"The decision hints that Alsup’s pending decision on a preliminary injunction might not be favorable to Uber. . . it could effectively halt Uber’s self driving development plans entirely while the trial plays out."
In context of Travis' view "What would happen if we weren't a part of that future? If we weren't part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way," he said." (1)
I'm far from an expert on the self driving car race, but I think even if Uber had to abandon LiDAR altogether it wouldn't mean it would be impossible to approach the problem in a different way. And it isn't clear that if the injunction were granted they'd have to abandon LiDAR altogether -- it may be that they could try a slightly different approach and/or develop a second firewalled team from the one tainted by Lewandowski.
It would surely be painful but I don't see why it would mean shutting down the self driving car project.
What happens if Uber just pleads guilty, in order to get back to work ASAP? They lose important patents. And then, the victor is obligated by patent law to license patents at a reasonable price, by some unknown definition of reasonable?
It looks to me like Uber could take another PR hit, burn a $billion or more on the fallout, raise more billions, and keep on going. Have ethically motivated boycotts ever worked out, historically?
A new entry on the docket for the case notes that Waymo’s motion for a preliminary injunction has been partially granted and partially denied, but it’s not clear yet which of Waymo’s requests the judge will honor.
"It is unfortunate that Waymo will be permitted to avoid abiding by the arbitration promise it requires its employees to make."
The idea of forcing people into arbitration has crept into every agreement and contract that Americans enter, and it's out of control. Congress needs to pass a law forbidding contracts from forcing individuals into arbitration.
> Congress needs to pass a law forbidding contracts from forcing individuals into arbitration.
Congress, unfortunately, passed almost exactly the opposite law. The American courts traditionally disfavored binding arbitration, viewing it as a kind of illegitimate private court usurping the power of the proper courts. The Federal Arbitration Act (1925) overturned that norm with regard to federal-court cases, and the Supreme Court controversially ruled in 1984 [1] that the FAA preempted state anti-arbitration laws as well, which is when binding arbitration really began to take off.
>Congress needs to pass a law forbidding contracts from forcing individuals into arbitration.
Hold on there. Let's not dismiss it out of hand - bypassing the court system and getting things resolved quickly has benefits. And I suspect the arbitration system is itself a response to some judicial excesses and the insane American lawsuit-happy culture.
I'm not saying there aren't problems, and the judicial system should be there, but it's not bad if people solve their own problems without government involvement.
they first need to forbid people to sue for whatever they feel like, especially when its intentionally bullshit, just to drive the other party into bankruptcy.
Binding arbitration has its place. Look at the binding arbitration decision between Qualcomm and Blackberry, which is resulting in Blackberry receiving an $815,000,000 refund from Qualcomm after a royalty dispute involving licensed standard essential patents.
Because it was binding arbitration and not traditional court proceedings, this judgment is not appealable. This compressed what would have been a 10-year drawn out and extremely costly process into five days. That's it!
There are more arguments against binding arbitration when it's an individual against a conglomerate - you get a biased arbitrator and you're sunk with no means of redress.
I remember reading on HN that at least one CMU researcher got paid 3 times their annual salary as a sign on bonus to join the self driving car team. I'm wondering how removed the Pittsburgh team was from Otto.
This is a pretty fascinating scenario. Between this and everything else that Uber is going through at the moment, it seems that they are going to have a very rough year.
Here's to hoping that more people start using competitors so that it's easier for me to find a Lyft as quickly as I can find an uber.
The thing is not that Lyft takes longer or is more expensive. The thing is that Lyft is not an Uber competitor for the vast majority of the world. They are US only. In a few markets they have partnerships with local services, but that's it currently.
I have never seen surge rates with Lyft. I find lyft to be more cheaper. There are times when from ORD Chicago, Uber would display surge rates (~$55, normally ~$35). Earlier, I used to call 303 taxi which takes forever. Now, I tried lyft which costed me $34 so competition is good
I've been using Lyft almost exclusively since Susan Fowler's blog post (only using Uber if Lyft has a surge and Uber doesn't), and it's really getting on my nerves how many Lyft drivers use Waze.
Waze is spectacularly terrible at everything. The algorithm is designed to take you out of your way to run up the meter, it encourages unsafe turns, and it's literally unable to navigate to where I live, so I straight-up refuse to ride in any car with Waze running. And yet Lyft recommends it to new drivers. It's not uncommon for me to walk out of cars because the driver pitched a hissy fit when I said "Please don't use Waze", and even when I don't walk out of the car I usually end up having to navigate the driver manually because Waze is the only thing they have installed.
Using Lyft has become a thoroughly unpleasant experience, but I'm not comfortable using Uber either for ethical reasons. I'm considering looking into what it would cost to straight-up hire a private driver as an on-call employee.
Uber should probably be shitting it's pants right about now. Google would have to really bungle this to not get a jury to agree Uber has been acting very shady.
Google doesn't have to convince a jury of anything to win. All they need to do is hold up Uber's next funding round for long enough to force them to drop out of a few markets.
This case reminds me of the glory days of Samsung vs. Apple in intensity and interest in the case, except it's not all wildly up in the air. It's fairly straightforward as to what side "looks" good, and it feels like it's more of determining just how bad the damage is and how far set back Uber will be.
But one is venture-funded, the other warchest-funded. That is not equal footing; the pools of money are not infinite and Uber's is both shallower and far less ensured.
I have a feeling that as soon as the case against Uber is done, Google is going to go after Lewandowski...try to teach him a lesson and send a message to other Googlers thinking about doing the same.
For strategic reasons they might have chosen to go after Uber first
After reading Judge Alsup's opinion, I'd be very concerned if I were Uber. Certainly not sympathetic to Uber's arguments.
That being said, I was a bit surprised by his decision. I was one of the attorneys for the prevailing defendant in the Torbit v. Datanyze case that Judge Alsup heavily cites (but disagrees with). Judge Alsup distinguishes that case, in part, on the basis that California state law does not support its holding. But the California Court of Appeals just expressly adopted the holding in Torbit in a case a few weeks ago.
Uber is claiming that Waymo has to enter arbitration because Lewandowski had an arbitration agreement with them when he worked there.
Imagine if that was legally correct. Suppose a fellow worked at 5 companies in the course of 10 years, and with each company his contract included an arbitration clause and other interesting items.
Then company #5 would have to honor everything relevant in the previous 4 contracts. What a mess that would be. Alsup was right to reject Uber's claim.
The articles keep referring to Waymo at "Waymo LLC". Almost every venture I've seen has been a corporation, not LLC... anything interesting as to why it's a LLC?
I don't think Uber will cease to exist as is. I'd like to think it's too big to fail. But Alphabet is no small Corp. They can absolutely crush Uber if they want to.
Would be a shame if this is the end of the road for Uber. For all of their scandals, they've been really bullish on innovation and pushed the envelope on moving the Industry forward. I hope only the guilty are charged instead of Uber as a company having to suffer due to the wrongdoing of a few individuals.
[+] [-] aresant|8 years ago|reply
"The decision hints that Alsup’s pending decision on a preliminary injunction might not be favorable to Uber. . . it could effectively halt Uber’s self driving development plans entirely while the trial plays out."
In context of Travis' view "What would happen if we weren't a part of that future? If we weren't part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way," he said." (1)
(1) https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/travis-...
[+] [-] cheeze|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradleyjg|8 years ago|reply
I'm far from an expert on the self driving car race, but I think even if Uber had to abandon LiDAR altogether it wouldn't mean it would be impossible to approach the problem in a different way. And it isn't clear that if the injunction were granted they'd have to abandon LiDAR altogether -- it may be that they could try a slightly different approach and/or develop a second firewalled team from the one tainted by Lewandowski.
It would surely be painful but I don't see why it would mean shutting down the self driving car project.
[+] [-] devrandomguy|8 years ago|reply
It looks to me like Uber could take another PR hit, burn a $billion or more on the fallout, raise more billions, and keep on going. Have ethically motivated boycotts ever worked out, historically?
[+] [-] sjg007|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elmar|8 years ago|reply
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-qa-moore-20170511-html...
[+] [-] eridius|8 years ago|reply
> Update: Judge Alsup has also referred the case to the U.S. Attorney for a possible criminal investigation.
(https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/11/waymos-claims-of-trade-sec...)
[+] [-] whatgoodisaroad|8 years ago|reply
...as Uber has argued that it can’t release documents related to its acquisition of Otto without violating its employee’s 5th Amendment rights.
I'm certainly not a lawyer, but that's not at all how I thought the 5th Amendment works.
[+] [-] greydata|8 years ago|reply
A new entry on the docket for the case notes that Waymo’s motion for a preliminary injunction has been partially granted and partially denied, but it’s not clear yet which of Waymo’s requests the judge will honor.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullnilvoid|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kyrra|8 years ago|reply
Criminal Referral: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3719176-Alsup-Levand...
Arbitration Denial: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3719100-Alsup-Denies...
[+] [-] p49k|8 years ago|reply
The idea of forcing people into arbitration has crept into every agreement and contract that Americans enter, and it's out of control. Congress needs to pass a law forbidding contracts from forcing individuals into arbitration.
[+] [-] _delirium|8 years ago|reply
Congress, unfortunately, passed almost exactly the opposite law. The American courts traditionally disfavored binding arbitration, viewing it as a kind of illegitimate private court usurping the power of the proper courts. The Federal Arbitration Act (1925) overturned that norm with regard to federal-court cases, and the Supreme Court controversially ruled in 1984 [1] that the FAA preempted state anti-arbitration laws as well, which is when binding arbitration really began to take off.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southland_Corp._v._Keating
[+] [-] macspoofing|8 years ago|reply
Hold on there. Let's not dismiss it out of hand - bypassing the court system and getting things resolved quickly has benefits. And I suspect the arbitration system is itself a response to some judicial excesses and the insane American lawsuit-happy culture.
I'm not saying there aren't problems, and the judicial system should be there, but it's not bad if people solve their own problems without government involvement.
[+] [-] wayn3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iplaw|8 years ago|reply
Because it was binding arbitration and not traditional court proceedings, this judgment is not appealable. This compressed what would have been a 10-year drawn out and extremely costly process into five days. That's it!
There are more arguments against binding arbitration when it's an individual against a conglomerate - you get a biased arbitrator and you're sunk with no means of redress.
[+] [-] sriram_sun|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheeze|8 years ago|reply
Here's to hoping that more people start using competitors so that it's easier for me to find a Lyft as quickly as I can find an uber.
[+] [-] j-walker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steveb0x|8 years ago|reply
But...if Uber truly is a bunch of scumbags, they deserve to burn.
[+] [-] j-walker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Semaphor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fuzzwah|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mandeepj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanx435|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amyjess|8 years ago|reply
Waze is spectacularly terrible at everything. The algorithm is designed to take you out of your way to run up the meter, it encourages unsafe turns, and it's literally unable to navigate to where I live, so I straight-up refuse to ride in any car with Waze running. And yet Lyft recommends it to new drivers. It's not uncommon for me to walk out of cars because the driver pitched a hissy fit when I said "Please don't use Waze", and even when I don't walk out of the car I usually end up having to navigate the driver manually because Waze is the only thing they have installed.
Using Lyft has become a thoroughly unpleasant experience, but I'm not comfortable using Uber either for ethical reasons. I'm considering looking into what it would cost to straight-up hire a private driver as an on-call employee.
[+] [-] wdb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meddlepal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjg007|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpartanMindset|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] froindt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goatherders|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1_2__3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] easilyBored|8 years ago|reply
For strategic reasons they might have chosen to go after Uber first
[+] [-] Gibbon1|8 years ago|reply
Um... Lewandowski is going to jail.
[+] [-] wernsey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siegel|8 years ago|reply
That being said, I was a bit surprised by his decision. I was one of the attorneys for the prevailing defendant in the Torbit v. Datanyze case that Judge Alsup heavily cites (but disagrees with). Judge Alsup distinguishes that case, in part, on the basis that California state law does not support its holding. But the California Court of Appeals just expressly adopted the holding in Torbit in a case a few weeks ago.
[+] [-] beedogs|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woodandsteel|8 years ago|reply
Imagine if that was legally correct. Suppose a fellow worked at 5 companies in the course of 10 years, and with each company his contract included an arbitration clause and other interesting items.
Then company #5 would have to honor everything relevant in the previous 4 contracts. What a mess that would be. Alsup was right to reject Uber's claim.
[+] [-] icinnamon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omarchowdhury|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pscsbs|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cryptos|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Abtin88|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] y_u_no_rust|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ameen|8 years ago|reply
Would be a shame if this is the end of the road for Uber. For all of their scandals, they've been really bullish on innovation and pushed the envelope on moving the Industry forward. I hope only the guilty are charged instead of Uber as a company having to suffer due to the wrongdoing of a few individuals.