[ryandrake]

I don’t think you had to be a biomedical engineer to have called this one, even years ago. Its attributes hit HN (and the gushing tech media) in all the soft spots: young, female founder, college dropout, wore black turtlenecks like Steve Jobs, disruptive tech, attacking a stodgy conservative industry, order(s) of magnitude claimed improvements. It was simply too good and aligned perfectly with the HN zeitgeist. Just like the poster: “I Want To Believe!” Everyone’s blinders were on, and nobody wanted to recognize the obvious signs of fakery.

This has been my favorite tech story of the decade. Watching a rich, well-connected phony get knocked down and called out on all the bullshit fills me with glee. It excites me in ways we don’t talk about in polite company. So many hard working smart people out there toiling away in obscurity while these “elite” fakers get all the recognition and money. The schadenfreude in watching one of them finally and spectacularly burn up is too good to bear.

[hkmurakami]

I've actually never seen a HN thread that was overall positive about Theranos. The top comments were shears critical of the company, despite all the worthy surface level virtue it carried.

[tgb]

I believe that this [1] is the oldest thread in HN about Theranos. There are two sub-threads that are negative and one which seems quite spot-on in hindsight. But the top comments are all quite positive.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349349