George Hotz.
Comma.ai
A self-driving car developer and hacker tweeted that he’s doing a 12 week internship at Twitter.
George Hotz said the “extremely hardcore” culture “is the attitude that builds incredible things.”
Hotz was behind creating iOS jailbreaks and was sued by Sony for hacking the Playstation 3.
A self-driving car developer and hacker who said he wants to improve search quality on Twitter is getting 12 weeks to give it a try with an internship at the company.
George Hotz tweeted that he wants to put his “money where my mouth is,” and that he’s “down for a 12 week internship at Twitter for cost of living in SF.”
Twitter owner Elon Musk replied with, “Sure, let’s talk.”
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2022
Hotz replied with, “Cool, my phone number hasn’t changed,” and added that he’s “not the guy” if Musk wants “long term stability.”
“I really enjoy diving in to complex codebases and think I could help document and clean up some of those 1000 microservices in 12 weeks,” Hotz tweeted at Musk. “Reverse engineering!”
Before offering to do the internship, Hotz asked how people on Twitter feel about “the quality of Twitter search,” and what it would take for people to ditch Google for searching on Twitter.
Austen Allred, co-founder and CEO of BloomTech, replied to Hotz saying Twitter’s search “really sucks,” and is “basically exact match.”
Hotz replied that it was “true” and that he “Will look into if there’s some easy way to improve this.”
Hotz seemingly confirmed his internship at Twitter by replying, “that’s what Elon told me my job was, and I will try my hardest to do it. I have 12 weeks.”
—George Hotz 🐀 (@realGeorgeHotz) November 22, 2022
He added that he will work on “trying to get rid of that nondismissable” pop up that prompts people to log in when scrolling on Twitter without being logged in, adding that “these things ruin the Internet.”
Hotz said he will “consider my internship a win” even if he only gets rid of the login pop up, adding that he has a Google Chrome extension on his laptop that blocks the login pop up.
After Musk’s late-night email to the Twitter staff who survived mass layoffs asking them to commit to being “extremely hardcore,” Hotz tweeted that it “is the attitude that builds incredible things. Let all the people who don’t desire greatness leave.”
—George Hotz 🐀 (@realGeorgeHotz) November 16, 2022
In a Twitter reply, Hotz proved he could probably survive at Twitter, saying he doesn’t like working remotely, and that he “would go into the office every day.”
Hotz gained recognition in 2017 when he became the first person to unlock the iPhone, letting people use their iPhone on networks other than AT&T’s. Years later when he was 20, Hotz was sued by Sony for hacking the PlayStation 3. It was settled out of court.
Musk and Hotz also have a history, as outlined in a 2015 Bloomberg feature about Hotz developing self-driving car technology.
In 2015, Musk allegedly tried to hire Hotz, telling Hotz he would give him a lucrative contract if Hotz’s technology could compete with Tesla’s former supplier MobilEye’s driver-assist technology.
Hotz backed out of the deal because he felt Musk kept changing the deal’s terms. Musk wrote to Hotz saying he “should just work at Tesla,” and offered a “multimillion-dollar bonus,” but Hotz turned the offer down.