341–350 of 450 posts
18 months for this but the kid that hacked twitter and stole ~100k is facing life in prison. This seems insane.
Same logic as to why no one cared when Target was being looted a few weeks ago, "They have insurance".
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I understand why socialism appeals to people when they see so much suffering and inequality in the world. What I do not understand is why any scholars would cling to the labour theory of value in light of such things as multi-billionaire startup founders. It should be pretty clear to anyone at this point that all you need is a laptop, programming skills, a good idea, and a lot of luck to become a billionaire. You don…
> You don’t need thousands, let alone millions, of employees labouring for you. Name a company with a billion dollars in revenue that is, or could be, operated solely by someone with a laptop and programming skills.
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.
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In all seriousness: You shouldn't remote diagnose mental illnesses for anybody. It's totally frowned upon by psychiatrists and psychologists, who are experts in the field, because it's actually impossible and can do a lot of damage. This has nothing to do with Levandowski not being a full blown greedy asshole and now a criminal too. But the problem is really that doing that can potentially hurt people with mental iss…
> In all seriousness: You shouldn't remote diagnose mental illnesses for anybody. As a counterargument: I am extremely annoyed by the people who publicly criticize the personal traits of others without even considering that they might be affected by a mental disorder.
For example we can choose to have sympathy and empathy for Kanye West during his public struggles. (Or not. I'm not telling anybody what to do. I don't have strong feelings about the guy myself.)
We can recognize that yes, clearly, the man is struggling with something. We can also simultaneously refrain from hamfistedly trying to figure out what, specifically, he's struggling with.
Why is white collar crime punished with such light sentences? I could have got that sentence for house breaking, or shoplifting to the value of $5k. I could get a lot more for dealing drugs to a few friends. Steal $100m and get 18 months, starting when the world is a nicer place. The world really is set up for rich people.
B&E also causes psychological harm to the people whose house you invaded so that increases its severity over a simple theft.
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.
>bonuses in the millions Hundreds of millions. As part of breaching his employment agreement by stealing trade secrets, Levandowski had to pay back one of his bonuses, which was $120 million . I mean, part of paying this type of comp is to retain talent. How much more should Google have paid to retain him? Or was this even preventable?
“Would I ever leave this company? Look, I'm all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I'm being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most.”
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It's likely Levandowski has narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), as is evident by his founding The Way of The Future , which is his own church to worship artificial intelligence.
You cannot seriously believe “narcissistic personality disorder” is a real thing, right? This has to be the most “it came from social media” I’ve read on HN in a while. Every personality trait you don’t like or is difficult to deal with is not a “disorder”
A disorder is not an excuse for one's behavior.
A disorder just means, hey, there's something here that's out of the normal. A recognition of something that people struggle with.
Does Levandowski have some kind of disorder? I really have no opinion; I haven't followed this case and refrain from amateur diagnoses in general.
But it is not normal to steal hundreds of millions of dollars (or hundreds of millions of dollars worth of things) and if a person has a longstanding pattern of shitty behavior then yeah, there's something going on there that's worth figuring out.
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.
What, just from looking at all the massive and excessive fraud and graft and "disruption", aka, destruction, of the economy that we have just alone witnessed in our lifetime that is any different than what Levandowski thought he could maybe also get away with on an individual level. He just didn't realize he had to diffuse what he was doing and not make himself an individual and identifiable target.
Just alone China has been pillaging and stealing in every conceivable manner over just the last 25 years or so; from all out hacking, to buying up tech companies and IP, to placing engineers in our Universities Inc., to basic industrial espionage, to immigration to place industrial spies in our tech companies, and on and on and on … to little more than the muted chirp of crickets.
What would make Levandowski think that he could not have gotten away with what he was doing when we have witnessed nothing but the very same kinds of law and ethical and moral depravity all across the board from top to bottom, left to right, and front to back for decades now? Tech companies have perverted and sold out our whole society as a function of even deeper graft and corruption for many decades now, I am not at all surprised that Levandowski thought he too could get a piece of action; he just made the mistake of not running in a pack like in DC or on "Wall Street" on in the tech sector. He stood out and strayed from the pack in a noticeable manner so they needed to pick him off to avoid wider recognition of what is really going on as we careen off the rails.
To put a point on it, it is precisely the utterly permissive, corrupt, and rotten state of not only the whole tech industry; but our whole society and failed and inherently illegitimate government that are the cause of someone like him thinking he could get away with what he did. Because let's be frank, it was a solid bed that he would have gotten away with it considering what everyone else has gotten away with for many decades now.
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>Google Maps basically showed the GIS crowd how their work oughta have been done all this time. With a corporate sponsor willing to sink billions of dollars into a project with potentially no upside?
That's how any company should act. If you stop spending money with the risk of no upside, you'll be dead in a decade or two.
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.
Although it does not surprise me one bit that you express such a sentiment as it is likely the most common one from that perspective; it is the result of the whole tech industry and even economy that is and has long been a kind of extreme mania of permissiveness and pillage, with next to no push back that would have possibly moderated such behavior, both on a systemic and the personal level that this is an example of…