Mr. Robot Episode 3 Review

Mr. Robot Episode 3 Review



[ NOTE: There are spoilers below, not just for this episode but for the show in general. ]

Enough people have asked me to start doing reviews of Mr. Robot episodes that I’m going to have a go at it. The deciding factor was the fact that I had such a strong desire to write during the third episode.

I’m going to start here with thoughts on the show in general, not just on episode 3.

Mr. Robot in general

The character

The main protagonist is an interesting character. He is what the writer evidently wants to capture, or actually believes to be, the template for a true hacker, which is highly damaged.

I am quite struck with the focus that is placed on how truly messed up he is. He has major drama with the way his father was killed. He largely hates society. He has deep personal depression. And he’s a user of narcotics.

I’m left thinking along the lines of a Hemingway type of artist, where the best creativity (in this case hacking) comes from those wo are the most tortured internally. Painters, musicians, etc. We’re familiar with the template.

This redeeming qualities, which the writers take equal efforts to highlight, are the desire to protect people, his love for the blonde girl, and a general but understated willingness to fight back against the soul-crushing force of our modern, consumerist society.

I really enjoy how he is only actually going to see his psychiatrist because he’s trying to help her, and if she’s actually going to help him it’ll kind of be on accident.

He deeply analyzes people and sees if they’re good, or weak, or in need of help, and then if they are he kind of hates them less because of this. And he is willing to use his superpowers to help them as a result, like when he pushed that guy out of his psychiatrist’s life.

The tech

Before going into the various problems, it must be said that the information security writing has been exemplary. I’d say definitely the best we’ve seen in either movies or “television” (whatever that is).

That said, there are a number of missing links in the armor.

On one of the first episodes, possibly the first, I noticed an IP address with a final octet in the 300’s. That’s just an editing miss, but it did take me out of the fantasy.

In Episode 2, which I generally didn’t like, I was quite bothered by the destruction scene. Here’s what I think happened there. They wanted to do a destruction scene, they had it all rigged up, and they wrote the story so that he’d do a quick hack and then get spooked enough to do it.

Then they show the infosec writer(s) the story component and they’re like,


Um, no. There’s no way anyone of this skill level would be hacking from his actual IP address.


And they’re like,


Well, we need to do this scene. Most people will miss that, and the scene will be cool enough to make up for it.


So the writer stomps out of the room mumbling about how they shouldn’t have hired him for authenticity if they were going to make such obvious mistakes, and they go with it.

Who knows if that really happened, but that’s how I imagine it.

Comments on modern society

I also find the comments on modern society to be quite interesting. I think it’s a big part of the whole hacker feel.

Hackers have always had this component to their mystique. Being counter-culture. Being underground. Fighting against the man. So the idea that everything is a conspiracy with the rich exploiting the poor, the strong exploiting the weak, and everything being about selling advertising and the dominance o...

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Episoder(531)

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 41

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 41

[ Subscribe to the Podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS ] InfoSec news and articles NSA hacking tools supposedly leaked back in 2013 Could have just been a jump box, which rival groups commonly attack from each other Snowden thinks Russia hacked the NSA and is announcing this as part of the DNC debate Flip […] -- :: Unsupervised Learning: Episode 41 appeared originally on danielmiessler.com. :: Subscribe to Unsupervised Learning---my weekly show where I handpick the best stories from infosec and technology, and talk about why they matter.Become a Member: https://danielmiessler.com/upgradeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

18 Aug 201634min

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 40

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 40

- LinkedIn breach from 2013 | 65.5 million emails and salted and hashed passwords - XSS in Wordpress plugin (JetPack) - DerbyCon is going to stream live this year | you can’t stream the networking, so it probably won’t hurt next year’s sales too much - Websites using audio fingerprinting to track web usersBecome a Member: https://danielmiessler.com/upgradeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

31 Mai 201654min

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 39

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 39

[ Subscribe to the Podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS ] InfoSec news and articles BAE systems saying that SWIFT hack is linked to the Sony breach [ Link ] Kaspersky is saying ransomware is the #1 threat now [ Link ] Identity thieves grab W-2 data from Equinox [ Link ] Germany claims it was […] -- :: Unsupervised Learning: Episode 39 appeared originally on danielmiessler.com. :: Subscribe to Unsupervised Learning---my weekly show where I handpick the best stories from infosec and technology, and talk about why they matter.Become a Member: https://danielmiessler.com/upgradeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

14 Mai 201623min

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 38

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 38

[ Subscribe to the Podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS ] InfoSec news and articles Michigan lawmakers want life sentence for hacking cars | will that apply to changing the speed of your turn signal? SWIFT to get update after Bangladesh hack NSA is so overwhelmed with data that it’s no longer effective FBI now […] -- :: Unsupervised Learning: Episode 38 appeared originally on danielmiessler.com. :: Subscribe to Unsupervised Learning---my weekly show where I handpick the best stories from infosec and technology, and talk about why they matter.Become a Member: https://danielmiessler.com/upgradeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2 Mai 201645min

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 37

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 37

[ Subscribe to the Podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS ] InfoSec news Feds paid over 1M to get into San Bernardino iPhone Continued fallout from Panama papers 3.2 million servers vulnerable to JBoss attack which is being used in SamSam ransomware attacks MIT launches internal bug bounty platform | https://threatpost.com/mit-launches-experimental-bug-bounty-program/117618/ NSA recommends out-of-band taps […] -- :: Unsupervised Learning: Episode 37 appeared originally on danielmiessler.com. :: Subscribe to Unsupervised Learning---my weekly show where I handpick the best stories from infosec and technology, and talk about why they matter.Become a Member: https://danielmiessler.com/upgradeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

25 Apr 201635min

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 36

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 36

[ Subscribe to the Podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS ] News [ ] Nothing useful found on Farook’s phone | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/14/nothing_useful_on_farook_iphone/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook | I think they knew this and used it as a lever for something they’ve wanted for a long time [ ] Apple engineers say security threat is hackers, not government | http://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/15/apple-engineers-hackers-security-threat/ […] -- :: Unsupervised Learning: Episode 36 appeared originally on danielmiessler.com. :: Subscribe to Unsupervised Learning---my weekly show where I handpick the best stories from infosec and technology, and talk about why they matter.Become a Member: https://danielmiessler.com/upgradeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

18 Apr 201620min

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 35

Unsupervised Learning: Episode 35

[ Subscribe to the Podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS ] News [ ] The hack of Mossak Fonseca has been tied to a breach of their wordpress install through a plugin called Revolution Slider, leading to the Panama Papers breach. So just to be clear, we might have just seen the biggest data leak […] -- :: Unsupervised Learning: Episode 35 appeared originally on danielmiessler.com. :: Subscribe to Unsupervised Learning---my weekly show where I handpick the best stories from infosec and technology, and talk about why they matter.Become a Member: https://danielmiessler.com/upgradeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

11 Apr 201627min

5 Increasingly Effective Ways to Achieve Immortality

5 Increasingly Effective Ways to Achieve Immortality

[ Subscribe to the Podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS ] — I think a lot about how to become immortal. More than I should, probably. Many think it’s a waste of time. Everyone dies, and it’s foolish to think we can avoid it. This piece takes a different view, and describes a number of ways, with varying levels of requirement and effectiveness, one can either avoid dying or live on after death. They’ll go from most practical to most effective. 1. Live On Through Your Children This one is cheating a bit, mostly because you’re not actually becoming immortal. But the fact remains that this does give many people (probably billions) a genuine feeling of lastingness, and that’s significant. Again, I don’t really count it because it’s an extremely tenuous way of living on, but it deserves mention. 2. Live On Through Your Works This one is kind of like the first, in that you’re not actually getting to continue living. So it’s a bit of a misnomer too. What it deals with, however, can also provide a significant sense of contentment at the end of one’s life. Basically, if you leave behind works and ideas that will be used by significant numbers of people, for a significant period of time, you can think of this as living on. It’ll take some sting off of dying, perhaps. But not much. You’re still dead. 3. Reconstruction Through Reproduction of Variables Ok, now we’re getting into actual survivability. This one works like this: either before you die, or after you are dead, an organization collects a series of inputs about you and uses them to create a working model of you. Here are some of the input types: * Your DNA (this is really important) * Everything there is to know about where you grew up (what was happening in the world then, where you went to high school, what the major news events were, the major themes in culture and art, etc.) * Everything there is to know about the people you grew up with * All your personal, transformational experiences. This can be gathered from a myriad of sources, but your own description of the incidents will be key. It’ll also come from interviews with people who know those experiences and how they affected you * Every piece of output you left behind, e.g. blog posts, Facebook posts, books, essays, schoolwork, letters, videos, whatever. They’re all harvested for evidence of who you are Then, the system takes the environment data and models it against your DNA, which it got from a piece of hair or something. It runs your entire genome and determines how you would respond mentally to these various stimuli. The output is a digital life form that is, as much as it can be, you. You now live in cyberspace somewhere, and you’re introduced to the fact that you were reconstructed using this method, and that you have this rich history, etc. You are you. 4. Preserving Your Brain to Be Put in Another Body in the Future Another method for achieving comfort that you’ll continue to live after death is to have a reliable way to preserve your brain once you pass, with the belief that it’ll be either 1) put into another body later (not my favorite idea), or 2) it’ll be downloaded into a digital form to live permanently in cyberspace. Become a Member: https://danielmiessler.com/upgradeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

7 Apr 201613min

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