Despite what you learned as a kid, you can get caught in a lie when you tell the truth. Part of the "game" of adversarial court is trying to get as many legally admissible statements from opposing witnesses as possible. Once enough statements have been entered into evidence, lawyers find contradictions - it doesn't matter how small. Humans don't say the exact same thing every time - it's not too hard to create the appearance of a contradiction where none exists - and sometimes prosecutors get it wrong and think they hear a contradiction where none exists. Good defense lawyers keep their clients (innocent or guilty) out of the witness box as much as possible.
Seeing as how the expert testimony is far from being in the least bit conclusive but allegations were presented as such, it's not hard to see why it is best to say nothing. Every word you utter will be used against you in the least charitable way possible, especially when the court of public opinion already thinks you're guilty.
Taking the fifth is not automatically a sign of guilt despite what some people might think.
As I understand it it's not out of the realm of possibility for a lawyer to advise doing so even for completely innocent clients. It's not hard to get tripped up on the stand and sound guilty even when you aren't.
It's one thing to take the fifth out of an abundance of caution when all it might do is raise some suspicion. It's another thing when doing so is likely to cost you $250MM. It's hard to look at this course of events and conclude that Levandowski probably did nothing wrong.
I think, basically, Uber will pay some $$$ to make the lawsuit go away and "license" Waymo's tech (which they already had, courtesy Mr. Lewandowski, but now will legally have it).
I agree. Google doesn't want a license agreement. As pointed out below, yes, there is investment, but I think Google/Alphabet is out for blood and the investment dollars will be recouped in the civil settlement if not the arbitration with Levandowski.
Either way, I don't think Google cares. They want to be first on the market. And based on how badly Uber has been flouting the law, I suspect Google gets there first no matter what. This just slows Uber down.
It won't matter though. Money will change hands. And that's about it. Google/Alphabet/Waymo/Lyft will be first to market in a pretty shitty way, followed by Uber. The tech world and early adopters will go nuts and in this case probably die in a fire. Then Apple and Tesla will come in with a far superior safety/user experience and take over.
None of this really matters at this point. It's a waiting game. This is what Apple always does and what Tesla has started doing: wait for the early entries in the market to do their thing, learn from their mistakes, and pwn the market later with better UX and marketing.
Yeah, doesn't Google have something like a 6.7% stake in Uber? Even with share diluation by half, at a $60bn valuation that's still $2bn. Do we really think Google can win much more than $2bn in this Waymo lawsuit?
The theory behind Kopi Luwak was that the civets knew which (coffee) berries were perfectly ripe, so ate them; in the process, pooping out the seeds (coffee beans).
Once humans found this out, now civets are kept in cavity and fed just coffee berries (i.e., they have no choice, just eat whatever is put in from of them). Natually, the beans that come out will be no different than average coffee beans. Yes, there's this whole "civet digestive enzymes" part, but that plays a negligible role IMHO.
Sounds like pump-and-dump to me. From what I could gather (albeit I'm not very familiar with financial engineering): the Chinese stock market is hot, and P/E of 100 is not uncommon. In other words: P = 100 x E.
Suppose you are a company that sells some conventional goods whose market is tapped out, so no more growth in the "E". You find a game company (who doesn't understand the games market, especially China, where smartphones are like second appendages?) with earnings of, say, X. If you can buy this outfit for something significantly lower than 100 * X, then (using the equation above), you'll be able to boost your own company's "P" by 100 * X by acquiring the company, at a cost much lower than 100 * X.
It seems super sketchy. I mean the valuations based on current P/E aren't even terrible except for the fact that gaming especially doesn't seem an enduring business. That E is probably going to go down as people move on to other games.
Maybe I'm reading a bit too much in it, but the top comments seem to have a bit of discriminatory tone: China = pyramid scheme or money laundering. When 1997, 2007, SF real-estate, unicorns with no earnings, all happen(ed/ing) in the US, in addition to Bernie Madoff. The original article topic is industrial companies buying tech and the arbitraging of valuations.
I think maybe you are reading too much into it. Adding "value" to a company's bottom line by purchasing assets COMPLETELY outside of the core competency of the company tilts the scales toward cooking the books and away from creating actual value.
No, I'm saying is: you're right "1997, 2007, SF real-estate, unicorns with no earnings, all happen(ed/ing) in the US" - and now there is a similar thing happening in China too.
A judicious use of xargs, curl and grep would have done it in 1 line in Linux. I looked at your PowerShell code; that does look a bit complicated compared to what Linux offers.
I'm sure you are right. I was just trying to convey the positive impression I got from what little time I spent with PowerShell and the great documentation it has.
Especially the fact that I was able to accomplish what I set out to do in a very reasonable amount of time.
