Mostly unrelatedly, this part seems particularly shitty:
> In fact, Uber had considered acquiring Tyto in 2015 but declined to do so at that time. Tyto was ultimately acquired by Otto with Uber’s consent and at Uber’s request prior to Uber closing on its acquisition of Otto to secure a lower price for Tyto than what Tyto would have requested had it known that Uber was the acquirer.
> Specifically, Uber was aware that Mr. Levandowski had facilitated the relationship between Tyto’s founder and its investor, a holding company managed by Mr. Stojanovski that invested funds provided by two irrevocable trusts formed for the benefit of Mr. Levandowski’s children, and would visit Tyto and his friends at that company to talk about technical and business matters from time to time. Uber was also aware of Pierre Droz’ (a Google employee) allegations that Mr. Levandowski was involved with Tyto and even deposed him extensively on that very topic during the Waymo litigation.
Part of Google's claims (rightly, imo, though ianal) was that Levandowski had a stake or outright controlled Tyto while he was at Google and before he had even formed Otto.
Just before your quoted section shows how shady the whole thing was.
>Uber’s claims were false. Uber accepted Mr. Levandowski’s tender of indemnity only after Google’s commencement of the arbitration proceeding alleging claims relating to Tyto and only after Mr. Levandowski had been interviewed by Uber extensively about Google’s allegations relating to Tyto. In addition, Mr. Levandowski’s devices given to Stroz had extensive information about Tyto on them. And Stroz had specifically identified other materials on Mr. Levandowski’s devices that he had not disclosed during interviews.
This is basically Uber saying (among other things) "yeah, we didn't know you were connected to Odin Wave/Tyto that Google is making claims about, that's outside the indemnity agreement."
And his response is "Oh no, you totally knew"
If I found out that my new employer/acquirer was dishonest to get me on board with the terms we ended up on, sure they "won" the negotiation in a way they're entitled to, but it's going to sour the relationship for good reason and I'd say it's bad behavior that makes the ecosystem worse for all of us.
But Levandowski screwed over his friend by getting him a lower price than he would have gotten.
This isn't CVS and Coke, this is one friend buying from another, only to turn around and flip it for more immediately.
> As a result of Uber’s breaches, Mr. Levandowski has suffered damages in an amount to be proven at trial, which amount should be at least $4.128 billion.
Here's an excerpt from a New Yorker article about the case:
> The judge, William Alsup, quickly tired of such distractions. “Despite the excellent quality of the lawyers here, I cannot trust what they say,” he announced in court. The documents he was being shown, he said, included “a lot of half-truth” and arguments that were “not quite accurate.” Alsup clearly thought that something unseemly had occurred, writing in one ruling that Levandowski had resigned from Waymo “under highly suspicious circumstances,” and that the “14,000-plus purloined files likely contain at least some trade secrets.” He also noted that “it would strain credulity to imagine that Levandowski plundered Waymo’s vault the way he did with no intent to make use of the downloaded trove.” Yet Alsup wasn’t sure if Waymo had demonstrated that any of its information had been used in an illegal manner. “If you can’t prove that Uber got these trade secrets, then maybe you’re in a world of trouble,” he told Waymo’s lawyers.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal...
Faced with a weak case, Google settled quietly for 0.33% of Uber's stock, which is no tiny amount, but definitely not a landmark settlement.
The more concerning part is that:
1. Google pursued Lewandowski with the help of federal prosecutors, using the threat of criminal trade secret charges and
2. He was essentially abandoned by both his former employer and his current employer. The former attacked him to punish him for wrongdoing and to set an example. Uber abandoned him because he became too risky now that he became a weak point that could be exploited in court.
This feels like too much leverage for a former employer to have, regardless of whether you were truly guilty or not. In fact, I think the outcome would have been similar had Lewandowski stolen nothing at all.
If you or I did any of those things we'd have been crucified. The fact that he's still standing is a testament to our dual legal system, one for the wealthy and powerful and one for the normals. Had he just left without stealing the IP he'd be fine. He even could have gotten away with violating his non-solicit agreement. The fact that nobody can prove he used the stolen material doesn't really apply.
Google and every Silicon Valley company provide bonuses to employees for creating patents(they do not verify if it's your actual work just patent away and bonuses are given). Thus and to me This dude is just doing what he saw while at Google and what it's culture (including Silicon Valley's) taught him.
Google going full force after him isn't surprising yet the hypocrisy of it all is disgusting!
This is gross misrepresentation of what happened. It’s not some smart, lone engineer leaving for competition and bringing some good ideas from previous employees with him.
It’s an executive (with a technical background, but still), paid insane amount of money, deciding to steal majority of trade secrets for an unreleased product, developed by thousands of people, just so he can sell it to a competitor for an obscene amount of money.
It’s not a little guy vs big corp. It’s a greedy and ruthless executive vs corporation.
That's just asking to be sued.
In fact, the major requirement for him to be acquired by Uber was that they indemnify him. He knew he did something wrong.
What's the rule on this? two weeks? three months? two years?
Not only did Levandowski not to this, he:
- bulk downloaded these files near the end of his employment;
- was deleting them in the office with Uber’s due diligence team.
He may not have benefitted. Uber may not have. But he created this cloud of uncertainty by not doing the common sense thing.
My personal theory is that he wanted insurance in case he couldn’t recreate this later if he needed it and/or he felt like this stuff belonged to him because he created it. Even though it’s clearly work product belonging to your employer people get possessive about these things.
As for the criminal part, honestly I actually think that’s what this law is for: to criminalize the plundering of commercial IP by by bad actors and competitors.
https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-i...
The religion’s 2017 budget, as supplied to the IRS, details $20,000 in gifts, $1,500 in membership fees, and $20,000 in other revenue. That last figure is the amount WOTF expects to earn from fees charged for lectures and speaking engagements, as well as the sale of publications. Levandowski, who earned at least $120 million from his time at Google and many millions more selling the self-driving truck firm Otto to Uber, will initially support WOTF personally. However, the church will solicit other donations by direct mail and email, seek personal donations from individuals, and try to win grants from private foundations. https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-i...
Not saying they aren't, I just never really heard it explicitly said so. Is this a common self perception within that region? What makes it so? Beyond a baseline of that most people consider themselves having integrity and decency.
>These people are the cancer of Silicon Valley that generally has integrity and decency in pursuing startup endeavors
The very same SV that has Airbnb, doordash, grubhub et all? give me a break
And no I don’t care if you’ve had use out of it or you feel like “it’s my property, I can do what I want with it”, which is an entirely self-serving rationalization that doesn’t stand up any sort of scrutiny.
Let's face it. It was all fun and games until silicon valley was the underdog. Now this place makes and inevitably breaks the world. As is natural, places of power will attract people of malice. It will bring out selfishness and pride from a fraction of any random group of people that are given this opportunity.
The undoing of any rebellion is the flawed belief that the rebels will continue to be the good guys because (a) they're young, (b) they are the oppressed or (c) because they stick to logical rational thought. This all works as long as they're the rebels. Once they're the power-weilders, the same people become the problem they tried to solve. Because lust for power, money and fame is inherent in most of us. What's happening in SV now is demonstration number N of this.
Potential for malicious macros?
As if a filename extension means anything at all.
It's real but creates another document automatically saying "Hire me". That's malware.
https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/Qmd9PTEtuSrKKtJQw36aNzpjJwZAdCd...
I have news for you. The file itself is real but it's also acting suspiciously like malware. (Opens a second document showing a "hire me!" message and downloading another file)
I was lucky to spin up a VM, open it and I saw that message.
