Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by supperburg » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

junon wrote: post #206

supperburg wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but would they be profitable if you took out the advertising and expansion costs? From the document I saw, yes. Can you please explain where are these enormous costs that are necessary to run the business? Is it SV salaries? Are their servers costing too much money? It doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that the concept of dispatching taxis with a computer is not capable of being profitable. It simply isn’t…

It's not an easy question to answer, but the majority of the cost were salaries and marketing. We didn't consider the one-off costs of e.g. legal, from what I remember. It was in the order of thousands (I think either $2k or $22k, sorry for the rounding error) per user signup that Uber paid in terms of marketing and advertising - and that was regardless of if they generated any money. It was way more for driver signu…

Wow what a substantive and interesting comment. Thanks

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

#212

Post by mannerheim » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

smart_creature wrote: post #165

mannerheim wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wasn't overwhelming evidence in the Cosby case, which is precisely why his conviction was overturned. He was convicted based on testimony he was forced to give against himself in a civil trial where he was not allowed to exercise his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. The previous DA specifically said there wasn't enough evidence to convict Cosby, which is both why he never pursued charges and wh…

You are technically correct but I don't see what the contradiction is. You could say that his testimony was 'overwhelming evidence' (he practically admitted to doing what he was accused of). Yes, improperly obtained and inadmissible, hence the 'technicalities' part. My point is that even an open confession existing somewhere is not a guarantee of conviction or a long prison sentence.

If the exclusion of a single piece of evidence whose use in a trial was unconstitutional meant there wasn't enough evidence to convict, I would say there wasn't 'overwhelming evidence'.

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

#213

Post by AlbertCory » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

sumtechguy wrote: post #148

adventured wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Jobs presentation thing did work - much of the audience bought into it early on - combined with the hefty bonus points of her being a woman in Silicon Valley that the media was desperate to elevate as a path blazing icon (so desperate they entirely drank the kool-aid and acted as a valuable reinforcement pillar for the fraud, and largely failed to investigate if Theranos was legitimate). Jobs had follow-through,…

The voice pitch thing she was doing was a nice touch too.

They say she might testify in her own defense. Of course, the attorneys will always say that, to keep the prosecution guessing. "Hide the ball" is the term the lawyers use.

If she does, whether she'll use the deep voice is a big question.

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

#214

Post by jollybean » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

mrkramer wrote: post #127

edot wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeWork and Nikola come to mind. Robinhood depending on if you consider purporting yourself to be “stealing from the rich, giving to the poor - Robinhood”, but you actually take orders from Citadel to be fraud. I think a lot of recent IPOs will turn out to be fraud-lite, in which it is shown over the next decade that these companies were pump and dumps that never actually do anything. They look just good enough to gar…

WeWork and Theranos were selling hype no real solution or service. They seem like companies from dot com bubble era, I thought tech investors got smarter but they are still as stupid as they were 30 years ago.

WeWork is different than Theroanos.

People actually rented WeWork properties and got a valuable service.

The problem was more or less shenanigans on the Exec. side, and unsustainable financial situation.

In that case, the 'consumers' actually end up ahead, with a cheaper services than otherwise, then investors lost.

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

#215

Post by cryptica » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

Radim wrote: post #145

cryptica wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. Investors don't give a damn about the business. They just want a machine that they put money in and more money comes out. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of fast growing businesses these days are frauds. In such environment, the less they know, the better. Only frauds can succeed in a monetary system which is itself founded on fraud. So it makes no sense to do due diligence if you know that the comp…

You're not wrong but… it's pretty disheartening. Do you see a way out? For businesses that want to minimize their reliance on the (trickle-down scraps of) the fraud money business.

I think the economy has become overly financialized - It has become too difficult to earn income through value creation and too easy to earn income through financial schemes - People are realizing this and giving up on value creation en mass. Fraud has become institutionalized (and therefore legalized).

IMO, the financial system has already suffered irreparable damage to its reputation. I think there might be calls for asset seizures and redistribution soon. In the US, the BLM movement has already been campaigning for 'financial reparations'. South Africa just passed a law to allow land to be seized by the government without compensation. I think this might become more widespread - Hopefully it will only be restricted to specific assets; I think big corporate stocks are a likely target for expropriation because they have benefited the most from money printing; it will be easy for people to find evidence of wrongdoing and use it as a basis to seize and redistribute shares (or simply nationalize the companies altogether).

My gut feeling is that we're headed to some kind of partial-communist government - First, they will only seize the assets related to big finance, big tech, big pharma since this will have public support. Maybe later once the public has warmed up to the new form of government, the government will be able to make a move on all private property.

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

#216

Post by zardo » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

Hermitian909 wrote: post #158

kube-system wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the SV “fake it ‘till you make it” culture. Right now Tesla is delivering “full self driving” cars that require a human driver at all times. Experts have said that it’s not possible using cameras alone, without LiDAR. Oversell and underdeliver. Fraud works great until it doesn’t.

I mean, we can go the other way by looking at SpaceX. I spent years reading detailed reports from experts that everything SpaceX was doing was impossible. -A rocket made of steel -Landing a rocket anywhere -Landing a bigger rocket anywhere -Landing a rocket on solid ground -Landing a big rocket on the ground and a lot of smaller things in between. I read many plausible looking reports on the non-feasability of these…

There were definitely no rocket experts claiming rockets can't be made out of steel. That's not a new thing.

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

#217

Post by moogly » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

the-dude wrote: post #18

throwoutway wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a second room where they led the inspectors with true lab eqpt while the other had the inaccurate machines (according to the book)

Are you sure it wasn't the other way around? Weren't they pretending to operate their own equipment while the real equipment was 'behind the curtain' ?

Yeah, that's what I remember too. They had the Siemens equipment in a back room that they used to run the real tests on, but pretended that they were using their own tech for these tests.

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

#218

Post by stickfigure » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #2

If anyone truly deserves a very long prison sentence it is Elizabeth Holmes. I think we're about to confirm what we've always known and that has been apparent since the start of this case. That rich white people, even if they got their money by taking advantage of others are pretty immune from harsh punishment in the criminal justice system.

Hold your outrage, the show's not over yet.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #205

stagger87 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MoviePass

Movie pass was literally a loss for the vast majority of its investors. If anything it was a wealth transfer from the public/private market to the app users who got extremely subsidized movie tickets. Moviepass was a total loss for it's investors, so how does that not prove the opposite of what's being argued here

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by effingwewt » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 8:24 PM UTC

avalys wrote: post #83

munificent wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What just amazed me is how gullible all the investors were, and how they didn't do due diligence, hire outside experts, or anything. Weird. The thing is, the primary goal of an investor is not to invest in companies that are honest and actually do what they claim. The goal is to invest in a company that reaches a valuation high enough to let them recoup their investment at a profit. If that valuation happens throug…

Can you provide any examples of a high-profile company, ultimately shown to be dishonest, where the early investors were able to “cash out” before this dishonesty became known?

uBeam.