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Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

nytimes.com

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#331

Post by pgeorgi »

kragen wrote: post #325
pgeorgi wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. And blatant copyright violation is a common tool for up-and-coming countries (e.g. the US in the past) to jumpstart their creative sector. But at some point, they all begin to protect their own work (nowadays the US is among the fiercest proponents of a strong copyright). I suspect shanzhai will end, too.

You have the “protecting their work” part backwards. You and I agree that copyright stops people from working. So clearly the way to protect your work is to not be at risk of someone using copyright to stop your work; for example, you can protect your work by not having a copyright law. Lots of people in China have work because copyright is not strongly enforced, and their work is in danger if copyright starts being…

In Germany there's an old idiom of it being the "country of poets and thinkers", and when going back to its origins it wasn't primarily about Goethe and Kant, Germans, being exemplary intellectuals (as it is understood today), but about the lack of copyright enabling cheap reproduction, so just about everybody had poets and thinkers (no matter the nationality) on their bookshelf (when compared to countries with copyright such as Great Britain).

As cheap reproduction is an prerequisite for copyrightable artifacts (don't want to spend too much on creating copies after all), the first high value product in that space is reproduction. Once that infrastructure exists and running it becomes a bottom feeder (everybody can run a printing press), locking in artifacts and thereby recreating scarcity is more lucrative. And that's done through copyright.

Workers (such as the "lots of people in China") rarely enter the picture, it's about who owns the means of production of the highest value goods.

(side note: I'm not a fan of that scheme, but it seems rather inevitable given the incentives)

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#332

Post by zimpenfish »

ryacko wrote: post #324
Razengan wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. However something was "built" doesn't mean that those practices are ethical or should be continued, or be imitated by others trying to catch up to that thing. For (an extreme) example, many countries were built on the massacre of indigenous peoples. Most of them have stopped doing that now.

I think it could be argued that they ran out of indigenous peoples or those people have formed their own country.

Also possibly because it's a lot more difficult to cover these things up nowadays (but doesn't stop people trying; cf. Bolsonaro's attitude to indigenous people or denying flu vaccine to detained migrants on the US border.)

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#334

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

nathanvanfleet wrote: post #135
cletus wrote: post #53

The level of greed, hubris and stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes. This was actually a running joke at Google (while I was still there) to describe $120M as "1 Levadownski". Like Sundar one year was described as earning "only 1.7 Levadownskis" (he got paid $200M…

I think it's just a scenario where once you are in the big leagues that becomes the group you compare yourself to. I don't think about the kind of comp c-suite people get besides sometimes just being boggled by the concept. But if I was making that kind of money I'm sure I'd be seeing other people making a bit more and trying to get there just the same. But yeah I think that I would have the common sense to just bow…

It would be good if corporate culture didn't make such a point of promoting and rewarding people with obvious personality disorders.

Even if you think the ethics are irrelevant - a reach on its own, but let's go there for the sake of argument - how often does the money thrown at these people generate lasting and reliable ROI?

Or any ROI at all, in fact?

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#335

Post by choppaface »

hintymad wrote: post #122

Why did reporters keep calling Levandowski an engineer? He's really not, at least not for quite a number of years. Anyway, Levandowski was a lousy leader, and was really detrimental to Uber's ATG. He bloated ATG from fewer than 100 people to more than 2000 within less than a year, without paying the slightest attention to culture. As a result, the number of people grossly exceeded the quantity of work. Political infi…

Was Levandowski primarily responsible for the greedy hiring and in-fighting, or was that Eric Meyhofer? Meyhofer pre-dated Levandowski and notably was involved in disabling safety systems prior to the death of Elaine Herzberg. I've personally seen evidence of heavy in-fighting as early as May 2015.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/10/report-a-manager-at-ubers-...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#336

Post by jonathankoren »

ryacko wrote: post #321
jonathankoren wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just an absurd statement. Do you really think that somone is sitting in some cubical thinking, “Geez, how can I regulate purchase of ballpoint pens?” or anything else? That’s not how laws and regulations come about. I really wish someone would point to an example where any “freedom stealing” law in a democracy was the came from a bureaucrat rather than outside lobbyists. Because the way this common claptrap i…

Have you read FDA regulations on food labels? Flavor has to be at least printed in a twelve point font. It may be started by lobbyists, but bureaucrats while drafting something will come up with some good ideas of their own.

Responding to the technical merits of a 12 point font:

From what I remember as a high school yearbook editor, 12 point is standard text font size. (Yes, I know MS Word popularized 10 point.) Failing to specify a minimum legible font size would allow someone to print labels that were illegible thus defeating the purpose of disclosures, while maintaining technical compliance. It is an unreasonable expectation that people when purchasing food products at a grocery store to carry a 200x microscope. Given that you want to ensure legibility, I would certainly hope that a regulation would exist that specified what was legible was for say 90+% of the sighted population, and was still accessible to technological pocket readers for the blind.

In a related example, the FDA respecified nutrition labels due to lobbying about its illegibility and confusing layout. Now it’s larger, high constraint, and has simpler headings around total sugar. I remember when they changed, and it was due to successful lobbying from consumer, health, and senior citizen advocates. You can read about the history of nutrition labeling at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/

Now to respond to the point that bureaucrats are incentivized to minimize freedom. What freedom is being minimized? The freedom to deceive consumers? The freedom to obscure? These aren’t really freedoms in the public interest.

More importantly, you even conceded that the regulation was started by lobbyists, when the original argument was the a bureaucrat was being “incentivized” to steal Freedom(tm) from the populace.

Laws aren’t just vague ideas. They’re technical specifications. Sometimes these specifications are at odds with each other. Sometimes they’re over broad, or ineffective at achieving the original goal. Sometimes they’re simple regulatory capture, (Barber and hairdresser licensure does little to protect the public, but limits the number of practitioners. Same with revoking barber licenses for felons. But do you know who is the biggest supporter of cosmetology licenses? Cosmetologists.) Even the regulators know this, but simultaneously are powerless do anything about it, as they are not the ones who pass the laws. For instance, SF Planning commission famously posted this video about trying to open a restaurant in San Francisco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA

There is more evidence that police have ticket quotas than there is that bureaucrats have regulation quotas. (Show me a beat cop that still has his job after refusing to write any tickets, but rather simply uses his professional discretion to give verbal warnings.)

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#337

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Ascetik wrote: post #163
fstuff wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird walking away from 120 million but I think I might get what he was thinking. He was probably over confident with the tech, and thought it was close to roll out. He was also probably thinking the tech was worth billions. I bet Anthony felt he built the tech himself and he owned it. He probably wanted and felt like he deserved a bigger piece of the multi billon dollar self driving pie than just 120 million.

Imagine not being satisfied with 120 million dollars. Unreal to think about, but greed is never satisfied.

You can't even buy your own wide-body private jet or ultra-yacht with 120 million dollars.

https://www.businessinsider.com/most-luxurious-private-jets-...

https://www.beautifullife.info/automotive-design/worlds-top-...

If you're aiming for the billionaire narcissist bracket - because of course it's the lifestyle you deserve - 120 million is chump change.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#338

Post by choppaface »

fortran77 wrote: post #105
cletus wrote: post #53

The level of greed, hubris and stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes. This was actually a running joke at Google (while I was still there) to describe $120M as "1 Levadownski". Like Sundar one year was described as earning "only 1.7 Levadownskis" (he got paid $200M…

Perhaps he's innocent?

Well he appeared to take files from Google / Waymo's repo on the same day as he met with Uber about selling Otto (before Otto even existed). More importantly, Uber very explicitly paid (and handsomely so) for Levandowski's capacity (and a few others) to create lidar-- Uber allotted 20% of Otto golden handcuffs to building a lidar.

https://sc.cnbcfm.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/editor...

If he didn't actually deliver / use Google's files at Uber (I believe they actually may have found he didn't?), he was clearly trying to get the tech in his head and build a crib sheet for what was to come later.

In any case, today he paid $2m in bail and is wearing an ankle bracelet GPS monitor.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#339

Post by ryacko »

zimpenfish wrote: post #332
ryacko wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it could be argued that they ran out of indigenous peoples or those people have formed their own country.

Also possibly because it's a lot more difficult to cover these things up nowadays (but doesn't stop people trying; cf. Bolsonaro's attitude to indigenous people or denying flu vaccine to detained migrants on the US border.)

Cover up what? No one is interested in most of these wars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#340

Post by ryacko »

jonathankoren wrote: post #336
ryacko wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read FDA regulations on food labels? Flavor has to be at least printed in a twelve point font. It may be started by lobbyists, but bureaucrats while drafting something will come up with some good ideas of their own.

Responding to the technical merits of a 12 point font: From what I remember as a high school yearbook editor, 12 point is standard text font size. (Yes, I know MS Word popularized 10 point.) Failing to specify a minimum legible font size would allow someone to print labels that were illegible thus defeating the purpose of disclosures, while maintaining technical compliance. It is an unreasonable expectation that peop…

>There is more evidence that police have ticket quotas than there is that bureaucrats have regulation quotas.

Yes, it would not make sense that there are requirements to produce impacts that aren’t publicly noticeable, particularly when there are complaints of scarce resources.

Regardless, people have bosses and work multiplies. Maybe no one has no idea what they are doing, but someone has to have some self reflection that it is harmful.

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