Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#171

Post by murderfs » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 10:27 AM UTC

dodobirdlord wrote: post #160

tomp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between a court and a contract like that is that the court is impartial and has a clear bar of criminality ("innocent until proven guilty" to some standard of proof), whereas it's always in the company's interest to fire you at a mere accusation of a potential crime (or non-criminal wrongdoing)...

Which is why, when you're selling a company for hundreds of millions of dollars in unvested stock, you don't sign a deal where the buyer can fire you for "mere accusations of a potential crime". Uber lost the lawsuit with Google and had to pay a quarter of a billion dollars. I'm sure their contract said something like "if you have materially misrepresented information to us that results in us getting sued for a quart…

Even if the contract doesn't say anything like that, they can still fire you. Misrepresenting information as part of contract negotiation is fraud.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#172

Post by Tepix » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

mikejb wrote: post #133

zanek wrote: post #3

Levandowski just filed for bankruptcy saying he has less than $100M in assets . Does anyone know if he will only pay a percentage or is only delaying this by kicking the can down the road to another court ? I would be highly surprised if his employer (Uber) shouldered any of the this

Is his church bankrupt, too? I'd start there.

The website (which consists of exactly one static page) is still up. Did it ever go anywhere? They used to have a signup form for a newsletter. It disappeared.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#173

Post by Tepix » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 10:33 AM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #155

mikejb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Levandowski started a Church, around the time shit started to fall around him. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of his money is hiding there.

A church? If that isn't a crooked move, I don't know what is. Kind of fits the picture, so.

http://www.wayofthefuture.church/

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#174

Post by tempestn » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 10:52 AM UTC

mikejb wrote: post #156

scarejunba wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never actually used the stolen tech, right? It wasn't good enough. They hit the pedestrian solely on their own tech, which (clearly, in hindsight) wasn't good enough either.

It wasn't disclosed on whether stolen IP was used - Uber had (still have?) to cooperate with Waymo, inspecting their hardware and software stack. The pedestrian ultimately got hit because a lot of fallback systems failed: They disabled the software's ability to emergency-break (1), they disabled the cars' systems to emergency break, and the operator of the vehicle was distracted, not reacting in time. (1) This was ac…

You want the car to brake in an emergency, definitely not to break.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#175

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 11:13 AM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #173

hef19898 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A church? If that isn't a crooked move, I don't know what is. Kind of fits the picture, so.

http://www.wayofthefuture.church/

I saw the John Oliver show on televangelists. But TAHT is accepted as an official church? Really? Humans in support of AI working on a peaceful transition yo humans and machines ruling the world?

But hey, if it helps to hide away millions of dollar, I guess why not?

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#176

Post by smackmybishop » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 11:13 AM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #165

throw03172019 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t he make tens of millions at Google as an employee as well? That is a lot of money to blow through (plus) assuming a nice chunk of Uber stock from Otto.

How does an employee make tens of millions? Was he a very early employee or did Google acquire a company he founded?

Neither, and it was hundreds of millions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/waymos-uber-lawsuit-reveals-...

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#177

Post by Super_Jambo » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 11:16 AM UTC

dodobirdlord wrote: post #162

shuwusxuu2he wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prosecutors, even high profile/positioned ones, have a finite amount of resources. At the end of the day it might be romantic to go after a megacorp but a prosecutor's job is to persue justice against criminals, you might get a few high profile executive types and justice for one family (if you're the type to consider beyond the defendant) but with those same resources and time you could probably lock up at least twe…

But moreover, it's totally unreasonable that anyone would have gone to jail as a result of this, except again, maybe the driver. The driver was literally being paid to monitor the vehicle. How is an argument that high profile executive types were engaging in criminal negligence going to fly, when the bar for legal driving is already that 1 person is in the car nominally paying attention?

Because the driver was given an impossible task in order to save money for the company. They were required to both fill in information on a tablet and monitor the car. It's not even clear that monitoring a semi-self driving car is even possible. Constant vigilance for the 2% of edge cases where it might crash is harder than just driving. Uber had previously used two people to do this task but had switched to one person.

Executives must be prosecuted when their money saving results in deaths or else there is no incentive for them not to make this trade off.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#178

Post by mkl » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 11:19 AM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #165

throw03172019 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t he make tens of millions at Google as an employee as well? That is a lot of money to blow through (plus) assuming a nice chunk of Uber stock from Otto.

How does an employee make tens of millions? Was he a very early employee or did Google acquire a company he founded?

$120 million in "Incentive pay": https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/04/04/anthony-...

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#179

Post by daemin » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 11:24 AM UTC

ivanvanderbyl wrote: post #50

loeg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His company existed for a seven months in 2016 before being bought by Uber. It isn't clear (to me) if there were third party investors or what the cap table was, broadly. Purportedly 90 employees at time of sale to Uber.

I don't know what the CGT situation is in America, but in Australia of you own an asset (shares, property, etc) for less than 12 months before sale, capital gains tax kicks up to about 50%.

Australian here as well.

If you own things and sell them for a capital loss you get a tax credit to use later.

If you sell for a capital gain within 12 months then you will pay tax on the full amount of profit from the sale. For individuals this is just added to your income tax.

If you sell for a capital gain having held the asset for over 12 months you get a 50% discount to how much profit is taxed.

The tax credit for a capital loss can be used to offset a capital gain but it gets applied before any discount is applied.

I am not an accountant but I have listened to one.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#180

Post by jstewartmobile » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 11:25 AM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #135

It feels perverse that when Uber's stolen technology killed a pedestrian, nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed. But the person who stole that technology was indicted and is getting financially destroyed.

perverse, yet not surprising