Travis Kalanick Continues to Leave a Trail of Slime

It turns out that Uber had a major data breach, with frightening levels of personal data taken about their drivers, and their response was to pay off the hackers and cover the whole affair up:

Hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year. This week, the ride-hailing firm ousted its chief security officer and one of his deputies for their roles in keeping the hack under wraps, which included a $100,000 payment to the attackers.

Compromised data from the October 2016 attack included names, email addresses and phone numbers of 50 million Uber riders around the world, the company told Bloomberg on Tuesday. The personal information of about 7 million drivers was accessed as well, including some 600,000 U.S. driver’s license numbers. No Social Security numbers, credit card information, trip location details or other data were taken, Uber said.

I'm not inclined to believe Uber's statements as to the limited scope of the breach.

At the time of the incident, Uber was negotiating with U.S. regulators investigating separate claims of privacy violations. Uber now says it had a legal obligation to report the hack to regulators and to drivers whose license numbers were taken. Instead, the company paid hackers to delete the data and keep the breach quiet. Uber said it believes the information was never used but declined to disclose the identities of the attackers.

That is so Uber.

Hackers have successfully infiltrated numerous companies in recent years. The Uber breach, while large, is dwarfed by those at Yahoo, MySpace, Target Corp., Anthem Inc. and Equifax Inc. What’s more alarming are the extreme measures Uber took to hide the attack. The breach is the latest scandal Khosrowshahi inherits from his predecessor, Travis Kalanick. 

Like the chicken said, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred."

BTW, Kalanick knew of the hack almost as soon as it happened.

Dara Khosrowshahi may have the worst job on the face of the earth.

But of Course

There has been a major leak of the Keystone Pipeline:

About 5,000 barrels of oil, or about 210,000 gallons, gushed out of the Keystone Pipeline on Thursday in South Dakota, blackening a grassy field in the remote northeast part of the state and sending cleanup crews and emergency workers scrambling to the site.

“This is not a little spill from any perspective,” said Kim McIntosh, an environmental scientist with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources. No livestock or drinking water sources appeared to be threatened, Ms. McIntosh said, and no farm buildings or houses are within a mile.

The spill, near Amherst, S.D., comes just days before regulators in neighboring Nebraska decide whether to grant the final permit needed to begin construction on a different pipeline proposal, the Keystone XL, which would be operated by the same company. An announcement in Nebraska is expected on Monday.

This is not a surprise.  TransCanada's safety record sucks.

Kidney Stone of a Commute Today

A car accident on the Beltway, a truck fire on I-95, and as a result an hour and a half commute to travel 26 miles.

That's an average speed of around 18 mph.

The only time I smiled on the way to work, was when I saw this bumper sticker:



I did smile at that.

Speaking of Overrated Silicon Valley Brogrammers

On appeal, the decision of the UK Employment Tribunal to classify drivers to be employees of Uber has been upheld on appeal:

Uber suffered another setback in its biggest market outside the United States after a British employment tribunal rejected the ride-hailing company’s argument that its drivers are self-employed.

The decision on Friday, which affirmed a ruling issued last year, means that Uber will have to ensure that its drivers in Britain receive a minimum wage and paid time off. That creates problems for a common hiring model in the so-called gig economy that relies on workers who do not have formal contracts.

Companies argue that such labor practices increase flexibility on both sides of the hiring equation. But critics counter that the system is exploitative and deprives employees of important safeguards like unemployment insurance.

The ruling was the second blow to Uber’s business here in recent months. In September, London’s transport authority barred the company from operating in the British capital.

In the case before the employment tribunal, two men, James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam, had challenged Uber on behalf of a group of 19 drivers, saying that the service had denied them basic protections by classifying them as self-employed. Uber countered with an argument it has used around the world: Its drivers were independent contractors.

“You can hide behind technology, but the laws are there, and they need to be obeyed and respected,” Mr. Aslam, 36, said in an interview after the tribunal issued its decision. “The impact of this ruling could affect thousands of drivers, and not just drivers but millions of workers across the U.K.”

The core of Uber's business model is that they can make other people cover the bulk of their costs, because ………Internet.

That they are finally getting push-back on this is heartening.

I Did Not Expect This

Warning, graphic video

The officers who brutalized David Dao on a United Airlines flight a few months ago have been fired:

According to the initial police report, Dao was said to have pushed away an officer's arm, causing "the subject to fall, hit, and injure his mouth on the armrest on the other side of the aisle." Another officer corroborated that account, but none of this is visible on the videos passengers posted online.

Thomas Demetrio, Dao's attorney, said video evidence is what doomed the officers.

"Do not state something that is clearly contrary to video viewed by the world," he said in a statement. "Our cell phones are the best deterrent to ensure mistreatment becomes a rarity."

The inspector general inquiry said that officers had "deliberately removed material facts from their reports." Aviation officials fired the security official who had "improperly escalated the incident" as well as an official involved in removing facts from a report on the incident.

You have the constitutional right to tape LEOs in action.  Use it.

As the counselor notes, "Cell phones are the best deterrent to ensure mistreatment becomes a rarity."

Yeah, This is Senior Investors Plotting an Exit Strategy

Uber's Board of Directors just made major changes in their structure to lock out Kalanick and to go IPO as quickly as possible:

Uber’s board of directors voted on Tuesday for governance changes that will reshape the balance of power at the ride-hailing service, paving the way for a stock sale to the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and for the company to go public by 2019.

The 11-member board met for less than four hours to approve some of the terms from a proposal put forward last week by Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s new chief executive, and Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that is an investor in the privately held company.

As a result, the clout of certain Uber shareholders — including, most significantly, its former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, who is a board member — will be reduced, according to people briefed on the deliberations, who asked to remain anonymous because the conversations were confidential. Other proposed measures, including one that would have posed hurdles to Mr. Kalanick’s returning as chief executive, were dropped before the meeting.

Still, the board approved enough changes for Uber to move forward on an investment from SoftBank. SoftBank has held discussions to buy a significant chunk of Uber’s stock, but the deal was contingent on changing the company’s governance structure so that some of its early investors would have an incentive to sell. In addition, directors approved a resolution for Uber to go public by 2019, the people briefed on the meeting said, setting up what could be one of the largest technology stock offerings in years.

These are a group of people looking to find some rubes so that they can cash out.

You have been warned.

Lord of the Flies, Uber Edition

It appears that Travis Kalanick has gotten to the breaking sh%$ of grief, specifically, he just appointed two board members without consulting with the board of Uber's new President:

The phone calls began late Friday among Uber’s new chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, and the ride-hailing company’s executives, as well as board members and a raft of lawyers. They were facing an emergency.

The problem was that Travis Kalanick, Uber’s former chief executive and a board member, had appointed two new directors — Ursula Burns, the former chief executive of Xerox, and John Thain, the former chief of Merrill Lynch — to the privately held company without informing them. The moves, which pushed the nine-member board to 11 people, gave Mr. Kalanick new potential allies on major decisions at Uber.

Mr. Kalanick’s actions were “disappointing,” Mr. Khosrowshahi wrote on Friday in a letter to employees that was obtained by The New York Times. “Anyone would tell you that this is highly unusual.”

The trigger for Mr. Kalanick’s move — one made possible by a board vote last year giving him control of three seats — was a proposal that Mr. Khosrowshahi and the investment bank Goldman Sachs, an Uber shareholder, brought to the board on Thursday. The proposal, which is set to be discussed by directors on Tuesday, includes measures that would shift the power on Uber’s board by reducing Mr. Kalanick’s voting clout, expanding Mr. Khosrowshahi’s powers and imposing a 2019 deadline on the company to go public, according to three people with knowledge of the proposal who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Parts of the proposal were also read to The Times.

Let me translate this into English, the investors realize that Kalanick has become toxic, and as a result is facing increased regulatory and media scrutiny.

In particular, people are beginning to notice that, "Uber has no conceivable path to profitability," because once they rise prices to reach profitability, entrants re-enter the market, and suddenly they are not particularly special and unicornish any more.

The big investors want to go public before it is too late, and that means rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and then getting into a lifeboat before the rush starts.

Bad Day at the Office

There was an uncontained engine failure on Airbus A380 on a Paris to London flight:

An Air France A380 superjumbo jetliner taking more than 500 people from Paris to Los Angeles made an emergency landing in Canada on Saturday following “serious damage” to one of its four engines, the airline said.

“Flight 066 landed without further damage at the Goose Bay military airport in Canada and all of the 520 people on board were evacuated with no injuries,” an Air France spokesman in Paris said.

The Airbus double-decker, wide body aircraft was rerouted as it passed over Greenland, landing in Goose Bay in eastern Canada, the spokesman said.

The landing went off with no problems for the jetliner carrying 496 passengers and 24 crew members, the spokesman said. The airline was exploring options to get the passengers to the US.

Glad not to be on that flight.

About F%##ing Time

After a continuing problems with driver vetting, incident reporting, and its treatment of its employees, Uber has been stripped of its operating permit by the Transport for London.

Specifically, they have been ruled that Uber is not a, "Fit and proper," private car operator:

Uber has been stripped of its London licence in a surprise move that dealt a serious blow to one of Silicon Valley’s fastest rising companies and sparked an outcry from a coalition of customers, government ministers and drivers at the ride-hailing company.

The firm’s application for a new licence in London was rejected on the basis that the company is not a “fit and proper” private car hire operator.

Uber’s cars will not disappear immediately as its current licence expires on 30 September and it plans to challenge the ruling by London’s transport authority in the courts immediately. The hailing app can continue to operate in the capital – where it has 3.5 million users – until the firm has exhausted the appeals process. Uber has 21 days to launch an appeal but can continue to operate until the process expires – which could take months.

Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi wrote to staff on Friday confirming that the company would appeal the ruling. He said he disagreed with the decision but it was based on past behaviour.

“The truth is that there is a high cost to a bad reputation,” he wrote. “It really matters what people think of us, especially in a global business like ours.

………

TfL said it had rejected the company’s application to renew its licence because “Uber’s approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility” in relation to reporting serious criminal offences, obtaining medical certificates and driver background checks.

The licensing body also said it was concerned by Uber’s use of Greyball, software that can be used to block regulatory bodies from gaining full access to its app and undertaking regulatory or law enforcement duties.

What Khosrowshahi is basically saying is that Travis Kalanick is simply too toxic to run Uber.

As Hannah Jane Parkinson has noted, "You name it, and if it’s sh%$#y behaviour, Uber has probably done it." (%$# mine)

Uber's primary innovation has always been a willingness to behave with complete disregard for the law and for ethics.

It's nice to see that bubble popped.

3rd Time is the Charm

There is now a third federal criminal investigation of Uber:

Federal investigators are probing an internal program, dubbed "Hell," that Uber used to keep tabs on its leading competitor, Lyft, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

"Uber created fake Lyft customer accounts, tricking Lyft’s system into believing prospective customers were seeking rides in various locations around a city. That allowed Uber to see which Lyft drivers were nearby and what prices they were offering for various routes," the Journal reports. "The program was also used to glean data on drivers who worked for both companies, and whom Uber could target with cash incentives to get them to leave Lyft."

Federal investigators are reportedly probing "whether 'Hell' constituted unauthorized access of a computer"—which is a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the anti-hacking statute Congress passed in 1986.

………

As the Journal points out, Uber is now facing three separate federal investigations. In addition to the "Hell" investigation, Uber is also facing scrutiny for creating a special version of its app to mislead local officials trying to enforce tax regulations. The third investigation is considering whether Uber violated anti-bribery laws.

I really want to see Travis Kalanick frog marched out of his house by FBI agents in handcuffs.

How Convenient!

Dara Khosrowshahi will be the new CEO of Uber.

All the profiles mention that he was CEO of Expedia, but none of them seem to mention that he is a member of the board of directors of the New York Times.

Anyone besides me (and Dean Baker, who pointed this out) wondering how this might affect coverage of the company?

Factoid from a Travelogue

Over at Obasidian Wings, Doctor Science has a review of the new Tappan Zee Bridge, and gives us this little factoid:

As for who *should* pay for the bridge, there's no question in my mind: it should be (mostly) the trucking industry. It won't, of course, but that would be fair.

Most of the vehicles that go over the TZB are cars, of course. But it turns out that the stress a vehicle puts on a road or bridge goes up as the fourth power of its weight per axle.

An example: my 2-axle car weighs about 4000 lbs. Empty, a typical 5-axle tractor-trailer weighs about 33,000 lbs. So the empty truck is about 3.3 times as heavy per axle, and causes almost 120 times the damage.

My toll on the TZB is $4.75. If that truck was paying its way across the TBZ, it should pay a toll of more than $500. But that's only if it's empty! Remember, the burden on the system goes up as the fourth power. If the truck is pretty full, weighing 72,800 lbs, it weighs 6 or 7 times as much per axle as my car -- and does more than 1500 times the damage. A fair toll would be more than $8000.

In actuality, no truck pays more than $50 to go over the TZB, and that's the rush hour price: it drops to under $25 if you cross at night. Other drivers, and the population as a whole, are subsidizing the trucking industry to a truly epic degree. And this occurs while the trucking industry has exploited its workers to the point of indentured servitude -- before they start replacing most of them with robots.

If the problem in our society could be reduced to a single issue, (They can't) it would be the various direct and indirect subsidies that the rich and powerful in our society extract from the rest of us.

Whether it's trucking, pharma, TBTF banks, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, charter schools, big ag, etc., their current business models would be unsustainable but for the money that they extract from the rest of us.

We are riven by parasites.

Getting into a Fight with Uber Over "Principles" Is Like Trying to Have a Reasoned Argument with a Mosh Pit Full of Rabid, Syphilitic Monkeys.

The above title is a comments from a story about how Uber screwed over a customer whose stuff was stolen by one of their drivers.

The short version is that the driver drove off with his stuff, and Uber steadfastly refused to help him contact the driver, and when sued (small claims) lied to the court.

To quote the film Aliens, nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Pass the Popcorn, Uber Edition

As I have noted earlier, Travis Kalanick was removed as CEO of Uber, and I noted that the company is having problems finding a replacement, because, among other problems,^* is that Kalanick imagines himself to be Steve Jobs, and has been meticulously planning a comeback.

While Kalanick shares some characteristics with Steve Jobs, most notably they are both frequently described as sociopaths, but Jobs actually had an eye for design and a vision beyond being a professional asshole.

But Kalanick is trying for a return to the captain's chair, and has been marshaling his forces, while the people who are concerned about parade of increasingly toxic revelations are fighting him.

The main advocate of keeping Kalanick away from management is Benchmark Capital, a private equity firm, and they just upped the stakes by filing a lawsuit against Kalanick for fraud:

Benchmark Capital sued Uber Technologies Inc.’s former chief Travis Kalanick in an effort to oust him from the board, exposing a clash between two of the ride-hailing company’s most powerful and contentious shareholders during the middle of a CEO search.

The lawsuit on Thursday alleges Mr. Kalanick defrauded directors into giving him more control over the board by hiding a range of “inappropriate and unethical directives.”

The allegations center around a decision in June 2016 by Mr. Kalanick to expand the board to 11 seats from eight, effectively giving him control over the designation of those additional seats, the firm said.  

Benchmark, which has a seat on the board, said it never would have authorized that move had it known about the company’s “gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber,” citing sexual-harassment allegations at the company, the handling of a rape incident involving a passenger in India and a lawsuit from Google parent Alphabet Inc. over the alleged theft of trade secrets.

In a statement, Mr. Kalanick’s spokesman said the lawsuit is without merit and “riddled with lies and false allegations.” He said Benchmark is attempting to deprive Mr. Kalanick of his rights as a founder and shareholder and silence his voice.

It's pretty clear that Kalanick was concealing this stuff from the board, as evidenced by the alacrity with which they defenestrated him when the revelations came to light.

Another group of investors, comprised of Kalanick bros and people who value a complete lack of ethics in the executive suite, are calling for Benchmark to leave the board.

I have a feeling that Benchmark is in a win-win situation:  Either they will beat Kalanick, or they will be bought out at significant profit.

I do think that Benchmark thinks that they will prevail in their lawsuit, because they gave Kalanick a month's notice before filing the lawsuit, which implies to me that either they have incontrovertible evidence of fraud, or that the revelations of a trial would be disastrous for Uber's investors:

The saga between the powerhouse venture firm Benchmark and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick continues. Following last week’s lawsuit revelation, Benchmark penned a public letter to Uber employees explaining why it is taking legal action against Kalanick, who remains on Uber’s board and controls two other, empty board seats.

Today, Benchmark doubled down on its decision, writing a note addressed to Uber employees, saying that not only should it sue, but “perhaps the better question is why didn’t we act sooner.” The firm said that when the CEO search began more than 50 days ago, Kalanick agreed in writing to “modify the company’s voting agreement to ensure that the board was composed of independent, diverse, and well qualified directors.” Benchmark is alleging that Kalanick has not followed through on this agreement and that he was warned more than a month ago that he would be subject to potential litigation.

(emphasis mine)

I plan to milk this for as much entertainment value as possible.

It's like trying not to stare at a car wreck.

^*Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Prank Turned Research Project

Not the test, just a a prank in the vid

At the Virginia Tech, researchers have dressed up a card seat to evaluate public responses to unmanned cars:

Tech blogs went crazy over the weekend after a new self-driving car was seen rolling around Arlington, Virginia.

Unlike vehicles from Google Waymo, Uber and others, the car didn’t have any obvious signs of a Lidar array, the chunky imaging technology most autonomous vehicles use to gauge the state of the road ahead. Instead, it had just a small bar mounted on the dashboard, which blinked red when it was at a stop light and green once the cost was clear.

Even more intriguingly, the car appeared to be genuinely autonomous: there was no-one sitting in the driver’s seat. Typically, a human overseer is required in the testing phase to make sure that the car doesn’t go wild and run over a marching band, but somehow this car had managed to find a loophole.

………

But still a question remained. Who was behind this breakthrough new technology? How were they solving the problems that had stymied even the mighty Alphabet/Google/Waymo megacorp?

You’ve read the headline. You know the answer: it was a bloke dressed up as a car seat.

………

But one aspect of the rumour mill was correct: the guy really was associated with Virginia Tech. According to the university’s transportation institute, he was engaged in research about autonomous vehicles, likely gathering data about the reaction of normal drivers to sharing road space with a self-driving car.

I'm not sure if this was a real study, or just an excuse for some researcher to f%$# with fellow drivers.

My money on the latter.

Not a Surprise

It appears that Ubern cannot find willing to take over the job as CEO:

Getting rid of Travis Kalanick may have been hard for Uber’s investors and board of directors. But replacing him could prove harder.

As the company’s board inches ahead in its search for a new chief executive to run the embattled ride-hailing company, candidates are dropping out before they’ve even met with every board member. Kalanick himself is rumored to be angling for a return, and some investors question whether any candidate could fill its departed leader’s shoes.

In other words, this is not a typical job opening.

This is not a surprise.  The best parts of Uber are profoundly toxic, the worst parts are illegal, and Travis Kalanick is attempting to regain control of the company, which, considering that he may have control of a majority of voting shares, is likely to put off anyone who has any concern about their reputation.

Any attempt to fix Uber will likely fail because, with Kalanick in the wings, the employees will likely slow-walk any attempted reforms, because they believe that they will be reversed.


It's a toxic mess, and the only person willing to step into it will have to either have nothing to lose, or have no f%$#s left to give.

There aren't a whole bunch of those in the C-suite.

I Hate Dealing With the DMV

I really, really, really hate this, with an enduring passion.

Blamestorming Commencements

I have mentioned that Governor Andrew Cuomo's hostility to mass transit in general, and to the New York City Subway in particular, is responsible for the current sorry state of the Subway.

Now, he is trying to fob the blame off on the Mayor of New York, and Bill de Blasio is having none of it:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio fired back Sunday at state and transit officials who have been trying to pin the subway’s problems on him.

“The state of New York is responsible for making sure our subways run,” Mr. de Blasio said, “period.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Joseph Lhota have spent the past several days suggesting subways are the city’s responsibility and the city should be paying more.

Mr. de Blasio begged to differ, saying the MTA has spent its money on projects unrelated to the subways at the state’s direction, and left other funds languishing.

“The state of New York has used the MTA as a piggy bank,” he said. “They need to spend the money on what matters.”

But Mr. Lhota late Sunday said the mayor’s comments were “completely disingenuous knowing that the MTA is set to present its 30-day overhaul plan this week. We know we have a problem and our job now is to fix it.”

………

The governor has more sway than the mayor over the MTA’s budgeting, leadership and other personnel, and Mr. Cuomo has directed the agency to fund and finish a number of his pet projects, like the Second Avenue subway.

But amid a recent rash of subway delays and derailments, and growing crowds underground, the governor has been pinning the problems on the mayor. “It’s the city’s legal obligation to be funding it,” Mr. Cuomo said last week.

The mayor office also distributed a “fact sheet” Sunday showing that the city already pays more than two-thirds of the MTA’s $15 billion operating budget through taxes, fares, and other means.

Recent polls show more New Yorkers hold the governor accountable for the MTA, but they want a bigger investment in the subways from both the state and the city.

Cuomo's attempt at deflecting the blame is really kind of pathetic.

This Is What Comes from Mixing Ambien and Alcohol

A little red wine, vintage record, some Ambien ... and magic!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 7, 2017

Like Keith Moon, and not in a good way

The increasingly erratic Elon Musk is now claiming that he got verbal governmental approval to construct a Hyperloop transit system from Washington, DC and New York City.

Rather unsurprisingly all manner of public officials over the proposed route have no recollection of any such discussion:

Elon Musk does not have government approval to build a Hyperloop tunnel from New York City to Washington DC.

The Tesla executive took to Twitter this morning to tantalize his legion of fans and the tech press with the “news” that he had “just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins … City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city.”

Lest any billionaires need to brush up on civics 101: the US system of government does not operate on “verbal government approvals”.

Musk walked back his claim about 90 minutes later, tweeting: “Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly”.

A lot of work is needed to receive formal approval, indeed.

Musk was received with typical credulity by the tech press, and considerable consternation by various government agencies. Several spokespeople who answered the phones at relevant city, state and federal government bodies laughed upon hearing of the claim that an interstate transit project with a significant street-level footprint in four of the east coast’s largest cities could be approved verbally.

Gee, you think?

I'm not sure if Musk has gone over the edge because of drug abuse, Ambien and alcohol is addictive and dangerous, or if it's because he has become convinced of his own epic awesomeness from sycophants and the, "Typical credulity by the tech press," but Elon Musk is well into delusional, and seems to be heading to Bond villain territory.

I'm kind of surprised.  Of all the PayPal mafia, I would have figured that would be vampire Peter Thiel would go over the edge first.

The Swedes are the Greatest People on the Face of the Earth

Swedish passenger operator MTR Express opened up a new line between Stockholm and Gothenburg, and they held an online contest to name it, the obvious happened, but unlike the killjoys at the Natural Environment Research Council, they decided to name the line Trainy McTrainface:

A Swedish rail operator has vowed to name one of its trains Trainy McTrainface after a public vote, saying it would bring joy to people disappointed when Britain rejected the name Boaty McBoatface for a polar research ship following a similar poll.

Trainy McTrainface won 49% of the votes in the naming competition, conducted online by train operator MTR Express and Swedish newspaper Metro, beating choices such as Hakan, Miriam and Poseidon.

“[This is] news that will be received with joy by many, not just in Sweden,” MTR wrote in a statement.

The train will run between the Swedish capital Stockholm and Gothenburg, the country’s second-biggest city.
………

MTR said another train had been voted to be named “Glenn”, an apparent tribute to an IFK Gothenburg soccer team of the 1980s that featured four players of that name – uncommon in Sweden – including Glenn Hysen, who later captained Liverpool.

This is so cool.