4 ms·

This guy called it back in 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349808 The whole thread is an interesting r

by gopled 4y ago

This guy called it back in 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349808 The whole thread is an interesting read in retrospect, quite a mix of effusiveness and skepticism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349349

holyharvey 4y ago
- xwdv 4y ago
  Agreed. I hope they learned that sometimes the devil comes dressed as everything you ever wanted.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    What the GP said never happened.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      What is this revisionist history? It certainly happened, I saw it for myself with my own eyes.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        Not in the link that was given.
system2 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this. It was a trip to read all those comments with what we know right now.
nunez 4y ago
one of the most legendary posts on Hacker News, for sure. this is the only thing that person posted, and it was 100% spot on YEARS before the fall. this person HAD to be an insider, no question.
- jojobas 4y ago
  Or read their patents.
  - ergocoder 4y ago
    I owned 5 software patents. They are all hot airs. Reading patent wouldn't help much. You can go read any software patents and would be: wtf is this about?
    - jojobas 4y ago
      Yes, but how many software shops get billions in funding specifically over sham inventions they've patented? Theranos patented a skin patch that automatically analyses blood and dispenses the best drug from the patch's inventory.
      - ergocoder 4y ago
        My point is that reading patents wouldn't help much. Most patents are written in an egregious way, even patents from a legit tech company.
- irjustin 4y ago
  I tried to search. Sadly can't find it at the moment. But, there was/is a reddit thread that, without naming the company, originally asked is it normal for a company be "pumping numbers" in the medical field. It was an an engineer/scientist who asked it years before anything public. A number of commenters guessed it was Theranos, eventually the poster came back to confirm the suspicions while expounding on the whole experience.
  - 4y ago
angry_moose 4y ago
I've long felt that the tech industry is somewhat blinded by decades of Moore's Law and its equivalent in storage, networking, etc. 2-10x improvements are so normal for Silicon Valley that they begin expecting to find them everywhere. In just about every other field or industry, a 10% improvement every decade is amazing and represents the combined efforts of tens of thousands of researchers. A 2x improvement is a once-in-a-lifetime revolution that will be backed my mountains of joint; and 10x (like Theranos promised) completely unheard of. This also functions as a great BS detector - breakthroughs of the scale Theranos claimed just don't happen out of nowhere - there would be thousands of peer reviewed papers leading up to it. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and Theranos didn't even offer an ounce of it.

by gopled 4y ago

holyharvey 4y ago

xwdv 4y ago
Agreed. I hope they learned that sometimes the devil comes dressed as everything you ever wanted.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  What the GP said never happened.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    What is this revisionist history? It certainly happened, I saw it for myself with my own eyes.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      Not in the link that was given.

system2 4y ago

Thanks for sharing this. It was a trip to read all those comments with what we know right now.

nunez 4y ago

one of the most legendary posts on Hacker News, for sure. this is the only thing that person posted, and it was 100% spot on YEARS before the fall. this person HAD to be an insider, no question.

jojobas 4y ago
Or read their patents.
- ergocoder 4y ago
  I owned 5 software patents. They are all hot airs. Reading patent wouldn't help much. You can go read any software patents and would be: wtf is this about?
  - jojobas 4y ago
    Yes, but how many software shops get billions in funding specifically over sham inventions they've patented? Theranos patented a skin patch that automatically analyses blood and dispenses the best drug from the patch's inventory.
    - ergocoder 4y ago
      My point is that reading patents wouldn't help much. Most patents are written in an egregious way, even patents from a legit tech company.
irjustin 4y ago
I tried to search. Sadly can't find it at the moment. But, there was/is a reddit thread that, without naming the company, originally asked is it normal for a company be "pumping numbers" in the medical field. It was an an engineer/scientist who asked it years before anything public. A number of commenters guessed it was Theranos, eventually the poster came back to confirm the suspicions while expounding on the whole experience.
- 4y ago

angry_moose 4y ago

I've long felt that the tech industry is somewhat blinded by decades of Moore's Law and its equivalent in storage, networking, etc. 2-10x improvements are so normal for Silicon Valley that they begin expecting to find them everywhere. In just about every other field or industry, a 10% improvement every decade is amazing and represents the combined efforts of tens of thousands of researchers. A 2x improvement is a once-in-a-lifetime revolution that will be backed my mountains of joint; and 10x (like Theranos promised) completely unheard of. This also functions as a great BS detector - breakthroughs of the scale Theranos claimed just don't happen out of nowhere - there would be thousands of peer reviewed papers leading up to it. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and Theranos didn't even offer an ounce of it.