back to article Hyperloop One lynched in hangman lawsuit

Tensions at the tube-traveling startup Hyperloop One have burst into the open with a lawsuit alleging physical threats, financial mismanagement and a sugardaddy chairman leaving a hangman's noose on a cofounder's chair. The lawsuit [PDF] was brought before a Los Angeles court yesterday by Hyperloop cofounder Brogan BamBrogan, …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    what this company needs is a

    Liz Holmes is going to be looking for new work soon. These jokers should bring her on and go full rainbow unicorn.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: what this company needs is a

      From a "would be funny perspective"... Hell Yeah!

      From a "would like Hyperloop to actually achieve it's goals"... Fark No!

    2. JLV
      Joke

      Re: what this company needs is a

      Is this where they blindfold you, put you in a "Hyperloop capsule", but then have a truck drive it 2 or 3 km away before letting you out?

      Claim that the extra time is because the capsule sealing lock mechanism is still under development and needs manual opening/closing each time. The blindfold is because there is proprietary tech that "just an NDA" is not good enough for.

      I dunno why anyone would want to be reinstated into this nest of vipers, if their claims are true. Or would deserve to be if they are not.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: what this company needs is a

        "Is this where they blindfold you, put you in a "Hyperloop capsule", but then have a truck drive it 2 or 3 km away before letting you out?"

        Are you sure not confusing it with the Southern hyperloop, it's 20km but takes three days & only runs once a month? (That's 'normal service' though, due to a recent re-timetabling exercise)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

    If even half of what he's claiming is true, that company needs to get rid of the Shervin guy + cronies if it's going to succeed. :(

    Alternatively, funding could be mostly cut from it and rerouted into a new company with new (competent) staff to actually get things to completion. Hopefully without influence from the bad members of current Hyperloop.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

      Silicon Valley lately is clearly showing how capital doesn't always get used in the most efficient manner possible.

      1. Pirate Dave Silver badge
        Pirate

        Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

        "Silicon Valley lately is clearly showing how capital doesn't always get used in the most efficient manner possible."

        Amen to that. Back in mid-June, I got an unexpected FedEx Express package. Inside of the package was what looked like an anti-static ziploc bag slightly larger than the ones they ship 3.5" drives in. Inside of that ziploc bag was some crappy little fold-up brochure from ProofPoint. I've never done business with them, so I was weirded-out by their strange shipping method. I mean, they could have mailed that brochure to me snail-mail and it would've cost them maybe 50-cents, but instead they sent it 2-day FedEx. Needless to say, I won't be spending my money with a company that wastes their money in such a frivolous and pointless fashion. It's like they're saying "Look at us, we've got money to burn."

        1. eriksolo

          Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

          Fed Ex-ing Junk mail was a tactic done by a few dot-coms back around 2000. I was basically a computer operator then, but I exaggerated my position to get a free subscription to some magazine like Sysadmin or EWeek and got on some mailing lists. Right before the fall B2B companies started fed-exing crap to me assuming that I would never throw away a fed ex envelope (they were right on that part).

          To me, though, Hyperloop seems like Chinatown or Season 2 of True Detective. Typical California land stuff with their arcane access rights for cattle and feudal water rights for certain families. 21st century high tech startups meet 18th century Spanish colonialism meet Dot-Com failure.

          This is going to be like 3 black holes colliding with Stephen Hawking doing narration. Quite good.

          1. ntevanza
            Paris Hilton

            Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

            This is LA, not SF.

            There's no business like show business.

            In LA, all business is show business.

            These clowns wouldn't last 3 weeks in the Valley.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

        "Silicon Valley lately is clearly showing how capital doesn't always get used in the most efficient manner possible."

        Let's make the totally unwarranted speculation that Hyperloop is a set of non-technologies that are going to be as successful as the "revolutionary" pneumatic railway in the 19th century, i.e. won't scale up much beyond a department store cash transfer tube system.

        Let's assume even more wrongly that the people persuading investors to put up cash get paid a lot of money for this.

        Then, from the perspective of the bank accounts of VC firms, this would be using [other people's] capital in an extremely efficient way. Which of course it is obviously not, if you read the story carefully.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

          >Then, from the perspective of the bank accounts of VC firms, this would be using [other people's] capital in an extremely efficient way.

          I will grant you that game changing R&D is always a risky bet and venture capital has its place. That said capitalism also does a remarkable job of very efficiently handling the problem of entities with more money than brains which seems more to be the case with the "investors" here.

      3. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

        Silicon Valley lately is clearly showing how capital doesn't always get used in the most efficient manner possible.

        Lately?

        1. Nunyabiznes

          Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

          Beat me to this comment.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

      > Sounds like a whole lot of crazy

      Agreed. Definitely more 'fruitloop' than 'hyperloop'.

  3. ma1010
    WTF?

    Truth stranger than fiction?

    Who wrote this *^%$*#$ script for Sillycon Valley? It's total crap! I mean, nobody would ever believe --

    What? This is an actual news item?

    Right. Well, carry on, then!

    1. Rich 11

      Re: Truth stranger than fiction?

      When I started reading the article I thought the bloke who'd changed his name would be the weirdest thing about it. By the time I'd finished the article, he turned out to be the most normal and sensible person in it!

  4. Eddy Ito

    Hyperloop One? Sounds more like Hyperlaunder Fund to me. Meh, probably not that much difference between investor and mobster in lots of companies these days.

  5. Mark 85

    Hmm.. just "hype" forget the "rloop" part.

    I was going to make some comments about the name of the guy filing the lawsuit and allegations about $40000 a month for sex... but why bother?

    I do wonder about how Musk feels about this as I recall, he's a big supporter.

  6. retiredandouttolunch

    Looks like a rescue attempt

    Clearly that's a bowline not a hangman's noose. Probably throwing him a lifeline...

    1. DNTP

      Re: Looks like a rescue attempt

      Looks more like a elementary school slipknot to me than a proper bowline or a noose. And if you want to pass your orientation interview and work in my lab, knowing how to tie a bowline is a requirement. Whereas things like nooses and "Fifty shades of gray knots" are more like a Never At Work deal...

      Oh! I know what it looks like! A complete lack of professionalism.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Looks like a rescue attempt

      No self-respect hangman would contemplate that thing, which as said doesn't seem to be a bowline.

      He's probably hampered by animated knots refusing to include the hangman's noose because of it's use in threatening situations. They should rethink that or people will keep making these elementary mistakes.

  7. wolf2600

    That's not even a proper noose!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Can't ger the staff, mate!

  8. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    Afshin – the company's general counsel

    From that CCTV image it looks more like a thuggish security guard than whatever a "general counsel" is.

    Would I be righting in thinking a "general counsel" is someone with legal training, maybe an actual lawyer who is on the board of directors?

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Afshin – the company's general counsel

      Yes it is.

    2. kain preacher

      Re: Afshin – the company's general counsel

      Lets just say he negotiate with unique style. So he went to john gotti law school .

  9. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Hyperloop - locked in a vehicle travelling in a vacuum

    What could possibly go wrong with that?

    Ahem... Soyuz 11

    Avoid the 'beta' test phase.

  10. Sleep deprived
    Trollface

    Bambi meets Hyperloop

    and pockets 40K$/month. A better outcome than after the Gozilla encounter!

    1. Tom 38

      Re: Bambi meets Hyperloop

      Bambi is the wife of the good guy in this story, not the un-named PR lady who figured $200k for 5 months of bad sex was probably worth it.

  11. Tom 64
    Coffee/keyboard

    Pie in the sky

    I always thought this venture was a ridiculous farce, but this exceeds my expectations.

    To make something like hyperloop a success you need a very serious engineering team, and not silicon valley shenanigans.

    Wont be long before Hyperloop One folds.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pie in the sky

      "To make something like hyperloop a success you need a very serious engineering team"

      Which might then embarrassingly announce "No, not possible. But there are these things called aeroplanes. They travel up where the air is thin, they don't need tubes, they can be rerouted in emergencies."

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oops...

    Got distracted. lori.ru/819311 @ 4368×2912 (12.7MB) is beyond my browsing budget!

  13. Nehmo

    It looks like the company is a bunch of kids. They need some older people with lower hormone levels to manage the internal squabbles.

    Something like this happened to the Superconducting Supercollider too.

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