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US Teen Trades Hacked iPhone for Nissan 350Z
PieGuy107 writes to mention that seventeen-year-old George Hotz of Glen Rock, NJ has made the trade of the summer. Hotz traded his hacked iPhone for a new set of wheels (Nissan 350Z to be exact) and 3 more 8GB iPhones. "[Terry] Daidone, who's the co-founder of Louisville, Kentucky-based CertiCell, has apparently also offered the young man a paid consulting job, but stresses the company doesn't have 'any plans on the table right now to commercialize Mr. Hotz' discovery'."
they want their story back.
Boy's now got a set of wheels and more iPhones to experiment on. You'd think it'd just be cheaper to pay the him to unlock your phone for you.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Why does Slashdot taste like day old bread bought from the register.co.uk so often?
I like many Apple products, but I can't afford an iPhone (I don't YET consider it a value when it doesn't offer 3G support, etc, and I can't afford to pay just for the style factor). Despite its shortcomings, however, I have been fairly impressed with its hackability (and the efforts those who've modified it for interesting new uses, including unlocking it). I haven't heard any peep out of Apple about discouraging this sort of thing (short of the obvious warnings warranties being voided). I think this approach with the iPhone, and also the highly hacked AppleTV, is enhancing the value of these products, which out of the box, aren't necessarily top of the line in many categories.
_NO_ taste. And that's twice in how many weeks ?
Tss tss tss.
Kids...
if the 350Z had a salvage title on it...
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
The poor kid is absolutely boned come tax time.
you don't even have to read TFA, TFS has it all
Yuppie kid just barely in college who was groomed into the industry follows a paint-by-numbers and unlocks the iPhone, receives a new car for it, receives eight more iPhones, and is offered a paid consulting job.
Not that I'm specifically downplaying the accomplishment of being the first to open an iPhone but doesn't anyone else feel that it's rather likely that he had some inside information, or maybe insider access to some specs, or access to a rather priveleged social group or knowledgebase which gave him a serious silver spoon in this whole event?
Even if not--is a single hardware hack good defining criteria for a paid consulting job? Does one hardware hack give him qualifications that graduating CS majors don't have? My guess is there's more affiliation between Hotz and Daidone behind the scenes than the story talks about. Maybe they met several years ago in a NAMBLA chatroom or something.
b) If that's the dorkiest guy you've ever seen? Man, you haven't met many real dorks, have you?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
first, as another poster says.. why not pay the kid to unlock it.. unless you don't want the car..
second, why didn't the kid hold out for more?
third, I can have some hacked phones if these guys wanna get rid of any maxed-out alienware laptops???
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Til he gets the 1099-MISC showing $30000 in "Misc Compensation" and the feds want him to pay 10 Gs in taxes..
Cool! Amazing Toys.
I wonder if that 350Z has an iPod connection?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but without reading a single article, I feel fairly confident concluding that the kid may be smart for his age but that he didn't do this.
Like that DVD Jon guy, other people did the work, but they are adults, adults with jobs, and they don't want to get sued to death, so they let an underage person take the credit and press. Who would dare sue a kid, because the press luv the fantasy story of some hacker kid sticking it to the man, and companies don't want the bad press of sueing a kid.
Different hack. This one is to make it take any SIM card and work on any network. Plenty of people would love to get an iPhone and use it on their current plan, plenty more would love to use it internationally without AT&T's crazy prices.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
An Australian group claimed to have gotten the iPhone working with a hacked Telstra sim on July 30th. That news never made it very far, either refuting or confirming. He claims he did it by using a programmable simm, on which he cloned part of the AT&T sim and part of the Telstra sim.
He was given the car by a guy who owns a mid-sized cell phone repair shop in the midwest. This guy (Certicell)'s getting massive publicity out of the hoopla surrounding the unlock. The unlocked iPhone isn't worth a 350Z. Getting mentioned on every news-outlet and riding the coattails of Hotz's fifteen minutes of fame is worth a 350z.
Interesting. He's a waste of skin because he does things for reasons other than pure monetary profit? Or is he a waste of skin because he can give away $30k worth of car at will while you can't?
It wants its pop culture reference back.
A) The hack in question isn't about running unauthorized programs, but about allowing the iPhone to work on any GSM network.
B) "Normal" iPhone users might not be willing to go through the trouble of hacking the iPhone to run additional problems, but thankfully there are some clever iPhone users who have made it easy for the rest of us. Run a simple GUI program, wait a couple minutes, and you have a nice little package manager built right into your iPhone. It gives you a list of installable applications, and with a couple taps of your finger, it will download apps from the internet and install them.
someone who proves they can do something is much more valuable than someone who has a degree. Obviously you look at the candidates that have both, when those candidates are available, but we have found no specific correlation to those with Bachelors or even Masters degrees and those who can actually do the job.
Of course I am not handing out $25,000 cars or defending people who do.
Everyone in the US over age 0 has to pay taxes, if their income warrants.
The gift tax rules don't apply - he's clearly being compensated for his skills. Strictly speaking, he increased the phone's value himself and then accepted compensation for it. Only his accountant knows for sure.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
The IRS will likely consider this taxable event, so young Mr. Hotz is going to be out some serious cash to cover his tax bill. I read somewhere that most game show winners of "free cars" end up selling them to cover the taxes.
he did the trade for the same reason GoldenPalace.com buys a grilled cheese sandwich with the Virgin Mary on it.
I like microcars
...does he call it Hotz Wheels or the Hotzmobile?
It's still better than getting a bill for $30K & still having to pay taxes in some form on top of that.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I was a devout /. reader and dismissed digg.com. Lately I find myself reading digg more than /. because I read this about 2 days ago there.
Still love /. but it seems to be more of a filtered digg a day or two old.
has anybody considered that this is just viral marketing? I mean, this feat is pretty darn cool...but it doesn't really accomplish much, now you can use the phone on tmobile as well, but it isn't like the phone now has the capability to be used on every single network out there. If anything, this is good news for apple, not only did they get MORE front page news, but now the kid who did this is being touted as a celebrity; not to mention the fact that they can now sell phones to all of the tmobile customers out there (because they are, after all, just the hardware manufacturer).
Sorry, but I'm pretty sure that the two Russians that this kid collaborated with actually lived in Cupertino.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Too bad it doesn't come with car insurance. There's no way the guy will be able to afford the premium on a 350Z.
People are confusing here. He won 3 8gig iPhones besides the car. Not 8 iPhones, only 3 of em. So, no worth it.
Have you seen this guy? Hello? Mom's basement? Holy Cow!
:-)
When a 17 year old receives a 350Z they are no longer spending much time in Mom's basement. Hopefully not all of that time outside the basement is spent earning money for gas, insurance, and taxes. That prize/gift is taxable, many a game show winner has been screwed by that. Fortunately, or sadly, I've never won anything over $1,000.
To go to a darker topic, I hope he doesn't move from Mom's basement to the basement at the morgue. Giving a high performance car to a 17 year old can be a dangerous thing to do. My Dad and his friends had muscle cars at a young age, he was wise enough to make sure I only had underpowered 4-cylinder Toyota when I was under his roof. By the time I graduated college, got a job, and could afford that 5.7L Trans Am(*) I had enough experience behind the wheel and enough common sense to do little damage. I swear I saw a half dozen cars like mine in the paper, all wrapped around telephone poles by teenage drivers.
(*) That first job didn't pay well enough for a Corvette, and by now I've turned into a cheap bastard.
Yes and No, the RIAA is more like a representative for many companies, they really don't sell anything to consumers that consumers could decide to boycott if there was bad press. Hmm, but they do work for the music labels, so if one did want to show disapproval of their behavior, they could stop buying their crappy music.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
A) What do you mean, what's wrong with the guy? Maybe you misunderstood, he wasn't making a "swap" of a car for an iPhone, he was taking advantage of the situation to get $30,000 worth of press and goodwill with the tech geek community. Maybe he'll hire the kid in a couple years when he's out of college. Getting the unlocked iPhone was just a bonus. Fuck, if I were Steve Jobs, I'd have given the kid a car and a job.
B) Windows Mobile sucks so horridly, I'd never touch it again.
Oh RIT .. you attract all kinds ... female hockey, female rugby, female field hockey .. oh and overpriced phone hackers.
My Motorola Q does just fine, all kinds of emulators, games, browsing utilities, DUN, etc.
RIT Theme Song anybody?
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" - Doctor Who
Why does Slashdot taste like day old bread bought from the register.co.uk so often?
Because people who read the register are really lazy and won't post the stories on Slashdot until the next day?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Good catch. That would be a typo.
Next step: Hack the 350Z and trade it for a jet
No. The overwhelming likelihood is that he does only (or at least mostly) care about pure monetary profit, but he actually thought this was a good deal. That requires a special kind of stupid.
ResidntGeek
out of the 3 iPhones, he'll have to pay 1 as tax, and use 1 more to recoup the losses of his original iPhone he traded, and about 1000 more (or the cash equivilent thereof) when A&AT&T (Apple and AT&T, see what I did there?) find a loophole and sue his ass.
You know they'll find a loophole.
I mean, it's AT&T!
ZOOM!! ZOOM!!!
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
WTF? How does a homophobic, conspiracy-theoretic troll get to +3 Insightful?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
You forgot the 5 grand in insurance! Hell, my Stratus would be ~2500/yr in insurance if I had it regged independently to me (I'm under 25 and live in NYC), insurance on the 350Z is gonna be a bitch if he's not smart about it.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Where the F53B is the F53B9E7 Secret Service? Hello? Does 18 USC 1029 mean anything? Oh, don't tell me. His family got connections, eh? He does not have that 'antiestablishment look'. You know, dyed a/o chopped hair, tattoos, piercings, mouth-gasket goatee, etc. If I were him, I'd make aliyah yersterday!
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
Sammy / my iPhone 8GB
Would you use a iPhone with someone's signature on it?
I'm sure the Fairlady will have "Daidone" signatures all over it!
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
And even if he is the dorkiest guy the GP's ever seen, who cares? He's a dork with a 350Z at 17, I don't think many girls are going to care about his Star Wars figurine collection.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
This kid was accepted to RIT in Rochester, I went there. A high powered RWD sports car like the 350Z is useless up there. Too low for snow tires, he'd just be a snow plow. The potholes combined with his nice stiff suspension and low profile tires will wreck havoc on the car and the rims. Good luck with that buddy.
How's he going to pay the income tax on that $40,000 car? He should have taken at least part of the deal in cash.
Well considering that he actually sold it for the price of the iPhone then he'll only have pay taxes on the ~500 or whatever those things cost. That's why when you buy a car from a relative you make say they sold it you for nothing.
Does one hardware hack give him qualifications that graduating CS majors don't have?
Since when do CS majors pick up soldering irons?
Heck, most EE's don't do that and wouldn't know how. (Yes, I'm an EE).
I saw the guy's website... I wonder how he is as a software/hardware developer... He's clearly talented, but does he document his code? Does he follow established best practices? Does he interact well with others? Probably is a bit unbalanced...
It's 7% of the car's value here. :-(
I won't argue that that's what he got, but is this what he expected to happen? If so, was his expectation really strong enough to risk 30,000 dollars on? It seems much more likely that he simply thought it was a good deal.
ResidntGeek
In Soviet Russia, if CDMA, for one, bows down to our new beowulf-cluster-of-iPhones overlords, GSM would hack you! and cover Natalie Portman in hot grits, you insensitive clod!
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
It's hard enough to get a decent ale in the US when you are legally allowed to. It's not like they don't brew them (there are some very nice amber ales brewed in the USA), they just seem embarrassed about it and hide them behind the macrobrewery piss.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What are some of those nice amber ales that are not microbrewery piss? (I would have assumed that only a microbrewery would make a nice amber ale?).
I'm genuinely curious.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Sorry. I was reading real fast while cyberslacking at work.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
"Daidone, who's the co-founder of Louisville, Kentucky-based CertiCell"
traded
"a new set of wheels (Nissan 350Z to be exact) and 3 more 8GB iPhones"
for
"a shit load of publicity"
You think $100,000 normally buys this much advertising?
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
Depends on the state. Tennessee, for example, makes you pay the tax on the blue book value. And for the inevitable fool that wants to dispute this, it happened to my brother and I was standing right there.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Just think...next year he can volunteer to fight and die for his country, and STILL can't drink alcohol!
It's hard enough to get a decent ale in the US when you are legally allowed to.
Did you just post that message from 1980?
Seriously, you might consider moving to.......I dunno.... anywhere in America I've been in the last 10 years or so. All of those places have plenty of good beers.
I think parent was talking of hacking "Content Security Systems," not Cascading Style Sheets.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
You just have to fill out a gift affidavit.
1 201.pdf
http://www.tennessee.gov/revenue/forms/sales/f130
Per the IRS's Revenue Rulings and appellate decisions, any increase in the economic position of a person is considered to be income, and then they carve out exceptions to that presumption. A gift is something that is motivated by love, kindness or charity.
The IRS, and the courts, wouldn't take 5 seconds to tell both parties that the car is income to the kid, and he owes taxes on it. The kid would then have to demonstrate why this transfer is related to love, kindness or charity, which would be hard to demonstrate when it happened at the same time as a payment for services rendered, and there was probably no prior relationship between the parties. Chances are, the company will deduct both the value of the car and the iPhones as wages or other business expenses, and that would be the nail in the coffin of "Gift". This issue comes up thousands of times a year, and this fact pattern isn't even close to being a tough call under precedent.