Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

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Ads for new phones typically read "Screen images simulated". No one should blame Theranos for using carefully configured images in their marketing brochures - if the graphic designer used actual photos at all instead of CAD renders and simulated screenshots, you'd expect them to clear a fault or get a passing test before hitting the shutter. If there were some machines visible from the front lobby, if they were live and just running "demo mode" that's basically the same as putting a sticker with a passing test over the display.

I give Apple a ton of credit for running with real demos, as shown by the fact that they fail, like the FaceID snafu:

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/12/16296912/a...

Or Steve Jobs' wifi disconnection:

https://www.cnet.com/videos/steve-jobs-demo-fail/

A lot of Apple demos include simulated marketing screen sequences too, but if they had 'lip synced' these parts I don't think anyone would have noticed. Clearly, they didn't, or else those two failures would not have happened.

Regardless, I don't think Theranos running a "null protocol" or "demo mode" is particularly surprising. You can't blame them for wanting to avoid something like the machine blurting out "You Are HIV Positive" during a demo. I do think there's a difference between a marketing demo where you expect to be lied to and a "this is a standard production machine running an actual test" lie. The question is which side of that divide the Theranos investor demos fell on.

I'd have a lot more sympathy for this argument if the Theranos machines were actually capable of doing the tests that they were pretending to run.

I think there's a world of difference between a) simulating a technology that a company really can provide just to ensure that things run smoothly for the test and b) pretending to offer a technology that, in fact, the company couldn't provide at all.

The difference- and one of the key things that makes this fraud- is intent. Theranos took blood from potential investors, told them it was their real lab results for their blood panel workup, except it was a fake script they have intentionally rigged to spit out dummy results as they knew the product would fail.

There's a massive qualitative difference here. If you're making something that is touted to be a breakthrough technology, you need to be actually doing it!

It is well-established from the history of hardware and software engineering that crashing bugs and glitches can be removed from a system through basic engineering. No one looks at a device that has some error messages and occasional crashes and says "Those crashes and errors are probably impossible to fix".

Theranos claimed to be doing a thing which everyone else in the field said was physically impossible (or at least physically impractical without an enormous nanotech breakthrough). Pretending that you're doing that thing, without actually having ever really done it, is indeed fraud.

Fun fact:

Steve Jobs' demo for the original macintosh was actually done with a bit of cheating:

"Once we integrated all the pieces together, the demo didn't come close to be able to run on a standard Macintosh. Fortunately, we had a prototype of a 512K Mac in the lab, so we decided to cheat a little (there were only two in existence at the time) and use that for the demo, which made things fit."

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

If you prick the investor's fingers and use their blood, are you simulating? It seems to be claiming to actually analyze the results.

It depends on what they told the investors: 'This is the real thing', or 'this is a simulation of how it will seem to customers'.

Truth is simple to communicate.

It depends on what you are demonstrating. I recently worked on a very legit medical device. It has a demo mode that shows off the product UI. It is 100% clear that there is no real sample and no real reagents in the machine.

Note the article said the demo mode "would not analyze the sample." The article goes on to say that real blood samples were used in these demos. Not the same thing at all.

The difference is that Apple made actual computers that worked, while Theranos' whole product was just literally a lie

Everything is a lie until it isn’t. Case in point: Tesla

This is not true. It doesn't even make sense. Pithy comments generally don't describe the real world.

"We are in development and do not yet have a working product" - Not a lie

"We have finished development and have a working product ready for patients" - Lie

Plenty of stuff was never a lie (look at the history of the nuclear bomb. Secrecy, but no lies on performance.) Meanwhile, plenty of stuff has always been a lie (check out nuclear fusion power.)

Apple's demos were (and presumably still are) using known hardware on a known happy path. The path is tested extensively. It's only outside forces (wifi, automatic reenabling of lock screens) that mar them.

If you want to really admire someone's balls, look at Bill Gates taking a BSoD to the face showing off Win95.

and "that must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet."

https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/20/windows_98_comdex_bso...

It's funny you mention Apple and "screen images simulated" ads.

It's because Apple was forced to add this because people complained that their visuals were misleading in ads.

I’d love a source for this.

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