The Uber Bombshell About to Drop • Hacker News Board

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#221

Post by the_duke » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #144

Judgmentality wrote: post #131

Earlier 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."

But how do we know Google wasn't the one making that plan? I find it strange that Google paid Levandowski millions in bonuses after he quit abruptly and after they already knew he was starting a company with their IP.

So Google paid Lewandowski a bonus to steal their own IP, launch a company and sell it for a large amount to Uber so they could destroy Uber with a huge lawsuit?

Makes sense! (cough)

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#222

Post by spikels » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

I just hope this doesn't somehow delay the deployment of much safer driving technology. The death, injury and property damage statistic are staggering:

  Global Annual Estimates:
  Deaths: 1.25 million
  Injuries: 20-50 million
  Cost: $580 billion

https://www.cdc.gov/features/globalroadsafety/

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#223

Post by tomphoolery » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:20 PM UTC

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…

> His replacement was a real hard charger, and worked with me to get the former CEO incarcerated

He who smelt it...must certainly have dealt it.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#224

Post by ufmace » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

beamatronic wrote: post #173

Judgmentality wrote: post #131

Earlier 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 allegation is that he stole ~10GB of mechanical and electrical drawings for various essential parts, including the custom LIDAR. They claim to have forensic logs of his laptop of him downloading them and copying them to a memory card

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#225

Post by apetresc » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:24 PM UTC

pfarnsworth wrote: post #182

Another big bombshell is that apparently Google laptops store every single thing you do on it, including whether you attach a USB drive, etc. That's pretty scary if you're an employee.

Everyone at Google knows about that. There's nothing scary about it, it's a work laptop.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#226

Post by kirykl » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:24 PM UTC

eugeniub wrote: post #181

amptorn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly amazed that anybody bought "pivot to self-driving cars" as a strategy. Even if it did work and they built perfect working autonomous vehicle software, right now, legitimately, what's the next step? Were they going to buy and operate a fleet? Have random people sign up to rent their unused cars out as taxis?

> Were they going to buy and operate a fleet? I don't see what's the problem with that.

Uber no longer passes the depreciating asset liability on to vehicle owners

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#227

Post by empath75 » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

dookahku wrote: post #17

empath75 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a stupid moonshot play. They should have just focused on being a really good taxi company.

They're not. Every major car company plus competitors are focusing on self-driving cars. Why pay a human what a machine can do for cheaper? Uber's future depends on being first with self driving cars. Being a good taxi company in the 21st century will mean good at self-driving cars.

So why not just wait for someone else to build the cars and buy them?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#228

Post by kirykl » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #13

empath75 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a stupid moonshot play. They should have just focused on being a really good taxi company.

Their "taxi" business model was completely unsustainable. A moonshot was/is the only thing that'd save them. That's why they did this (the self-driving part we know for sure, and the alleged stuff, if proven).

the monopoly position is unsustainable

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#229

Post by kirykl » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

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.

This level of logging is easy to come by forensically, even on a stock windows install - except the year time window, probably need to archive logs for that

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#230

Post by _audakel » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

d--b wrote: post #32

It's not a bigger bombshell than what was already in the news. We know what stealing means. The guy is an engineer at Waymo and plugs a USB stick in a laptop to download 9GB of code. And he hoped to get away with this? I'm pretty sure everyone at Google knew, they were just waiting to time it right. "Hey, what about now? When Uber is taking fire from all directions?"

i can't believe someone as smart as he is would just blatantly stick in a usb. With how much money he was going to make he could have researched some more annomous ways to get it. Not the least would be to intercept a team members auth/pw and use that to access the data.