Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 305 posts

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#201

Post by DINKDINK »

linkregister wrote: post #70
DINKDINK wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber: Hey, we're really sorry that things didn't work out but "here's some equity for the time that you worked here" oh and by the way here's the estimated value of that equity if we win the lawsuit or don't win the law suit.

Unlike a compiler that you can trick, the law operates on the intended spirit in addition to the letter of the statute and relevant precedent. This "law hack" would be immediately caught by Waymo and Judge Alsop would rightfully penalize Uber. The corporate officers who signed off on an action like that would likely be criminally liable as well.

I'm not advocating for Uber to do what I said but given what's been written about their ethical practices, it's what I would expect from them.

The problem is, how do you differentiate between equity whose grant is meant to manipulate a party of a crime and equity justly earned by working there?

If I were Uber, I would fire him and if possible, revoke any equity he had to absolve the company from any accusations of implied manipulation.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#202

Post by ianamartin »

bykovich2 wrote: post #38
hackunomatter wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, basically, Uber will pay some $$$ to make the lawsuit go away and "license" Waymo's tech (which they already had, courtesy Mr. Lewandowski, but now will legally have it).

You don't think Google's out for blood? Didn't they announce a Waymo partnership with Lyft a couple of weeks ago?

I agree. Google doesn't want a license agreement. As pointed out below, yes, there is investment, but I think Google/Alphabet is out for blood and the investment dollars will be recouped in the civil settlement if not the arbitration with Levandowski.

Either way, I don't think Google cares. They want to be first on the market. And based on how badly Uber has been flouting the law, I suspect Google gets there first no matter what. This just slows Uber down.

It won't matter though. Money will change hands. And that's about it. Google/Alphabet/Waymo/Lyft will be first to market in a pretty shitty way, followed by Uber. The tech world and early adopters will go nuts and in this case probably die in a fire. Then Apple and Tesla will come in with a far superior safety/user experience and take over.

None of this really matters at this point. It's a waiting game. This is what Apple always does and what Tesla has started doing: wait for the early entries in the market to do their thing, learn from their mistakes, and pwn the market later with better UX and marketing.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#203

Post by dllthomas »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #194
dllthomas wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I mean, it did fly, in that he was not compelled (... directly?) by the court to testify. Which isn't to say it didn't have other consequences...

But Levandowski tried to get the court to not allow Waymo to discover who wrote the due diligence report. (Not just block Waymo from seeing the report - he tried to block Waymo from even learning who wrote it.) He did this by claiming the 5th. On a court case that he wasn't a party to. And the judge didn't buy it (rightly, IMHO).

Ah, yeah.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#204

Post by dragonwriter »

dllthomas wrote: post #199
dragonwriter wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber can't plead the 5th as it's not a natural person and it isn't be criminally prosecuted. Uber can plead the fifth [EDIT: no, it can't, see note at end] (it applies not just to natural persons, and corporations are subject to criminal process as well), but a party to a civil suit pleading the fifth can have that held against them, and if you take the fifth you can't do it selectively, any issue you take the fift…

> but a party to a civil suit pleading the fifth can have that held against them Isn't that untrue in California?

> Isn't that untrue in California?

IIRC, you are correct in suits under California law, but this has no effect in suits under federal law that happen to be heard in California. How that applies to this case may be complicated because it involves both state and federal law claims in federal court.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#205

Post by jsmthrowaway »

dsp1234 wrote: post #170
kbenson wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading the transcript of the testimony on what Google actually knows about (1), it's actually less convincing in my opinion than Google's wording makes it sound (which is to be expected from lawyers making a case). I still believe Levandowski likely took trade secrets, but it's much less compelling when you read the details. There's a link to it in this HN comment[1], and I reply with what I think is a fair su…

More specifically, the "specialized software" was TortoiseSVN, and the "downloaded over 14,000 ... downloaded 9.7 GB" was an SVN checkout. An SVN client being used to access an SVN repository is hardly unusual, certainly not in the way insinuated by the wording presented.

If I recall, Google/Waymo claimed in their filing that he had never used the Subversion repository in question from that laptop in the course of his employment, until that moment. They further claim he actually searched MoMA for how to access it as well as how to do end-to-end setup. He then left not long after that checkout. That is unusual, if true.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#206

Post by xhedley »

Arizhel wrote: post #181

>So yeah, it happens; it's just a spectacularly bad idea for the police to do it. If they hadn't declined to file charges, my friend and another murder victim would probably still be alive today Sorry about your friend, but why is it a "spectacularly bad idea" for police to do so? What alternative do they have? If the sole victim is unwilling to cooperate with the investigation and subsequent trial, their chances of…

Arizhel, I have never been subjected to rape and attempted strangulation myself. But someone that I know well has.

In the country that I live in, the justice system rightly requires that guilt in criminal cases is proved "beyond reasonable doubt". In court, the accused has every reason to allege that the alleged victim was "up for it" and "consenting" and "enjoyed it".

The victim who "lets it drop" in these circumstances may be selfish - but they aren't stupid when they weigh the cost to themselves of an adversarial court case against the gain to themselves of a rape conviction. In an ideal world all women would feel strong enough to testify in a rape case but maybe this isn't an ideal world.

Testifying that someone raped you isn't like testifying that someone stole your wallet. It's way more intimate and personal and dangerous.

To the thread starter - I am so sorry that your friend was raped and killed. Please look after yourself and talk to someone about how you are feeling.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#207

Post by [deleted] »

Arizhel wrote: post #181

>So yeah, it happens; it's just a spectacularly bad idea for the police to do it. If they hadn't declined to file charges, my friend and another murder victim would probably still be alive today Sorry about your friend, but why is it a "spectacularly bad idea" for police to do so? What alternative do they have? If the sole victim is unwilling to cooperate with the investigation and subsequent trial, their chances of…

[deleted]

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#208

Post by NicoJuicy »

EnFinlay wrote: post #33
tmh79 wrote: post #17

OK: Here is some context for those who aren't current on the case. One result of the injunction (all of the hearings up until now) was that uber needs to use all of its power to compel levandowski to testify, the extreme limit of which is firing him. Uber followed through as was legally required This is one part of a number of things that came out of preliminary injunction hearings, other parts are (1) the breadth of…

One thing I've been confused about: didn't this whole thing start when a vendor sent an e-mail to Google that was intended for Uber, and the contents of the design in that e-mail were sufficiently similar to Google's designs that Google started this process. Was the design not similar enough to prove Uber's use of Google's IP? Am I remembering or interpreting that story incorrectly?

I remember the vendor contacting Google ( Waymo), because Uber has similar designs. An email to Uber was send to a colleague at Google, when he was still employed there

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#209

Post by Nelson69 »

tmh79 wrote: post #17

OK: Here is some context for those who aren't current on the case. One result of the injunction (all of the hearings up until now) was that uber needs to use all of its power to compel levandowski to testify, the extreme limit of which is firing him. Uber followed through as was legally required This is one part of a number of things that came out of preliminary injunction hearings, other parts are (1) the breadth of…

Questions...

This is civil, so a preponderance of evidence is the burden here. Can he fight that at all without talking? Google has a ton of evidence that he 'downloaded' a lot of stuff. It's not a big jump to see Otto/Uber made a tremendous amount of progress pretty rapidly too. I'm not the judge but being an engineer, knowing other engineers, hearing Google's story about the data he took, seeing the dollar figures, it seems damning. What evidence is there to the other side if he won't explain things?

Post reply on HN