A New Look Inside Theranos' Dysfunctional Corporate Culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-look-inside-theranos-dysfunctional-corporate-culture/ <comment><USER2> It is ludicrous that Theranos' punishment for all their fraud was merely paying a fine. We need to resume prosecuting the individuals who commit white collar crimes. Otherwise, getting caught committing crime just gets budgeted into the business plan.

The book _The Chickenshit Club_ does a good job highlighting this (fairly recent) problem with US justice. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the- chickens...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the-chickenshit- club-jesse-eisinger-.html) "America's Top Prosecutors Used to Go After Top Executives. What Changed?"

<comment><USER3> "Conservative" (i.e. pro-corporate) justices have had a majority on the US supreme court for four and half decades now. There are now decades of precedent firmly on the side of corporate executives vs. customers, employees, or the general public.

More generally, corporations have coopted or subverted most other institutions in the society, including the DOJ and the legislature. (Hooray for unlimited anonymous campaign finance.)

<comment><USER4> Ideologically, I'm inclined to agree with you. However, last year I read the book mentioned in the parent comment, The Chickenshit Club.

One of the central arguments laid out in that book is that ultimately it is a "gentleman's code" in the legal world that leads to fewer prosecutions of corporations and individuals executives. The author of that book obtained DOJ memos and conducted interviews with several career prosecutors.

The general takeaway is that US federal prosecutors are inclined to "see the humanity" in corporate executives, and ascribe potential criminal behavior to negligence instead. After all, high powered lawyers and C-suite executives went to the same handful of elite schools, and are likely to run in similar social circles. This is complicated by the fact that the US Department of Justice has two tracks: career civil servants, and political appointees who are often part of a revolving door from whiteshoe criminal defense law firms to government. The political appointees oversee and have ultimate discretion on what cases to pursue and against whom.

The incentives for prosecutors to take cases to trial, as opposed to settling, are also not there. Federal prosecutors cherish their "win rates", and extracting a settlement from a corporation counts as a win, which in turn helps career advancement. Take a case to court, and if 1/12 of the jurors are unpersuaded, you've lost.

In all fairness to George W. Bush's presidency, his DOJ was given political cover and the necessary resources to prosecute Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and Arthur Andersen. Both corporation and individual executives were held accountable with financial penalties and heavy jail sentences.

The Obama presidency on the other hand, featured former criminal defense and corporate law firm lawyers leading the DOJ. Many had no previous experience of working as prosecutors, and it showed painfully in several botched prosecutions.

The problem of "chickenshit" prosecution in this country has long predated Citizens United, and several conservative presidents have done a better job than their liberal counterparts of holding corporations accountable, and vice versa.

Corporate money may well add fuel to the fire, but it was by no means the catalyst that got us to where we are today w.r.t. unpunished corporate wrongdoing.

The book is really worth a read, and goes into far greater detail.

<comment><USER3> Odds of winning at trial/appeals depends heavily on the aggressiveness of the laws on the books and on the folks judging the cases. Various quasi-fraudulent business practices have been normalized and legalized by legislative and judicial action over the past 2 generations, while the rights of consumers and workers have been steadily eroded.

Available money at the top (for legal defense, lobbying, etc.) depends on the level of income inequality, which in turn depends on income/estate tax rates, minimum wage, allowable structures for corporate boards, allowable terms of contracts, legality of monopolistic business practices, etc.

Political will from the top of the DOJ depends somewhat on the president's personality. The era of Teddy Roosevelt or FDR or Lyndon Johnson is long past; the Democrats to hold office have been the type to favor moderation and compromise, and the Republicans since Nixon have been firmly pro-corporate, often bordering on fascist, embroiled in their own criminal conspiracies for which they have largely avoided any direct consequence. But it also depends on whether the president feels beholden to donors or can take an aggressive message directly to the public. With unlimited anonymous campaign money, who can afford to piss off CEOs or Saudi princes?

<comment><USER4> It can certainly be the case that landmark Supreme Court decisions can dramatically alter the playbooks of prosecutors. For example, SCOTUS has in recent years tightened then widened the definition of insider trading. Gov. McDonnell got his corruption conviction thrown out.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "odds of winning...depends heavily on the folks judging the cases." It's been my experience in jury selection, both as a potential juror and as a party to litigation, that the lawyers on both sides are going to move to strike any jurors who are "extreme" in any characteristic. Very rich or very poor, very young or very old, etc. It can certainly be the case that appellate court judges have a strong pro or anti corporate bias, but ultimately appellate courts overturn on the basis of constitutional or procedural issues. They can't overturn the original findings of a jury just because they disgaree.

Re: the influence of money, both in terms of lawyers and campaign contributions: if the federal government actually decides to throw its full weight behind a case, there is a limit to how much a corporation can spend on legal defense. And, even if the defense is represented by the best lawyers, a compelling criminal case can overcome that. Keep in mind that Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, and Andersen were represented by the white shoe-iest of criminal defense firms. At several points, each prosecution encountered significant difficulties, but the government prevailed in the end.

On political money, there is also a limit to its influence. As someone who worked for the Obama campaign in 2012, I was acutely aware that we were being outspent by hundreds of millions of dollars on the other side. A huge majority of Obama's 2008 Wall Street backers defected to Romney after the passage of Dodd-Frank. However, various political scientists have found that if both sides are adequately funded in a race, the marginal effectiveness of an additional dollar dramatically decreases. Running an ad 500 times a week vs your opponent being able to do it 1500 times makes no measurable impact. It's true that in local races, money can have a huge distortionary impact. However, for the kinds of races that affect who gets appointed to lead the DOJ, namely the presidential race, I think this is somewhat overblown.

All this is to say that while I suspect that we would both strongly support significant restrictions on the influence of money in our campaign system, it would be wrong to say that our campaign finance system and the ascendancy of conservative judges eliminates the ability to prosecute white collar crime. With sufficient public anger, and dedicated and courageous prosecutors, there can be successful cases brought against wrongdoers that add some measure of equity to the system.

<comment><USER3> > _With sufficient public anger, and dedicated and courageous prosecutors, > there can be successful cases brought against wrongdoers that add some > measure of equity to the system._

I'll toast to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author of this book, John Carreyou, was apparently public enemy number 1 at Theranos. Theranos both dedicated time at an all hands to chant "f--- you Carreyou" and developed a space invaders like game where players could shoot pictures of his head.[0] It does put some of the more... unflattering descriptions of Balwani in the article in context. For someone who was so viciously attacked and ultimately vindicated on his bearish view of the Theranos it's understandable.

[0][http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-employees-made- space...](http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-employees-made-space- invaders-game-where-you-shoot-journalist-that-exposed-startup-problems-2018-4)

<comment><USER6> That's one very sick corporate culture.

I sincerely hope that all the high level cadre at Theranos will find it hard to get new employment. That sort of thing has absolutely no place in any organization.

<comment><USER7> > _That sort of thing has absolutely no place in any organization._

That's kind of funny. Many (most?) organizations are exactly like that: willing to break the law in order to get ahead. There would be no Uber and no AirBnb otherwise; there wouldn't even be a Microsoft, either. And those are the most visible and prominent firms.

I worked at a big consulting firm in the 90s, the corporate culture there and then was total indifference to laws, regulations, morals or even common sense. The only thing that mattered was billable hours.

Granted, those companies don't deal with people's health, and it's normal to feel outraged and compassionate towards patients who were put in harm's way by the deceiving tactics and outright lies of Theranos' officials.

But let's not forget this happens everywhere -- laws are meaningless if they're not aggressively enforced: if people simply followed the law there would be no need for law enforcement.

<comment><USER8> > Granted, those companies don't deal with people's health

This sentence of yours called to mind a counter-example:

Two companies traditionally in the "business consulting" trade, Atos and Capita, were tasked by the British Department of Work and Pensions with investigating the "fitness for work" of millions of British welfare recipients. Driven by expectations and probably bonuses for producing the desired outcome, they erred overwhelmingly on the side of "fit." A few of their "fit for work" examinees were undergoing intensive care in a hospital, at least one died on the day following the assessment. Apparently the assessment crew didn't even have a single licensed physician on board.

So here we had two typical "bean counter" outfits acting in a way that tragically worsened quality of life for many infirm and/or poor people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Like many people who met her for the first time, Beam was taken aback by her > deep voice. It was unlike anything he'd heard before.

Someone pointed it out the other day here, and I thought well that's just silly. Then went and listen to some videos and it is kind of freaky. It's like she deliberately changes her voice, but it sounds worse and obviously fake.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YecjzEScXqU&t=105](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YecjzEScXqU&t=105)

Here she forgets to fake it for a while:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGfaJZAdfNE&t=403](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGfaJZAdfNE&t=403)

I'd think someone should have mentioned it to her. But given the culture in the company I can see what was going on. She could have showed up with a lampshade on her head and nobody would have said anything either. After a while there is nothing to say to someone who does stuff like this:

> Still visibly angry, Holmes told the gathered employees that she was > building a religion. If there were any among them who didn't believe, they > should leave. Balwani put it more bluntly: Anyone not prepared to show > complete devotion and unmitigated loyalty to the company should "get the > fuck out."

<comment><USER10> This is what happens when someone reads that deep voices help you make more money: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/10052978/Deep- voice...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/10052978/Deep-voiced-chief- executives-are-more-successful-scientists-say.html)

And for a while, wasn't it a successful tactic?

It has a lot of intuitive validity. "Command voice" is definitely a skill that can be taught, and is used by people from military officers to animal trainers and teachers. Given the extent to which the HN audience is amenable to "self- hacking", how many people here would do this if they were convinced it would earn them an extra 5%?

<comment><USER11> I learned "command voice" in the control room of a sub, where certain things HAD to be heard over twenty other voices.

It still helps with everyday conversation when my wife is on a different floor of the house, or across the yard, etc etc.

Every once in a while it helps sort out an otherwise mishmash of a professional discussion... when used judiciously of course.

<comment><USER12> _where certain things HAD to be heard over twenty other voices._

Often people say that higher-pitched, female voices are easier to hear over machinery noises, that's why car satnavs and voice warnings in cockpits tend to be female. Which would seem to be the opposite of a low-pitched voice being more commanding. What do you reckon?

<comment><USER11> Either one can be effective, it's a matter of sufficient pitch difference and increased volume.

Almost on topic, some residents of my former high-rise barracks liked playing their bass tracks blaring out the windows, which got my roommate and I thinking, if they have the bass, we can take the treble... and we got our competition bagpipe CDs out and cranked them up. We made our point. (And the barracks mangers shut us both up... )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Listening to the Audible version right now. Even as someone who read every story the WSJ published on Theranos, I'm still finding the book version to be very worthwhile. Lots of interesting detail, including on what it was like on the engineering front to hack together the machines for what turned out to be a pipe dream.

edit: for example, the second chapter focuses on the "Gluebot", a robot originally designed for glue-dispensing that became the core of Theranos's "Edison" machine. The author goes into decent detail about how this robot differed from Elizabeth Holmes's original vision of a wildly unrealistic microfluidic processor. And how Holmes/Theranos hired a new separate engineering team (which came up with the Gluebot idea) to pit against Theranos's own engineering department after the then lead engineer refused Holmes's request to run his team on a 24/7 schedule.

<comment><USER14> Wha? A 24 hour _engineering_ team? Who they hell did they think they were going to hire to do engineering at 3am? Maybe they mean quality control engineers for a 24 hour production line? Medtronic does this, but the QC guys are really only there for when the lines mess up.

<comment><USER13> Relevant excerpt from the book:

> _ED WAS WORKING late one evening when Elizabeth came by his workspace. She > was frustrated with the pace of their progress and wanted to run the > engineering department twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to > accelerate development. Ed thought that was a terrible idea. His team was > working long hours as it was..._

> _Ed pushed back against Elizabeth's proposal. Even if he instituted shifts, > a round-the-clock schedule would make his engineers burn out, he told her. > "I don't care. We can change people in and out," she responded. "The company > is all that matters."_

 _Carreyrou, John. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (p. 28). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition._

<comment><USER14> > "I don't care. We can change people in and out,"

Yeah, that's a great person to work for right there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That first story is the nightmare of anybody working with blood. As an analyst you can take a guess at what a particular sample _might_ contain because of the tests ordered but you treat each and every sample as though it contains the worst of the worst. To have a sample container explode in a machine with blood spattered all over would be a one-time occurrence in any responsibly run lab, and the clean-up after an incident like that would take a long time.

<comment><USER15> That sounds like it failed at the stage where your taking blood and not inside some machine.

As some one who has a lot of bloods done (down to 4/5 a month now) you occasionally have to repeat as the vein doesn't work etc and there is always some blood leakage.

<comment><USER6> "When the technician pushed the tiny twin tubes into the device, there was a loud pop and blood splattered everywhere. One of the nanotainers had just exploded."

So definitely in the machine.

<comment><USER16> It was not in a machine. The 'device' is the plastic instrument they use to collect blood, not a machine.

"At her signal, a technician pricked a volunteer's finger, then applied a transparent plastic implement shaped like a miniature rocket to the blood oozing from it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The whole Theranos disaster and partly also whats going on at Tesla are just good illustrations of the hubris in Silicon Valley. As soon as you leave the domain of stuff that can be accomplished with more or less buggy software, you collide with a bunch of real world/physical problems that are much harder to solve and need a lot of experience and perseverance to get right. That attitude that the guys developing blood testing devices at Siemens & co for decades are just a bunch of idiots who never thought of reducing the size of the devices and/or the amount of blood it takes to perform the tests is pretty preposterous. Just like the car industry which has been at the forefront of process automation has never thought of using robots for dashboard assembly etc.!? Its not that they dont do it because they are stupid or lazy (which is the assumption of SV) but because the tried for many years and it just doesn't work well enough.

Its really interesting, that SV VC seem to have forgotten that very basic question: why have the existing players not come up with something like that? Very often the answer is, they have and they tried and they figured out a long time ago, that it probably doesnt work well enough in the real world.

<comment><USER18> What makes you assume that the SV assumption is that other companies are stupid or lazy?

Siemens doesn't have to be a bunch of idiots to not pursue devices that test on smaller amounts of blood; they might simply not have an incentive to do so. If their business model is to sell devices to labs for $$$$, reducing the amount of blood is probably not a big selling point. It only becomes so if you're trying to bypass the lab and go more directly to the customer (as in Theranos with Walgreens). But why would Siemens do that, when it's a less profitable product that directly competes with the other?

For all we know, Siemens already has a smaller, cheaper device that uses only a drop of blood, yet no reason to sell it until they get some competition.

<comment><USER19> > For all we know, Siemens already has a smaller, cheaper device that uses > only a drop of blood, yet no reason to sell it until they get some > competition.

Do you have a source for this? As far as I remember past discussions on HN about Theranos, testing on small samples is notoriously difficult. As an experimental physicist, this seems plausible to me: Say 5% error margin on your result is required. This leaves a lot more leeway for dimensional errors (of the sampling chamber) compared to a few µl. Not to speak of introducing external impurities (or those induced by the sampling as mentioned by the article). I am pretty sure Siemens has lots of incentive to err on the safe side.

If we really like to disrupt this industry, it would be nicer to be able to make these tests in-vivo, in my opinion.

<comment><USER20> > _Do you have a source for this?_

In case you're not a native English speaker: "for all we know" means something like "hypothetically". icebraining's point is that Siemens' behavior is not inconsistent with Siemens having a secret device that can reliably test on small samples, even if they don't sell it. icebraining did _not_ mean to imply that Siemens actually has such a device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > As Khannah flashed it on a screen with a projector, the five members of his > team stole furtive glances at one another, nervous that Balwani might become > wise to the prank. But he didn't bat an eye and the meeting proceeded > without incident. After he left the room, they burst out laughing.

Not proud of it, but I admit that a younger, less grownup version of me once played a similar "what can we get the non-technical senior exec to believe/repeat" game. I guess when you encounter an obvious phony who is likely making 10-100x what you are, you can rationalize these kinds of immature activities to yourself :)

<comment><USER6> I don't even see that as a prank but as a way of establishing beyond doubt that the guy was full of shit.

<comment><USER22> Yeah. It's a test. I have done that too before. Say something obviously wrong and see if you get called on it.

<comment><USER23> What is the upside of this test? If they say nothing it may be that they don't know you're wrong or silently concluded you're wrong. If they do say something you say...what? "Just testing you"?

<comment><USER22> You say that it was a joke. It was a similar situation where a new VP was commenting on code he didn't know anything about but just repeated falsehoods with total conviction. So I put some stuff into a presentation that was clearly funny to people who knew how things worked but the VP took it at face value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > ... double dilution lowered the concentration of the analytes in the blood > samples to levels that were below the ADVIA's FDA-sanctioned analytic > measurement range. In other words, it meant using the machine in a way that > neither the manufacturer nor its regulator approved of. To get the final > patient result, one had to multiply the diluted result by the same factor > the blood had been diluted by, not knowing whether the diluted result was > even reliable. _Young and Gong were nonetheless proud of what they'd > accomplished. At heart, both were engineers for whom patient care was an > abstract concept. If their tinkering turned out to have adverse > consequences, they weren't the ones who would be held personally > responsible._

Emphasis added.

<comment><USER6> That could have been straight from the movie 'the Cube'.

<comment><USER24> Riiiight? The road to hell is paved with "abstract concepts".

And now, for spine-tingling thrills... (shines a flashlight under his face)

 _Synthetic Biology Startups!_

(campers all scream)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tyler Schultz is the reason we know any of this. Without that brave man, Theranos would still be faking it and very likely hurting real people with real families. Tyler Schultz blew the whistle on this fantastic scam. When the news and the net have you feeling really down, just remember, people like Tyler Schultz are still here, doing the right thing.

Be brave. Be like Tyler Schultz.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-whistleblower-shook- th...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-whistleblower-shook-the- companyand-his-family-1479335963)

</comment><comment><USER25> What I find really interesting here is how badly "move fast and break things works in other industries".

Balwani's outlandish behavior aside, a lot of this stuff doesn't seem all that bad, if this weren't a medical product. Raising money for a product you're not sure will work out, tinkering with what a competitor has done and seeing what you can borrow, launching without a credible fallback and just hoping for the best.

I think I've done all of these things, but for software that doesn't put peoples lives on the line.

<comment><USER26> I don't think it works that well in our industry either. Products from companies that follow that process are at best frustrating to work with because of the constant churn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> as someone with a background in the biotech industry and also as someone who has written a lot about theranos' systemic problems, i'm inclined to say the problems with corporate culture go way farther than this article suggests.

the technical mishaps with pipettors and nanocapsules aside, theranos has a culture of 1. secrecy, 2. exec impunity, and 3. incompetence.

i'm sorry to say that theranos is probably not the only biotech company out there which falsifies results. i was never under any pressure to falsify any kind of results in my positions, but the incentives are very clear.

<comment><USER2> Share cites of your writing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Did Theranos ever have anything of value that would indicate that they could overcome the obstacles described?

It sounds like they were up against huge obstacles and nowhere near capable of overcoming them. Makes me wonder how anyone thought they could.

Also did the other industry players pretty much know... they had to be full of it?

<comment><USER13> The book makes the case that Elizabeth Holmes was a capable practitioner of the "reality-distortion field" and was able to use her charisma, and Theranos's purported humanitarian mission, to persuade enough of the right people. For example, former Safeway CEO Steve Burd, who committed the company to $350M in renovations to accommodate Theranos "Wellness Centers". Burd remained confident that Holmes was legit (and had been vetted by others), even after Theranos missed every deadline. He even brushed off how Theranos's test erroneously diagnosed a Safeway senior executive with prostate cancer.

> _When questions or issues came up that had to be taken back to Theranos, he > would pipe up with what became a refrain: "I'll talk to Elizabeth about it." > Larree Renda, the executive who had started out at Safeway as a teenage > bagger in 1974 and climbed the corporate ranks to become one of Burd's top > deputies, and other executives involved in the project were surprised by how > much latitude he gave the young woman. He usually held his deputies and the > company's business partners to firm deadlines, but he allowed Elizabeth to > miss one after the other. Some of Burd's colleagues knew he had two sons. > They began to wonder if he saw in Elizabeth the daughter he'd never had. > Whatever it was, he was in her thrall._

<comment><USER29> > The book makes the case that Elizabeth Holmes was a capable practitioner of > the "reality-distortion field"

She also survived a coup attempt by her board, simply by convincing them to give her another chance. Then she fired the executives that moved against her.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > At heart, both were engineers for whom patient care was an abstract concept. > If their tinkering turned out to have adverse consequences, they weren't the > ones who would be held personally responsible.

That seems to be at the heart of the issue for me. It is not only the structuring of (financial) on a macro (economy) and micro (Theranos) level that puts profits over the health of patients. It is also the lack of both any liability for the people "just following orders" and the lack of any legal and moral education as part of the engineer training at uni

</comment><comment><USER31> A key universal insight here is surely that "it's extremely dangerous to consider anyone who raises concerns or objections as cynics or nay-sayers", in any company culture.

</comment><comment><USER32> When do we get an article about the dysfunctional culture of the press? They helped Holmes hype Theranos without asking any hard, or even mildly difficult, questions. Why is that?

<comment><USER33> The book describes how the board vouched for the initial integrity of Theranos and Holmes. Because of the high calibers of the board members they were taken as character witnesses.

The boarded included:

* former Secretary of State George Shultz

* William Perry (former Secretary of Defense)

* Henry Kissinger (former Secretary of State)

* Sam Nunn (former U.S. Senator)

* Bill Frist (former U.S. Senator and heart-transplant surgeon)

* Gary Roughead (Admiral, USN, retired)

* James Mattis (General, USMC)

* Richard Kovacevich (former Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO)

* Riley Bechtel (chairman of the board and former CEO at Bechtel Group)

<comment><USER26> So only one with a medical background.

<comment><USER34> But several experts in the bloodshed field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Apparently Theranos wasn't above advertising their broken tech as a tool for Ebola response:

[https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/998998156661706753](https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/998998156661706753)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm happy for all VCs that lost money. Ivy college x drop out got them good.

<comment><USER12> The VCs didn't lose any money, they lost money entrusted to them to manage.

<comment><USER6> Some of them lost their own money, some of them lost their LPs money, but given the fact that they failed the DD I would not be surprised if those LPs have a claim on the managing partners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The site is unusable on my mobile device, (chrome on OnePlus 5t, unclosable popup appears immediately) Aside, I really think displaying a picture of the "villain" so obviously doctored to make them look cartoon-villainish weakens any factual reporting that follows (which I'm sure it does, the case against Theranos being so clear cut by now)

<comment><USER13> Well, it is excerpted from a book titled _" Bad Blood"_, which arguably is a signal of where the author stands on the matter.

<comment><USER37> Whatever the source I don't think there can be any question how Theranos will be judged at this point, which makes resorting to cheap devices all the more unnecessary and redundant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wow that is a creepy looking feature image lol

<comment><USER39> Well that will teach me to read stuff just before sleeping...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The term unicorn and the search for unicorns has never been so appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER41> It took me about 2 minutes on Google to find the source's real name. Given the detail about his CV in the article, I find it hard to believe that the author took his source's privacy very seriously.

<comment><USER13> For which potential bad actors has "Alan Beam's" privacy been seriously compromised? He was already known (according to the book) to Theranos and its lawyers as being a whistleblower. It may have been enough privacy for him to make sure Googling his actual name would not bring up Theranos in search results.</comment></comment>


What is a good JavaScript Physics Engine? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to write a small interactive physics simulation where students can learn by clicking, dragging or swinging a pendulum, etc.... I found a lot of JScript Physics Engine out there, but I don't know where to start. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> [http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/](http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/)

box2d has good documentation and plenty of examples available. You can start with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much :)

<comment><USER3> If you want to use box2d, use box2dweb[0]. It's much smaller and faster and is actually up to date. However if you want your game to run smoothly on mobile phones your best bet is Chimpunk-js[1].

[0] [https://code.google.com/p/box2dweb/](https://code.google.com/p/box2dweb/)

[1] [https://github.com/josephg/Chipmunk- js](https://github.com/josephg/Chipmunk-js)</comment></comment></comment>


Markus Braun, Wirecard chief goes from billionaire to bail - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/ec986d0e-5d92-4e66-a595-0f8645f1aaf0 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/yt0C2](https://archive.vn/yt0C2)</comment>


Paying interns defeats the point of internships - <AUTHOR> http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-and-economy/paying-interns-defeats-the-point-of-internships/

<comment><USER2> In what is ostensibly an effort to prevent exploitation, the government has legally created a situation where an internship is almost completely worthless to the intern.

Whether or not the laws are actually followed in most large businesses, I don't know. However, in the United States there are laws preventing interns from displacing paid employees and doing substantive work.

[http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pd...](http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pdf)

Because of this, I think all "interns" should get minimum wage to work around this nonsensical legal situation and actually be able to legally get in a position to work on something meaningful and to hopefully learn something useful.

<comment><USER3> It's not nonsensical if interns in fact do take jobs from paid employees.

I do agree that at the very least, with the exception of monitored academic credit-related work with a company, interns should get minimum wage.</comment></comment>


HN Poll: Is your heart in San Francisco? - <AUTHOR>

A now dead submission last evening made me wonder whether the readership of HN believes their future lies in San Francisco.  What could be better than asking you?  Please vote below, then comment if you feel you have something to add. <comment><USER2> I won't be moving there in any foreseeable future. Cost of living is too high, and I don't see that the quality of life there is worth the premium I'd pay.

EDIT - Is there a reason this isn't a traditional poll? Nobody can see the results since the options are just regular comments with hidden karma.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would be willing to move there for the perfect opportunity

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't move there

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I definitely want to move there

<comment><USER3> Ocean, terrain, climate seem like a great combo (being from the Midwest).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I already live in San Francisco</comment>


New bill ensures Jailtime for CEOs that lie - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb5qd9/new-bill-promises-an-end-to-our-privacy-nightmare-jail-time-to-ceos-who-lie <comment><USER2> Good. I find it unlikely to pass, but I'd like it to pass.

If a CEO says publicly, "Our product is safe and good for the public, and there should be no concern" and it turns out they knew their product was actively harmful, or that they were marketing it in harmful ways (see: cigarettes, opiates) then they were willfully misleading the public and jail- time should be a very real possibility.

<comment><USER3> I agree plenty times the command chain was let scot free from scandals because of the diluted liability on the corporate actions as whole and the limited personal responsibility granted by hiding behind a corporation, something personal to pierce the corporate veil is needed at this point in time as correction to the rampant abuse from execs

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This might be an issue with 1A , but we shall see.

It's about accountability imho. From CEO's to our elected leaders to law enforcement to celebrities. This is very generalized, but there is a huge lack of people being held accountable for their actions and decisions in this country. It's always someone else. I.E I think here, Jussie Smollett is a good recent example.

The Equifax hack for example is an example of where the CEO failed. Easy fix, and could have been addressed but it was not. Equifax should not exist imho. They are in the business to keep our data private, and they clearly failed. Why do they get to continue to operate as nothing happened? They exposed millions of users private and confidential info, and all we get is credit reporting, and some of us get maybe a few dollars. _sigh_

<comment><USER5> False statement of fact is not protected free speech, and has a long history of case law. So I'm not sure about hand-wringing over the constitutional impacts is really a serious concern.

<comment><USER6> That is not entirely true, it all depends on who the target of the speech is. Law enforcement certainly can lie to the public.

I am always of the opinion, government first. As in, want to apply an accountability rule; or any law for that matter, apply it to those who write the law first and make their penalties more severe.

In this case, this is a lot of election year posturing. We already have accounts of government officials leaking private information and that rarely lands with anyone being penalized.

<comment><USER7> > That is not entirely true, it all depends on who the target of the speech > is. Law enforcement certainly can lie to the public.

Why can law enforcement lie to the public? I honestly don't know what you're alluding to.

<comment><USER8> They can, for instance, tell you that one of your supposed cohorts has already told them what happened, but you can still receive a reduced sentence if you confess. I can also recall a few cases where they have lied to suspects about their rights, I believe largely within the CBP. I'm not sure how that interacts with your Miranda Rights (i.e. they have to read your Miranda rights, but are they then allowed to lie about them?).

<comment><USER9> That's an entirely different class of thing though, possibly civil vs. criminal, I believe. If I'm signing a contract with you, and you tell me "no one is going to ever offer you a deal like this," even though you fully know many people would offer me a better deal, that's not illegal.

This is more akin to the chief of police making an announcement that a building is safe to enter, knowing there is a gunmen ready to shoot people as they enter. I don't know the exact definitions here, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure my scenario would be legally actionable.

Similarly, freedom of speech is limited at least in one way by "imminent lawless action."

I'm not sure about the issue you mention regarding CBP, but I believe there are certain differences between how the law treats citizens and non-citizens. The Exclusionary Rule, disallowing evidence illegally obtained, doesn't apply to civil matters, including immigration, apparently ([https://www.halt.org/things-cops-do-that-are-illegal- what-a-...](https://www.halt.org/things-cops-do-that-are-illegal-what-a- police-officer-cant-do/)).

Law enforcement can omit or lie about your Miranda rights, but they can't use evidence obtained from what you say without reading your rights. So if a cop saw you shoot someone, and you're still holding the gun, they don't really need to read you your rights; they don't really need anything from you at that point.

<comment><USER8> > If I'm signing a contract with you, and you tell me "no one is going to ever > offer you a deal like this," even though you fully know many people would > offer me a better deal, that's not illegal.

Is it not illegal to get someone to sign a contract based on a known falsehood? I.e. if I offer to sell you my house and tell you that it has no issues, but it turns out termites have eaten half of it and I knew that, is the contract not invalid? I think your solution only works because it's common sense that that is not a statement of fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good.

In a more general sense, we as a society need to take a long, hard look at limited liability. We cannot call for more personal responsibility in society with one hand while with the other hand letting malicious decision-makers walk away with their personal fortunes while workers and shareholders take on the cost of their actions. People need to be held accountable for their actions, and this is _especially_ true for people in positions of power whose actions can affect millions of people.

<comment><USER11> on the flip side, limited liability allows smaller players to enter the market without necessarily risking their entire life savings.

<comment><USER10> So maybe the "long hard look at limited liability" I suggested concludes that limited liability applies only to small players entering the market.

Nobody is confused about why limited liability exists, so I don't think it needs to be brought up every time someone points out the problems with it. It generally comes across as just trying to shut down the conversation, and refuse to admit there are very large downsides to limited liability.

<comment><USER11> what "very large downsides" are you talking about? the possibility that a company might be unable to repay a debt? do you also think we need to take a long hard look at bankruptcy? to me, the fact that I can hold a few thousand dollars in stocks without risking everything I own seems pretty good. I'm not sure how you could change it in a way that wouldn't shift the balance of power even more towards the well-capitalized.

<comment><USER10> Ideally, limited liability wouldn't apply to people making decisions for the company: if a CEO decides, for example, not to recall deadly exploding cars because of a cost/revenue analysis, _the CEO 's_ 401k should not be off limits as a source of funds for a settlement against the company.

I don't know why you assume you benefit from this not being the case: when Ford was sued for the Pinto, shareholders of Ford lost money which they wouldn't have lost if the decision makers had paid more of the settlement.

One possible way to regulate this is related to voting and non-voting shares. If you want to invest in a company without taking on liability, you can invest in non-voting shares--since you can't make any decisions for the company, you can't be held liable if the company decides to do something wrong. But you shouldn't be able to take part in the decision making of a company without also taking responsibility if you decide to do something wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would be neat if we could get one of these for politicians that lie!

<comment><USER13> One problem at a time please

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Personally, I think Andrew Yang has a bold position for data privacy that I hope Congress will embrace.

Data as a property right: [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property- right/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/)

<comment><USER15> _Data generated by each individual needs to be owned by them, with certain rights conveyed that will allow them to know how it's used and protect it._

If I were to set up an device that associated different electromagnetic spectrum emissions, would that data belong to me or to the people who emitted it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was initially sceptical, because lying is generally not illegal. CEOs are people, and people have first amendment rights. However, it seems it's narrowly classifying the act of hiding what you do with personal data as criminal fraud, and I'm on board with that idea.

</comment><comment><USER17> Bill proposals rarely count as on topic for HN. Most bills never go anywhere.

<comment><USER18> The _content_ of this bill seems like it would be pretty important for HN, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I rather they start with the financial companies. How many bankers were even charged after 2008? Rhetorical question of course.

<comment><USER20> It's a pity we didn't take a page from Iceland.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-31/welcome-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-31/welcome- to-iceland-where-bad-bankers-go-to-prison)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's with the title? I thought Jailtime might be a new apple product. It should be "jail time".

</comment><comment><USER22> Yeah, that's a bill that will never see passage.</comment>