Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

danielcompton.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 542 posts

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#231

Post by wavefunction »

wh-uws wrote: post #124
NathanKP wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They work fantastically. Ride Austin is actually way better than Uber in my opinion. In fact even if Uber and Lyft decided to start following the city regulations and return to Austin I would probably never use either in Austin again, simply because I prefer the non profit approach that respects drivers and gives them a much higher percentage.

Ride Austin is far from "way better" on par when the service works maybe but hardly better. This past Saturday none of the ride sharing services could handle demand and all went down. No riders could request and an no drivers could accept. Also when the service does work glitches like seeing the login screen when you are already logged in are routine. Source: I'm in Austin right now for sxsw and I'm a former Austin r…

I disagree with your "tax grab" angle since there is no evidence of that. Unless you mean that the city of Austin was somehow going to make money off fingerprinting?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#232

Post by michaelt »

GCA10 wrote: post #132
MagnumOpus wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Ventures owns only 6% of Uber. If they can drag this out sufficently, then Uber cannot IPO, will have burnt all their cash - and the whole company will be at the mercy of their biggest creditor who just got awarded a billion-dollar penalty payment.

The math still doesn't work. Right now 6% of Uber is worth about $4 billion, if you believe the latest venture valuation. (Make adjustments as you see fit.) If this is litigated until Uber collapses in a heap of dust, Google ends up owning 100% of a heap of dust. No money left to pay off the judgment. Most of the talent is gone, and the folks that remain are hardly motivated to rebuild the business for their new mast…

  The math still doesn't work.
If the article's predictions come true, gaining control of Uber isn't Google's only motivation. They have a secondary motivation: To set a precedent that serves as an example to other people who have the opportunity to sell or buy their trade secrets.

If there's a $680 million prize for a successful theft, and people think the chances of being caught are low, you'll need a big penalty to act as an effective deterrent.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#233

Post by gumby »

dnautics wrote: post #220
gumby wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I am ready to believe almost anything derogatory about Kalanick up to and including eating bbq'd babies with mayonnaise (yuck), the idea of "stealing a company concept" is pretty lame. Lyft started with a different business snd pivoted to Uber's (itself all a pivot?). Did Lyft "steal the concept?"

Not quite. Uber started as a hailing black car effort, then Lyft pivoted from ridesharing to hailing 'common cars' over a Hackathon iirc, and then Uber pivoted to uberX. History aside, this 'copying of ideas' is distinct since someone independent is reimplementing a general concept (which is not really protectable). You would be hard pressed to argue that burger king stole McDonald's idea of selling hamburgers, for e…

> I think in the Uber/Otto case the theft is pretty specific.

I agree 100%. When you wrote "stole the concept" I thought you meant Uber's original business approaches.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#234

Post by te_chris »

_audakel wrote: post #213
beamatronic wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly and not to mention, people aren't the only thing that needs to be taxied around.

i never understood why something like food / grocery delivery never took off with lyft/uber. they could partner with costco and do deliveries. I would love that.

UberEATS

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#235

Post by joering2 »

ufmace wrote: post #224
beamatronic wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the illegal part of this? This happens all the time in the Valley. Did they actually steal source code?

The allegation is that he stole ~10GB of mechanical and electrical drawings for various essential parts, including the custom LIDAR. They claim to have forensic logs of his laptop of him downloading them and copying them to a memory card

> They claim to have forensic logs of his laptop of him downloading them and copying them to a memory card

Sounds like a farytale to me, unless those logs are captures and stored independently then otherwise anyone can claim having any kind of evidence against anyone involved.

Besides, there might be many reasons of him doing that, let the backup be one.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#236

Post by clubm8 »

NathanKP wrote: post #15
Analemma_ wrote: post #3

Yeah, this is a big deal. Uber has gambled everything on self-driving cars, what with their absurd burn rate and all. If that gets shut down because of trade secret injunctions, I don't think they have time to pivot to another strategy, especially after their reputation has nosedived.

I'll be really interested in seeing what happens if Uber can't recover from the burn rate and make a sustainable business without self driving. I can see in the best possible scenario we end up with more cities like Austin, Texas that have their own nonprofit ride sharing app. I actually have huge respect for what Austin did in banning Uber and Lyft and making their own app (Ride Austin) that isn't designed to make i…

One thing no one seems to talk about: a large chunk of the Uber drivers I've encountered are also Lyft drivers.

If large chunks of people ditch Uber, Lyft could stand to grab the lion's share of the market.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#237

Post by Applejinx »

sschueller wrote: post #165
dantiberian wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bombshell part specifically would be Levandowski arranging with Uber to steal Waymo tech, form Otto, and Uber would acquire Otto. In all of the reporting I read about this after the first filing, this was missed.

With everything that has gone on at Uber including a former friend of Travis' accusing him of stealing the company concept itself, something like this wouldn't be a Surprise.

It must be very confusing and frustrating for the guy. It's just like Enron: all that behavior is super wonderful and exciting and disruptive and rewarding, until suddenly it's not.

The kind of person who does this stuff, really doesn't understand even the concept of 'crossing a line', or indeed legality. Hence, it seems to them really offensive that anyone should get in their way, and up TO that point their self-confidence carries them and helps persuade others that they're the golden boy.

The real lesson is 'how did we get here in the first place'. It's easy to bust the biggest megastar and make a story of hubris and disastrous, Icarus-like fall, but isn't it the very same system that put them there at that valuation?

The rule seems to be 'Seem like the biggest monster around, but if we catch you actually BEING it, you're busted'.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#238

Post by habosa »

harryh wrote: post #29

Uber passengers only pay 41% of the cost of trips, with investor capital making up the difference FWIW this assertion (which isn't really core to the central thesis of the post, but still) is wrong. That number comes from https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unic... but the author of that story misread the data. Uber only counts their cut as revenue not the full cost of the ride. Despite this repet…

Can you explain further what was wrong with the calculation? This number is widely reported and yours is the first refutation I've seen.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#239

Post by cdolan »

coleca wrote: post #183

What happened with Uber's Pittsburgh research facility? I thought that was the hub for their self-driving car program? http://fortune.com/2016/03/21/uber-carnegie-mellon-partnersh...

It's still chugging along. Volvos and Ford Focus with LiDAR scoot around town daily. The ATC (advanced technology center) is fully staffed and operational. Pittsburgh also recently got some sort of certification/designation as a sort of "robotic testing ground" for autonomous driving, I think by the US government?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#240

Post by Applejinx »

r00fus wrote: post #212
pm90 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the new apps do suffer with reliability issues in periods of high loads. e.g. I would not, from experience, trust fasten to get me back home at 2.30am on a weekend night (even if I'm willing to pay their "boosted" fares). Its not an unsolvable problem though. I bet if they could hire more/better engineers and invest in infra for reliability they could be a lot better. And it might actually happen if Uber…

What happens when Google, Apple, Amazon or other company with a solid cloud app team steps in? Austin's homegrown competitors may not be fearful, but one of the existing majors could single-handedly shatter Uber's image with a half-decent app, esp if it's integrated with something like Google Maps or Apple Wallet or equivalent feed.

Why could this not be a public service? Sort of like the very public highways the cars drive on.
Post reply on HN