Remember PS3 hacker Geohot? Elon Musk just hired him to help fix Twitter
"I have 12 weeks."
Notorious hacker George "Geohot" Hotz has been hired by Elon Musk to work on Twitter - primarily, to fix the flailing social network's search functionality.
Hotz shot to internet fame in 2008 for being the first to jailbreak the iPhone. Around a year later, he followed that feat by hacking the PlayStation 3 - and memorably rapped about Sony's subsequent attempts to sue him. The two sides ultimately settled matters outside of court.
Now, Hotz has agreed to join Musk at Twitter on a temporary work contract (something which seems wise).
If you're wondering what Hotz has been up to over the past decade, the hacker-turned-CEO has been busy.
Most recently, Hotz served as the boss of Comma AI, a driver-assist technology company that acted as a rival to Musk's own Tesla Autopilot. Hotza quit the company last month, saying it had changed and that he was better suited to being a "cheerleader and court jester".
That role put Hotz on Musk's radar - indeed, Musk is reported to have previously offered Hotz a multimillion-dollar contract to work for Tesla - something Hotz declined, with the two men ending up squabbling.
A series of tweets over the past month show the pair have seemingly made up (thanks, iClarified), with Hotz offering his services as an intern at Twitter for 12 weeks.
Thousands of employees have been made redundant by Twitter over the past month, with many more quitting after Musk told staff they would need to work longer hours and be more "hardcore".
Hotz officially joined Twitter at the weekend, and has since detailed what he is working on.
Responding to a user who said 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. also trying to get rid of that nondismissable login pop up after you scroll a little bit ugh these things ruin the Internet."
