A lot of commentators here were suggesting that the due diligence report was strong evidence for Waymo's case, but I think that Judge Alsup is strongly suggesting that it's not: they're still crucially missing evidence that supports the case that Levandowski's bad actions made it to Uber.
Courts are based on facts, not popular opinions, and it's innocent until proven guilty.
If there really was patent infringement, then it would be difficult to erase all traces. Similar to the Zenimax Oculus lawsuit where computers were erased, but the verdict still came down against Oculus.
Civil case. Preponderance of evidence is enough. And the defense standing over a shredder pushing stolen documents through, paying for the shredding of a hard drive in cash months after it was supposed to be done, delaying discovery and magically disappearing a boatload of files from a company already known publicly to act scummy looks a fucking lot like a preponderance of evidence. All Waymo needs to do is tell the story the way they see it to a jury - too many dots connect up perfectly.
My guess is that the only reason this case is still going is that Uber can't come up with settlement terms (i.e. billions of dollars of cash) Waymo will accept.
Their business is based on transporting people relatively short distances. All involved parties are consenting. That this is in violation of any laws or regulations is the true injustice.
Is this belief based on any knowledge of similarities of the alleged infringing product? Judge Alsup seem to disagree with you since the end product that Waymo sued Uber over seem very different:
"Waymo alleged that Uber had stolen its trade secrets and had been violating four patents. Waymo had people signing, under oath, statements about how they could tell the patents had been violated. It's now turned out that the patent claims have completely vanished. They've been dropped. The expert you had was way out of bounds. There was no patent infringement. I think when Waymo got into this case, it thought it was going to go into the files and find an exact duplicate of the Waymo files. As it turns out, the product is dissimilar in a lot of ways. It may even be a vast improvement over what was going on Waymo. So they've come up short there."
My read is that all of this bad behavior on the part of Levandowski (and Kalanick) and so forth will be extremely damaging if Google can come up with some kind of evidence that Uber is actually using some of its trade secrets.
Like, if Uber had a prototype that was clearly very closely related to Google's prototype, then it would be very hard for Uber to credibly suggest that the similarities are just coincidence, that there was parallel evolution or something. But without a link to something that Uber actually produced or used, what Google has is an iron-clad case that Levandowski took their IP and acted like a douchebag, and an iron-clad case that Uber was at least retroactively aware of that, and very little case that Uber took their technology.
This case was started when Google discovered that Uber's Spider prototype was identical to an early Google lidar. It now appears that they haven't been using it primarily, but your hypothetical smoking gun is literally the foundation of this case.
I don't. I do remember Judge Alsup raised concerns about Waymo being able to show damages from these patent infringements a while ago. I believe that this was part of the reason that Waymo revised their claims, and might point to why the spider prototype isn't as much of a smoking gun as we expect.
My impression -- and I could be wrong, I haven't seen a lot of discussion of the Spider since the early stages of the case -- is that it was less similar than it initially appeared.
> "That the most important witness in the case [Levandowski], somehow his own files got overlooked. That's very suspicious."
I think the judge was specifically referring to this fact:
> Uber also said, just this weekend, that it found that Levandowski's e-mails from his startup, Otto Trucking, hadn't been properly migrated to Uber and weren't produced.
So I read it as he's raising the Vulcan eyebrow at Uber for that.
And he's even more directly telling Uber's lead attorney in the case that he (Alsup) doesn't care what consequences he (the attorney) gets for playing stupid (and unethical) hide-the-document games during discovery, because those consequences are his own fault.
Uber's behavior in this case has been one of three things: behavior of those who don't think the rules apply to them, behavior of those who are unaware of how badly the court can hurt them, or behavior of those who have something that they are desperate to hide.
I would be stunned if it's OK for someone to have proprietary info all over their house and laptop and it's fine as long as you can't find those bits on other computers owned by their new employer.
I, on the other hand, would be stunned if I hired someone from my competitor (Absolutely okay in my book), they later find things he stole from his previous employer and then judge me for having them without needing to proof it.
The question is, if you find out about the trade secrets before you get sued, how far do you have to go? Do you have to fire the employee and will you have to report this to the other company? Or is it enough to not use the secrets?
agreed, I think that's the point of the article - the grey area is very large here. Judge Alsup slapped both Uber and Waymo/Google over the wrist and "With that, Alsup got up and retired to his chambers."
seems like a good character to have on "Sillicon Valley" for a bit of contrast
> "Well, you only need three of the lawyers over there to try this case," Alsup said, gesturing to Uber's table full of attorneys. "We will miss you greatly. I was looking forward to seeing you perform in this case. But next time, maybe you ought to produce the documents."
Yes he is. I got a chance to sit in on his court during the Google/Oracle trial and felt confident that what ever outcome came out of the trial, he would not allow it to be sabotaged by silly lawyer gambits.
If we could have 10 like him processing cases the world would be a more just place.
Really? I didn't know federal judges can request cases. Is that specifically a N.D. Cal. thing? I always thought cases were randomly assigned to a judge in the relevant district.
Northern district of California is a proper venue based on the civil rules (defendant's HQ almost always is), so the plaintiff files there. After that, it’s randomly assigned to one of the 14 judges, so there was roughly a 0.5% chance of Alsup getting both.
I'm not a lawyer but I ended up having to take a number of courses on law. One of the most heavily covered topics is procedure. Courts love their procedure.
This isn't something I'm clear on. Maybe someone here is a lawyer and can offer some insight.
Yes, he's a badass but under what rules can the judge completely disallow courtroom access for specific individuals doing representation work? I can see malfesience, disruption, or ethics being reasons - but being illprepared resulting in sanctions (? maybe, not sure of the right word, perhaps censure) against specific individuals seems like it might require a high standard, as choice of representation is a pretty solid privilege.
Like you said, a badass. Judges have awesome powers in their courtroom, but I'm not sure I've seen anything quite like this and I'm unsure of the rules surrounding it. I'm sure there are rules. Courts love their procedure. They've got rules for everything.
>"At the end of the hearing, Uber's lawyer Arturo Gonzalez made a last-ditch plea that he had a scheduling conflict. He is scheduled to pick a jury in a different trial on November 27, the Monday after Thanksgiving."
The judge told Arturo he wouldn't reschedule for him. He's not barring him from the courtroom; the judge is simply saying he's not making any more accomodations for Uber.
A judge can kick a specific attorney out of the courtroom, but I think the standards are pretty high for doing so. I don't know if that's just custom or an established rule.
Judges have some awesome powers inside their courtrooms. I find law to be a pretty fascinating subject but that is a long post for another day.
Yes that, and Alsup seized the opportunity be an asshole right back to Uber's counsel for all their douchebaggery in this case. I'll bet they were laughing it up at Judge Happy Hour this evening
Sure but presumably, two judges scheduled events pertaining to the same attorney at the same time.
I took the question to ask more or less, "Is their any judicial obligation to avoid scheduling conflict, when the attorney is already obligated to be present at a different court-related function".
I assume this is usually granted by courtesy, but a fed up judge has no obligation to do so.
Where did you get that that particular attorney is "obligated to be present"? He's not being sued, Uber is. Uber obviously has to be there in some capacity, but they have no shortage of lawyers, both inhouse and external counsel. (That particular one is external, he works for Morrison & Foerster).
> "When this case started, Waymo had a strong case against Levandowski," Alsup said. "But it didn't sue Levandowski; it sued Uber."
> He continued:
> "Waymo alleged that Uber had stolen its trade secrets and had been violating four patents. Waymo had people signing, under oath, statements about how they could tell the patents had been violated. It's now turned out that the patent claims have completely vanished. They've been dropped. The expert you had was way out of bounds. There was no patent infringement. I think when Waymo got into this case, it thought it was going to go into the files and find an exact duplicate of the Waymo files. As it turns out, the product is dissimilar in a lot of ways. It may even be a vast improvement over what was going on Waymo. So they've come up short there."
That’s definitely possible, but would be pretty devestating too. That would probably only be employed if the judge believed that the evidence was being withheld, not destroyed. If magically evidence of said destruction ever came to light however? Prison.
The judge can impose sanctions for discovery violations up to and including entering judgment in favor of the other side. That’s pretty extreme but an issue sanction wouldn’t be unusual or (from what this article says) unwarranted.
> I think when Waymo got into this case, it thought it was going to go into the files and find an exact duplicate of the Waymo files. As it turns out, the product is dissimilar in a lot of ways.
It was a quite reasonable assumption on Waymo's part, given that Uber and Levandowski met secretly for months before he left Waymo, he stole all those files from Waymo, and then Uber payed him 680 million for a startup.
And the only way Waymo could find out for sure what had happened was bring a lawsuit. Or do you think Waymo should have just taken Uber's word that it hadn't done anything illegal?
That's a quote from the judge, not something that I said. The judge also doesn't make any value judgement about whether or not their assumption was reasonable, so I'm not sure what or who you're arguing against.
Why does he have to be arguing against something..? he's just saying that Waymo's legal machinations were rational based on what they knew at the time.
> the only way Waymo could find out for sure what had happened was bring a lawsuit. Or do you think Waymo should have just taken Uber's word that it hadn't done anything illegal?
I've been very open about that (it's in my HN profile) and I didn't think it was relevant here since I was quoting the judge and not offering up my own opinions. Apologies if you disagree. :)
It's my opinion too, and I think Uber are a bunch of baddy bad-bads.
Since this case began I've been waiting for Waymo to drop the bomb, and no bomb has materialized. Levandowski is in trouble, but what is it again that Waymo has to levy against Uber? I'm not seeing much.
But seriously, judge a person's comments on the merits of their argument, not who they work for.
> But seriously, judge a person's comments on the merits of their argument, not who they work for.
Undisclosed conflicts of interest are a huge red flag. Selectively posting critical comments about your competitors is pretty shady. Doing it without disclosure of the bias is very shady.
Whoa, there. This is just a casual HN comment thread, I don't think we need to be getting that uptight. Maybe the subject has primed you all to make believe as super serious lawyers, but we all know opinions expressed here really don't count for much. It certainly won't have any influence on the outcome of the case.
It's not like his bias was that hard to figure out, all you had to do was open his user profile. If there are genuine Uber astroturfers creeping around they wouldn't be that easy to unmask.
I don't agree. It's shady regardless. It doesn't have to be "genuine" astroturfing, whatever that is. If I were posting snarky comments about my competitors and not disclosing my conflict of interest in the comment, I'd fully expect people to call me out on my behavior.
My employer (Microsoft) has a serious policy about disclosing employment if making comments about our products or our competitors' products online, because it otherwise reflects very poorly both on the individual and the company.
Of course, Uber's track record of ethical conduct is pretty spotty. It's not surprising that some of their employees wouldn't see the issue with posting negative comments without disclosure about not just competitors but competitors waging active legal battles against Uber.
You just went on the attack against an Uber employee without disclosing that you work for Microsoft in your previous comment. You literally just committed the sin you're accusing someone else of.
Worse, Uber doesn't have that policy. Microsoft does. Uber doesn't have to obey Microsoft's arbitrary made up rules. You're just looking for an excuse to hurt somebody, while ironically, and with total lack of self awareness accusing them of being ethically challenged.
And maybe you've forgotten what Microsoft did to get where it is today. Because in the 90s it was just as ethically challenged as Uber is now.
1. Criticizing an Uber employee is not the same as criticizing Uber.
2. Uber and Microsoft aren’t really competitors.
> Worse, Uber doesn't have that policy. Microsoft does. Uber doesn't have to obey Microsoft's arbitrary made up rules. You're just looking for an excuse to hurt somebody, while ironically, and with total lack of self awareness accusing them of being ethically challenged.
You have no idea whether Uber has this policy. It’s also not an arbitrary policy. It’s expected among reasonable people to reveal conflicts of interest. It’s why journalists and stock advisers clarify when they’re writing about their employers or stocks they hold. It’s why the FCC demands that sponsored tweets are labeled as such. And it’s why disclosure is very common here in HN. If Uber doesn’t have this policy, they should.
Accusing me of intentionally hurting others is just lame. I called out an inappropriate behavior while you’re now essentially engaging in an ad hominem attack.
> And maybe you've forgotten what Microsoft did to get where it is today. Because in the 90s it was just as ethically challenged as Uber is now.
Microsoft had one “ethically challenged” space, which was they they leveraged their monopoly power. Uber has bent or broken ethical standards over and over. They started by breaking laws in many of their markets. They’ve intentionally wasted competitors time and fuel by calling for cars and canceling. They’ve enabled their employees to stalk celebrities. They created greyball explicitly to evade law enforcement. And on and on. I don’t think Microsoft was ever as ethically challenged as Uber.
But you have been stating your opinions here, without including the disclaimer that you're an Uber employee. The standard procedure is to put your disclaimer within your comment as people typically don't automatically lookup a commenter's profile when reading his/her comments.
"The standard procedure is to put your disclaimer within your comment as people typically don't automatically lookup a commenter's profile when reading his/her comments"
No, it isn't. (it is if you are a journalist with a conflict of interest, which he isn't).
The second it is, i'm out.
Because there's no reason you should care.
It's just another excuse for people to be able to dismiss what others say without having to think critically about it.
If you want to engage on the merits, do it.
Everyone and everything is biased. Both consciously and not. If you want to say "hey, i read the article and i think your take is wrong", awesome, do that. His take isn't any righter or wronger because he's an uber engineer, and the whole point of a discussion forum like this is, in fact, to have critical thinking. Otherwise it's just another worthless echo chamber.
(I'm going to completely and totally ignore the "people also aren't their jobs" part of this).
So instead of caring about his day job, IMHO, you should do the critical thinking and engage in the discussion for real.
It's not about condemning bias, qualifying the rightness/wrongness of comment or "caring about his day job" but about arguments in good faith. Not declaring affiliations or potential conflicts of interests makes people ascribe negative intentions or deceptive motives to you (even when not necessarily the case) if they discover it after the fact.
It doesn't have to be in more formal settings such as in publications by journalists - I also see disclaimers stated by others in HN comments often.
Arguments in good faith do not require source disclaimers. That's the very definition of good faith.
"potential conflicts of interests makes people ascribe negative intentions or deceptive motives to you (even when not necessarily the case) if they discover it after the fact."
This is, in my experience, nonsense.
The only thing disclaimers add to a good faith discussion is the ability of people to do exactly what you claim they'll do "after the fact", during the discussion. Please stare at any comment with a disclaimer from a group people don't like (uber, for example), and count how many comments are about where they work instead of their argument.
IE They are upset they turned out to agree with someone that belongs to some group they don't like, or whatever.
It is also against the very definition of good faith you describe to do that kind of thing "after the fact", regardless of who you are. The fact that you believe disclaimers are necessary to a good faith discussion means you aren't actually having discussions in good faith.
For unverifiable claims, perhaps, but it's usually far better to simply ignore all unverifiable claims in the first place. It's not useful in debate, either, better to simply to stick to debating what facts (if any) formed an opinion, as at least those can be researched.
I disclose all affiliations when there is a reasonable chance that others might consider it deceptive if I didn't disclose my biases and they were later discovered.
In longer format:
Sometimes, it isn't even an affiliation with a specific company and I'll simply type something like, 'I admit my bias(es).'
For the former an example might be, 'I was an early investor in Tesla and continue to own shares. This may bias my opinions.'
Basically, if in doubt, disclose affiliations and biases due to those affiliations. Sometimes affiliations mean the bias is a negative reaction, it's not always a positive response. 'I have previously worked with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and my opinion may be biased based on those experiences.'
If someone could later learn you were affiliated and say, 'Well, that explains their post!' it's probably better to have disclosed the affiliations in the first place.
This post is just meant to share how I do it and why I do it. You can, of course, disclose what you want. I think it is customary to make such disclosures on HN. It is in your profile, but I'm not sure many people check profiles.
Come on, man. Don't be that way. I always list my affiliation when commenting on relevant articles. Listing potential conflicts of interest is a community norm--and besides, I'm proud of my affiliation!
According to the article, they've dropped the 4 patent infringement claims. Further, from the coverage recently, it looks like they are having trouble showing that their IP was used inside Uber. They have a slam-dunk case against Levandowski, but he's not a defendant.
> According to the article, they've dropped the 4 patent infringement claims.
Judge Alsup explicitly requested that Waymo narrow the scope of the case[1], so Waymo had to pare down to what they felt were the strongest claims:
> Over the course of the last several months, the judge has urged both parties to simplify the scope of the case so that each could be adequately prepared to argue the merits of the strongest claims post-discovery
"But Alsup had harsher words for Uber. He said that using the joint attorney-client defense privilege to try to keep things like the Stroz report secret was an "elaborate scheme to conceal the facts from the public and particularly from Waymo." That made Uber mostly responsible for the delay. Uber also said, just this weekend, that it found that Levandowski's e-mails from his startup, Otto Trucking, hadn't been properly migrated to Uber and weren't produced. "That seemed remarkable to me, after 25 years of doing what you lawyers have been doing and 18 years on the bench," Alsup said. "That the most important witness in the case, somehow his own files got overlooked. That's very suspicious."
The Fifth Amendment applies to statements which could conceivably show up in a future criminal proceeding. Here is a more precise statement of the principle:
A witness has traditionally been able to claim the privilege in any proceeding whatsoever in which testimony is legally required when his answer might be used against him in that proceeding or in a future criminal proceeding or when it might be exploited to uncover other evidence against him.
If the judge gets suspicious, you'll have to explain the potential issue to him off the record. After that you can only continue to say it if the judge thinks that you have a potential reason for worry. But they err on the side of respecting it.
That said, a defendant who pleads the fifth at all questions will not necessarily help their case...
91 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadIf there really was patent infringement, then it would be difficult to erase all traces. Similar to the Zenimax Oculus lawsuit where computers were erased, but the verdict still came down against Oculus.
Civil case. Preponderance of evidence is enough. And the defense standing over a shredder pushing stolen documents through, paying for the shredding of a hard drive in cash months after it was supposed to be done, delaying discovery and magically disappearing a boatload of files from a company already known publicly to act scummy looks a fucking lot like a preponderance of evidence. All Waymo needs to do is tell the story the way they see it to a jury - too many dots connect up perfectly.
My guess is that the only reason this case is still going is that Uber can't come up with settlement terms (i.e. billions of dollars of cash) Waymo will accept.
If I invent something and Patent it, you can independently invent it and you're still infringing on my Patent.
Provenance is only important for Copyright and Trade Secrets.
(I think. IANAL.)
There are bad taxi laws out there, but the number of good taxi laws is not negligible.
"Waymo alleged that Uber had stolen its trade secrets and had been violating four patents. Waymo had people signing, under oath, statements about how they could tell the patents had been violated. It's now turned out that the patent claims have completely vanished. They've been dropped. The expert you had was way out of bounds. There was no patent infringement. I think when Waymo got into this case, it thought it was going to go into the files and find an exact duplicate of the Waymo files. As it turns out, the product is dissimilar in a lot of ways. It may even be a vast improvement over what was going on Waymo. So they've come up short there."
> "That the most important witness in the case [Levandowski], somehow his own files got overlooked. That's very suspicious."
Is he not implicating Uber in that, or at the very least Uber's legal counsel?
Like, if Uber had a prototype that was clearly very closely related to Google's prototype, then it would be very hard for Uber to credibly suggest that the similarities are just coincidence, that there was parallel evolution or something. But without a link to something that Uber actually produced or used, what Google has is an iron-clad case that Levandowski took their IP and acted like a douchebag, and an iron-clad case that Uber was at least retroactively aware of that, and very little case that Uber took their technology.
My reading of the article was that they'd dropped patents from the case entirely, but that quote might have been misleading.
> "That the most important witness in the case [Levandowski], somehow his own files got overlooked. That's very suspicious."
I think the judge was specifically referring to this fact:
> Uber also said, just this weekend, that it found that Levandowski's e-mails from his startup, Otto Trucking, hadn't been properly migrated to Uber and weren't produced.
So I read it as he's raising the Vulcan eyebrow at Uber for that.
And he's even more directly telling Uber's lead attorney in the case that he (Alsup) doesn't care what consequences he (the attorney) gets for playing stupid (and unethical) hide-the-document games during discovery, because those consequences are his own fault.
Uber's behavior in this case has been one of three things: behavior of those who don't think the rules apply to them, behavior of those who are unaware of how badly the court can hurt them, or behavior of those who have something that they are desperate to hide.
Judge Alsup is a badass.
If we could have 10 like him processing cases the world would be a more just place.
This isn't something I'm clear on. Maybe someone here is a lawyer and can offer some insight.
Yes, he's a badass but under what rules can the judge completely disallow courtroom access for specific individuals doing representation work? I can see malfesience, disruption, or ethics being reasons - but being illprepared resulting in sanctions (? maybe, not sure of the right word, perhaps censure) against specific individuals seems like it might require a high standard, as choice of representation is a pretty solid privilege.
Like you said, a badass. Judges have awesome powers in their courtroom, but I'm not sure I've seen anything quite like this and I'm unsure of the rules surrounding it. I'm sure there are rules. Courts love their procedure. They've got rules for everything.
The judge told Arturo he wouldn't reschedule for him. He's not barring him from the courtroom; the judge is simply saying he's not making any more accomodations for Uber.
A judge can kick a specific attorney out of the courtroom, but I think the standards are pretty high for doing so. I don't know if that's just custom or an established rule.
Judges have some awesome powers inside their courtrooms. I find law to be a pretty fascinating subject but that is a long post for another day.
I took the question to ask more or less, "Is their any judicial obligation to avoid scheduling conflict, when the attorney is already obligated to be present at a different court-related function".
I assume this is usually granted by courtesy, but a fed up judge has no obligation to do so.
IANAL.
> He continued:
> "Waymo alleged that Uber had stolen its trade secrets and had been violating four patents. Waymo had people signing, under oath, statements about how they could tell the patents had been violated. It's now turned out that the patent claims have completely vanished. They've been dropped. The expert you had was way out of bounds. There was no patent infringement. I think when Waymo got into this case, it thought it was going to go into the files and find an exact duplicate of the Waymo files. As it turns out, the product is dissimilar in a lot of ways. It may even be a vast improvement over what was going on Waymo. So they've come up short there."
Not looking good for Waymo...
It was a quite reasonable assumption on Waymo's part, given that Uber and Levandowski met secretly for months before he left Waymo, he stole all those files from Waymo, and then Uber payed him 680 million for a startup.
And the only way Waymo could find out for sure what had happened was bring a lawsuit. Or do you think Waymo should have just taken Uber's word that it hadn't done anything illegal?
The trade secret claims are still looking pretty good for Waymo.
Since this case began I've been waiting for Waymo to drop the bomb, and no bomb has materialized. Levandowski is in trouble, but what is it again that Waymo has to levy against Uber? I'm not seeing much.
But seriously, judge a person's comments on the merits of their argument, not who they work for.
Undisclosed conflicts of interest are a huge red flag. Selectively posting critical comments about your competitors is pretty shady. Doing it without disclosure of the bias is very shady.
It's not like his bias was that hard to figure out, all you had to do was open his user profile. If there are genuine Uber astroturfers creeping around they wouldn't be that easy to unmask.
My employer (Microsoft) has a serious policy about disclosing employment if making comments about our products or our competitors' products online, because it otherwise reflects very poorly both on the individual and the company.
Of course, Uber's track record of ethical conduct is pretty spotty. It's not surprising that some of their employees wouldn't see the issue with posting negative comments without disclosure about not just competitors but competitors waging active legal battles against Uber.
Worse, Uber doesn't have that policy. Microsoft does. Uber doesn't have to obey Microsoft's arbitrary made up rules. You're just looking for an excuse to hurt somebody, while ironically, and with total lack of self awareness accusing them of being ethically challenged.
And maybe you've forgotten what Microsoft did to get where it is today. Because in the 90s it was just as ethically challenged as Uber is now.
2. Uber and Microsoft aren’t really competitors.
> Worse, Uber doesn't have that policy. Microsoft does. Uber doesn't have to obey Microsoft's arbitrary made up rules. You're just looking for an excuse to hurt somebody, while ironically, and with total lack of self awareness accusing them of being ethically challenged.
You have no idea whether Uber has this policy. It’s also not an arbitrary policy. It’s expected among reasonable people to reveal conflicts of interest. It’s why journalists and stock advisers clarify when they’re writing about their employers or stocks they hold. It’s why the FCC demands that sponsored tweets are labeled as such. And it’s why disclosure is very common here in HN. If Uber doesn’t have this policy, they should.
Accusing me of intentionally hurting others is just lame. I called out an inappropriate behavior while you’re now essentially engaging in an ad hominem attack.
> And maybe you've forgotten what Microsoft did to get where it is today. Because in the 90s it was just as ethically challenged as Uber is now.
Microsoft had one “ethically challenged” space, which was they they leveraged their monopoly power. Uber has bent or broken ethical standards over and over. They started by breaking laws in many of their markets. They’ve intentionally wasted competitors time and fuel by calling for cars and canceling. They’ve enabled their employees to stalk celebrities. They created greyball explicitly to evade law enforcement. And on and on. I don’t think Microsoft was ever as ethically challenged as Uber.
Would we like to know when bias exists? Sure.
Do we need to castigate those who neglect to comment on their own bias? I don't think it's necessary.
No, it isn't. (it is if you are a journalist with a conflict of interest, which he isn't).
The second it is, i'm out.
Because there's no reason you should care.
It's just another excuse for people to be able to dismiss what others say without having to think critically about it. If you want to engage on the merits, do it.
Everyone and everything is biased. Both consciously and not. If you want to say "hey, i read the article and i think your take is wrong", awesome, do that. His take isn't any righter or wronger because he's an uber engineer, and the whole point of a discussion forum like this is, in fact, to have critical thinking. Otherwise it's just another worthless echo chamber.
(I'm going to completely and totally ignore the "people also aren't their jobs" part of this).
So instead of caring about his day job, IMHO, you should do the critical thinking and engage in the discussion for real.
It doesn't have to be in more formal settings such as in publications by journalists - I also see disclaimers stated by others in HN comments often.
"potential conflicts of interests makes people ascribe negative intentions or deceptive motives to you (even when not necessarily the case) if they discover it after the fact."
This is, in my experience, nonsense. The only thing disclaimers add to a good faith discussion is the ability of people to do exactly what you claim they'll do "after the fact", during the discussion. Please stare at any comment with a disclaimer from a group people don't like (uber, for example), and count how many comments are about where they work instead of their argument.
IE They are upset they turned out to agree with someone that belongs to some group they don't like, or whatever.
It is also against the very definition of good faith you describe to do that kind of thing "after the fact", regardless of who you are. The fact that you believe disclaimers are necessary to a good faith discussion means you aren't actually having discussions in good faith.
It certainly was in all my research courses when I was in school.
Or do you just mean I should have to click to do the source evaluation?
I disclose all affiliations when there is a reasonable chance that others might consider it deceptive if I didn't disclose my biases and they were later discovered.
In longer format:
Sometimes, it isn't even an affiliation with a specific company and I'll simply type something like, 'I admit my bias(es).'
For the former an example might be, 'I was an early investor in Tesla and continue to own shares. This may bias my opinions.'
Basically, if in doubt, disclose affiliations and biases due to those affiliations. Sometimes affiliations mean the bias is a negative reaction, it's not always a positive response. 'I have previously worked with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and my opinion may be biased based on those experiences.'
If someone could later learn you were affiliated and say, 'Well, that explains their post!' it's probably better to have disclosed the affiliations in the first place.
This post is just meant to share how I do it and why I do it. You can, of course, disclose what you want. I think it is customary to make such disclosures on HN. It is in your profile, but I'm not sure many people check profiles.
Come on, man. Don't be that way. I always list my affiliation when commenting on relevant articles. Listing potential conflicts of interest is a community norm--and besides, I'm proud of my affiliation!
My interpretation of the judge's comments is that Uber is in a lot of trouble, if Waymo has a case at all. Which it looks like it doesn't.
I am not a lawyer. I am unaffiliated with the case in any way. Your mileage may vary. Not available in all states.
That's a hell of a claim.
Judge Alsup explicitly requested that Waymo narrow the scope of the case[1], so Waymo had to pare down to what they felt were the strongest claims:
> Over the course of the last several months, the judge has urged both parties to simplify the scope of the case so that each could be adequately prepared to argue the merits of the strongest claims post-discovery
1. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/07/waymo-drops-patent-claims/
Odd take, given the judge's words to Uber:
"But Alsup had harsher words for Uber. He said that using the joint attorney-client defense privilege to try to keep things like the Stroz report secret was an "elaborate scheme to conceal the facts from the public and particularly from Waymo." That made Uber mostly responsible for the delay. Uber also said, just this weekend, that it found that Levandowski's e-mails from his startup, Otto Trucking, hadn't been properly migrated to Uber and weren't produced. "That seemed remarkable to me, after 25 years of doing what you lawyers have been doing and 18 years on the bench," Alsup said. "That the most important witness in the case, somehow his own files got overlooked. That's very suspicious."
Fifth Amendment only applies to criminal proceedings, not civil case. How can he refuse to answer questions based on the Fifth?
No.
https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/178/does-the-us-fift...
A witness has traditionally been able to claim the privilege in any proceeding whatsoever in which testimony is legally required when his answer might be used against him in that proceeding or in a future criminal proceeding or when it might be exploited to uncover other evidence against him.
And for references see http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment5/annotation07.html...
That said, a defendant who pleads the fifth at all questions will not necessarily help their case...