[dehrmann]

For the most part (so no self-driving cars), startups are in a low-stakes game, so it makes sense to hack away, and it nas nothing to do with an "old guard." Google (or any other tech company) outages aren't particularly memorable unless you were an engineer involved in it. The space shuttle accidents were labeled "disasters."

[major4x]

Theranos? All those cases of neglected security when data leaked and/or people killed themselves over scams?

[kumarvvr]

Theranos is an outright fraud. Not the product of getting things done on fast track.

They knew things could not be done and kept up the charade for long enough to profit off of it, and hopefully get away.

[ClumsyPilot]

> Theranos is an outright fraud. Not the product of getting things done on fast track

Theranos is product of the same culture. Company founder chases a goal they do not understand, and convinces investors its right around the corner. In actuality they have no clue.

There is no foundamental difference between theranos diagnosis and tesla autopilot.

The only reason we call theranos fraud is that we know conclusively that their goal is impossible. We have not yet accepted that autopilot is.

[some_random]

Elizabeth Holmes was not convicted of fraud and sentenced to eleven and a quarter years in prison because her company was a bad investment, no matter how much tech "journalists" want you to believe. She's going to prison because she committed boring financial fraud. If she was truthful to investors about the state of her company and her technology, she never would have received funding. Claiming that your technology will totally be ready in 6 months and will change the world is one thing, saying that it's in secret use by the US Military in Afghanistan onboard medevac helicopters is another.

[ftrobro]

> we know conclusively that their goal is impossible

No we only know that their approach was wrong. Here is a preprint of a paper describing detection of 12 different types of cancer from a single drop of blood:

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-2025767/v1

[civilitty]

No, we know for a fact it is impossible.

The problem isn’t the volume of blood, it’s that blood drawn from finger capillaries is not a representative sample for diagnostic purposes. There are plenty of tests that are even more sensitive, but they require a proper sample drawn directly from a vein or artery.

[robertlagrant]

> Company founder chases a goal they do not understand, and convinces investors its right around the corner. In actuality they have no clue.

This can be said for many, many successful companies. Your category is too wide.

[adql]

>There is no foundamental difference between theranos diagnosis and tesla autopilot.

But we're talking about submarine that already dived, not something that never had a chance of working in the first place

[PinguTS]

Really? Think another way: MVP. MVP is a big in the startup scene. No startup tells you how they made there MVP. Most of them think, if I get enough investment, if I get enough customers, then I will make it better. But until now the other way is just enough for my MVP.

So some would call it MVP and others would call it fraud. Until it is really being implemented as advertised.

[kumarvvr]

A medical product that compromises accracy is neither viable, nor the minimum nor really a product.

An MVP means something that has just about the core functionality, with bells and whistles and newer use cases coming on later.

[KptMarchewa]

V stands for viable.

[berniedurfee]

I agree. With software being ever more embedded in our daily lives and ability to function in society, the stakes are very high, even in domains outside of physical products.

Social media has shown to be pretty destructive. I don’t think there are many low stakes areas for software. It’s all impactful and potentially harmful at scale.

[underdeserver]

As far as I remember the Theranos people used standard commercial tests, and sold the results as coming from their magic device. So the results were solid - the fraud was elsewhere. I might be remembering this wrong.

[andix]

They used the commercial devices far outside specification (with too small amounts of blood), which made the results unreliable.

[licebmi__at__]

No expert, but as I have read and understand, theres a catch. Theranos promised all kinds of tests drawing minimal blood, and they performed the tests using commercial equipment but with less blood than what these equipment is meant to use. So the results were not actually solid.