this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Is this fake?
For context, this is the guy who figured out how to see what's written on some ancient Greek Scrolls without destroying them. It seems slightly far-fetched that he wouldn't know better.
What Greek scrolls?
Ok so they were apparently in Greek but not from Greece. Source: https://news.unl.edu/article-2
Even granting the quality or contribution he had to that effort, there's a huge difference between, "I can make a computer read burnt scrolls," and, "I can make government software with industry-standard protocols and security."
By way of comparison, just because I can write automation software for my company's apps doesn't mean I could just jump into doing Linus Torvalds' job maintaining the Linux kernel.
Sure, but the difference between "I win awards for figruing out how to decipher ancient scrolls that no one has been able to do despite their best efforts" and "I can't research well enough to discover appropriate existing tools for document conversion" is very hard to reconcile.
It's not even a matter of research. The whole question is demented. It's like asking what is the best pizza cutter to write with.
Not particularly, in my book. Like I said, a specific skillset that allowed him to decipher ancient scrolls doesn't equate to practical skills that translate to other things like document conversion.
By way of another analogy, I can build a fine cabinet out of wood, but that doesn't mean I can also build a wooden cuckoo clock.