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> The basic idea was and is unworkable. To be fair, lots of "basic ideas" are unworkable until someone bangs their head against it enough times and suddenly it

> The basic idea was and is unworkable. To be fair, lots of "basic ideas" are unworkable until someone bangs their head against it enough times and suddenly it is workable. Sometimes the environment or available technology just have to change/improve/scale a tiny bit more for something to go from unworkable to workable. Still, what she did was obvious fraud straight up, not just "lets bang our head against this until it works".

deleted 28d ago
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twoodfin 28d ago
One of the best examples of this: Streaming video. Literally a dream for decades, with billions of dollars spent on technology, marketing, infrastructure by huge incumbent players and startups alike. Netflix didn’t innovate much on any of these angles, they “just” had the right business plan at the right moment.
- embedding-shape 28d ago
  > One of the best examples of this: Streaming video. "Robots" that can talk/write like humans is probably an even longer endeavor we just managed to make believable enough to fool other humans.
- anukin 28d ago
  Before netflix there were adult websites which innovated on that. Same goes for payment softwares.
wasabi991011 28d ago
> To be fair, lots of "basic ideas" are unworkable until someone bangs their head against it enough times and suddenly it is workable. Sure, but also lots of "basic ideas" are unworkable regardless of how many times heads get banged, due to some fundamental limitation, like perpetual motion machines or homeopathy. It's a spectrum, but from what I understand Theranos was closer to the "unworkable in theory" side of things than the "currently unworkable in practice" side of things.
sarchertech 28d ago
That’s true. But this idea was unworkable because of basic biology/physics. It doesn’t matter how good the sensor is if you’re dealing with bad samples. For most of the tests they wanted to perform, a finger stick will always provide an unrepresentative sample. And not in a predictable way. The thing is experienced people knew this. All you had to do was to talk to anyone who knew the biology and they would have told you this could never work. Not this can’t work with today’s technology, but this is fundamentally at odds with reality.
FireBeyond 28d ago
But the implication is that others weren't banging their heads. The amount of money invested in this particular domain is in the tens, if not hundreds, of billions. There are so many companies whose lives, whose workflows, product lines would be made vastly easier. The thing that calls her out as a scammer is that Theranos probably invested more money in the faking it, the deception, with Siemens equipment than they did in actually trying to solve the problem itself.

deleted 28d ago

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twoodfin 28d ago

One of the best examples of this: Streaming video. Literally a dream for decades, with billions of dollars spent on technology, marketing, infrastructure by huge incumbent players and startups alike. Netflix didn’t innovate much on any of these angles, they “just” had the right business plan at the right moment.

embedding-shape 28d ago
> One of the best examples of this: Streaming video. "Robots" that can talk/write like humans is probably an even longer endeavor we just managed to make believable enough to fool other humans.
anukin 28d ago
Before netflix there were adult websites which innovated on that. Same goes for payment softwares.

wasabi991011 28d ago

> To be fair, lots of "basic ideas" are unworkable until someone bangs their head against it enough times and suddenly it is workable. Sure, but also lots of "basic ideas" are unworkable regardless of how many times heads get banged, due to some fundamental limitation, like perpetual motion machines or homeopathy. It's a spectrum, but from what I understand Theranos was closer to the "unworkable in theory" side of things than the "currently unworkable in practice" side of things.

sarchertech 28d ago

That’s true. But this idea was unworkable because of basic biology/physics. It doesn’t matter how good the sensor is if you’re dealing with bad samples. For most of the tests they wanted to perform, a finger stick will always provide an unrepresentative sample. And not in a predictable way. The thing is experienced people knew this. All you had to do was to talk to anyone who knew the biology and they would have told you this could never work. Not this can’t work with today’s technology, but this is fundamentally at odds with reality.

FireBeyond 28d ago

But the implication is that others weren't banging their heads. The amount of money invested in this particular domain is in the tens, if not hundreds, of billions. There are so many companies whose lives, whose workflows, product lines would be made vastly easier. The thing that calls her out as a scammer is that Theranos probably invested more money in the faking it, the deception, with Siemens equipment than they did in actually trying to solve the problem itself.