This season of Silicon Valley is getting good.
I loved the episode with the new-age pushing machine for juice.
Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
71–80 of 134 posts
Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#72Question: how public are these hearings? Is there a place we could get transcripts of them? (I remember previous days had snippets of transcripts (at the very least))
Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#73Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1] Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining…
I think the biggest cost in this business is the human component. For that all you need to do is check the price difference between renting for a day or getting taxi for a day. Given a choice, Uber would love to be the first to have self driving cars. Once they do that their business model scales predictably with capital. Whoever gets self driving technology right, will own all transportation and logistics - which is…
I think Matt Levine succinctly said it best:
>Eventually there will be self-driving cars, and there's no special reason to think that Uber will be the best at building them, or that its dominant position in the ride-hailing-app space will protect it from better self-driving-car businesses.
Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man, I miss Groklaw. I would love to have a Groklaw-equivalent following this trial. I wonder if folks could, like, crowdsource a salary for PJ to cover a new trial?
I'd stopped reading by then, but apparently she stopped posting in 2013 after Lavabit. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175 "[...] So. There we are. The foundation of Groklaw is over. I can't do Groklaw without your input. I was never exaggerating about that when we won awards. It really was a collaborative effort, and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate. I'm really sorry that…
> It seems quaint now, reading her expectations and worries, but it's honestly infuriating that in less than a decade we've gone from an expectation of net privacy to haggard indifference at government's best efforts to engineer electronic panopticon.
Lots of cheerleaders for that right here. It's a sad state of affairs, to put it mildly.
Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#75Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1] Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining…
Sure but Uber has one big ace up their sleeve... they could go public anytime they want.
The last best sucker is the stock market.
Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't know. Levandowski's lawyer outed its existence in a hearing, trying to use it as some basis for redacting or witholding other documents. "Ramsey pointed to a joint defense agreement between Levandowski and various law firms that meant that nothing should be revealed." I assume it was dated. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/judge-accuses-ub... Perhaps a move he regrets? Edit: That arstechnica ar…
Wow, misstep after misstep. This is really turning out very poorly for Uber. All because of a bunch of accidental events.
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Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#77Question: how public are these hearings? Is there a place we could get transcripts of them? (I remember previous days had snippets of transcripts (at the very least))
[deleted]
Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#78I don't get Levandowski's 5th amendment claim on the privilege log. Doesn't the 5th amendment only stop the individual from incriminating himself?
How can he argue that other people (or an entire company in this case) are not allowed to incriminate him?
Has anyone successfully claimed 5th amendment and forced other people/entities not to incriminate him/her?
Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#79Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1] Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining…
Sure but Uber has one big ace up their sleeve... they could go public anytime they want. The last best sucker is the stock market.
> they could go public anytime they want.
Why? I cannot believe Uber's status-quo supports its valuation at all.
Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo
#80Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1] Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining…
Sure but Uber has one big ace up their sleeve... they could go public anytime they want. The last best sucker is the stock market.
They'd have to publish real GAAP financial numbers. Those numbers would look awful. Years of losses.