How credible are all these logs? Email records (came up in Oracle Android case) are one thing, emails are a known thing. But how trustworthy are Google Drive logs, a record that only exists within Google, when what they've recorded helps their case? I'm not casting aspersions, just curious how a new kind of evidence plays out.
By what process do you think Waymo (or is it Alphabet) would fabricate these logs? Like, who in particular would do it? Would they form a team of a dozen, two dozen people to do all the fabrication across all the systems that would be impacted, without leaving any fingerprints? And of course none of this planning could be done over email or Google docs, so it all has to be coordinated in person with only handwritten…
The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
191–200 of 542 posts
Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bombshell part specifically would be Levandowski arranging with Uber to steal Waymo tech, form Otto, and Uber would acquire Otto. In all of the reporting I read about this after the first filing, this was missed.
With everything that has gone on at Uber including a former friend of Travis' accusing him of stealing the company concept itself, something like this wouldn't be a Surprise.
Lyft started with a different business snd pivoted to Uber's (itself all a pivot?). Did Lyft "steal the concept?"
Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's another comment from an HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558078 "Otto was designed to be sold to Uber before it was created, there's a reason it was self-funded despite having nearly 100 employees by the time it was acquired. Anthony Levandowski met Travis Kalanick years ago and had been planning something like this for a while. It's basically an open secret."
What is the illegal part of this? This happens all the time in the Valley. Did they actually steal source code?
I guess it's up to the legal process to decide if he did or not.
Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearing up some serious misconceptions here: 1) Austin did not ban Uber or Lyft. The city council passed an ordinance that required a gradually increasing percentage of rideshare drivers pass an FBI-approved fingerprint background check. (These rules are in place in other locales in which Uber operates, such as NYC and Houston.) Uber and Lyft formed a PAC that got a proposition on the next local election ballot that…
Are you sure it was to make an example or there was something unique / different about Austin that made both companies not want to provide business there?
Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
#195Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
#196Outside 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
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearing up some serious misconceptions here: 1) Austin did not ban Uber or Lyft. The city council passed an ordinance that required a gradually increasing percentage of rideshare drivers pass an FBI-approved fingerprint background check. (These rules are in place in other locales in which Uber operates, such as NYC and Houston.) Uber and Lyft formed a PAC that got a proposition on the next local election ballot that…
Interesting that Uber and Lyft work together on political influence campaigns like this, given Uber's strategy of bleeding out Lyft through their VC subsidized capital advantage. I would think that just letting them both get shut out of a given city would be a win for Uber.
Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's another comment from an HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12558078 "Otto was designed to be sold to Uber before it was created, there's a reason it was self-funded despite having nearly 100 employees by the time it was acquired. Anthony Levandowski met Travis Kalanick years ago and had been planning something like this for a while. It's basically an open secret."
What is the illegal part of this? This happens all the time in the Valley. Did they actually steal source code?
>the subtext of Alphabet’s filing is an even bigger bombshell. Reading between the lines, (in my opinion) Alphabet is implying that Mr Levandowski arranged with Uber to:
>Steal LiDAR and other self-driving component designs from Waymo
>Start Otto as a plausible corporate vehicle for developing the self-driving technology
>Acquire Otto for $680 million
Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
#199How credible are all these logs? Email records (came up in Oracle Android case) are one thing, emails are a known thing. But how trustworthy are Google Drive logs, a record that only exists within Google, when what they've recorded helps their case? I'm not casting aspersions, just curious how a new kind of evidence plays out.
Let's not pretend that you can't fabricate emails too. I strongly suspect that the existence and timestamps of the Drive logs can be verified at multiple levels and exist in backups made around that time. HTTP logs as well as MTA logs have been provided as evidence before, those too could be fabricated.
Email you have a bunch of different parties: the sender, the receiver, the servers in the middle, all of which are going to record something, and maybe they differ in weird ways, but if you got it you go it.
Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop
#200For all the noise and excitement at the start of these clashes, don't they usually get settled with a licensing agreement that both sides can live with? Sometimes we also see a medium-sized payment (not ruinous) to address the allegedly bad conduct. That usually gets paired with some lawyer-like phrases that amount to a blend of quasi-apology and face-saving evasions. It's still an interesting suit. But after Apple/S…
Why would Uber be awarded licensing terms they could "live with" for code they (allegedly) outright stole from a competitor?
They both have to decide if that might be better than a long and expensive legal battle.