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Who is George Hotz, the hacker hired by Elon Musk for Twitter

1 year ago babelfish

Who is George Hotz, the hacker hired by Elon Musk for Twitter

At 17 he cheated Steve Jobs, at 20 Sony and at less than 21 he was already a billionaire. Today George Hotz is 33 years old, a past as a hacker, experiences in Google and Facebook, and was recently called by Musk for an internship at Twitter, but the two have not always been rosy…

Between mass layoffs and rapid resignations , a contract – obviously for a fixed term – the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, did. The lucky one, or even not, depending on your point of view, is George Hotz, an enfant prodige among hackers.

WHO IS GEORGE HOTZ

Hotz, thirty-three years old, professional hacker. The boy is known for having developed the first jailbreak (a violation of the operating system that allows you to enter options not provided by the parent company) on an iPhone in 2007, when Steve Jobs had just presented his first smartphone. Hotz was 17 years old.

Three years later he attracted attention again by carrying out the reverse engineering (process that allows manufacturers to analyze in detail the design of a part of the product, so as to replicate it or modify it to improve some functional aspects) of the PlayStation 3, which cost a lawsuit with Sony that ended in an out-of-court settlement.

Before he turned 21, he writes on his LinkedIn profile , he was already a self-made billionaire.

WORK EXPERIENCE

But Hotz, whose hacker name is Gehot, also boasts 'more orthodox' experiences. He spent just over a year at Google first as an IT contractor then as a software engineer, eight months at Facebook covering the same role and four months at SpaceX before returning to study at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

In 2015, he worked for seven months at California-based Vicarious where, again according to his LinkedIn description, he took part in “building the next generation of artificial intelligence algorithms”.

After this experience, he founded Comma.ai, a company that works in the autonomous driving sector, of which he was CEO and president. Among the activities carried out: “ghostriding for the masses” and “teaching driving to cars”.

THE FIRST ENCOUNTER-CLASH WITH MUSK

But Hotz and Musk's paths had already crossed before today. As The Verge recalls, in 2015, Hotz argued with Musk after the latter offered him a job at Tesla. Hotz, for his part, had claimed he could make a better version of Tesla's Autopilot semi-autonomous driving software. Musk, however, in one of his usual delusions of omnipotence and boundless ego, had replied that it was "extremely unlikely".

THE PARABLE OF HOTZ

The following year, Gehot, with his Comma.ai, built a self-driving vehicle, whose test drive on I-280, a highway in the San Francisco Bay Area, cost him a warning letter from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which led him to focus on driver assistance technology.

“Since then, – writes The Verge – he has become a bit of an apostate from autonomous vehicles, declaring that robotaxi startups like Waymo and Cruise are a 'scam'”. However, as of today, Comma.ai is selling a $1,999 kit , compatible with more than 200 vehicles, that promises to turn an ordinary car into an autonomous car.

In late October , Hotz announced he was stepping down from Comma.ai as he admitted he "didn't feel capable" of continuing to lead the company he founded.

THOSE WHO DO NOT DIE SEE IT AGAIN

Now, seven years after his confrontation with Musk, Hotz has stepped forward after showing solidarity with the Tesla owner on his vision for the job.

Musk, in fact, had asked employees to work much harder or sit outside. Hotz tweeted that “this is the attitude that builds amazing things” and that he would be willing to 'intern' at the company.

Musk's response was: "Sure, let's talk about it."

Hotz then accepted the offer. You will have 12 weeks to improve the search tool and remove the request that prevents you from browsing the service on the web without logging in.

According to what Hotz said in a tweet, he will earn $2,000 a week:

And there are already those who are betting that the new hire will be the next to migrate – voluntarily or not – from social media. In fact, one user states that “there is no way this guy can come and fix Twitter's unusable search in a month, when thousands of people haven't done it for years. I'd be shocked."

But Hotz promises to do his best.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/chi-e-george-hotz-hacker-che-vorrebbe-far-spiccare-di-nuovo-il-volo-a-twitter/ on Sun, 27 Nov 2022 06:39:12 +0000.