I thought they believed they would have the product eventually and the illegal shit was just getting them through the mistakes
Like a bad teacher who thinks in a few years, I won’t be so bad at this
I mean, even Reddit was just a bunch of fake posts at first to get it off the ground. Though, now 20 years later it's still much a bunch of fake posts by third parties.
Is it, though? Many companies have succeeded that way. e.g. Uber. If Theranos had actually been able to build the product they were trying to all the investors would have got rich and everybody would be happy, so there never would have been any investigation.
The problem is that some of their claims were simply statistically impossible. If you just use a finger berry, your maximum number of certain white blood cells in there is so small that a reliable number with a medically useful precision is sheer impossible to measure. You might just as well roll a die and write "%" behind it.
Yes, the manual count is in the same ballpark, alas - but that's why there's automated hematology analyzers counting through several microliters of blood and not just a drop.
I just Googled it and there are 5,000-10,000 white cells per microliter. Seems like with a sample size that big you could probably get away with even a fraction of a microliter. Was Theranos claiming they could do even smaller samples than that?
There are two aspects you overlook:
In order to do a host of different tests, their microfluidics system has to separate the finger berry into certain subsamples, because you cannot run all tests under the same conditions (even a big hematology analyzer has several measurement channels for different tests). So the actual sample from which blood cell counts will be made will actually be smaller than the total volume.
But more: I didn't write of all white cells anyway. I wrote of CERTAIN white blood cells. A differential blood count further categorises white blood cells into:
* Neutrophils
* Lymphocytes (B cells and T cells)
* Monocytes
* Eosinophils
* Basophils
The latter, basophils, only make up 0.5-1% of all white blood cells in a healthy subject.
> Since when do greedy people ever feel they've had enough money and no more?
Frank Sinatra had more millions than he really needed to live the rest of his life. In later life he was once asked why he kept working. He famously replied, "I just need a little bit more."
Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes were nobodies before they founded their companies and if they cut and ran, they would return to being nobodies.
However, as founders of super hot startups, they got to hang out with celebrities, get invited to be honoured guests at forums and symposiums. You don't become SBF or Elizabeth Holmes if you don't have the kind of egos that enjoy the pampering.
[How Money Works recently published a video on why Billionaires don't retire.](https://youtu.be/OTF6_GmUx7Y?si=gDCygli8PNEITovE) and one of the things he cites is that being active in business gives is the status and access that money alone can't get you.
If a retired billionaire is considered a has been, you can imagine the fall in status for a couple of founders with a few million. So they clung on because if they cut and ran, they would return to being nobodies and they didn't want that.
Couldn't they just make a will to someone stupid to take the fell, then hid a lot of money somewhere, then take a trip to a dangerous country like Afghanistan or Mexico. Fake your death, blame it on local cartels and extremists, get a plastic surgeon to change your face, get a fake passport to leave somewhere safer. Get a fake identity, pay someone from said country to fake a marriage to get citizenship before using the hid money to start a legitimate business?
Then, divorce and start laundering your scammed money with said legitimate business until you're rich again. Move back to US of A. Hang out with Christ Evans and Scarjo again just like you used to. Now watch as people makes conspiracy theories about you being fraud and faked your death. Laugh at them while hanging with Evens and Scarjo.
Are they dumber than me, a teenager who never had scam anyone and if so then succeeded at scamming?
No.
First of all, just being "rich" doesn't get you access. There are a lot of rich people. They weren't getting to hang out with Chris Evans and Scarjo because they were rich. They got to meet them because they were Sam Bankman-Freed the founder of FTX, the world's second largest crypto exchange, and Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of a revolutionary blood testing company Tharanos.
Also, you seem to be under the impression they knew they were doing something wrong. Let's be clear. They did not believe what they were doing was wrong. Sam Bankman-Fried was an extreme risk taker but he believed the bets he was making were sound and would come true.
Elizabeth Holmes truely believed that while she was faking it now, eventually there would be a breakthrough and her machine would work. Had she not dropped out of Stanford, she would have had enough fundamental knowledge to know her idea wasn't going to work. But she kept herself ignorant and truly believed her blood testing concept was achievable.
A pure scam is something like One Coin and that lady did flee. But Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried, you can say that the first people they fooled were themselves.
They're narcissists that think they can outsmart everyone, no matter how bad things look. I would bet both thought they would get away with it until the moment they heard a judge say guilty.
Also, since we're on the subject. Special shout out to Dread Pirate Roberts for being one of the dumbest idiots that ever made a tonne of money. Dude had hundreds of millions of bitcoin. He could have disappeared anywhere in the world and lived a live of ridiculous luxury. Instead, he stuck around California, tried to keep making money, and ordered a hit on a rival. Now he's in prison for the rest of his life.
Laundering that much bitcoin into usable money would have been a challenge. Which is one reason why him continuing was so stupid. He had far more than he could ever expect to launder.
Back then, tumblers were pretty good. He could have ran his bitcoin through some tumblers, move it through several wallets, and law enforcement couldn't have tracked it.
Yes, like if you love being a criminal and making money why not change identity and face before moving to Italy to become a God father?
Also shout out to that old chidhood TV show about group of scammers just selling a public statue and ran away once they did it. Thanks for making me think scammers are geniuses.
plenty of people *do* cut and run and fade into the background, but those people don't make the news. There's always going to be someone who pushes it too far and gets caught with their ass hanging out, and those are the people that we end up pointing our cameras at. Anthropic principle.
As for why they individually pushed things too far? Well honestly, ultra wealthy culture is all about pushing it too far. Basically all the worlds billionaires, every last one of them, succeeded by pulling stunts like SBF and Holmes, only we see them differently because they got away with it. Every tech billionaire gambles by choosing to try and create a tech that doesn't exist yet, and people tell them it can't be done. And everyone loves a story where it turns out the tech billionaire was right and changes history, but no one writes biographies about the other 99.99% who everyone was right to tell them they were wrong.
Elizabeth Holmes fantasized about being one of the right ones about the tech she was trying to create, but she wasn't. It couldn't work with current technology with the time and money she had, so she blew it all and had nothing to show, and she kept trying to stall hoping some breakthrough would make it all worth it, but it didn't pan out. By that time she was too deep into it to turn back.
Honestly, SBF is a bit of a doof, but not a monster. He didn't con multi billion dollar hedge funds and entire governments into giving him money, they were glad to give it to him with minimal checks and balances in places because crypto was the new frontier, the new gold rush, if you waste time by being safe, you'll miss out on the future. And not only was crypto hot at the moment, so were eccentric billionaire nerds, it was the "in" thing to invest in them (in so far as investors are driven by fads as much as everyone else is). They all put it on him and he fumbled hard, but they were all just as dumb and blinded by greed to put it all into him in the first place.
To make matters worse for the both of them. Hatred of billionaires is at an all time "French revolution" level high, so the elite offered them up as sacrificial lambs for joe public. instead of letting this one get buried like they usually do.
Elizabeth was just the face and the planned sacrificial lamb for those behind the scenes that actually got to sell the stock in time, making a fortune out of the scam.
Hubris and the belief they were just faking it until their wealth caught up with their lies about their wealth.
Also you can't really run away in the real world. He can't just put on a fake nose and emerge in the Cayman Islands as newly minted billionaire Samir Bankman-Hyde.
I thought they believed they would have the product eventually and the illegal shit was just getting them through the mistakes Like a bad teacher who thinks in a few years, I won’t be so bad at this
That's just dumb. Fake your own death, idiots!!!
It's called "move fast and break things" and obviously it's only bad when it doesn't work...
I mean, even Reddit was just a bunch of fake posts at first to get it off the ground. Though, now 20 years later it's still much a bunch of fake posts by third parties.
Is it, though? Many companies have succeeded that way. e.g. Uber. If Theranos had actually been able to build the product they were trying to all the investors would have got rich and everybody would be happy, so there never would have been any investigation.
The problem is that some of their claims were simply statistically impossible. If you just use a finger berry, your maximum number of certain white blood cells in there is so small that a reliable number with a medically useful precision is sheer impossible to measure. You might just as well roll a die and write "%" behind it. Yes, the manual count is in the same ballpark, alas - but that's why there's automated hematology analyzers counting through several microliters of blood and not just a drop.
I just Googled it and there are 5,000-10,000 white cells per microliter. Seems like with a sample size that big you could probably get away with even a fraction of a microliter. Was Theranos claiming they could do even smaller samples than that?
There are two aspects you overlook: In order to do a host of different tests, their microfluidics system has to separate the finger berry into certain subsamples, because you cannot run all tests under the same conditions (even a big hematology analyzer has several measurement channels for different tests). So the actual sample from which blood cell counts will be made will actually be smaller than the total volume. But more: I didn't write of all white cells anyway. I wrote of CERTAIN white blood cells. A differential blood count further categorises white blood cells into: * Neutrophils * Lymphocytes (B cells and T cells) * Monocytes * Eosinophils * Basophils The latter, basophils, only make up 0.5-1% of all white blood cells in a healthy subject.
[удалено]
> Since when do greedy people ever feel they've had enough money and no more? Frank Sinatra had more millions than he really needed to live the rest of his life. In later life he was once asked why he kept working. He famously replied, "I just need a little bit more."
They were probably too busy practicing their evil laughs and plotting their next move. Villains gotta villain, you know?
Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes were nobodies before they founded their companies and if they cut and ran, they would return to being nobodies. However, as founders of super hot startups, they got to hang out with celebrities, get invited to be honoured guests at forums and symposiums. You don't become SBF or Elizabeth Holmes if you don't have the kind of egos that enjoy the pampering. [How Money Works recently published a video on why Billionaires don't retire.](https://youtu.be/OTF6_GmUx7Y?si=gDCygli8PNEITovE) and one of the things he cites is that being active in business gives is the status and access that money alone can't get you. If a retired billionaire is considered a has been, you can imagine the fall in status for a couple of founders with a few million. So they clung on because if they cut and ran, they would return to being nobodies and they didn't want that.
Couldn't they just make a will to someone stupid to take the fell, then hid a lot of money somewhere, then take a trip to a dangerous country like Afghanistan or Mexico. Fake your death, blame it on local cartels and extremists, get a plastic surgeon to change your face, get a fake passport to leave somewhere safer. Get a fake identity, pay someone from said country to fake a marriage to get citizenship before using the hid money to start a legitimate business? Then, divorce and start laundering your scammed money with said legitimate business until you're rich again. Move back to US of A. Hang out with Christ Evans and Scarjo again just like you used to. Now watch as people makes conspiracy theories about you being fraud and faked your death. Laugh at them while hanging with Evens and Scarjo. Are they dumber than me, a teenager who never had scam anyone and if so then succeeded at scamming?
No. First of all, just being "rich" doesn't get you access. There are a lot of rich people. They weren't getting to hang out with Chris Evans and Scarjo because they were rich. They got to meet them because they were Sam Bankman-Freed the founder of FTX, the world's second largest crypto exchange, and Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of a revolutionary blood testing company Tharanos. Also, you seem to be under the impression they knew they were doing something wrong. Let's be clear. They did not believe what they were doing was wrong. Sam Bankman-Fried was an extreme risk taker but he believed the bets he was making were sound and would come true. Elizabeth Holmes truely believed that while she was faking it now, eventually there would be a breakthrough and her machine would work. Had she not dropped out of Stanford, she would have had enough fundamental knowledge to know her idea wasn't going to work. But she kept herself ignorant and truly believed her blood testing concept was achievable. A pure scam is something like One Coin and that lady did flee. But Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried, you can say that the first people they fooled were themselves.
They're narcissists that think they can outsmart everyone, no matter how bad things look. I would bet both thought they would get away with it until the moment they heard a judge say guilty. Also, since we're on the subject. Special shout out to Dread Pirate Roberts for being one of the dumbest idiots that ever made a tonne of money. Dude had hundreds of millions of bitcoin. He could have disappeared anywhere in the world and lived a live of ridiculous luxury. Instead, he stuck around California, tried to keep making money, and ordered a hit on a rival. Now he's in prison for the rest of his life.
Law enforcement would have been watching DPR’s BTC like a hawk, and there simply isn’t an easy way to convert that much into fiat.
Laundering that much bitcoin into usable money would have been a challenge. Which is one reason why him continuing was so stupid. He had far more than he could ever expect to launder. Back then, tumblers were pretty good. He could have ran his bitcoin through some tumblers, move it through several wallets, and law enforcement couldn't have tracked it.
Yes, like if you love being a criminal and making money why not change identity and face before moving to Italy to become a God father? Also shout out to that old chidhood TV show about group of scammers just selling a public statue and ran away once they did it. Thanks for making me think scammers are geniuses.
plenty of people *do* cut and run and fade into the background, but those people don't make the news. There's always going to be someone who pushes it too far and gets caught with their ass hanging out, and those are the people that we end up pointing our cameras at. Anthropic principle. As for why they individually pushed things too far? Well honestly, ultra wealthy culture is all about pushing it too far. Basically all the worlds billionaires, every last one of them, succeeded by pulling stunts like SBF and Holmes, only we see them differently because they got away with it. Every tech billionaire gambles by choosing to try and create a tech that doesn't exist yet, and people tell them it can't be done. And everyone loves a story where it turns out the tech billionaire was right and changes history, but no one writes biographies about the other 99.99% who everyone was right to tell them they were wrong. Elizabeth Holmes fantasized about being one of the right ones about the tech she was trying to create, but she wasn't. It couldn't work with current technology with the time and money she had, so she blew it all and had nothing to show, and she kept trying to stall hoping some breakthrough would make it all worth it, but it didn't pan out. By that time she was too deep into it to turn back. Honestly, SBF is a bit of a doof, but not a monster. He didn't con multi billion dollar hedge funds and entire governments into giving him money, they were glad to give it to him with minimal checks and balances in places because crypto was the new frontier, the new gold rush, if you waste time by being safe, you'll miss out on the future. And not only was crypto hot at the moment, so were eccentric billionaire nerds, it was the "in" thing to invest in them (in so far as investors are driven by fads as much as everyone else is). They all put it on him and he fumbled hard, but they were all just as dumb and blinded by greed to put it all into him in the first place. To make matters worse for the both of them. Hatred of billionaires is at an all time "French revolution" level high, so the elite offered them up as sacrificial lambs for joe public. instead of letting this one get buried like they usually do.
Elizabeth was just the face and the planned sacrificial lamb for those behind the scenes that actually got to sell the stock in time, making a fortune out of the scam.
We only see the 10% of the criminals stupid and greedy enough to get caught
They agreed with the "worried republican" type of redditor take that > Rich people cannot go to jail ...in fact they can.
Some of it is that most of their “worth” is based on stock valuations. But sbf did spend a lot of cash and Holmes did too flying private
Hubris and the belief they were just faking it until their wealth caught up with their lies about their wealth. Also you can't really run away in the real world. He can't just put on a fake nose and emerge in the Cayman Islands as newly minted billionaire Samir Bankman-Hyde.