Farhad’s Week in Tech: HomePod Whiffs, but Elon Musk Does Not
- 6 years ago
Farhad’s Week in Tech: HomePod Whiffs, but Elon Musk Does Not
Travis Kalanick took the stand, drank a whole lot of water, offered his thoughts on greed
and Google, and introduced the world to the crazy lexicon of tech bros: “unpumped,” “angsty” and, most mysteriously of all, “laser is the sauce.”
These are the highlights from Waymo’s big trade-secrets lawsuit against Uber, which,
after months of legal maneuvering, finally hit a San Francisco courtroom this week.
Every reviewer — among them Nilay Patel at The Verge, Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal and my New York Times colleague Brian X. Chen — found
that HomePod beat Echo, Google Home and a comparable Sonos device in audio quality.
At the heart of the case is one question: Did Uber steal trade secrets from Waymo, Google’s self-driving
car spin-off, when it purchased Otto, a self-driving company founded by former employees of Waymo?
Where Amazon’s and Google’s devices can answer a variety of questions
and perform lots of different tasks (like order up an Uber or Lyft), HomePod’s brain, Siri, needs evolution.
Kalanick conceded that during a “jam sesh” with Anthony Levandowski, the former Waymo engineer alleged
to have stolen its secrets, he discussed the key technology at issue in the case, laser sensors.
Travis Kalanick took the stand, drank a whole lot of water, offered his thoughts on greed
and Google, and introduced the world to the crazy lexicon of tech bros: “unpumped,” “angsty” and, most mysteriously of all, “laser is the sauce.”
These are the highlights from Waymo’s big trade-secrets lawsuit against Uber, which,
after months of legal maneuvering, finally hit a San Francisco courtroom this week.
Every reviewer — among them Nilay Patel at The Verge, Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal and my New York Times colleague Brian X. Chen — found
that HomePod beat Echo, Google Home and a comparable Sonos device in audio quality.
At the heart of the case is one question: Did Uber steal trade secrets from Waymo, Google’s self-driving
car spin-off, when it purchased Otto, a self-driving company founded by former employees of Waymo?
Where Amazon’s and Google’s devices can answer a variety of questions
and perform lots of different tasks (like order up an Uber or Lyft), HomePod’s brain, Siri, needs evolution.
Kalanick conceded that during a “jam sesh” with Anthony Levandowski, the former Waymo engineer alleged
to have stolen its secrets, he discussed the key technology at issue in the case, laser sensors.