<story><title>Anthony Levandowski, self driving car whiz who fell from grace</title><url>https://www.wired.com/story/god-is-a-bot-and-anthony-levandowski-is-his-messenger</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>valuearb</author><text>&amp;quot;But Larry Page is no longer convinced that Levandowski was key to Chauffeur’s success. In his deposition to the court, Page said, “I believe Anthony’s contributions are quite possibly negative of a high amount.” At Uber, some engineers privately say that Levandowski’s poor management style set back that company’s self-driving effort by a couple of years.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So does this mean Waymo owes Uber damages, or payment for taking the problem off their hands?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>I could see Page saying that. Urmson seems to have been the one who took the Waymo technology from &amp;quot;sort of works&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;works reliably&amp;quot;.  There&amp;#x27;s a long, slow grind phase of testing, logging, and dealing with more unusual situations before the technology is ready for deployment. Levandowski tends to skip that part, as with the Otto demo. One can see why he got along with Kalanick.&lt;p&gt;Levandowski comes out of this fine. Google can&amp;#x27;t sue him. Google has an employee contract which forces employee disputes into arbitration.  That arbitration has already happened and can&amp;#x27;t be reopened.  The settlement terms are not public.&lt;p&gt;The LIDAR design is a side issue.  There will be lots of good, low-cost LIDAR units as soon as someone is able to order a few hundred thousand of them.   Continental&amp;#x27;s flash LIDAR will probably be the first successful mass-market flash LIDAR.  Quanergy made a lot of noise, but never shipped. Now they seem to be pivoting from automotive to border security. (They want to make Trump&amp;#x27;s border wall a virtual one.) Tetraview has funding but no products. Velodyne has been making flash LIDAR noises but hasn&amp;#x27;t demoed yet. Innoviz has demoed an experimental unit and claims to be selling it. Meanwhile, Velodyne is trying to get their rotating devices down to $500 in quantity.</text></comment>
<story><title>Anthony Levandowski, self driving car whiz who fell from grace</title><url>https://www.wired.com/story/god-is-a-bot-and-anthony-levandowski-is-his-messenger</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>valuearb</author><text>&amp;quot;But Larry Page is no longer convinced that Levandowski was key to Chauffeur’s success. In his deposition to the court, Page said, “I believe Anthony’s contributions are quite possibly negative of a high amount.” At Uber, some engineers privately say that Levandowski’s poor management style set back that company’s self-driving effort by a couple of years.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So does this mean Waymo owes Uber damages, or payment for taking the problem off their hands?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ehsankia</author><text>The stuff he stole wasn&amp;#x27;t necessarily his own work. Page is saying that not only Levandowski didn&amp;#x27;t help, he also stole the hard work of the other engineers.</text></comment>