George Hotz Biography

George Francis Hotz Jr., better known as George Hotz, was born on October 2, 1989, in Glen Rock, New Jersey, US, to George Hotz Sr. and Marie Minichiello, a social worker. He is also known by the pseudonyms Geohot and tomcr00se.

He was 5 when he wrote his first computer program, sitting on his father’s lap. Growing up, he developed an interest in technology.

He initially attended the Academy for Engineering and Design Technology of the Bergen County Academies, a Hackensack, New Jersey-based magnet public high school. He was also part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Program.

He was in fifth grade when he built his own video game console with an electronic project kit. He also often liked to explore household objects such as remote controls and telephones to learn more about their technical aspects. He once hacked quite a few school computers while playing Beethoven’s ninth symphony at the same time.

While in high school, Hotz built a 3-D display named I Want a Holodeck, which was inspired by Star Trek and won him a spot as a finalist at the 2007 International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). Hotz won 15,000 dollars in the contest, topping the electrical and mechanical engineering category. He then went to Sweden to speak about his project at a seminar.

Following high school, he joined the Rochester Institute of Technology. He also joined Carnegie Mellon University for a short while.

On August 21, 2007, at 17, he released a YouTube video introducing himself as Geohot and presented what he called “the world’s first unlocked iPhone.” The video instantly garnered almost 2 million views on YouTube. While iPhone had an exclusive partnership with AT&T, George Hotz, a T-Mobile subscriber, had hacked the phone.

After the release of the video, Hotz became the world’s most famous hacker and got a lot of media coverage. On the other side, Apple and AT&T did not respond.

When he hacked iPhone, the company co-founder Steve Wozniak wrote him an email, stating he thought he was creative and not a criminal. Following Wozniak’s email, he continued to jailbreak and unlock new versions of the iPhone for the next couple of years.

Soon, he received a mail challenging him to hack the PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game system. After failing a number of times, he hacked the system.

In response to this, Sony released a software update, that disabled other operating systems. However, Hotz was able to hack PS3 again.

Following this, Sony filed a case against him at the US District Court of North California, on January 11, 2011, However, in April 2011, Sony was granted permission to access Hotz’s PayPal account and thus settled the case outside the court. Hotz was made to assure he would not hack into Sony’s systems again.

After a month, he moved back to California and took up a full-time job at Facebook. He worked for them from May 2011 to January 2012.

In June 2014, Hotz published a software hack for Samsung Galaxy S5 devices in the US. In July 2014, Hotz joined Google to work on Project Zero. From January to July 2015, he worked for a startup named Vicarious.

In September 2015, Hotz launched his own AI company, Comma.ai. The company creates machine learning algorithm-based vehicular automation technology. It was initially geared toward creating a driver assistance system to bring autopilot-like functionality to cars other than Tesla. In 2016, he built a self-driving technology named Acura ILX.

George Hotz considered selling his technology to Tesla and even arranged a meeting with Elon Musk, its CEO. It is believed, he was offered $12 million by Musk to replace Tesla’s MobilEye by building another driving system.

However, Hotz soon broke off the deal, as Musk continued to change the terms. They parted ways when Musk tried hiring him and he said he did not need a job.

Soon, Comma.ai grew and developed products such as a $1,999 driver assistance developer kit which it claims is compatible with more than 200 cars. In November 2022, he launched tiny corp.

On November 16, 2022, Musk, who had recently acquired Twitter, sent an ultimatum to its staff to fill out an online form or quit with 3 months of severance pay. He also stated that Twitter employees would now be expected to devote more hours to work and increase their productivity.

While he set the deadline for employees to revert on November 17, Musk witnessed a mass exodus of employees on Twitter immediately. While Musk’s leaked email became viral on the Internet, Hotz stated on Twitter how he thought Musk’s move was to be appreciated.Soon, he was hired by Musk for a 12-week internship to fix Twitter’s broken search engine feature and to remove the prompt that stopped people from browsing the service on the internet without logging in.

Soon, he was hired by Musk for a 12-week internship to fix Twitter’s broken search engine feature and to remove the prompt that stopped people from browsing the service on the internet without logging in.

In 2004, George Hotz was a finalist at the ISEF competition in Portland, Oregon, with The Mapping Robot. He was subsequently interviewed by the Today Show and Larry King.

He was a finalist at the 2005 ISEF competition, too, with The Googler. In March 2008, he was named to the Top 10 Overachievers under 21 list of PC World.

In August 2013, he was part of the DEF CON with Carnegie Mellon's Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP). PPP got the first prize in the DEF CON Capture the Flag tournament.

Later that year, Hotz participated in CSAW 2013 and took the first place working under the pseudonym tomcr00se. In August 2014, he won the DEF CON CTF tournament again.

In 2013, Hotz started his music career, making hip hop music and uploading it on his SoundCloud account as tomcr00se. Since then, he has made countless originals and covers.

He also maintains a Twitch channel and livestreams often. In February 2020, he launched the cheapETH crypto currency.