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iPhone and PS3 hacker George "geohot" Hotz plans to fix Twitter's long-broken searching functionality in 12 weeks.
Elon Musk has hired renowned iPhone hacker George "geohot" Hotz to work on Twitter – primarily to fix its search issues.
George Hotz is known as the first person who successfully removed the SIM lock on an iPhone in 2007, at the time he was only 17 years old. He's also noted for jailbreaking both iOS and the PlayStation 3 – the latter one sparked Sony to sue him.
In 2015, Hotz founded Comma.ai, the AI startup which acted as a rival to Musk's own Tesla Autopilot. Musk even offered him a job at Tesla in 2015 which Hotz turned down.
On November 16, Hotz commented on a leaked email from Musk, which followed massive layoffs, where the new Twitter owner asked the remaining staff to commit to being part of a new Twitter with "hardcore" hours for no extra pay or leave. Geohot tweeted that "this is the attitude that builds incredible things" suggesting that "all the people who don’t desire greatness" should leave the company.
He followed this statement by offering to work for three months at Twitter for the cost of living in San Francisco. "I’m down for a 12 week internship at Twitter for cost of living in SF, " Hotz tweeted. "It’s not about accumulating capital in a dead world, it’s about making the world alive." Musk saw the tweet and simply replied, "Sure, let’s talk."
On November 19, the notorious hacker confirmed he was working at Twitter where he was tasked with fixing Twitter's long-broken searching functionality.
Responding to a Twitter user who claimed there was "no way [Hotz] comes in and fixes Twitter's unusable broken search in a month while the thousands of people couldn't in years", Hotz wrote: "That's what Elon told me my job was, and I will try my hardest to do it. I have 12 weeks." He noted that he also plans to remove the login pop-up after scrolling as "these things ruin the Internet."
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