Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 364 posts

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#171

Post by Animats »

revelation wrote: post #63
Animats wrote: post #57

Google might have been better off with patents than trade secrets. There are financial penalties for theft of trade secrets, but once the secret is out, no injunctions. The one who stole it can use it. With patents, injunctions are available, although hard to get. Anyway, several companies are developing automotive LIDAR units which are better than Google's rotating things. Quantergy and Velodyne claim to be close to…

I doubt there is any hot technology in some LIDAR interface board in the first place.

There's a lot to be done at the semiconductor level for solid state LIDAR. The ASC units work great, but the sensor requires an InGaAs fab, like night vision sensors, to get good light sensitivity and thus range. Others are talking about getting good performance with a sensor that can be made in a CMOS fab, but nobody is shipping yet. This is an area where Waymo has a strong interest, even if they're not making the sensors themselves.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#172

Post by dsacco »

austinl wrote: post #149
mevile wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems criminal. I remember an engineer from goldman sachs went to prison for doing something similar.

That would be Sergey Aleynikov [0]. I'd recommend reading Flash Boys by Michael Lewis [1], who covers this story in detail. Sergey's case seems much more nuanced, and if I remember, Lewis takes his side on a number of issues. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24724602-flash-boys

...and then after that, do also read Flash Boys: Not So Fast by Peter Kovac. Not necessarily for Aleynikov's case in particular, but because it's healthy to see both sides of the greater narrative that Lewis unfolds.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#173

Post by cpeterso »

golfer wrote: post #155

Does anyone else remember this New Yorker profile [1] of Anthony Levandowski and self driving cars? Way back from 2013, when this tech was still novel. Google let Levandowski run the show for this piece -- his name is mentioned 57 times in the article. Goes to show how important and trusted he was in Google's universe. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/25/auto-correct

Anthony Levandowski was targeted back in 2014 by protesters against Google's military work with Boston Dynamics.

https://arstechnica.com/business/2014/01/protestors-show-up-...

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2014/01/22/activists-target-goog...

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#174

Post by dsacco »

Jabbles wrote: post #83
taneq wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this "over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems" is what, an engineering repo? (Edit: My money's on repo. It says 'searched for and installed specialized software', I'm translating that as 'installed git.') Or did he just take a copy of his mailbox? Sounds like a rookie move to be downloading this stuff on his work laptop either way.

Stealing is a rookie move. But I don't think there was a choice about using his work laptop. You can't connect an arbitrary device to Google's network. https://research.google.com/pubs/pub43231.html

Nice link, this is a great read for anyone interested in endpoint security research.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#175

Post by dsacco »

tajen wrote: post #37
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

How does Google build such forsenics? Do they have spyware monitoring all their company laptops?

Typical garden-variety endpoint security/IT management solutions such as Crowdstrike or Casper with a kernel module are capable of all of that.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#176

Post by [deleted] »

tajen wrote: post #37
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

How does Google build such forsenics? Do they have spyware monitoring all their company laptops?

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#178

Post by sounds »

ehsankia wrote: post #144
ABCLAW wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds worse when you consider the potential for treble damages due to having knowledge of the infringement. Uber's negotiating position is doubly weakened by the fact that they are dealing with a reputation crisis at the same time as this claim has been brought forward. If Google has the information they claim they do, they have persuasive arguments to anchor their damages calculations on the basis of Otto's acqu…

I don't think I've ever seen Google go in the offensive like this, so this must be pretty serious.

Eh, Google doesn't use patent litigation as an offense strategy, but they _do_ pursue leaks. They treat leaks (that is, exfiltrating data while employed) very seriously. Offensive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/4emtua/nest_ceo_ton...

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#179

Post by throwaway23190 »

dsacco wrote: post #174
Jabbles wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing is a rookie move. But I don't think there was a choice about using his work laptop. You can't connect an arbitrary device to Google's network. https://research.google.com/pubs/pub43231.html

Nice link, this is a great read for anyone interested in endpoint security research.

... all which are easily compromised by a commodity phone.

"Ah you know, I forgot my charger! Dang! I'll just plug this into the USB port of this sooper secure machine connected to this sooper secure network."

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#180

Post by changdizzle »

untilHellbanned wrote: post #141
danjoc wrote: post #35

There's something very wrong in the world when the people who invent things aren't the main beneficiary of their own inventions. Edit: A guy downloads 9.7GB of other people's work, walks off with it, and sells it. Flushing years of work from hundreds of engineers down the toilet. You down voters really support that? Amazing.

Otto was a YC company so there's your answer. People condone a lot of awful if they 1) make money off it; 2) Have some emotional connection to it

As far as I know Otto wasn't YC - are you sure you're not thinking of Cruise (which was acquired by GM)?
Post reply on HN