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Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

arstechnica.com

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Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#181

Post by sjg007 »

hef19898 wrote: post #147
pessimizer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Bill Clinton but a hype man, though? The board of Theranos was filled with names evocative of gravitas to baby boomers, but whose input on anything would be worthless.

Clinton? For all his faults, a two term president. And one that left with a federal budget running in the black. That requires some skills, even if I have no idea which exactly. Edit: Come to think of it, Clinton was also a president that didn't start or prolong a pointless war, on the scale of the war on terror, Vietnam or Korea.

Clinton is probably one of the best Presidents in recent history. Obama is the best currently and Biden will probably be the best if he can get his legislation passed and the pandemic under control. Right now blue states with mask requirements and mandatory vaccinations are doing very very well. The rest of us are in for a bumpy ride.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#182

Post by JohnWhigham »

supperburg wrote: post #159
photochemsyn wrote: post #29

The crazy thing about Theranos is that so many people with experience in microfluidics (developed mainly for DNA sequencing although there are other uses) knew that their claims were impossible, technologically speaking. Working with such small volumes to obtain quantitive estimates of blood chemistry is so implausible, as you are introducing uncontrollable variability - micro-evaporation, even tissue localization is…

Never ever forget that anyone who said Holmes was a fraud was screamed down by accusations of sexism and toxic masculinity.

Even now, people are still doing it! NYT ran an op-ed piece from a woman VC partner (who had a BS sexual harassment case got shot down in court) basically saying "yeah but what about all the male CEOs that don't get punished? You're sexist if you don't punish them!" as if Holmes is receiving any punishment herself. The delusional headcanons that some people view the world through...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/opinion/elizabeth-holmes-...

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#183

Post by jjulius »

thehappypm wrote: post #152
jjulius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sure, she was not honest to investors. ... or the businesses that purchased the machines, and every average person who got tested with those machines and put their faith in the results, all because she was dishonest. This is the healthcare industry we're speaking of - it's not just investors at stake here, it's everyone's health that she put at stake for the sake of getting herself rich. Edit: Regarding prototypes i…

I agree that the prototypes in the wild was done improperly. If it's a prototype used for data gathering with a big "these are prototypes!" waiver, then that's one thing. I'm not sure how they were positioned in the stores they were placed in, if they were marketed as a 100% accuracy miracle box or an up-and-coming technology that still has to have kinks worked out. In either case I'm struggling that this is jail tim…

We'll have to agree to disagree here. To me, with the level of fraud she engaged in in every area of her company, and the fact that that fraud impacted the healthcare decisions of individuals who used that test, that is a criminal issue.

She was fucking around with the actual health of people for her own financial gain.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#184

Post by ta1234567890 »

supperburg wrote: post #164
ta1234567890 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber Explanation, since this is being downvoted. Uber might not have lied about their business, but it surely looks like investors never cared about the businesses viability and rather only cared about being able to turn a profit on their investment (which was the point being made by the gp). To this day, it is still not clear if Uber’s business model is viable. Also not to mention the original CEO/founder’s reputati…

The idea that Uber is not profitable is a myth isn’t it? I remember they posted some financial documents a while back that showed them in the red. But when I looked at the papers there were literal billions in advertising and expansion. Uber runs the app. People call an Uber and they pay money. Some of that money goes to the driver and some goes to Uber. You’re really saying that Uber can’t collect enough money to ru…

> The idea that Uber is not profitable is a myth isn’t it?

No, it’s a financial/accounting fact expressed by Uber themselves in their filings as a public company.

Having a business model (which is what you are describing), doesn’t make it profitable.

Hertz had a business model too, they owned cars, people rented cars and paid money for that. Are you saying Hertz couldn’t collect enough money to run their operations and pay some staff? Well they couldn’t, and they went bankrupt. They were also in the red for several years before the pandemic hit.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#185

Post by jacinabox »

photochemsyn wrote: post #29

The crazy thing about Theranos is that so many people with experience in microfluidics (developed mainly for DNA sequencing although there are other uses) knew that their claims were impossible, technologically speaking. Working with such small volumes to obtain quantitive estimates of blood chemistry is so implausible, as you are introducing uncontrollable variability - micro-evaporation, even tissue localization is…

Why did Theranos insist on using 'a single drop of blood.' Why not be able to run a normal blood sample through an unprecedentedly compact form factor testing unit. Wouldn't that be good enough?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#186

Post by rsynnott »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #169

I know there is “fake it till you make it” but usually these companies have some idea how to get success. But as far as I understand Theranos never had any technology or approach that promised to lead to their goals. They just tried various stuff that never worked and lied about it. It was more like me starting a company that wants to create a battery with ten times the capacity of current batteries but having no ide…

It's a step worse. It's as if you then sold that battery to electric plane manufacturers, really just gave them a standard lithium ion battery, and planes started falling out of the sky. Theranos's broken tech was used on real people and had real consequences.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#187

Post by rsynnott »

mrkramer wrote: post #168
danjac wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly don't care about the investors, they won't go hungry and they should have known better. Endangering the lives of ordinary people though - 10 years isn't enough.

But the money which was lost investing in Theranos could've been invested in other companies that would actually save the lives of ordinary people the ones that Theranos was suppose to save.

I mean realistically, given the timing, it would probably have been invested in Uber or that iPhone app that was just a "hey" button or something.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#188

Post by rsynnott »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #3

The problem is that none of this will work against her defense, that she was not of sane state of mind at the time.

That's traditionally a very difficult defense; it's often tried as a Hail Mary, but rarely succeeds.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#189

Post by MrGando »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #70
LanceH wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the self-driving just a feature on top of the car? They're faking one feature that a customer might opt into -- and none that I know have. Tesla has delivered a performant EV that is nice to drive in and is comparable to other luxury vehicles. It's not exactly faking for quite some time.

The fake it part is calling something full self driving when it does anything but that.

They stopped calling it fully self driving a little while ago in part due to a lot of pretty bad press and some good journalistic research.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#190

Post by dogman144 »

supperburg wrote: post #164
ta1234567890 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber Explanation, since this is being downvoted. Uber might not have lied about their business, but it surely looks like investors never cared about the businesses viability and rather only cared about being able to turn a profit on their investment (which was the point being made by the gp). To this day, it is still not clear if Uber’s business model is viable. Also not to mention the original CEO/founder’s reputati…

The idea that Uber is not profitable is a myth isn’t it? I remember they posted some financial documents a while back that showed them in the red. But when I looked at the papers there were literal billions in advertising and expansion. Uber runs the app. People call an Uber and they pay money. Some of that money goes to the driver and some goes to Uber. You’re really saying that Uber can’t collect enough money to ru…

Collecting enough money to pay staff/run servers != profitable. You're asking a cash flow vs. a income statement question. With enough cash flow, yes, can achieve any sort of operational expense that you're referring to.

Uber still hasn't turned a profit, and might be able to soon via some creative accounting: https://gizmodo.com/uber-says-its-on-track-to-maybe-make-a-f...

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