Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by Anthony-G » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:07 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #367

Anthony-G wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why this post is being down-voted as it clearly states one of the foundations of socialism. A quick (and very) simplified summary of the traditional socialist perspective is that in capitalism, the vast majority of the population must work as wage-earners (proletariat) to provide the means to sustain their life. A much smaller group of people (capitalists or bourgeoisie) own the means of production…

> As well as these two primary classes, there are other (smaller) classes in capitalist society, Not really smaller, the lumpenproletariat and petit bourgeoisie are each generally both numerically larger than the haut bourgeoisie . Less important in terms of the basic class conflict, but not smaller.

I wrote that synopsis quickly and expected some nit-picking but that's an excellent correction. Thanks.

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

#432

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:10 AM UTC

breck wrote: post #412

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If all of the people who say they won't create without monopoly profits Trade secrets and monopoly profits are different things. The source code for your business' software is a trade secret, even if you don't have a monopoly. It would be untenable to produce software for profit if any of your employees could walk off with your source code after your investment and set up a competing business selling the same thing…

> It would be untenable to produce software for profit if any of your employees could walk off with your source code after your investment and set up a competing business selling the same thing at a cut rate. You can still ask your employees to keep things secret, of course. Just without government as your enforcer. What would generally happen is you'd have to sweeten the terms of employment to make sure your people…

All the software you cited is basically server infrastructure software. I suppose that depending on your definition of important, you could say that this is the majority of important software. Perhaps if important includes only what is needed to develop web properties. But there are a lot of people who use software besides web developers. I don't really buy that your list names even close to the majority of important software by most folks' reckoning of what's important.

Some important (to me and many other people) software you didn't mention:

    * Everything besides generic infrastructure that makes
      any web property work (Google, Bing, Netflix, Facebook,
      Amazon, DropBox, Personal Capital, etc.).
    * Microsoft Windows
    * Microsoft Office
    * Mac OS X
    * Nearly all games
    * Nearly everything that makes any given bank work
    * The Adobe Creative Suite
    * Any popular Android or iOS app

I'd guess that the number of people working on the pieces of software I mention here exceeds those working on your list by at least one if not two or three orders of magnitude. I doubt much of it would be economically viable except for government protection of intellectual property.

Anyway, fortunately, the government will likely to continue to protect IP in the foreseeable future. It's working pretty well so far.

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

#433

Post by CarbyAu » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:28 AM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #375

simonh wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty broad brush you’re slapping about there. If you listen to Marxists, employing people to do anything you yourself benefit from is inherently abusive. Property is theft! Or you could ask my father in law what he thinks about that, having grown up under Mao.

A company making N billion in revenue is a lot different than its profit, and LOT different than an individual making even one billion of personal wealth. There's a reason the adage is not about millionaires. 1 million, 10 million, even 100 million isn't really "world-changing" amount of money. But 1 billion is , and there are currently just over 2500 people in the world that have at least 1 billion in personal wealt…

I agree with you and want to expand on:"People don't really understand just how much a billion dollars actually is."

Billion and it's larger cousin, Trillion(etc and so forth), really are hard for the human mind to grasp.

From: https://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-develop-a-sense-...

One strategy is to rescale. So, if I am worth 1 million (I wish!) then someone worth 1 billion could treat things as though they were 1000 times cheaper than me. If you could get a $1000 per night hotel for $1 per night, that might change how you live. Further examples left to the reader.

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

#434

Post by CarbyAu » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:36 AM UTC

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #301

timavr wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any non-violent crimes we should not send people to prison. I don't even know why it became a criminal matter. Civil courts can do that job really well. If we prosecute everyone who took information from the previous job, then there will no sales people left. I don't know any SaaS sales person who doesn't take their sales funnel with them.

That would mean that rich people could just do non-violent crime without any real consequences. The risk to be caught is way too small to outweigh the rewards of those crimes. It would still be a benefit for them in the long term.

The rich already can do a lot without any real consequences. Fines are for poor people.

Fines for minor matters should be % based somehow. (I don't know how!)

My $150 parking ticket should be their $15,000 parking ticket.

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

#435

Post by CarbyAu » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:38 AM UTC

FrozenSynapse wrote: post #333

jackric wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your definition of non-violent? I think the following bad behavior deserves jail time: Signal man distracted on TikTok causes train crash Fraudster electronically steals retirement savings Pedophile gets child to do stuff over the internet Driver repeatedly drives drunk, though never hits anyone

Corrupt politicians should work without pay for 5-10 years and all wealth confiscated.

I would argue that rules should pay attention to "motivation". When you say the politician should "work", I hope you mean "breaking rocks" or "brick laying" rather than continuing as a politician...

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

#436

Post by Anthony-G » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:55 AM UTC

tacocataco wrote: post #370

Anthony-G wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why this post is being down-voted as it clearly states one of the foundations of socialism. A quick (and very) simplified summary of the traditional socialist perspective is that in capitalism, the vast majority of the population must work as wage-earners (proletariat) to provide the means to sustain their life. A much smaller group of people (capitalists or bourgeoisie) own the means of production…

Can you recommend leftist authors other then marx and Engle? I've read their stuff but I'm open to more. Appreciate your time. Peace

I’m not as well-read as I’d like to be (thanks, Internet) so I can’t be of much help. I’ve read a fair bit of Chomsky but his writing focuses more on modern topics such as US foreign policy and the influence of the media in democratic societies.

I used to be an anarchist (libertarian socialist) and was very much inspired by the accomplishments of the CNT and FAI in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 [1]. The book that I remember most from those days was “The ABC of Communist Anarchism” [1] by Alexander Berkman which explains in plain language the ideas and philosophy of libertarian communism. Being Irish and interested in history, I also read James Connolly’s “Labour in Irish History” [2] where he argued that class solidarity was more important to the cause of freedom than pure nationalism. I was also strongly influenced by the Orwell classics, “1984”, “Animal Farm” and “Homage to Catalonia”. Most of these books are free of the jargon and overly academic language that many leftist authors are wont to use.

Nowadays, I still consider myself to be a socialist, albeit a sceptical one. I’m always open to learning more about history, economics and human nature. I find myself seeing the conservative perspective on a number of issues and I despise the divisiveness of cancel culture and the modern incarnation of identity politics as being antithetical to the ideals of socialism. Anyhow, I’ve had “The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists” on my to-read list for some time (now that I’ve publicly said it, I better stop procrastinating and actually do it).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_and_After

3. https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lih/

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthr...

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

#437

Post by omarforgotpwd » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 4:02 AM UTC

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.

He wanted to ship the technology, not just get paid a lot of money.

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

#438

Post by bduerst » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #308

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that in his case the bonus was paid based on Project Chauffeur hitting certain milestones. They retained him until the project hit the milestones, and then he left. Which is fair and square. And by the way, Chris Urmson and Sebastian Thrun did the same. It's just that Google did not understand the Goodhart law of self driving, which states that you can hit arbitrarily hard milestones and yet get nowhere near r…

Has anyone seen any good hard milestones that would validate that self driving progress is being made? Even the framework?

Yes - dunno what GP is talking about because there are tangible milestones for working self driving:

https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-level...

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

#439

Post by simonh » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 11:25 AM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #375

simonh wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty broad brush you’re slapping about there. If you listen to Marxists, employing people to do anything you yourself benefit from is inherently abusive. Property is theft! Or you could ask my father in law what he thinks about that, having grown up under Mao.

A company making N billion in revenue is a lot different than its profit, and LOT different than an individual making even one billion of personal wealth. There's a reason the adage is not about millionaires. 1 million, 10 million, even 100 million isn't really "world-changing" amount of money. But 1 billion is , and there are currently just over 2500 people in the world that have at least 1 billion in personal wealt…

Being a billionaire isn't about money, it's about ownership. Take Warren Buffet as an example, Buffet is "worth" 71 Billion dollars, but what does that actually mean?

Buffet doesn't have a vault full of 71bn dollar notes. His wealth almost entirely consists of the ownership of Berkshire Hathaway stock. That means that wealth consists of factories, media companies, property, mines, shops, warehouses and hundreds of thousands of people doing productive work.

So by and large, and there are exceptions of course, most billionaires are so because they lead and own huge businesses doing work on which our entire civilisation depends. They gained that control through being effective leaders that know how to build efficient and productive enterprises that employ people like you and me.

So what's the alternative? Appropriating their wealth would also involve removing their ownership and leadership of those businesses, and handing it to who? On what pretext, and to who's benefit?

Personally I have no problem with people being successful like that. What I think can be a problem is what happens to that wealth when those people die. If a person obtains vast wealth through hard work and contributing to society that's fine, but inheriting that kind of wealth is a different question. I think there's a reasonable case to be made for much higher inheritance taxes and regulation of trust funds.

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

#440

Post by pnutjam » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

negamax wrote: post #390

pnutjam wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean no socialist country that hasn't been under constant attack by the majority of non-socialist countries.

Please create your socialist utopia and make it work. Why change US and other successful countries?

Never claimed I could or wanted to, just pointing out that it's disingenuous to claim these systems fail in a vacuum because they are inherently flawed.