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The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

danielcompton.net

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Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#121

Post by pm90 »

bedhead wrote: post #105

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."

In hindsight, a better crook would have accepted outside funding just to cover this line of attack (Assuming the Otto Founder is guilty; of course it might be otherwise).

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#122

Post by nopriorarrests »

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.

How many thousands of hours of video is uploaded to youtube _daily_ and stored on google servers forever?

And you are talking about logging actions of your own employees. Let's say 100kb per day per employee (these logs are pretty detailed).

100kb * 50 000 employees = 4.7Gb per day. 1740Gb per year. Probably much, much less then 1 day of youtube videos.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#123

Post by pthreads »

thrill wrote: post #83
ontoillogical wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As someone who several years ago "managed" to take over a publicly traded company ... That sounds like an interesting story! Have you told it elsewhere?

Heh - usually after a few beers, and it gets even better. The first SEC attorney involved was a real stickler, but up for retirement in the middle of the process. His replacement was a real hard charger, and worked with me to get the former CEO incarcerated ... and he then went into private practice ... and a few years later got indicted for pulling the same scheme himself working with another small cap company as th…

I want to know the whole story so bad. You should write a book. :-)

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#124

Post by wh-uws »

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.

Ride Austin is far from "way better" on par when the service works maybe but hardly better.

This past Saturday none of the ride sharing services could handle demand and all went down. No riders could request and an no drivers could accept.

Also when the service does work glitches like seeing the login screen when you are already logged in are routine.

Source: I'm in Austin right now for sxsw and I'm a former Austin resident.

Also this whole debacle was a clear and present tax grab for the city please dont pretend it wasn't.

Now on balance Uber and Lyft ran an AWFUL campaign against the regulations when they already do background checks but still that was always about money.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#125

Post by Eridrus »

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.

I don't know how much Uber cost in Austin, but it seems like the base costs for calling a car are $4.50; I've gotten Uber rides for less than that in NYC, and the cost has been the prime reason to call them (I probably would have taken a bus otherwise).

I am very interested to see if aggressive pricing and cost/route optimisation can unlock enough demand to make pooling actually viable economically, which none of the Uber/Lyft alternatives really seem willing to try.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#126

Post by harryh »

vkou wrote: post #70
Havoc wrote: post #47

>Uber passengers only pay 41% of the cost of trips, with investor capital making up the difference. Holy hell. That's not exactly a sound business model.

It's 41% of the driver's cut of the ride (So closer to 12% of the trip cost).

That is also not correct. Uber's cut of the ride (which is a bit under 20% of the fare) is covering 41% of their total corporate expenses (which are not the costs of delivering rides).

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#127

Post by transfire »

> August 2016 - Levandowski received his final multi-million dollar payment from Google (presumably a bonus?)

That's a pretty fat check for someone who just ran away with the crown jewels. How do we know Google didn't have Lavandowski do all this on purpose to lure Uber into a compromised position by buying Otto? Unless the courts are rigged, doesn't Google have to prove Uber acquired Otto with full knowledge that they were buying stolen property?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#128

Post by pyb »

Hmm, he got the name of one of the main protagonists wrong. Pierre Yves => Pierre-Yves Droz.

You need to demonstrate some attention to detail, if you're going to claim an ability to 'read between the lines' in this dossier.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#129

Post by Eridrus »

themgt wrote: post #35
booleanbetrayal wrote: post #4

I can't imagine what Lewandowski and Uber were thinking here. The timeline is just too constrained to even be taken seriously.

Even at the time, knowing none of the characters or background I found Otto a very odd startup, one I almost didn't believe looked legit, and their rapid acquisition by Uber was one more "huh, strange" moment - how could they have bootstrapped out of nowhere and had tech worth that kind of money so fast? It's almost hard to believe Uber would be so brazen as to put something like this together, except that breaking t…

It doesn't seem that much stranger than the Cruise or Argo; people with real experience are getting snapped up like crazy without a product.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#130

Post by erikpukinskis »

hangonhn wrote: post #60
psbp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably mean network effects. Facebook is the prime example. For Uber, a critical mass in users and drivers makes it hard to unseat.

There is no network effect here. Each additional driver does not increase the value of the network to the other drivers and similarly for passengers. Uber and Lyft are old-fashioned market makers. They increased the pool of suppliers and consumers and connected the groups. In cities where both Uber and Lyft exist, substituting Uber for Lyft and vice versa does not change the value the driver or passenger derives from…

> There is no network effect here. Each additional driver does not increase the value

More drivers => decreased wait times => more customers => more drivers

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