First to hack into iPhone, tech prodigy who trolled Tesla joins Elon Musk on Twitter- Technology News, Firstpost
Mehul Reuben Das23 Nov 2022 16:42:20 IST
Looks like Elon Musk knows the game when he sees it. While Musk can come across as a rude troll at times, the Tesla and Twitter boss certainly respects technical skills and people who demonstrate their technical prowess and know what they’re doing.
George Hotz was one of the first to hack into an iPhone. He also turned down a job offer from Tesla before starting his own technology company that made autonomous driving systems for older cars. Image credit: AFP
Elon Musk has hired George Hotz, a famous engineer who made a name for himself as one of the very first people to hack into an iPhone. Hotz is a notable security hacker who previously turned down a job at Tesla working on its driver assistance technology.
One of the problems Musk had discovered with Twitter was how jarring the search options on the platform worked. This is a sentiment shared by many programmers, including Hotz. Hotz then suggested what he would do to fix this and solve the search problem that users face with Twitter.
Hotz even offered to join Twitter as an intern under Musk, which Musk accepted.
Sure, let’s talk.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 16 November 2022
The internship came about after Hotz expressed support for Musk’s “extremely hardcore” ultimatum to Twitter employees, which required them to work “long, high-intensity hours” or leave the company. Hotz said that “this is the attitude that builds incredible things” and that he would be willing to do an internship with the company. “Sure, let’s talk,” was Musk’s response.
Apart from hacking into an iPhone and the subsequent battles with Apple, Hotz became famous for founding Comma.ai, an advanced driver assistance company that creates autonomous driving solutions that can also be retrofitted into older cars. At the time, Tesla said of Hotz’s autonomous driving ideas that it was “extremely unlikely that a single person or even a small company lacking extensive engineering validation capability would be able to produce an autonomous driving system that could be deployed into production vehicles.”
Apparently, Tesla had previously offered to hire Hotz before he founded Comma.ai, to work on Tesla autonomous driving. However, he rejected the offer because, according to Hotz, Musk kept changing the deal. Hotz, in rejecting Tesla’s final offer, famously told Musk: “I appreciate the offer, but like I said, I’m not looking for a job. I’ll ping you when I crush Mobileye.” At the time, Mobileye was the company that supplied some of the technology Tesla used in its autopilot system.
How do you feel the quality of Twitter search is? What makes you use Twitter search instead of Google?
BTW, there’s some nice advanced search stuff here:
— George Hotz 🐀 (@realGeorgeHotz) 21 November 2022
In exchange for fixing Twitter’s search feature, Hotz is just asking for his living expenses in San Francisco to be covered. Hotz’s internship comes at a time when Musk is desperately looking for engineers who can write software or code.
Musk is also looking for engineers with expertise in other avenues as well as salespeople for the ad sales team.
