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Yea in retrospect this is easy to say and it is trivial to join the dots, but the real leg work was done by John Carreyrou. He single-handedly investigated, rec

• bigmattystyles 4y ago
  >> Yea in retrospect this is easy to say and it is trivial to join the dots And it likely is happening again, someone who is being heralded now will be exposed and we'll go through this important exercise again. My money is on Musk's number coming up.
  • bluepizza 4y ago
    Far from me to defend Musk as a person, but Tesla cars are in the streets, SpaceX rockets are launched regularly, and Starlink is used by millions.
    • mhermher 4y ago
      This has nothing to do with what they said. Completely irrelevant to the question at hand.
      • bluepizza 4y ago
        What is the question at hand?
    • metadat 4y ago
      History doesn't repeat itself; instead, future events rhyme with those of the past.
    • thebooktocome 4y ago
      And we’ll have full-self driving any day now. /s
      • Volundr 4y ago
  • anigbrowl 4y ago
    There was that Nikola CEO who was recently convicted of defrauding investors with overly-rosy stories about the company's electric semi-trucks: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/14/1129248846/nikola-founder-electric-trucks-guilty-fraud https://www.npr.org/2022/10/14/1129248846/nikola-founder-ele... It is a pity that charlatanry seems so profitable of late. It's always been around and in some respects you can admire a con artist's cleverness, but to me there's a difference between fleecing some investors looking to make a quick buck and trying to do the same to the public.
  • MartinCron 4y ago
    Holmes made one single promise on which she couldn't (possibly) deliver while Musk makes dozens of promises and delivers well enough on enough of them that he'll never be fully discredited. The whole "stepping on a single nail vs. sleeping on a bed of nails" metaphor.
    • ajross 4y ago
      I'm having trouble following the metaphor. You seem to be saying that it's a... I guess "unfortunate coincidence" that Musk has had a handful of successful (well, outrageously successful) projects, because it makes exposing him as a fraud for the unsuccessful stuff difficult? But... isn't success the goal here and not punishing fraud? Would the world really be a better place if we viewed every failure as disqualifying?
      • groby_b 4y ago
        That's not the question. The question is "would the world really be a better place if we viewed malicious lies as disqualifying", and I believe the answer is yes.
        • ajross 4y ago
          Which malicious lies are we talking about here? I'm still having trouble following. The dude makes over-optimistic predictions and shitposts like crazy; we're hardly talking about Pol Pot here. The same personality holds for, what, 90% of Reddit? Maybe only 40% of the HN commenter base (we're cultured!). People hate Musk because Musk makes it so fun to hate him. And that's fine. But it leads to some pretty weird places if you let it (like "The world would be better off without Tesla or SpaceX" being discussed here).
          • bhauer 4y ago
            Musk-hatred as a pop ideology is certainly one of the weirder ones. It's a baffling hybrid of conspiracy theorist, self-serving gatekeeping of engineering licensure, not-invented here extremism, technology "realism," billionaire rage/envy, angry politics, and a need to feel superior to the engineers who work at the Musk companies. Altogether, not a look becoming someone who is on a web site devoted to technology and innovation. Look, it's fine if you don't like the guy or his companies. But some of the ridiculous talking points listed elsewhere in this thread are unhinged.
  • danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    Musk gets the timing wrong almost every time. But he has by and large delivered, on crazy difficult stuff. The guy is a straight up genius, even if his behavior is a little weird.
    • giantrobot 4y ago
      > The guy is a straight up genius I've never seen anything genius level out of Musk. He likes to think he's a genius and he's not dumb but actually genius? No.
      • danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        Building a large profitable car company is genius level. It's crazy difficult, most people thought it was impossible to compete against the scale the big existing players had.
        • giantrobot 4y ago
          You might be surprised to learn Musk isn't the only employee of Tesla. Most of Tesla's profits the past decade have been carbon credits and not their cars. Like SpaceX the hard work is done by other people while Elon tweets like a 12 year old girl.
          • danielmarkbruce 4y ago
            If it's that easy everyone would do it - just hire some people and write some tweets. There are 10's/100's of billions laying around on the floor for people who can create large profitable companies. And if there is billions of easy money to be made in carbon credits everyone would be doing that too. It's crazy difficult to do what he's done. That's why there are so few companies worth so much money.
    • KerrAvon 4y ago
      Pretty casual with the word genius there. He's an emerald mine scion who lucked out in the dot-bomb era and apparently has a talent for working through hardware manufacturing issues. None of his original ideas have been successful. Tesla and SpaceX were not originally his, and SpaceX arguably owes more to Shotwell and government money than Musk. There are so many people in Silicon Valley who would be more effective users of billions of dollars than Musk. Such a waste.
  • harmmonica 4y ago
    Can you share what you think could happen with Musk? I know he’s polarizing, but he deserves a large amount of credit for Tesla’s success making ev’s mainstream and SpaceX’s success creating reusable rockets. These are certainly up there as major accomplishments from corporate America in the past 20 years (longer most likely). Tesla’s market cap may get cut by 80% at some point to be more in line with auto manufacturers; SpaceX may eventually have other competition; and if he’s forced to go through with Twitter it might cause financial and reputational harm to him, but is there anything like Holmes on the horizon? I’m no fanboy of Musk, but even his harshest critics have to acknowledge that his business successes are real and meaningful (assuming you believe any business successes can be meaningful). Ps yes, he does seem like a jerk a lot of the times, but that’s different than being a fraud.
    • MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Somebody doing real things some of the time doesn't preclude them scamming other times. And vice versa, somebody scamming some of the time doesn't necessarily mean everything they does is a scam. Basically, the rockets being real doesn't prove that FSD isn't a scam. And FSD being a scam doesn't prove the rockets aren't real.
      • harmmonica 4y ago
        Agree. My intent wasn’t to suggest otherwise. I was trying to give more depth to my question of what the parent could mean when they said Musk’s number may come up. On the topic of FSD, I think that could be a fair answer for “why is Musk a fraud?” but that would require a follow up question: is FSD fraudulent, like the people working on it inside Tesla, or maybe just Elon, know it won’t ever work and are lying when they say it will? If yes that seems like fraud and therefore the parent comment would end up being right about Elon’s number. But if he genuinely believes they’re going to get there and they’re wrong about the timing? That’s not fraud in the legal sense, is it? If he’s constantly wrong about the timing? It could be unethical to keep on saying it’ll be here soon and not delivering, and based on some of his behavior you can certainly make the case he may be unethical, but I guess I think the bar for being a fraud or even called a fraud is or ought to be higher (like Theranos or Nikola or Enron or MCI, the list goes on).
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    > My money is on Musk's number coming up. Equating Musk with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos investigation is completely unhinged and speaks more about your ideological preferences than anything else.
    • KerrAvon 4y ago
      And what does your response reveal about yours?
      • systemvoltage 4y ago
        Thinking rationally and putting emotions/ideology aside. I know you meant it as a rhetorical snark.
        • maxbond 4y ago
          If you look at Musk's career and public activity and conclude that the only way to believe that some reporter might get the goods on him in a way that radically changes his public perception is by ideologically motivated reasoning, then I don't think you're being nearly as dispassionate and rational as you believe. This is a man who regularly throws public tantrums and picks really petty fights against anyone who tries to hold remotely accountable (eg, harassing the rescue diver who called out his publicity stunt, or trying to get the ex-SEC lawyer fired from his private sector job with zero provocation). He's shown that he's willing to act impulsively and inappropriately if he feels slighted. Is it so hard to imagine that he crossed some serious boundaries, or will in the future? If we enter a recession and funding gets tight, have you absolute confidence that Musk wouldn't lie to investors to secure funding, and perhaps end up facing the same charges as Holmes? What could this man, a stranger to you I presume, have possibly done to earn that trust? I doubt his board members and major investors would take that on faith. I've actually never heard someone make an informed analysis about a topic, and then spend their breath deriding people with different views. I believe when people have conviction in their analysis, they generally feel secure presenting it and letting it stand on it's own. But the folks who want to rationalize their beliefs need to constantly tell you about how factual and logical they are, and how the people who disagree with them are the opposite.
• AlexandrB 4y ago
  I love some of the crazy stuff[1] that happened inside Theranos in response to Carreyrou's reporting. > Theranos employees once reportedly chanted, “Fuck you, Carreyrou,” at an all-hands meeting in October of 2015. > At a company party, Theranos employees played a video game modeled after Atari's Space Invaders: The gun was the miniLab, the bullets the nanotainers and the invader being shot at: Yours Truly! I know it's fashionable to hate the press, but when it escalates to this level of vitriol it smells of "The lady doth protest too much". [1] https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/4/13/17234844/theranos-space-invaders-clone-video-game-john-carreyrou https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/4/13/17234844/theranos-sp...
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    I think this is more of an indictment of the rest of journalism than Theranos. He was swimming against all other journalists who were raving about Elizabeth Holmes. How could you not!? She is charismatic, a woman, and young MIT dropout. We need more journalists like John. There is a shortage of journalists that would stand up for facts even if that meant going against the whole world.
• bane 4y ago
  I feel like Carreyrou was the first to popularize that there was something up with Theranos and Holmes. Being a journalist he also did it with direct sources. But the feeling that something was "wrong" predates him by a while, there's some really insightful comments here on HN circa 2013-2014 that seem to smell fishiness. Some of the comments back then point very specifically to the weirdness of her board and the near impossibility of the tech. It seemed to tick up really sharply in late 2015, which seems to be when Carreyrou decided to pick up the story. This started coinciding with Holmes going on publicity tours talking about new partnerships she had brokered with various pharmacies and other companies. I don't really think it hit the general public consciousness until mid 2016 when the wheels really started coming off. By then Carreyrou really just seemed to be a public face for a lot of people who had more or less figured it out -- except he was really trying to get at the bottom of the "why" it felt bad.
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    Nope, Carreyrou was on it before it was public that Carreyrou was on it. He spent months talking to people privately. Read the book. There is so much amiss here. Edit, responding to comment below: Of course people inside Theranos knew about something fishy, a few people outside were rumouring about it. But the suggestion that Carreyrou "jumped" on it in 2015 is false. Completely.
    • MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > Nope, Carreyrou was on it before it was public that Carreyrou was on it. This doesn't preclude other people independently suspecting something was wrong. Indeed, many of the people Carreyrou talked to thought something smelled fishy. People in the original HN threads thought so too, as did Phyllis Gartner.
    • eaurouge 4y ago
      He should get credit for investigating and building a story around it. But there were calls from the scientific community, and in discussions here on HN, for Theranos to open up and show their data, way before he started investigating. The fact that Silicon Valley VCs, with one notable exception, passed on investing, speaks for itself.