UPDATE 12/21: Hotz didn't quite make it 12 weeks. He resigned today, saying he couldn't achieve any "real impact" at Twitter. Also, the food at Twitter HQ had gone downhill (yes, really).
Original Story:
Elon Musk has hired well-known security hacker and iPhone jailbreaker George Hotz to fix Twitter's broken search feature.
Hotz was thrust into the public eye aged 17 when he became the first person to remove the SIM lock on an iPhone. After that he reverse engineered the PS3, and founded AI startup comma.ai to work on vehicle automation technology based on machine learning algorithms. Fixing Twitter search may be the hardset problem he's faced yet, though.
Hotz confirmed he had started an internship at Twitter on Nov. 19 and now has 12 weeks to sort out the search functionality. He's going to "try my hardest," but also admits he'd be happy just to remove the login pop-up that appears if you scroll Twitter without being logged in.
As The Verge points out, Hotz secured his position at Twitter after expressing support for Musk's "extremely hardcore" request to employees. What followed was an offer from Hotz to work at Twitter for 12 weeks in return for "cost of living in SF." Clearly Musk liked his attitude and offer, and we should get to see how successful Hotz has been before the end of February next year.