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The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

danielcompton.net

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Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#251

Post by cvoss »

mattmanser wrote: post #161
transfire wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The bonuses could have been historically earned?

Via a recent Bloomberg article [0], the (pre-Waymo) car project had an "unorthodox compensation system" resulting in "multi-million dollar payouts" that were somehow tied to the success/value of the project. A fascinating and weird way to incentivize hard work.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reaso...

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#252

Post by pfarnsworth »

beering wrote: post #2

TL;DR: The "Bombshell" is Alphabet/Waymo's lawsuit against Lewandowski and Uber for stealing trade secrets, and an interpretation that Lewandowski formed Otto basically as a cover to get a big payday from Uber in exchange for the secrets.

Bloggism at its worst. A blog post with an agenda making huge leaps of faith without bothering to keep a semblance of impartiality to try to show that Uber somehow conspired to steal technology. Without bothering to hear the other side.

"From Waymo’s filings, it seems that they have Levandowski dead to rights on stealing their LiDAR designs." This is one of the dumbest quotes in the post. Of course the lawyer's job is to write up their side of the story. He hasn't even heard the other side of the story and he's already coming up with conclusions. That's pretty terrible.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#253

Post by kbenson »

joering2 wrote: post #235
ufmace wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> They claim to have forensic logs of his laptop of him downloading them and copying them to a memory card Sounds like a farytale to me, unless those logs are captures and stored independently then otherwise anyone can claim having any kind of evidence against anyone involved. Besides, there might be many reasons of him doing that, let the backup be one.

Read the original allegations, not the summary here. Just to start you off, here's some the things alleged by google you're missing from that summary:

- He installed custom software to access the files.

- The files were in a data store he had no normal access to.

And here's my best guess as to why Google knows so much:

- Google requires access to their networks using either your Google assigned device, or a pre-approved list of devices of your own (basically chromebooks). I know from past interactions with a friend that works at Google that they often give beta versions of software (Android) and/or hardware (Nexus phones, chromebooks) to employees to test. It's entirely possibly that quite a lot of debugging data is reported on some build. Additionally, that same friend noted that Google has a whole department dedicated to rooting our invalid access like what is alleged here, and since they control the devices available to access their network, there's really no conceivably limit to the amount of activity data they could collect about employee usage.

In short, I see no reason why Google couldn't have as much data as they allege and possibly much more. to me, the fact that they waited until this stage to present it also seems calculated to benefit the most from those trying to defraud them (why not stop the forming of Otto initially, or the buyout?). If that's the case, I don't really have much sympathy for Uber, as they seem to possibly have been integral to the crime, and may have escaped punishment if it hadn't gotten this far.

Edit: Whoops, said Waymo where I meant Otto,

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#254

Post by angus-prune »

memmcgee wrote: post #163
Animats wrote: post #133

Uber, in their usual rule-breaking way, may come out OK on this. Suppose everything in the complaint against Uber is proven true. Google/Alphabet/Waymo gets an injunction against Uber using their rotating LIDAR, a clunky technology that's on the way out. (The future of high-volume 3D LIDAR is either flash with a staring sensor or MEMS with chip-sized moving mirrors.) G/A/W gets paid a few billion dollars, but far les…

They seem to be fundraising awfully quick for a company that has plenty of cash on hand. They'd probably have to fund-raise again or go public to pay off the damages.

One of their strategies is to starve competitors of investment by hoovering up as much as they can themselves.

This doesn't mean that they're in a good financial position, just that the signalling is different from other VC funded companies.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#255

Post by free_everybody »

I read the whole article and it was very interesting. Thanks for the info! However, could someone explain to me why Uber is losing money from their taxi services? Obviously the drivers take home a large chunk of revenue, but what about the rest of the money they receive from the fares? Shouldn't that be enough to cover the overhead of running a mobile app? Are they trying to do too much? What gives?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#256

Post by mulmen »

cityhall wrote: post #135
jimmywanger wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What you want is competition, not for one entity to control the market regardless of its organization.

Well in this case sure, competition is good and apparently Austin has multiple choices so everything is fine but competition is not always the answer. Competition does not seem to be the answer to public transit for example. It's not such a leap to say that ride sharing type apps might end up being replaced by a more personal and dynamic form of bus service.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#257

Post by dcosson »

passivepinetree wrote: post #155
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt. I've talked with 2-3 Uber drivers in LA area. They seem to be getting 65% to 75% of what passenger pays. I think many of the core Uber markets are fairly profitable. This would imply that majority of the burn is focused on growth in new markets. Some potential problems with extrapolating the data: * Small sample size. * Uber rides cost more in California, observed…

I think you're misinterpreting what the post and the GP meant. What's at issue here isn't that Uber drivers don't get to take home X% of what the passenger pays, but rather that the cost Uber charges passengers isn't enough to keep the business afloat without a significant amount of VC funding.

I think the point of the comment was as kind of an upper bound. For instance if drivers made 100% (or more) of what the passenger pays, then Uber would be obviously not breaking even. At 65-75% it's feasible that at a certain scale Uber's cut would make them profitable.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#258

Post by emanuelsaringan »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #205
sfeng wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the context provided in this post, it seems pretty blatant and obvious. Stealing a design is one thing, stealing the circuit board design from an unreleased product is espionage.

Out of curiosity, what is it about a user interface and a circuit board that makes you consider the design of one to be protected but not the other?

One is already on the face (literally) of 4 billion people while the other one is confidential.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#259

Post by r00fus »

_audakel wrote: post #213
beamatronic wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly and not to mention, people aren't the only thing that needs to be taxied around.

i never understood why something like food / grocery delivery never took off with lyft/uber. they could partner with costco and do deliveries. I would love that.

Google Shopping Express already does this - I get my 50lb. bag of rice delivered on-demand to my house.

Uber would need to start understanding how ordering of goods works, returns, and service/quality complaints.

They could do it, but there are a whole lot of domain specific problems and approaches to resolve and it's not clear that's it's long-term viable.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#260

Post by [deleted] »

kbenson wrote: post #253
joering2 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They claim to have forensic logs of his laptop of him downloading them and copying them to a memory card Sounds like a farytale to me, unless those logs are captures and stored independently then otherwise anyone can claim having any kind of evidence against anyone involved. Besides, there might be many reasons of him doing that, let the backup be one.

Read the original allegations, not the summary here. Just to start you off, here's some the things alleged by google you're missing from that summary: - He installed custom software to access the files. - The files were in a data store he had no normal access to. And here's my best guess as to why Google knows so much: - Google requires access to their networks using either your Google assigned device, or a pre-appro…

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