One of the young Doge engineers Elona Muska explains how he won the challenge Vesuvius worth $ 700,000

This week, the Silicon Valley appeared to Washington in the form of the fresh face of engineers, which allegedly lead the government. AND Wired bomb report He said that Elon Musk quietly selected not less than six engineers, the oldest of whom is supposedly 24 to assist him conduct the performance of the government department.

The secret of the group, in addition to the lack of experience of the identified six, drew anger from Washington’s establishment. “The American nation will not be in favor of an undeveloped secret group that will go crazy through the executive,” the leader of the minority of the senator Chuck Schumer He said on Tuesday.

But above all, six latest secrets were born. Because all engineers are supposedly under 25 years of age, their digital traces are limited, and in real musk fashion most avoid all media. Musk even said that naming these people in public He was a “crime” They doxxing. So the country was wondering who these young individuals are and what motivates them.

At the end of 2023, I spent an hour talking to 1 of those newly crowned Powerbroker: Luke Farritor, then-21-year-old “Run-the-Mill Computer Science” at the University of Nebraska-Llincoln working on Vesuvius. This is the effort that the AI ​​Nat Friedman investor to make use of artificial intelligence to decoding ancient turns. Farritor, Thiel, was like many young men in Peter Thien-Verse: kind (he called me “Ma’am”), at risk of tangently about past civilizations and, above all, got involved in technology.

Our conversation mainly concerned the challenge of Vesuvius, so I didn’t ask what methods he would use to dismantle the federal government if he were called to it in the future. But Farritor emphasized that the project showed him the power of coding – how the technology enabled him to unravel the problem that has surprised experts for many years. “Even if you are just a lean child from Nebrask, you can work hard and influence,” he said.

“We are here to help”

When Farritor joined SpaceX at the starting of 2023, as an intern working on Starship Launch Pad software, he followed his father’s footsteps. His dad, Shane Farritor, is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-founder of the virtual incision of the surgical company. Farritor shared his father’s passion to technology, working for hours to facilitate the start of the ship. “I just worked very hard for the whole seven months,” said Farritor about his internship, describing him as “a lot of fun.”

One day, Friedman heard on the road to work on Podcastie Dwarkesh Patel, describing the secret of Vesuvius turns: Papyrus documents buried in 79 by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The turns looked like charcoal blocks, but Friedman and a handful of professors believed that because of 3D modeling and AI technology, someone could read them. He proposed a whole lot of 1000’s of dollars to anyone who was successful.

Farritor studied Latin and was fascinated by ancient civilizations. “I always read about archeology growing up and this is, WOW, now I can be involved in a project with Richard Janko,” he remembered, referring to a scholar classics, who was the judge of Vesuvius’ challenge.

After hearing the podcast, Farritor returned home to his apartment in Texas and commenced working, creating software that would detect patterns on charred paper that correlate with letters. He went so far as creating his own test turns, buying papyrus from Amazon and burning him in the oven of the Robotics company of his father.

Friedman announced some winners of live money prizes before the premiere of a spacecraft, during which Farritor’s task was to ascertain all 60-year-old computers in mission control. “I have this very clear memory in which I keep this broadcast live with Nat talking in my left hand,” he said. “And then, with my right hand, I go from the computer to the computer, including every thing in the mission control.”

Farritor and his friends will ultimately take the most important prize of $ 700,000, which Farrogor told me that he would use his parents’ mortgage, “Buy a new iPhone”, and possibly introduced the rest in the “company start”.

His plans were then removed from his current concert, during which Wired reports that he had government E -Mail and access to the physical office in the administration of general services.

But his time at Vesuvius’ challenge included runs with university establishment. He described the organizers of Vesuvius Challenge, who support the heads of university bureaucracy after they tried to access some advanced technologies. His view on why the team should gain access they wanted: they tried to assist.

“Yes, we are a group BROS from the Silicon Valley, but we are here to help and build such a good will,” he said about the project’s university transactions. “It’s a very delicate balance, right? People are very complicated creatures. ”