Protesters Show Up At the Doorstep of Google Self-driving Car Engineer

mpicpp sends this report from Ars Technica: "Protests against tech giants and their impact on the San Francisco Bay Area economy just got personal. According to an anonymous submission on local news site Indybay, an unknown group of protesters targeted a Google engineer best known for helping to develop the company's self-driving car. ... The protest against Levandowski came the same day that the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority (SFMTA) voted for the first time to take action regulating Google, Facebook, Apple, and a number of other large tech companies that shuttle workers in private, Wi-Fi-enabled buses from the Bay Area to points south in Silicon Valley."

Comments

Wait so now

[dale.furno]

Being a Luddite is fashionable?

Re:Wait so now

[Altus]

and that is this guys fault personally and somehow not the fault of the protesters who likely have their own phones and computers and used the same resources to print the very fliers that they used to protest this one guy who is just designing things and is really, in no way, more responsible for the economic state of the world than any of the people standing outside his house.

If you have a problem with this kind of economic inequality then you have a long journey ahead of you. Bitching about one engineer and the fact that he can cary a baby and check his cell phone at the same time (but what about the LIFE he carries in his HAND!) is sure as shit not going to change any of that.

Re:Wait so now

[SiliconSeraph]

Picketing this guys house doesn't solve anything. He's enriching the world with his work. He's not beating child slaves in some African diamond mine, he's not indenturing people to manufacture tennis shoes. These people are doing the most convenient thing possible to act like they care without actually leaving the city or county they live in. The protestors would be better served to use that energy to plant a tree and get over themselves.

Re:Wait so now

[hey!]

It never went out of fashion. The difference is there used to be a firewall against fanaticism: upward mobility.

The Great Recession reduced the median net worth of American Household's by 39%, and 85% of self-identified middle class people say it has become harder to maintain a middle-class lifestyle over the past decade (citation: 2012, Pew Research Center, "Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier: The Lost Decade of the Middle Class"). The Great Recession also wiped out 15 years of growth in the median household income in the US (citation: Wikipedia, 'Household income in the United States',http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States), with the median continuing to drop even after economic growth resumed, although truth be told median household income was stagnant through the first decade of this century.

If you want to know how politically stable this country is, look at those median numbers. If they drop or stagnate while average incomes rise, that means the mass of people in the country are experiencing economic insecurity, and a certain proportion of those people are apt to be radicalized -- toward both ends of the political spectrum.

Re:Wait so now

[Guspaz]

Indeed, the protesters weren't complaining about rent, but about how the engineer "is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control, and automation", that the designer of a condo he wants to build "[have] created military installations, malls, and hospitals", that they are destroying the economy by "growing their own vegetables in a rooftop garden and selling them to other wealthy people"... They talk about how they stalk him in his morning routine and that when he descended the stairs of his home with his baby in his arms, he "appeared in this moment like the robot he admits that he is."

They also go on some insane rant about mining and that "Anthony Levandowski has never worked in a pit mine"...

These people come off as a bunch of creepy stalker nutjobs. If I was their target, I would legitimately fear for the safety of my family.

Re:Wait so now

[pushing-robot]

False. Intelligent people enjoy Pink Floyd and the Backstreet Boys, drive a 1982 white Honda Prelude, have two cats and one dog and live in a small but tidy flat in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Re:Wait so now

[geekoid]

don't go blaming liberal democrats.
I am a liberal democrat, and I think SFMTA is in the wrong, and that these protesters are idiotic.

Stop letting echo chambers, and shit stirrers cause you to think along such simple lines.

Re:Wait so now

[triffid_98]

The Great Recession really sucks, and the investment banks have never been held to account for their strong role in creating it [...], but don't lay all the world's ills at its doorstep. We're still far better off economically than the 70s!

In spite of a far more educated workforce I have serious doubts that that's true.

Adjusted for inflation, the median household income in 1975? $45,788
The median household income in 2012? $51,017

But wait you (might) say. That means we're better off now....except for one small detail. We're measuring household income.

In the 1970's that was (generally) one persons income, in 2012 that's two people's income. In terms of physical goods I think we compare quite favorably, but factoring in things like housing, energy and food? Not so much.

REFERENCE http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php

Re:Wait so now

[phantomfive]

Do you understand, that living in the first world, you are likely richer than 90% if not 99% of the rest of the population? How much of your wealth are you willing to give up in the name of inequality?

Re:Wait so now

[meerling]

You do know that lots of gold is mined in the USA.

In 2012 the United States produced 230 tonnes of gold, making it the third-largest gold-producing nation, behind China and Australia. South Africa (that's actually a country) is 5th, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo isn't even in the top 10.

Most gold is used for jewelry, not electronics, so go protest a freaking jeweler.

Re:Wait so now

[swalve]

Exactly. My parents and all their cousins grew up in houses with about 100 sq feet per person. Three bedrooms, 7 kids, etc. Sure, they were able to live on dad's salary, but mom's entire day was spent toiling so they could make it work. If you want to live like they did in the 70s (and 60s and 50s), you certainly can on one income. But it won't be pretty, because it wasn't pretty then either. We have two income households because we have greater expectations for standards of living.

Re:Wait so now

[floobedy]

they have valid points about the Congo and rising rent caused by google's self-driving cars spreading their high-earning workers into lower-rent neighborhoods.

The protesters certainly do not have valid points. The rising rents in the SF Bay Area are caused by fixed supply despite growing demand, which in turn is caused by the relentless opposition to constructing any new urban housing there.

The far left in the SF Bay Area has fought tooth and nail, for decades, to disallow any dense urban housing construction. That is why rents are increasing. Demand increases every year while supply is fixed.

From the protesters' flier:

Levandowski is now making his contribution to the further sterilization and gentrification of Downtown Berkeley and Shattuck Avenue [by sponsoring new condominium buildings]. The proposed project is a testament to the arrogance, disconnection, and luxury of the ruling class. Growing their own vegetables in a rooftop garden and selling them to other wealthy people allows them, somehow...

Here the protesters will not allow the construction of new urban housing. When rents continue to go up, which is what the protesters are causing by their own actions, they will complain again that rents are too high.

The protesters are causing additional carbon emissions and environmental destruction. If they successfully prevent the construction of dense urban housing, then obviously that will force those people to live in suburban housing (because people don't protest new construction there), and suburban housing has vastly worse carbon emissions that urban.

Newsflash: if you prevent the construction of dense urban housing, then that doesn't cause the potential occupants just to disappear magically. Instead, it causes them to live in suburban housing instead, which is far worse for the environment in every regard. Suburban residents usually have triple the carbon emissions or more, of urban residents.

Furthermore, if the protesters manage to shut down the bus (!?), then obviously that will force some people to drive which will contribute to the gridlock on the 101, and will cause thousands of cars on the gridlocked 101 to idle even longer during their travels.

valid points about the Congo

If you care about the Congo, as the protesters claim to do, then you should send part of your money as charity to the Congo. It does not help the people there, to boycott their only product and to boycott the only major export from the entire country. It causes economic devastation to a country to prevent its exports. That is why a blockade on exports is forbidden by the UN as an international crime.

If exports are exploitation, then the Israelis are doing the Palestinians a big favor by blockading the ports at the Gaza strip. It is preventing the palestinians from being "exploited" by selling what they have on the international market.

It's nice of you to try to find something positive about the protesters. However, in my opinion, the protesters are just stupid. What they are doing is silly, poorly thought out, unintentionally destructive, and it causes precisely the problems which they are trying to cure.

Re:Wait so now

[hey!]

What you're doing here is interesting. You've created a basket of goods, and argued that those things are cheaper for a given quality. And it's an important point that you *can* do this -- but it's tricky.

Take Elvis' house. Elvis was rich, but he was not a cultural sophisticate, except possibly when it came to music. I can point to counter-examples. I once worked in a non-profit that was chock full of scions of elite Boston families -- Forbes's, Cabots, Lowells, etc. These are people whose ancestors made fortunes in the 1700s and handed it down generation to generation, and patterned their consumption patterns on those of the English aristocracy. Their homes aren't large or flashy, but they're unmistakably old money, and almost couldn't be reproduced at any price today. Everything is old, handmade and of fabulous quality, selected to be handed down to the next generation.

Now that's an extreme example (as extreme as Elvis's house), but it shows there's a flip side the the "everything's cheaper" argument. Everything *is* cheaper, not only in the sense of price, but in the sense of durability and serviceability (with a few exceptions like autos). I'm 53 years old, and there's been a shift in the very concept of quality over my lifetime that makes comparisons tricky, a shift from use-centered quality to sales-centric quality. Look at the original IBM PC-XT, obviously a ridiculously underpowered by today's standards, but focus on the build quality for a moment. It's almost exotic by today's standards, and it's built to last for ten years or more, to be serviced and upgraded. In comparison the smartphone I carry is incomparably more powerful, it is designed to be thrown away when it's non-replaceable li-ion battery starts to flag after about two years.

There's been a shift in the way we live our lives, and it's something of a mixed bag. We have to buy stuff differently now, because it's all designed with a very short service life (again except for cars, which are a huge bright spot). I can fill my house with attractive Ikea furniture at a bargain price, and it'll make my Brahmin friends' hand crafted mahogany stuff look dowdy in comparison -- but I'll have to replace most of it in five years, and they'll pass their dining room set down to yet another generation of descendants.

A lot of our enhanced buying power comes at the cost of getting on the replacement treadmill. I bought a $400 flat screen HDTV two years ago, and I just replaced it with another $400 flat screen HDTV. Meanwhile the 1970s Sony Trinitron in the spare bedroom keeps going. The point is that comparing what you could buy in 1970s to today is complicated, because our notion of quality has changed to one based on the assumption that stuff is disposable.

morons

[slashmydots]

So they're being too eco-friendly with the bus rides? Or everyone's jealous about the benefits? Or public transportation isn't crowded enough? I don't get it but I have the sneaking suspicion that these people are morons.

So I was sitting behind a Gbus/Fbus on 85 today.

[t0qer]

I started thinking to myself, "Wow, I only live a mile from where they pick folks up, and they drop me off about a mile from work" Maybe SF should take into consideration that non-goog-app-fac employees might want to ride on the same line. These companies should consider allowing non-employees to pay a fare to use the busses.

First they came for the Engineers,

[Anonymous Coward]

and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Engineer.

Then they came for the Software Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because there was no Software Union.

Then they came for the Network Admins, and I did not speak out-- Because those guys are mostly assholes.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

Re:First they came for the Engineers,

[bunratty]

I joined a Facebook group in protest, so I'm good.

illiberal attack on technology advancement

[zerosomething]

This is a very good example of people who like to call them selves "Liberal" not being very liberal. Technology will advance and apparently some people don't like it in the same way some other people don't like gay marriage or pot smoking.

Protesting against themselves?

[hawguy]

Part of their flyer says:

There are men and women in the Congo, slaving away in giant pits in order to extract gold and other precious metals from the earth. This gold will go into phones and tablets made by companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft

Unless they all walked there and are wearing homemade clothes from home grown cotton weaved by hand into fabric, and "printed" their flyers by hand by writing them using sustainably harvested carbon pencils on home made papyrus, and organized the protest through word of mouth (which was probably aided by the fact that they all live in the same cave) rather than using email and iPhones, they are being disingenuous by protesting against resources used for technology that they themselves use and enjoy.

Re:Protesting against themselves?

[darkmeridian]

These idiots probably designed those flyers on a Mac using Microsoft Office, and used Google to find all the facts and allegations in their flyers.

Re:Protesting against themselves?

[neo-mkrey]

Hypocrisy is often lost on the hypocrite.

Fail by all posters so far on the issue

[div_2n]

The protesters are part of a group that are upset about gentrification. In the event that you don't know what that is, I'll explain since all the posters so far clearly didn't read the actual article (another day on /.). Quite simply -- it's when people with significant wealth and/or income move into an area of people with less wealth/income and thereby drive up real estate prices beyond what the established population can potentially afford. Hint: property taxes start going up and the established population can't afford to buy/rent a new place in their current neighborhood and possibly can't afford their current residence anymore and will be forced to move potentially far from where they currently live. For families, this is a non-trivial challenge.

They've been protesting Google buses because this has put gentrification onto the fast track by making areas more attractive to Google employees that otherwise wouldn't have been due to transportation headaches. Getting a company funded ride straight to work is not a small deal.

Note I'm not taking a side on the issue, just pointing out what's going on. Essentially you have people that can see the time coming when they will have to move and it's directly the result of Google and its employees. I won't use the word "fault" because that implies wrongdoing.

The tactics of the protesters are clearly questionable, but I'll leave that up for the ensuing discussion.

Re:Fail by all posters so far on the issue

[div_2n]

At the risk of drifting to one side or the other -- I think you're oversimplifying. While gentrification is not a new phenomenon, this is one of the first times I've ever heard of people reacting so viscerally to it. I think the reason this stings so badly for existing non-Google employee residents is because it's not happening due to a new employer opening their doors nearby. If that were the case, existing residents could potentially get jobs there and afford the new normal.

In this particular instance, you have an employer that is NOT nearby making the fact that this location is not nearby a non-issue for its employees and causing gentrification in a way that mostly leaves current residents out of the loop since it's not likely the average resident could get a job at Google. The results can be devastating situation depending. Some residents might only be getting by or barely getting ahead. Having to relocate could completely upset their financial balance in a way that they can't rectify.

At a minimum, people's lives are being upended due to no fault of their own and it's quite clear where they should direct their energy.

Re:Fail by all posters so far on the issue

[rgmoore]

Please note that rising property taxes is not a big issue in California because of Prop 13, which prevents properties from being reassessed until their next transfer of ownership. People who already own houses in the neighborhood will not see their property taxes go up any more than they otherwise would. Prop 13 was passed specifically to prevent owners from being forced out of their homes by rising property taxes, and it does a good job. Gentrification may increase the cost of living in other ways (e.g. by replacing affordable local stores with more expensive ones) but it will also help the local city's finances and help to pay for better public services.

The people who really lose out to gentrification are renters, who certainly can be priced out of their neighborhood. Even rent control and other tenant protections can be worked around, if nothing else by landlords selling to owners who plan to live there rather than rent out the property.

Re:Fail by all posters so far on the issue

[Loki_1929]

At a minimum, people's lives are being upended due to no fault of their own and it's quite clear where they should direct their energy.

Toward getting better skills, better jobs, or finding more affordable places to live if the first two don't work out?

Talk about fault, what fault is there with Google or its employees? The process you describe will happen regardless of where Google goes (since it can only go where supporting infrastructure exists). So Google and other high paying companies are terrible, evil companies regardless of where they go? How about their employees? Are they only allowed to live in their own offices at work? Since apparently they aren't allowed to choose where to live based on the location, rents, etc.

Sorry, but paying rent today (or for however long) does not entitle one to continue paying that same rent tomorrow and forever into the future. What you're entitled to is what's in your lease. If your lease says you can pay rent for the next 12 months at $1,000, there's absolutely nothing there saying you can pay that (or anything near that) 13 months from now. If you want the security of staying where you are, BUY; renting doesn't give you that and it shouldn't. This whole concept of some people being somehow entitled to continue residing in the same place simply because they've been there for a given period is patently absurd.

Gentrification is a net positive for an area. It makes the area nicer, increases the tax base without altering the individual tax burden, reduces crime for that area, and helps stamp out poverty. It won't be a net positive for every resident and that's fine. No change ever makes everyone happy all the time and it doesn't have to to be a net positive. How many crime-ridden ghettos of NYC have been completely turned around by gentrification?

Want to see a place without gentrification? Look at Detroit.

Re:The candlestick makers did the same thing...

[admiralh]

So the 55-year old candlestick makers were supposed to upgrade their skills or do what? Starve? I think that tech advances are generally good, but this "Creative Destruction" comes at a cost to certain individuals in society who were unlucky/unconnected enough to choose the wrong profession. You can't simply let all those people fend for themselves without any support.

The protesting slime seem to think they have a god given right to be where they are.

Wow. I think you would fit into Putin's (or Stalin's) Russia just fine.

Re:Maniacal

[ackthpt]

This fanatical "activism" needs to be stopped.

Boycott them!

If that doesn't work, organize a vocal protest.

Re:The candlestick makers did the same thing...

[frog_strat]

That's all well and good when the jobs are still there, they're just changing. That candlestick maker, he can retrain to work on robots ! But when jobs are shed and not replaced, this will eventually lead to big problems. Shaming the unemployed is not so effective when there are no jobs.

The problem with Google Bus

[Khopesh]

So they're being too eco-friendly with the bus rides? Or everyone's jealous about the benefits? Or public transportation isn't crowded enough? I don't get it but I have the sneaking suspicion that these people are morons.

I think you've missed the point. Dozens of companies in the peninsula have their own dedicated bus lines. The bus-to-person ratio is quite high, and this is not as eco-friendly as you might think. It also causes congestion in the city, and confusion at the shared bus stops (which are owned by the city of SF), both of passengers and of citizens looking for a bus they can actually ride.

The city taxing the bus services allows maintenance to be applied to the extra load of the stops as well as planning for the increased traffic these systems create. I think it is quite reasonable.

Daily Kos had a good explanation of the problem back in April.

Re:The problem with Google Bus

[jcr]

this is not as eco-friendly as you might think.

It easily beats having those people all driving themselves.

It also causes congestion in the city,

No, it reduces congestion in the city.

-jcr

Re:So I was sitting behind a Gbus/Fbus on 85 today

[supervillainsf]

Except for the fact that there is no city bus that runs from San Francisco or Berekely to Mountain View, so the competition would be with CalTrain which is owned by Amtrak. As for Bus service, anyone who does the SF - South Bay commute will be familiar with Bauer's busses and they are a private company doing exactly what you are saying can't be done. So, the whole "can't compete with gubment" thing is a bit stupid in this context.

Re:Dear San Fran

[hawguy]

Easy solution: These companies should open major offices in downtown San Francisco. Build a skyscraper (vertical campus!) that is walking distance from a BART subway stop. They already have one (very small) office in the downtown SF area (opened in 2007). Same with Yahoo (though they can't afford a skyscraper), who recently bought the old SF Chronicle building.

Build a skyscraper!? You really don't know anything about SF, do you?

Move

[rlp]

If Google, Apple, and Facebook are not welcome in the San Francisco, I'm sure there are a lot of other places that would welcome them.

For instance, taxes and cost of living are much lower in Ohio. Plus we have all this lovely snow.

You are the one being judgmental here

[SuperKendall]

if it takes a private bus to get them to stop driving, the issue is that they're already looking down upon "regular" people, and that is not to be rewarded.

Bullshit. Lots of people don't take regular buses because:

1) The schedule is not as regular as you might hope
2) Hard to work on most public buses (not good seating for it or network access, and you may well not get a seat).
3) Total time taken might be very long if you have to transfer, and the bus is not going exactly where you are so there's some walking component when you reach home.
4) Bus schedules at night get worse.

The company buses potentially solve all those issues:

1) Buses will be more regular as they have fewer (or possibly just one) stop.

2) Seats meant for working and enough buses so that you can get a seat.

3) Total time taken is greatly reduced and it's going exactly where you are, so no wasted time walking after the bus stops.

4) Can run buses on demand.

Really the reason these companies have buses is because employees can get hours more work in per day. That's also better for the employees because they do not necessarily have to stay at work late if they can finish up things on the bus.

There's nothing elitist at all, it's just that a bus tailored to working serves people far better than public transport ever can. There's nothing wrong with this and as many have pointed out it is reducing congestion for everyone and ever keeping the public buses less crowded for rush hour commuters.

Lewandowsky, SF, etc.

[Animats]

I met Lewandowsky when he was an undergrad at Berkeley, building a self-driving motorcycle, while also running a startup to sell a two-screen display for field use at construction sites with a player for drawings. I was impressed. He does tend to deliver on his schemes.

The Google bus thing is impressive. Google now has a huge bus fleet. They're all the same, they're all huge, and they're all white and unmarked. They're more visible than the public bus lines, because they're concentrated in a few areas. Yesterday, I was caught in a traffic jam of Google buses in Mountain View.

One of those areas is the Mission District in San Francisco. It's an OK low rent neighborhood, but not great or particularly cool. (SOMA, pre Dot Com Boom 1.0 was cool - lots of art galleries, performance spaces, clubs, warehouse parties - the fun things that need big, cheap spaces. That's over.) I have friends living in the Mission. I've been there many times. It's not really being "gentrified". It's just that rents are going up on existing buildings, which is annoying residents. SOMA and Dogpatch have been redeveloped, with most of the old buildings replaced and most of the rest converted to residential lofts or such.

SF is driving out low-income people. Mayor Brown said a few years ago that no one making less than $50K a year should live in SF. Really. The Mission was one of the few cheap neighborhoods left that was merely poor, not awful. SF still has a few bad cheap neighborhoods, but they're under attack, building by building. The 6th Street corridor is still a druggie and flophouse area. But go a hundred feet off 6th and there are luxury lofts. The area of Market Street around 6th to 8th was also a big druggie/homeless area. Then Twitter HQ moved in there. As that area gets gentrified, the 6th St. corridor will be cut off from the Tenderloin across Market. We'll know that's happened when the last strip club there closes.

Re:So I was sitting behind a Gbus/Fbus on 85 today

[t0qer]

One question...why?

If I worked at Google I wouldn't want you on my bus. Google is a big machine. As someone who also works for a big machine, I'm only here for the perks and I have no interest in sharing with outsiders.

You want my perks? Come break your back with me and work 60 hours a week...then the bus rides, free food, nap pods, etc. will seem less like privileges and more like justifications for your insanity...

Can't tell if trying to insult me, or recruit me.

Re:Thugocracy in Action

[geekoid]

You have a weird definition of public spaces if there are certain classes not allowed to use them.