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Comment by booleanbetrayal | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine what Lewandowski and Uber were thinking here. The timeline is just too constrained to even be taken seriously.

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Even at the time, knowing none of the characters or background I found Otto a very odd startup, one I almost didn't believe looked legit, and their rapid acquisition by Uber was one more "huh, strange" moment - how could they have bootstrapped out of nowhere and had tech worth that kind of money so fast?

It's almost hard to believe Uber would be so brazen as to put something like this together, except that breaking the law has been Uber's business model since day 1.

To me it seems like the Uber executives know the music has stopped playing, and are now trying to do anything possible to save the company.

It doesn't seem that much stranger than the Cruise or Argo; people with real experience are getting snapped up like crazy without a product.

Can't find info on Argo (not looking properly, most likely), but Cruise raised over $18m before being bought (for ???). It looks like a solid effort to launch a product/startup that was snatched up. Otto was ~6 months and bought for $680m. I think there's a pretty large delta of strangeness there.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/argo-ai#/entity

Cruise was bought for a billion dollars. Argo got a billion dollar investment.

Argo isn't really an independent startup, Ford was behind it all along.

Do you have a source for that I could read?

> except that breaking the law has been Uber's business model since day 1.

So tired of hearing this. It's just parrots talking in the echo chamber. Show me a court verdict that Uber broke the law.

"Uber will pay as much as $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit with the district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/technology/uber-settles-s...

"Uber settles driver lawsuit over background checks, to pay $7.5 million" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-lawsuit-idUSKCN0Z12GS

"Uber has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle litigation brought by customers who alleged the ride hailing service misrepresented the quality of its safety practices and the fees it charged passengers" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-tech-safety-settlemen...

Need more?

Settlements are not admissions of guilt.

Nor are they admissions of innocence. However, if they were to lean one way, I'd say guilt is the direction they lean.

I don't think anyone has ever admitted to being innocent.

if your definition of guilt is "found guilty by a jury"- then sure. but because OP claimed they were "breaking the law", whether or not they were found guilty is irrelevant (by your definition).

that is, just because one was not found guilty by deliberation does not mean one didn't break the law.

They may or may not have broken the law but asimov_ is trying to present settlements as proof of lawbreaking which is invalid.

because it settled the best we can do is vet the material and make our own educated decisions. they're asking for proof of an opinion. (i feel compelled to mention, some opinions hold more water than others. i think we are free to carefully speculate).

No, but they do waggle their eyebrows suggestively and whisper, "Look over here!"

Yeah, they kinda are.

"Uber, suspension is definitive: service forbidden across all of Italy"

http://mobile.ilsole24ore.com/solemobile/main/art/tecnologie...

This is about UberPOP.

I was in Helsinki a couple weeks ago. They are offering their services there even if it is totally illegal [1]. Of course, it's the Uber drivers taking the fall, and Uber is letting this happen, simply hiding part of the license plate on the app to make it harder for authorities.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-16/uber-driv...

From TFA: "Uber Technologies Inc.’s app remains available in Helsinki -- there’s no law against it as is the case in other cities around the world -- but drivers are required to have a permit, which few drivers have, according to the police."

TL;DR: App is legal, most drivers are not.

> Summer 2015 - Anthony Levandowski told Pierre-Yves Droz, a colleague at Waymo, that he had talked with an Uber executive about forming a self-driving car startup and that Uber would be interested in buying that startup.

This, particularly, seems absolutely moronic. If you're going to do something shady, don't tell anyone about it.

You tell the people you hope to poach, especially if you intend to give them equity rather than salary because you're cash-poor because you can't get VC funding.

It's even more incredible given that the target of Uber's corporate espionage efforts... holds a 6% stake in Uber!

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