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Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#221

Post by objclxt »

Nelson69 wrote: post #209
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,…

> This is civil, so a preponderance of evidence is the burden here. Can he fight that at all without talking?

Pleading the fifth in a civil case can be used as a negative inference, so if you're not prepared to talk and the other side has evidence it's going to be an uphill struggle at best.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#222

Post by marklyon »

huebnerob wrote: post #153
kbenson wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Played well, that sounds like a good way to get your side project off the ground. Then again, I imagine the cross section of under-performing employees that get this treatment and those that are ambitious enough to follow through on an idea for a side project/business is probably quite small. Also, you probably would have to hide all the work, since depending on your contract your employer would probably have some cl…

I would love to get 'put on the roof' like that, but I think the Japanese policy also states that you're not allowed to do anything outside of the ridiculously mundane task they assign you, and they actually watch you like a hawk to ensure as such. Pretty smart, most people aren't going to stay in that situation for long.

Could you imagine being the manager assigned to watch such employees? That's a special hell.

I once worked at a newspaper, when "online" was new and side project of the marketing department so that they could sell more ads.

Until I automated things, we were cutting and pasting a few articles each night from Quark into BBEdit and hand-massaging it into HTML templates for upload. They assigned us an "editor". Poor guy had written pro-civil-rights editorials at a time when that didn't go over well. Got assigned shit jobs for decades to try and force him out. We didn't create new content; there was nothing to edit. But, they made him go to all the meetings and report that each day. Dude used a giant trackball and knew nothing about tech, but somehow landed in the department that would one day rule the newsroom. I wonder how he's doing these days.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#223

Post by dllthomas »

dragonwriter wrote: post #204
dllthomas wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Interesting!

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#224

Post by wutbrodo »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #180
kbenson wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Played well, that sounds like a good way to get your side project off the ground. Then again, I imagine the cross section of under-performing employees that get this treatment and those that are ambitious enough to follow through on an idea for a side project/business is probably quite small. Also, you probably would have to hide all the work, since depending on your contract your employer would probably have some cl…

In these Japanese companies they'll be sorta monitoring you and fire you if you're caught not doing the mundane tasks they've assigned you. So they basically force you to quite or get fired.

If firing is an option, why wouldn't they do so in the first place?

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#225

Post by kbenson »

huac wrote: post #217
kbenson wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it was also a previously unused laptop, so it's not all that unusual for someone setting up a work system to make sure their work access is set up. It is odd that it happened towards the end, and that it wasn't used afterwards, but I can also see it being something I might do in preperation if I had to take a short trip and hadn't set up a remote work laptop yet or my prior one was causing problems. That it…

Google alleges he then copied the files onto a portable hard drive and wiped the laptop, which shows a pretty strong intent to deceive.

Sure, when it's summarized like that, it sounds bad, and it maybe bad. But compare that to this slightly expanded timeline summary from reading the actual filing[1]:

The laptop in question connected to Google only 3 times between March 2, 2015 and November 25, 2015, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes. ~ 2 hours on Oct 22, ~2 hours on Nov 20, and "briefly" on Nov 25. (My interpretation? It was almost always off and not in use).

Windows was reinstalled on Nov 26th.

On Dec 3, searched were done on Google's internal search system for how to log in and setup access through SVN to the driving car project ("chauffer").

Tortoise SVN was downloaded and installed on Dec 11. It then "downloaded over 14,000 files from the SVN repository". (My interpretation? A SVN checkout of the entire repo was done).

A USB card reader was attached on Dec 14 for about 8 hours.

On Dec 18, the laptop was reinstalled with Goobuntu (Google's custom Ubuntu).

The machine stayed on and checking in to Google normally from the time of the install until Dec 21, when it received a "machine certificate", within a minute of which it was not seen again on Google's networks, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes (My interpretation? It was off again).

The filing goes on to talk about some Google drive exports of documents that don't necessarily look good for Levandowski.

My purpose here isn't to convince anyone that he's innocent, just to point out that Google's allegations are worded in a way to cast the most suspicion while being technically true. Through the omission of the timeline it sounds like his actions were all taken at once, which looks a little more premeditated, when instead it was over a period of a couple weeks. It's entirely possibly that Levandowski purposefully obfuscated his actions by spreading them out temporally, so this isn't evidence he didn't do what is alleged, but I think it's important people have the facts before making judgments based on Waymo's lawyer's accounting, which is obviously as beneficial to Waymo as possible, as should be expected.

1: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-...

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#226

Post by [deleted] »

hackunomatter wrote: post #220
kbenson wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it was also a previously unused laptop, so it's not all that unusual for someone setting up a work system to make sure their work access is set up. It is odd that it happened towards the end, and that it wasn't used afterwards, but I can also see it being something I might do in preperation if I had to take a short trip and hadn't set up a remote work laptop yet or my prior one was causing problems. That it…

Well, if he has a rock-solid benign explanation, why doesn't he come on the stand and testify?

[deleted]

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#227

Post by zaphar »

hackunomatter wrote: post #220
kbenson wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it was also a previously unused laptop, so it's not all that unusual for someone setting up a work system to make sure their work access is set up. It is odd that it happened towards the end, and that it wasn't used afterwards, but I can also see it being something I might do in preperation if I had to take a short trip and hadn't set up a remote work laptop yet or my prior one was causing problems. That it…

Well, if he has a rock-solid benign explanation, why doesn't he come on the stand and testify?

Taking the fifth is not automatically a sign of guilt despite what some people might think.

As I understand it it's not out of the realm of possibility for a lawyer to advise doing so even for completely innocent clients. It's not hard to get tripped up on the stand and sound guilty even when you aren't.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#228

Post by kbenson »

woodandsteel wrote: post #196
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…

Part of the problem for Uber is that, as is standard in acquisitions, Uber commissioned a due diligence report to try to determine the odds there was stolen IP involved when they were thinking of buying Levandowski's company. Now that ought to be evidence that Uber could use in its defense. Instead, Uber is going to extrordinary lengths to try to keep it out of the trial.

Sure. I'm not coming in on the side of Uber, I'm just calling into question the idea of taking Google's initial allegations, and the assumptions that are often made from them, as evidence instead of the actual filing which paints the story slightly differently.

Personally, I suspect we'll eventually fine out that Levandoswki - and others, check the filing - did steal trade secrets.

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#229

Post by Arizhel »

xhedley wrote: post #206
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 circumsta…

OK, but that still doesn't explain why it's a "spectacularly bad idea" for police/DA to not bother prosecuting in cases like this. What exactly are they supposed to do when they don't have a cooperative victim? Why is it not-stupid for the victim to avoid the costs of an adversarial court case, but it's stupid for the DA to avoid a case that he or she is guaranteed to lose?

Re: Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski

#230

Post by acchow »

hackunomatter wrote: post #160
bykovich2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Google owns a chunk of Uber, so I'm not sure they'd want to wipe out their investment?

Yeah, doesn't Google have something like a 6.7% stake in Uber? Even with share diluation by half, at a $60bn valuation that's still $2bn. Do we really think Google can win much more than $2bn in this Waymo lawsuit?
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