On the old original Star Trek series, they bought some futuristic salt and pepper shakers to use on an episode. The problem is they didn’t look like salt and pepper shakers, so they used normal ones instead and turned the strange-looking ones into Dr. McCoy’s medical instruments. This demonstrates the value of looking like what you claim to be. So sure, you are a super skillful hacker, but if you are sitting in front of a normal looking computer desktop, how can anyone tell? After all, in the movies, hackers use exotic flashy user interfaces, right? Now thanks to eDEX-UI, you can look like a movie hacker if you use Windows, Linux, or the Mac.
As you might expect, the program isn’t very efficient or practical, but it does actually do something. In addition to a load of system information about the CPU and network, there’s a shell, a file manager, and an onscreen keyboard, too. The app uses Electron and — on Linux — AppImage, but for a toy program like this, that may not be a problem.
The program is based on an older program called DEX. As you might expect there are a lot of customization options, including multiple themes that you can load from the interface itself.
To add extra complex goodness, we tried running byobu, to make it look that much more alien. However, that interfered with the file manager integrating with the shell — depending on how you set it up, you may or may not have that problem. The onscreen keyboard shows what you are typing, so you probably shouldn’t type passwords while using this program.
Practical? No. But it might be just the thing to park on an unused computer to impress the boss when she visits. If you want practical system information on a screen, you might try something like cockpit. If you want our picks for the best hacking scenes in movies, you have to go back a few years.
Show me a screen full of distractions and I’ll show you a skriptkiddie.
You rang?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss6nKn9Qgt0
it dont let me watch it
did you call me as well, I prefer scriptgrandfather though
All well and good for Hollywood. Or if you have a bunch of moron friends (why would you?) that you want to impress.
So they’ll stop teasing you about having no life. ;-)
What people think programming is vs. how it actually is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HluANRwPyNo
More practically, a Hollywood style interface can sometimes improve motivation.
whahhaaaaa…. how recognizable…
Though I have to admit that I’m not sure what image I want people to have of me when I say I’m a programmer.
The Hollywood style may look cool, but repels people because they are intimidated.
The real style doesn’t look cool at all, looks boring and doesn’t appear to be complicated at all.
So to be honest… it’s best not to tell people you are a programmer, so it doesn’t confuse them. So if someone should ask… I think i would say that I do import/export. Although Hollywood has created a wrong image about that too.
I guess that the real problem is that life is a little bit boring…
Just tell them you do data entry which is half-true.
I think it depends on how hollywood you want to be, i tend to use dark themes with high contrast colours as it is a bit easier on my eyes for long coding sessions. For most people now a days a simple linux desktop can look hackerish as UI developers over at microsoft, google and apple are making changes for the sake of keeping their jobs. If your desktop doesnt look like what people have been trained to use then it can intimidate and scare them, this is because most people dont have any understanding of how an operating system functions beyond the user interface and UI people are making that gap larger and larger by the day. Its a shame really because a little bit of general knowledge would go a long way to reducing the proliferation of viruses and scams.
This is a fake! I can tell by the screen color.
We all know Hackers haven’t progressed past green screens and command prompts!
I loaded it and it looks good.
How can I easily change the screen color – you know – without hacking
Type EXIT at the command prompt to close.
We’ll show you! “Alexa! Hack into the Federal Reserve of New York.”
Im giving evrything she’s got captain …….. Beam me up scotty
“After all, in the movies, hackers use exotic flashy user interfaces, right?”
Funny you say that. Playing EXAPUNKS and the interface is rather bland. Hacknet is about the same.
Or you can look like hacker in Mr. Robot, all you need is Kali image and USB memory stick.
And a Python REPL.
Been using fluxbox for years for this reason and others.
At least the file browser should be 3D, though.
Only if it’s a UNIX system and you know it.
LOL!
(my daughter has been binge watching the Jurassic Park/World movies lately!)
My brother’s wife’s husband’s sister was just talking about that scene the other day.
I see what you did there. Clever girl…
I was going to complain that the background needs to be a fake CRT looking grid to really match early 2000s movies… But nope, he’s got a theme engine and everything so you can do that! Well done!
I might actually use this. Not for real work because I prefer the GUI and I run too many electron apps using up my 8GB of ram as it is, but I’ve got some videos I’d like to make showing of some tools I’ve written, and this is not only cool but somewhat practical for demos because of the extra info.
If you just want to look “cool”:
https://geekprank.com/hacker/
That is cool!
I’m going prank someone at work with that!
That’s fine… but you need to set the background and text only a couple of RGB values apart so it’s hard to Van Eck phreak :-D
Download Rainmeter and you will find tons of skins to it + it’s very scriptable (I e.g. made script with vbs and Rainmeter skin to show me connected COM ports, so I don’t need to looks into hardware manager for the right COM port number every time) :P
But does it give you current rainfall amounts?
It can ;)
And Conky for linux.
stumpwm + htop + xeyes + emacs + gnuradiocompanion
Hmm… it looks nice but I don’t think I need it!