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The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

danielcompton.net

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Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#101

Post by d--b »

mmanfrin wrote: post #59

Outside of the case, the most striking thing to me about this is the level of detail that Google has over the logs and actions of their laptop. They were able to tell that a memory card was plugged in for 8 hours a year ago? I have trouble finding exactly how a customer encountered a 500 10 minutes ago.

Mountable device tracking is very common to log. My company started implementing when we went from 20 to 30 employees. When things like this are at stakes, it's a small price to pay. In fact, it is so well known that this kind of tracking exists that very few people actually do try and actually do insert mountable devices in their computers, which makes the tracking even easier.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#103

Post by BurningFrog »

harryh wrote: post #29

Uber passengers only pay 41% of the cost of trips, with investor capital making up the difference FWIW this assertion (which isn't really core to the central thesis of the post, but still) is wrong. That number comes from https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unic... but the author of that story misread the data. Uber only counts their cut as revenue not the full cost of the ride. Despite this repet…

Also, that number must be Uber's total loss distributed per ride, rather than the profitability of each ride?

I can't imagine that Uber loses money on each additional trip. If that was true, the boycotts are helping Uber!

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#104

Post by dantiberian »

mmanfrin wrote: post #59

Outside of the case, the most striking thing to me about this is the level of detail that Google has over the logs and actions of their laptop. They were able to tell that a memory card was plugged in for 8 hours a year ago? I have trouble finding exactly how a customer encountered a 500 10 minutes ago.

Yeah I really enjoyed the technical details in Gary Brown's deposition: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-....

It looks like they could see:

* When the device made check-ins to their management server, and appeared on the Google network

* That the Windows OS was re-installed

* MoMA search queries (some kind of internal system?) for "chauffeur svn login"

* Downloading and installing TortoiseSVN

* Transferring files from SVN

* When a card reader was plugged in

* When the OS was reformatted to Linux

* File downloads from Google drive

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#105

Post by bedhead »

Among the circumstantial evidence, the self-funding aspect is what jumped out at me the most. This is the equivalent of a hedge fund manage buying something based on inside information, but only for his personal account. Why cut other people in on the wink-and-nod-guaranteed payday? Besides, Lewandowski couldn't realistically raise money through proper channels if his pitch amounted to, "I stole stuff from Waymo."

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#106

Post by jimmywanger »

NathanKP wrote: post #40
repomies69 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I didn't know about these. How well do those work? Do payments work automatically? What about reputation system?

They work fantastically. Ride Austin is actually way better than Uber in my opinion. In fact even if Uber and Lyft decided to start following the city regulations and return to Austin I would probably never use either in Austin again, simply because I prefer the non profit approach that respects drivers and gives them a much higher percentage.

> because I prefer the non profit approach that respects drivers and gives them a much higher percentage

For now. I generally prefer for-profit approaches because their motivations are far more transparent. They want to make money for the investors.

Non-profits exist to serve the wishes of the donors, which may be opaque. For instance, the Ride Austin investors might suddenly decide that they really want to focus on transportation to/from low income areas or art festivals. That would degrade service, and there would be no accountability to the customer in that regard.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#107

Post by rajacombinator »

andrewrice wrote: post #44

What is the possibility of criminal charges being brought forth if it's determined that Kalanick actively conspired with Lewandowski?

Curious about this too. Seems more serious than a "pay a fine and get off" situation, but I don't know anything about the relevant law.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#108

Post by [deleted] »

mmanfrin wrote: post #59

Outside of the case, the most striking thing to me about this is the level of detail that Google has over the logs and actions of their laptop. They were able to tell that a memory card was plugged in for 8 hours a year ago? I have trouble finding exactly how a customer encountered a 500 10 minutes ago.

[deleted]

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#109

Post by payne92 »

I'll be curious to see if the Uber-Otto acquisition gets strained.

It's common for the acquired company to make specific "representations and warranties", particularly around IP.

"We own our IP and didn't steal it" is typical, and some percentage of the deal is held back for ~1-2 years in case there is a problem.

But if there's fraud, all bets are off.

Does Uber throw Otto under the bus? It would be "The Uber Way", based on what's been published recently.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#110

Post by haldean »

mmanfrin wrote: post #59

Outside of the case, the most striking thing to me about this is the level of detail that Google has over the logs and actions of their laptop. They were able to tell that a memory card was plugged in for 8 hours a year ago? I have trouble finding exactly how a customer encountered a 500 10 minutes ago.

If you send your kernel logs to a syslog server you could get that pretty easily. From plugging a USB stick into my computer just now, then running dmesg:

    [14863.014481] usb-storage 2-4:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
    ...
    [15045.488440] usb 2-4: USB disconnect, device number 34
They do, though, have quite a bit of pretty impressive logging!
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