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Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

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

#191

Post by tssva »

engineeringwoke wrote: post #168
chongli wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even in this case. Does Anthony Levandowski deserve to become homeless and destitute for what he did? No. This is going to hurt him far, far more than what he did could ever have hurt Google. Yeah, maybe Google would have lost more than this on paper, but definitely not in terms of marginal utility. Google remains an extremely wealthy and powerful company and now Anthony is broke.

He should've gone to jail, like people are supposed to when they commit fraud.

He may go to prison. He is facing a 33 count federal indictment. The trial is scheduled for January 2021.

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

#192

Post by dijksterhuis »

martin_a wrote: post #182
dijksterhuis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing to load for me on iOS...? Can’t stand the TechCrunch Cookie Monster.

Hm, sorry, works on my Desktop with Firefox. Ah, take the text, it's not that long: --- Anthony Levandowski, the engineer and autonomous vehicle startup founder who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has been ordered to pay $179 million to end a contract dispute over his departure from Google. Reuters was the first to report the court order. An arbitration panel ruled in December tha…

Thanks!

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

#193

Post by omarhaneef »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #177
dodobirdlord wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pers…

Not taking sides here but want to point out one thing:

When I took the Uber self driving cab in Pittsburgh (randomly called on my Uber), there were two people in the car.

One person was a driver, and the other person was in the passenger seat with a laptop. They were both very polite. The person with the laptop was very focused and watched the sensors take in information.

The driver -- at least in my case -- was very cautious and almost never let the car do anything by itself. He was almost driving it the whole time.

This is right after Uber brought over the team from Carnegie Mellon (so 2015 ish?).

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

#194

Post by govg »

angry_octet wrote: post #131
nilkn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that style might not be to everyone’s taste, that sentence definitely is grammatically correct and does not have any comma splices. Personally I don’t find it that awkward either.

Is is really meaningful, as a defence, to say a sentence is grammatically correct, if the meaning is unclear or the style is wretched? Instead we should ask, if a sentence is unclear and wretchedly wrought, what purpose is served in pointing out its grammatical correctness? That is like admiring a two legged horse. The author was no doubt under a tight deadline and just bashing it out with even less thought than I gi…

Misquoting Futurama, "they are technically correct, the best kind of correct."

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

#195

Post by 0xcafecafe »

philshem wrote: post #164

Some backstory (2018) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal...

Good read. This made me chuckle

"Even the Levandowskis’ nanny assumed a minor role in the drama, when she filed a multimillion-dollar suit of her own, claiming that Anthony had been emotionally abusive to her, and that he had a drawer that was filled with sex toys. (The lawsuit, which offered no evidence of her claims and contained multiple factual errors, was eventually dropped.)"

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

#196

Post by Mvandenbergh »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #147
pembrook wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a mid-century Hollywood myth that just won't die. Even when it was still possible to do so, a tiny, tiny minority of Rich Americans were actually evading taxes by hiding money overseas. Today, it's virtually impossible to hide money overseas as an American after FATCA and various other crackdowns unless you are willing to entirely give up your US citizenship. Since the $USD is the reserve currency of the worl…

Have you ever heard of the Panama Papers?

The above is the reason why there were very few Americans in those papers. They're not worth the risk.

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

#197

Post by swiley »

tozeur wrote: post #12

A friend of mine heard his personal attorney speak at a law school class. Even his attorney thought Anthony was a “jackass” for stealing the IP; his defense fell on him being an engineer who, at the end of the day, just wanted to build cool shit and wasn’t malicious.

I feel like this stuff should be public anyway, we’ve already had one person die over a company using “IP” to keep secrets.

Maybe what he did was wrong but I don’t like calling him a “jackass.”

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

#198

Post by emiliobumachar »

bogomipz wrote: post #166

>"However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M." Could someone with a legal background say what this means in practical terms? Stating you have assets worth "between $50M and $100M" while declaring bankruptcy obviously looks absurd on it's face but I'm guessing there's muc…

I have nowhere close to a legal background, but I think I understand what's going on here.

First, there's zero incentives for him to be precise. If the upper bound is far below his debts, he'll end up with zero regardless of whether he owns 50M or 100M or 150M.

There are incentives for him to be right. Putting incorrect numbers in a legal document is a faux pass at best, and at worse can be assumed to be malicious.

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

#199

Post by Mvandenbergh »

bogomipz wrote: post #166

>"However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M." Could someone with a legal background say what this means in practical terms? Stating you have assets worth "between $50M and $100M" while declaring bankruptcy obviously looks absurd on it's face but I'm guessing there's muc…

Well, $100M is a lot less than $197M. Bankruptcy doesn't mean "out of money" it means that you have debts that you have no way of paying. I would expect a bankruptcy court to force him to liquidate almost all of that $100M to pay the judgement. I don't know if an arbitration judgement like this can be discharged through bankruptcy, some judgements and penalties cannot.

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

#200

Post by ewidar »

bogomipz wrote: post #166

>"However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M." Could someone with a legal background say what this means in practical terms? Stating you have assets worth "between $50M and $100M" while declaring bankruptcy obviously looks absurd on it's face but I'm guessing there's muc…

I don't get your question. He is asked to pay $179M, he "only" has between $50M and $100M, hence he is technically bankrupt.
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