One of Dog’s young engineers in Elon Musk explains how he won the Vesuvius challenge of $ 700,000

This week, Silicon Valley came to Washington, DC, in the form of new engineers who are supposed to run the government. A Bombeshil wireless report He said that Elon Musk quietly chose at least six engineers, the oldest of whom are 24 years old, to help him manage his government’s government.

The group of the group, as well as the lack of the experience of the six identified, from the Washington Foundation. “The American people will not defend an unructly secret group to operate through the executive authority,” the leader of the Senator minority Chuck Shomer He said on Tuesday.

But mostly, it produced six new secrets. Since all engineers are less than 25 years old, the effects of their digital feet are limited, and in a real path, most of them avoid any media. Musk said that naming these men is public It was a “crime”, ” You reach Doxxing. Therefore, I left the country to wonder who are these young people and what motivates them.

In late 2023, I spent an hour speaking to one of these newly crowned namarin: Luke Varitor, a 22 -year -old computer science at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, working to challenge Vesuvius. This is an effort led by the artificial intelligence investor Nat Friedman to use artificial intelligence to decode old coil. Farritor, a Thiel colleague, was like many young people in Peter Thiel-Verse: polite (referred to me as “ma’am”), subject to healing about ancient civilizations, and adhering to technology above all.

Our conversation was primarily about the Vesuvius challenge, so I did not ask, for example, what methods would use to dismantle the federal government if he was invited to do so in the future. But Farritor emphasized that the project showed him the force of coding – how technology enabled him to solve a problem that has been exposed to experts for decades. “Even if you are just a child from Nebraska, you can work hard and make an effect,” he said.

“We are here to help”

When Farritor joined Spacex in early 2023, as a trainee working on Pad Pad Starship, he was following his father’s footsteps. His father, Shin Farure, is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and the founder of virtual surgical robots. Farritor shared his father’s passion for technology, making long hours to help facilitate Starship. “I worked for the night and a river hard for the seven months.”.

One day, Friedman in Bodcast Duarkash Patel heard, describing the mystery of Vizovius manuscripts: The papyrus documents buried in 79 AD due to the eruption of Jabal Vizovius. The manuscripts seemed like charcoal blocks, but Friedman and a handful of professors believed that with 3D modeling and artificial intelligence technology, someone can read them. Hundreds of thousands of dollars offered to anyone who succeeded.

Farure had studied Latin and was fascinated by ancient civilizations. “I have always read the archaeologist, which is like, Wow, and now, I must actually participate in a project with Richard Yanko,” he remembers, referring to the classic researcher who was a judge of Vizov’s challenge.

After listening to the podcast, Farritor returned to his apartment in Texas and started work, and created programs that can discover patterns on the charred paper that would be linked to messages. He went further than performing his test manuscripts, buying a pink paper from Amazon and burning them in his father’s robot oven.

Friedman announced some of the beneficiaries of the cash prize on the live broadcast-just before the launch of the spacecraft, as the Farritor function was to check all the 60-year-old computers in controlling the mission. He said: “I have this very distinct memory, as I carry in my left hand this live broadcast from Nat.” “Then, with my right hand, I am going from computer to computer, and I run everything in control of the task.”

Farritor and his friends eventually received the $ 700,000 prize, which Farritor told me that he would use him to pay his parents ’mortgage,“ Buy the New iPhone ”, and it is possible that the rest will be placed in the“ start of a company ”.

His plans at the time were far from the current party, as WIRED reports that he had a government email and access to the financial office in the Public Services Department.

But his time in the Vesuvius challenge includes running with the university institution. Vesuvius Challenge head organizers headed their heads with university bureaucracy while trying to reach high -tech scanners. His point of view on the reason for the team’s arrival: they were trying to help.

He said about the university’s dealings in the project: “Yes, we are a group of Silicon Valley Tech, but we are here to help and a kind of building all this good will.” “It’s a very accurate balance, right? People are very complicated creatures.”