duh, a still
from the movie.

------
bitwize
It's still a rip of the _Ghost in the Shell_ opening credits, but an
interesting one and iconic in its own way.

------
thomasjudge
Matrix release date: March 31, 1999. 20 years ago today

~~~
mistersquid
I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere except here. I wonder if the silent
passing the film's 20th anniversary is due to the soon-to-come 20th
anniversary of the Columbine massacre.

------
kumarvvr
It was a great effect at the time, and holds up well now too. Not that it was
technically sophisticated, but it added quite a bit of mysticism to an already
mystery filled movie.

The moment I saw it, I knew it was Korean / Japanese / Chinese, while some
characters looked overlapped.

Was obsessed with the graphic for quite a while. Screensavers, Wallpapers,
etc.

------
abbot2
Wired web site displays annoying "pay us now" banner over half of the page on
a phone browser, which cannot be removed, probably due to JavaScript bug.
Can't help, but flag this.

~~~
paulcole
Weird that a paying subscriber would see that banner. You are a paying
subscriber, right?

~~~
abbot2
I'm fine with paywalled content overall. I'm not fine with paywalled content
on the front page of hn, because it reduces hn utility: I can't see the
content.

------
tinus_hn
Kind of similar to what SuperDry is doing with clothes, stylyzed Japanese
characters that don’t really mean anything. They choose the words to be
nonsensical but inoffensive phrases.

~~~
YUMad
Not really nonsensical, just badly translated.

------
mistersquid
You get used to it. I don’t even see the code. All I see is hamachi, unagi,
toro…

