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Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

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Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#151

Post by euix »

ridaj wrote: post #75
w0mbat wrote: post #50

This guy had such a sweet deal at Google originally, it staggers me that he'd go to these lengths to steal even more. He was getting a massive salarY, bonuses in the millions, and he had persuaded Google to pay him even more money through a side-hustle company of his while remaining an employee. Then he quits and steals their stuff.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's actually clearly correlated. The same underlying ego could've driven both the ambition and rewards he got at Google (after lots of rule-bending) and the brazen theft.

This. You see this behavior in gamblers who make it big and then lose it big, or in revenge trading. Make a lot of money then lose a lot of money. If you are even luckier you might even be net positive at the end.

People who know when to quit will usually not have made that much money in the first place because it's a different personality type almost.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#152

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

albacur wrote: post #92
gilrain wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A courtesy not afforded to the largely not-rich, not-white general prison population. I don't think Levandowski should be treated worse, just noting it would be nice if less privileged prisoners were treated as humanely.

You’re trying to make this into a race issue, when that’s not really the case here. The justice system in San Francisco bends over backwards to keep criminals of all races, classes, and backgrounds out of prison, and especially so with Covid-19.

Isn't this a Federal case?

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#153

Post by ponker »

teej wrote: post #149
cgb223 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God what kind of knowledge / training do I need to get that level of bonus?

This is the Google version of winning the lottery. Right place, right skills, right time.

No, you cannot compare becoming the world's best self-driving engineer to winning the lottery. This is like becoming Lebron James, it's tremendous talent combined with tremendous commitment.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#154

Post by lsllc »

bduerst wrote: post #134
dragonwriter wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cohen is mostly notable not because he was initially eligible for the general COVID-19 release to home confinement that the DOJ has set up, but because DOJ tried to unconstitutionally craft his conditions of release in a way to squelch his first amendment rights when they found out he was planning on releasing a book that would be embarrassing to the President.

I think GP was mixing it up with the President's chief Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, who was serving his 7.5 year sentence in prison and moved to home confinement for covid 19.

I did mean Cohen, not Manafort (Cohen was Trumps lawyer, Manafort his campaign manager) -- The GGP said "How many other criminals can avoid jail time right now due to the Covid threat?" and having recently seen an article about Michael Cohen being out of jail on furlough due to C19 (linked in my original post) I posted the link; from TFA:

"Cohen was released to furlough in late May as part of a release program undertaken by the Bureau of Prisons to address the coronavirus pandemic."

However, as dragonwriter points out, turns out Cohen 1) was writing a book possibly damaging to Trump and 2) had been out at restaurants in NYC possibly in violation of his furlough; again from TFA:

"A photographer from the New York Post captured Cohen dining at a restaurant near his apartment with his wife and another couple in early July. Cohen said that didn't violate the terms of his release."

The controversial part is that the DoJ put him back in jail, but it seems it might have been to prevent him from completing his book (and the ACLU successfully sued to get him released again).

This is the link I should have posted regarding his original release in May due to C19:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

(but good point, I didn't know that Manafort had also been released).

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#155

Post by bduerst »

ponker wrote: post #153
teej wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the Google version of winning the lottery. Right place, right skills, right time.

No, you cannot compare becoming the world's best self-driving engineer to winning the lottery. This is like becoming Lebron James, it's tremendous talent combined with tremendous commitment.

That's survivor bias though, isn't it? Hard to see the world's best self-driving engineers when they're not getting caught stealing trade secrets and forced to reveal compensation.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#156

Post by gorgoiler »

hannasanarion wrote: post #41

Why is the government throwing people in jail for leaking trade secrets? Trade secrets aren't supposed to have government protection, that's the entire point: they're risky. If you want a monopoly on your technology, you're supposed to file a patent. Trade secrets were invented as a riskier way to extend your monopoly by giving up government protection. If the government is going to give trade secrets the same protec…

In general, fraud is a criminal offense in most countries.

This is rightly so. Defrauding others of possessions or money is sufficiently aberrant that any criminal justice system worth its salt should bring prosecution.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#157

Post by devonkim »

illustriousbear wrote: post #64
w0mbat wrote: post #50

This guy had such a sweet deal at Google originally, it staggers me that he'd go to these lengths to steal even more. He was getting a massive salarY, bonuses in the millions, and he had persuaded Google to pay him even more money through a side-hustle company of his while remaining an employee. Then he quits and steals their stuff.

People in the security industry have told me that this sort of thing often comes down to ego and self-importance. In Intelligence, people have been caught selling state secrets for 10-20k a pop. The kind of secrets that can land you decades in jail. It makes no sense from a monetary standpoint.

Intelligence screening essentially tries to select for more financially conservative people and in the cases so far people only go that far due to extenuating situations like divorce, addictions, etc. rather than standard American Greed motive. Until relatively recently people didn’t make $500k+ / year as individual contractors or founding random boutique firms. As such, one of the oddities of the US IC demographics is that a really high number of them are Mormon. It helps explain the Salt Lake City presence and investment when most other sectors of technology are relatively lukewarm there.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#158

Post by ponker »

bonoboTP wrote: post #140

An honest and naive question from someone outside industry: where is the line between stealing trade secrets and taking your experience and expertise developed at another company to a new company. Where does a lesson learned during project X become taking the know-how of the company which it developed during project X? Because obviously the next company pays you so much because they see in your CV that you gained exp…

The unsatsifying answer is "there's a grey area and a judge and jury decide" but the Levandowksi case is 100 miles beyond the grey area.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#159

Post by tomc1985 »

klipt wrote: post #88
CarelessExpert wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trade secrets were invented as a riskier way to extend your monopoly by giving up government protection. You're definitely mistaken on that point. Trade secrets enjoy protection in the law, both in the US and worldwide: https://www.uspto.gov/ip-policy/trade-secret-policy > If the government is going to give trade secrets the same protection as patents (or even more, because patent infringement doesn't come with jai…

Pretty sure anyone could hire a few experts to duplicate the flavor of Coke exactly. Their moat is branding, partnerships and a huge distribution network, not some "secret recipe".

It's been accidentally disclosed a few times over the years. IIRC at some point someone offered to sell the recipe to Pepsi, and they refused on account of the legal mess it would put them in and perhaps a sense of honor

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#160

Post by ponker »

gilrain wrote: post #32
williamstein wrote: post #5

Much more interesting to me is that the article says "he will not need to report until threat of COVID-19 pandemic has passed." and "With no end to the COVID-19 pandemic in sight, it is possible that Levandowski’s latest lawsuit will be resolved before he even reports to jail."

A courtesy not afforded to the largely not-rich, not-white general prison population. I don't think Levandowski should be treated worse, just noting it would be nice if less privileged prisoners were treated as humanely.

A vast number of nonviolent inmates have been released in California:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

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