Fascinating that the only communications with Tyler Schultz, which was the main insider confronting the fraud, had all of ~4 exchanges with her. All in the same day.<p>Truly brave of him to go against the golden geese, despite turning his own family- and even former attorney generals & military officers- against him.<p>Its all on 4/11/2014.<p>Also interesting to see how Sunny & Holmes always thought it was Tyler, or the CLIA Lab Director (Adam) plotting against them.... when their scam was just in plain sight of regulators that bothered to actually do the work.<p>Holmes/Sunny reaction to Tyler's email and to Adam's resignation (Nov 2014) is one of outrage. Using the power inbalance to make their point, is 101 fraud.
I read the book (Bad Blood) and watched the mini-series (The Dropout) -- both absolutely great! and yet I still don't completely understand how Sunny & Holmes were able to fool experts inside their own company for so long.<p>Fooling the public is easy. But how do you fool the people working on the machines and trying to get actual results out of them? Sure, dividing the work into micro-tasks help, and creating an atmosphere of suspicion/excitement/respect for authority, etc. But still?!?
Sunny's response to Tyler's email, the one full of sincere concern for the well-being of the company:<p>Tyler.<p>We saw your email to Elizabeth.<p>Before I get into specifics, let me share with you that had this email come from anyone else in the company, I would have already held them accountable for the arrogant and patronizing tone and reckless comments. In your case, I am giving you the benefit of doubt that your intentions are in the right place, and am taking the time to respond, even though your tone in this email all the way through the last paragraph is not that of someone seeking to understand, but rather someone standing at higher perch of morality and business wisdom. Perhaps this too was not your intent but this clearly comes across as your mind set.<p>See my comments in red below.
This is great, it reminds me of promotional websites from the Adobe Flash era. Ads were a lot more fun back then.
From Elizabeth's Sent mailbox, 10/26/2015:<p>> <i>Theranos is a revolutionary business, founded and led by a remarkable engineer and businesswoman - joined by a team of professionals who have, at their core, embraced her mission to serve humanity through innovation in health care.</i>
In the "Notes" app on the iphone, there is a note which says "msg me on X". Back then, it was Twitter. Boy, I hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
What are we to believe this is some sort of, <i>snort </i>heh* magic iPhone or something?
She was truly ahead of her time.
“X” was actually a pre-Twitter BBS focused on transgenics and corpuscular macronutrients, based in Fort Worth. Any true believers would know that.
I'd love to agree with you but that look like the site designer asking for feedback on his site
its still called twitter<p>(for some of us)
Rest assured that I still refuse to call it X, it's so stupid. But I couldn't pass up the opportunity in this instance. :)
I will never call it X and die violently on this hill
I've accepted X and call the posts "crements"
it's just kinda awkward, but worse than just "X" is the fact that now you're supposed to call tweets "posts on X" or "X posts"<p>like come on... it was so good before
How about Xitter? :)
If Elon Musk can deadname, we can too.
good catch, i may need to find a new job soon
> I hope somebody got fired for that blunder<p>Their name is probably Claude.
[Scoff, Scoff]
It's so strange to see this here. I remember when this site was nothing but foaming-at-the-mouth fawning adoration of Elizabeth Holmes long after her scams were exposed.
My first memory of her being mentioned on this site was the dawning skepticism followed by the big expose. But it's possible I missed the fawning because it didn't sound as interesting
I recall there were plenty of people on here going into bat for Theranos way after others were calling it fraud.<p>The thing is, she expertly rode a belief system that was already prevalent: that SV was going to change the world and that SV and what was happening there was different. Plenty of WeWork fans as well. Plenty of fans of firms that actually did something as well, but most of those "did something"s were a website.
I think there was a lot of resentment here because of how easily it appeared she was raising money and how quickly the company grew at first without having a working product and a murmur from experts that their miniaturization play may not be able to work at all.
I posted about Theranos 2013. Not entirely sure, but I think it was when they launched publicly.<p>Crazy how my gut feeling was more than vindicated.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349349">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349349</a>
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This is an ad for her upcoming, self-starred documentary. So nothing much has changed?
Whoa. With a lidar scan of my house, a drone-captured point cloud of my neighborhood, and a backup of my icloud, I could create an immersive 3D snapshot of my life. And then what if other people did the same and we networked them together, so that we can actually interact in the snapshot. It'd be like second life except actually cloned from real lives. weird
You could pitch the idea to Zuck, see if he wants to burn $100b to try it out.
No please. Not again.
It seems we will be having gaussian-splatted 3D world soon.<p>eg. <a href="https://www.nianticspatial.com/products/capture" rel="nofollow">https://www.nianticspatial.com/products/capture</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-S-x0b9TrE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-S-x0b9TrE</a>
Why not, it's big tech money, at least share it with the poor.
I had a thought the other day that you could probably divide up the world into cubic miles and with a few thousand codex subscriptions make a high fidelity blender model of the entire world based on google maps, street view, and tagged location photos.<p>What would you do with a whole model of the world? I don't know, but it would be fun to walk a national park while I'm on the treadmill or basejump off of a realistic el capitan.
…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.<p>(Borges)
Microsoft has done that to some extent with Flight Simulator using older machine learning techniques. Wouldn't call most of the world high fidelity yet but I'm sure they could get there with generative AI models. I'm also sure the anti-AI screeching in the gaming community would be heard for miles.<p>Would also make a great Zwift competitor (cycling app where you can hook up your stationary bike and race or ride on certain routes).
Microsoft Flight Simulator’s world map covers the entire Earth at approximately 1:1 scale: about 510 million square kilometres of surface, including roughly 149 million km² of land<p>Ref: <a href="https://flyawaysimulation.com/ask/answers/microsoft-flight-simulator-world-map-size/" rel="nofollow">https://flyawaysimulation.com/ask/answers/microsoft-flight-s...</a>
In that case generative AI could be defended as a privacy preserving measure, I guess.
I love doing flybys of my house in MSFS
Pretty sure I've seen experiments to do this using a combination of AI and traditional photogrammetry.
Bro just go outside
If only google could use their AI to generate a wiremesh model out of their google maps streetview data, and make it public. And then another model to generate texture.
That is exactly the idea of some minecraft projects: Mapping the entire world into minecraft.
And then you realize how boring it is.
I mean Second Life has been around since 2003... <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life</a><p>I wasted a lot of hours in it when I was a teen.
Ok, I have to ask : is there a way to get a "cartridge" to insert into the theranos machine ?<p>I would love to have the machine "function" up to a point (except, actually doing the analysis results in a "NotImplementedException" of some kind.à
Why do I have Nathan Fielder's look in my face (same when he was staring at as EH on the pilot), as I'm going through all the features on this site?
Burying the api key in notes on the laptop is a nice touch.
All I feel is that UI of MacOS and iOS is so inferior now than it was then... :\
If only apps were opening in an instant, odd feeling of having it on random website but not have it natively.
Unfortunately the OS itself won't be the be-all / end-all, crossplatform (web) apps and a lack of care for optimization are the other major issue. I just timed how long it takes to open the 'calendar' tab in Teams - 8.5 seconds. MacOS' own calendar app takes <2 seconds (unrepresentative test due to factors) and does not show a screen with a spinner.
Same, but for that generation of MacBook Air. Insane quality and value for the price. And you didn't have to wait 6 weeks to get them!<p>Although I bet Lizzie used a Pro..
only because it was. We peaked with skeuomorphism at the turn of millenium.
I left some snaps on your iphone, so see we can stare into each other's eyes Liz.
For those who are curious, Elizabeth Holmes was originally charged to serve for 11 years and 3 months. However, now her projected release date is just right around the corner - 2030. That's just 6 years and 9 months. A little more than half of her original serving period.
It is a bit hilarious that most of the "apps" open faster in a fake desktop simulated inside the browser than it actually does natively on my Macbook Pro<p>*yes i know, not apples to apples.
Was having trouble resolving this domain and it's because Quad9 (9.9.9.9) is blocking it lol
Super slick buried Extend marketing
we parsed all the theranos PDF filings with Extend (<a href="https://extend.ai/">https://extend.ai/</a>) and wanted a fun interactive way of visualizing them!
Did we get their emails? Would be interesting to tease out the differences between the Enron culture and the Theranos culture (and similarities)
Took me a while to figure out why, till I opened Safari read "document processing" and it clicked. Good job.
Given the context this made me assume extend is also some kind of a scam
there's even an extend api key in there (invalid though, would've been cool if it did something special)
Landed on it like 3 clicks in and immediately closed the page.
thank you!!
You know, for a single pretty rare case of fraud in tech, as opposed to the industries where fraud is common, this gets brought up an excessive amount a decade later.
Two theories:<p>* It was off-the-charts brazen, and amazing that so many prestigious people got behind it, and that it took so long for anyone blow the whistle/notice that the impossible product didn't in fact exist.<p>* Sexism.<p>If you want me to believe #2, I would like to hear what you think are the more comparable cases which don't get bought up as much as this one.
Tech? Not the health sector?
The "tech" sector label is a fraud in its own right.<p>It makes sense to have a separate label for companies that develop software. They have a unique investment appeal because their cost of production doesn't increase with units sold, so higher PE ratio if growing.<p>For "some reason" Netflix isn't priced as a media company. Tesla isn't priced as manufacturing.
That's fair, I guess it depends on how you divide it.
It's hard to forget when the "pretty rare" (citation needed) case was also shoved down your throat by the fawning media for 5 years first.
The page crashes instantly in Safari on iOS on an iPhone 13.
The memory limit for Safari on iOS is less than 400 MB so it's probably because of that
Doesn’t load at all on an iPhone 7
Works great on my iPhone 13.
looking into it!
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A24 (the studio behind the movie) is one of our customers, so we're hosting a watch party in SF<p>plus, we used our APIs to parse all the theranos PDFs to power the experience<p>hope our content marketing made your day a bit more fun!
It's an amazing site - well done.
Sneaky and a little icky, but novel enough to pass.
Where’s the party? I just built something similar to your product for an SF-based non-profit (fully self-hosted on site) and it’s been extremely useful. Would love to get tips on how we can improve our setup.
I mean this in the best way possible: This reminds me so much of Microsoft Bob if it had survived to 2016.
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At least this is a fun ad. I appreciate the level of commitment the developers put into it. It's not just vibe coded slop which is rare
I mean, fair play? I appreciate marketing that has effort involved, especially these days.<p>You do have to get your word out somehow
The event they're hosting is a free watch party for the movie. You didn't exactly crack the case.
Feels like they are unintentionally marketing the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary rather than themselves.
Yes but intentionally:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013534">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013534</a>
Maybe creating the documentary was the most ambitious Nathan For You episode yet, and all simply to build publicity for this company.
Reddit is full of EH content lately, now this.<p>All of this must be a marketing campaign for the movie.
Wait, this isn't marketing for the documentary?
Llllllllllllol?
Not that it matters or anyone cares, but it's so obvious Balwani was manipulating her emotionally. There are so many instances where he says "Love you", or "love" or "I am in love with your beauty", while she is more direct like "I love you", "I am in love with you" etc.
That's some sick marketing
Man, was not prepared to come across a Sparklehorse track randomly tonight.
In my genearl observations of office desks/cubicles around me I have noticed that the only people with carefully stacked books, often more than one or two, were the ones who didn't really read.
I love how incredibly vapid the emails and text messages are.<p>And by love I of course mean: I love, LOVE, LOVE, [repeat ad nauseam]<p>Nails on a chalkboard.
The reminders section is the second most entertaining bit after the messages. Look it up. It's hilarious!!!
This is remarkably well-made, I love these little simulator dealies.
The setting is unsettling. Remind me of some old horror flash games i used to play.
This is inspired by jmail.world, which may have been inspired itself.<p>It is obviously not as interesting as jmail.world, but, give her time
Ok I'm a pretty passionate anti-advertising advocate, but if advertising is gonna look like anything, it might as well be this!
Genuinely curious: does anyone know if the backers ever got refunded?
Love the camera jump scare. Genius
Immediately crashes on my phone, is this something related to Nathan Fielder's new doc?
Might be the most tasteful ad I've seen in a hot minute, not bad at all.
Blew my mind away.....
The iPhone works and you can even play/listen to music on it!
this site is so slick great job! love how the email in the iphone works
I finished the juice. Now what ?<p>LOL<p>Excellent work! All the best for the documentary launch!
I spent way to much time with that :-D
I took a photo on the iPhone of Elizabeth Holmes and myself hanging out smoking a joint together!<p>The share button let me download it.
Kinda cool, but also annoying that it's just backdoor marketing for a b2b SaaS company.
There is no way to run for the door.
Bo you are a legend!!!
playfulness is the key
you can click on the drink to take a sip btw
I checked the health app on the phone:<p>> No health data.<p>:)
Very cool!
interesting seeing marketing content do so well on HN haha, not bad!
As someone who only knows Theranos by the creepy lady and that they did some scam this is very interesting. Only critique is that it calls Twitter X, which isn't historically accurate.<p>EDIT: uhh I thought the movie signup thing was a gag, didn't know it was real. Sorry I guess.
Context please. What is this?
Why are people giving her anymore attention and time? Yawn. I don't get it. The story has been told, there is nothing new here besides some weird shots of her wide eyed like she always has been. Am I the only person who isn't impressed?
woah this is such a throwback, made me oddly nostalgic. great fucking work
Now do Epstein's Laptop!
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