Math Professor Fighting Gerrymandering with Geometry - <AUTHOR> http://www.chronicle.com/article/Meet-the-Math-Professor/239260/ <comment><USER3> The upcoming fight over redistributing is likely to decide our country for the next ten years.

On one hand, republicans have waged a legal campaign against the voting rights act, drafted various pieces of legislation aimed at disenfranchising minorities and college students, and chosen for their attorney general a prosecutor who viewed mintority voter registration a felonious offense. This isn't mentioning a president who has not wavered from the view that the 3 million vote margin he lost the popular vote by is the byproduct of fraud.

On the other hand, you have a former president and possibly the most popular/powerful politician in America signal this will be his primary focus, an opposition party looking to expand use of the efficiency gap metric as a tool for enforcing fairness, and possibly a justice system willing to step embrace these concepts (the wisc. decision). Not to mention a motivated and very angry base.

<comment><USER4> > waged a legal campaign against the voting rights act, drafted various pieces > of legislation aimed at disenfranchising minorities and college students

Showing your ID isn't waging a war against voting rights, its straight up common sense like we have to do for every other thing in society. Many people find it surprising around the world that we don't check IDs.

<comment><USER5> The thing is in the US we lack a mandatory national or even state id. We use a driver's license which is effectively mandatory in rural parts of the country because otherwise you can't get anywhere. However if you are poor and live in a city the odds that you don't have a driver's license go way up. It turns out that their is no ID the government forces you to have. Clever politicians realize that they don't need to prevent everyone who disagrees with them from voting just preventing 2-3% is likely enough in many races.

The idea of voter ID is effective because of what you just said it sounds so reasonable, until you look at the motivation that it disproportionately results in poor people not being able to vote.

<comment><USER6> Would you support voter ID if it came bundled with a low friction, easy to obtain voter ID card?

<comment><USER7> What problem do we have that a voter ID would solve?

<comment><USER8> Is that a rhetorical question? The reason given for requiring voter IDs (while possibly not the primary one) is to prevent voter fraud. Are you asking if there has every been a case of voter fraud? If so, here is one example [1].

[1] [https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/oagnews/release.php?id=...](https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/oagnews/release.php?id=2071)

<comment><USER9> Youve linked an example of a woman who registered some non-citizens to vote which did not sway the election in her favor. I agree that non-citizens should not vote, but i do not agree with increased regulation from the government in order to fight against voter fraud which did not influence an election.

Can you link to a single instance of voter fraud effecting the outcome of an election?

<comment><USER10> [http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article322208/Missouri-...](http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article322208/Missouri- Rep.-John-Joseph-Rizzo%E2%80%99s-relatives-admit-to-voter-fraud.html)

<comment><USER9> I'll admit that I am surprised youve managed to find an election influenced by fraud, unfortunately the proposed solution of voter id laws dont seem to address this situation.

How would voter id laws prevent an american citizen from voting in a different district?

For example the texas election ID doesnt even include your address.[1]

[1][http://www.dps.texas.gov/DriverLicense/electionID.htm](http://www.dps.texas.gov/DriverLicense/electionID.htm)

<comment><USER10> I was answering a direct request for "a single instance of voter fraud [a]ffecting the outcome of an election". I have no comment on voter ID laws.

<comment><USER9> areyousure?

im kidding, but seriously thats a really interesting article/event - <USER2> search terms did you use, or did you have prior knowledge of that incident?

<comment><USER10> I do find it amusing to post under my username, but perhaps it is a bit caustic.

I found the incident a few months ago when I simply tried to collect a bunch of data on voter fraud in order to estimate how prevalent it is. Because the issue is so highly politicized, you have to dredge through an excessive amount of bullshit just to find references to specific elections. That election is mentioned in this article (which I, incidentally, recommend reading in full) about Hans von Spakovsky in the New Yorker, albeit in a VERY different guise than two relatives of the candidate: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter- fraud...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud-myth)

A much more interesting election is that of Loretta Sanchez to the House of Representatives in 1996. That resulted in a Congressional investigation that lasted for over a year, whose findings are worth reading if you're interested in analysis of voter fraud. For a quick link to an article from the time, see for example [http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/13/cq/sanchez.html](http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/13/cq/sanchez.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can I just point out that _every_ time a gerrymandering article is posted to hacker news, the thread is quickly overwhelmed by people professing various forms of proportional representation?

This is striking me as becoming close to Wolfram Derangement Syndrome, and I think it's bad for the quality of discourse on this subject.

Just to sketch out the brief reasons why, let's first accept that the gerrymandering conversation is about the United States. As such, we have to accept the reality of the United States Constitution. Finally, most arguments about gerrymandering are focused more on _federal_ districts, as in the districts that make up the House of Representatives.

Given all that, talking about proportional representation is a complete waste of time, and it gets in the way of having constructive conversation about this subject. It is constitutionally _impossible_ to disband the House of Representatives and switch to proportional representation. It will not happen. Arguments about how it should happen are completely irrelevant to the gerrymandering subject, and counterproductive. For people that know this, arguments about proportional representation are not all that different than hijacking threads and trolling - the only difference being the high likelihood that people are not educated enough civically to understand that proportional representation is impossible on the Federal level.

Every time I see a thread here I really do look forward to reading thoughts that are actually about gerrymandering and solving gerrymandering - I would like to see more focus on those subjects rather than the completely unrelated subject of proportional representation.

One caveat - many people don't realize this, but some state constitutions DO theoretically allow proportional representation for STATE governments. That's worth exploring.

<comment><USER12> Gerrymandering is considered a bad thing, but one might reasonably ask why we ought to care about geographical subdivisions of voters at all, why not just allow a pure majority vote within a broader administrative unit.

This is, incidentally, the argument behind eliminating the Electoral College.

But the fascinating thing about the EC is that it's basically a custom "consensus algorithm" that is intended to prevent large disparities between the political power of states with very large vs very small populations.

This has the effect of increasing the political power of voters in remote regions, and decreasing the political power of voters in states with large populations. In effect, what we consider "consensus" in the EC system is different than what we'd consider consensus in a purely majority-vote system.

Congressional districting is an attempt to do the same thing at the state level... Consensus requires more than just appealing to the largest numerical majority. Interests that correlate with geography get slightly more political power than they would in a purely majority-vote system.

As we know from cryptocurrencies, changing the consensus algorithm is a hot topic, and there is always a group of winners and a group of losers.

Gerrymandering creates voting blocs that make it more likely that the bloc will elect a candidate that strongly supports the bloc's interests, but it also reduces the impact of the bloc's views on elections held in nearby blocs.

How this plays out in any specific scenario is largely the result of historical accident, but I'd offer the argument that allowing states to change the consensus algorithm for their own voters is not necessarily bad for anyone outside of that state.

I support the Electoral College because I think that without it, the issues that Americans considered at the national level would be very strongly dominated by the concerns of the most populous urban centers, which would lead to even more fractiousness between urban areas and "flyover" areas.

So states that tinker with their own consensus algorithms are potentially helping (but likely hindering) the ability to achieve stable consensus. This is a bad thing, but not something that should be prevented by Federal law. We should let them make their own mistakes and let more enlightened states (if any exist) lead by example.

<comment><USER13> >the issues that Americans considered at the national level would be very strongly dominated by the concerns of the most populous urban centers, which would lead to even more fractiousness between urban areas and "flyover" areas.

This is a common sentiment. I'm curious about what you think about the following question:

Let's say we order cities from most populous to least populous. How many cities would we need to add together to get to roughly 50% of the population? Bonus points for putting down a guess before doing the math and checking.

<comment><USER14> I guessed about a 100 and that's a little low. Half the US lives in the top 146 biggest counties.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/half-of-the-united-states- liv...](http://www.businessinsider.com/half-of-the-united-states-lives-in- these-counties-2013-9)

<comment><USER12> There are a few places where the split into counties obscures the contiguity of the population, such as greater NYC (the five boroughs, part of NJ, etc.) and greater SF (includes Oakland, Berkeley, etc., down to San Jose). The same is true in the greater DC area and greater LA area.

Once you merge those into virtual counties, the number of counties is a lot lower.

<comment><USER13> And, of course, there are places where the county's reach exceeds the city's. For example, the city of Milwaukee is deep blue, but Milwaukee County elects Sheriff Clarke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I do find the focus on compactness and contiguousness kind of strange. There was a recent image[1] going around that describes how gerrymandering works, and what struck me is that having three completely blue districts and two completely red districts is considered "most fair", in that every voter in the district feels completely represented.

In reality, voters are more scrambled than that - so if you try to retain that "most fair" sense, then you are by definition going to have extremely non- compact, non-contiguous districts.

You can get back to more compactness by making some voters "unrepresented" (meaning, a representative other than the one they voted for). As long as that balances out between parties, then you're okay (which is what the "efficiency gap" is all about).

But by itself non-compactness is not a guarantee that the district is unfair. It's really just an indication, that _so far_ , it probably means that the district drawers were up to shenanigans. It's just not _necessarily_ so. You may _want_ to get more creative with district shapes to help more voters feel represented.

By the way, I should point out again that there are plenty of other weird tradeoffs like this. For instance, Schwarzenegger was recently complaining about "non-competitive" districts, while others regularly complain that the Federal house districts are not very representative of the voting population as a whole. These two aims are actually in tension with one another! The "most fair" scenario above is about as non-competitive as you can get.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/jK8VFZx.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/jK8VFZx.jpg)

<comment><USER15> > I do find the focus on compactness and contiguousness kind of strange.

They are "looks nice" (in a picture of district outlines) criteria that actually (given the geographical distribution of party members) are equivalent to deliberately gerrymandering in favor of Republicans.

And that's really the key point: as long as you have single member districts and data about the existing distribution of voting preferences (which people in a position to adopt or sell policies do), you can design facially neutral criteria whose application will result in any distortions of representation you could seek to gain from gerrymandering, and say "let's automate with these criteria, take people out of the loop, and avoid gerrymandering", when all you are really doing is automating gerrymandering.

<comment><USER16> >you can design facially neutral criteria whose application will result in any distortions of representation you could seek to gain from gerrymandering

I seriously doubt this assertion is true. If you were to take, say, one state and design a set of district division rules based on, say, population density, geographic similarity and boundaries, infrastructure boundaries, existing political borders like counties and cites and manipulate the weights given to each factor so that one party comes out over- represented, the very next time the districts are redrawn after significant changes that carefully constructed balance will fall apart.

<comment><USER15> > If you were to take, say, one state and design a set of district division > rules based on, say, population density, geographic similarity and > boundaries, infrastructure boundaries, existing political borders like > counties and cites and manipulate the weights given to each factor so that > one party comes out over- represented, the very next time the districts are > redrawn after significant changes that carefully constructed balance will > fall apart.

No, there's not. The patterns of geographical distribution of partisan identification in the US is relatively stable over decades (and that of broad _ideology_ is even more stable, as much of the shift in distribution of party identification is realignment of parties rather than redistribution of ideology), it's also pretty similar across the nation in many key ways.

I started hearing about and researching the idea of algorithmic districting to address gerrymandering the same year I started college, 27 years ago; optimizing for compactness and contiguity was a popular proposed standard then, and that it overrepresentingamong conservative views and the Republican party because urban cores nationally tend to contain liberal supermajorities whereas rural and suburban areas broadly have a narrower conservative majorities was true _and not even a new observation_ then. And it remains just as true now.

<comment><USER17> Some things are very consistent. I was surprised by the map of election results in Alabama from 1892 and 2016 in this article: [http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21716658-why- cou...](http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21716658-why-counties-had- fewer-slaves-1860s-voted-president-alabama-support)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _[...] a need for expert witnesses who understand the mathematical concepts applicable to gerrymandering. To meet that need, she's spearheaded the creation of a five-day summer program at Tufts that aims to train mathematicians to do just that_

 _[...] over 900 people have indicated their interest by signing up for a mailing list_

[http://tufts.us15.list- manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7...](http://tufts.us15.list- manage.com/subscribe?u=3529c170e5d9b7aa8ab22ea62&id=a979bdf71d)

<comment><USER19> I applied! Note that there will be regional programs in the next year that follow this initial program at Tufts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This isn't really a new thing. From a professor at the University of Florida (@ElectProject) who specializes in this sort of thing:

       "Math prof claims she's invented new form of compactness, which Mexico has used for decades
       & programmed into our DistrictBuilder software"

[https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/834570289728147457](https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/834570289728147457)

<comment><USER21> "I'm always a little bit wary of coming off sounding like I'm the very first person to work on this idea; I just want to be clear that's not the claim." \-- from the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There have been a number of attempts to automatically do redistricting using Operations Research techniques. Here's one such slide deck, using integer programming.

[http://www.illc.uva.nl/COST- IC1205/documents/Caen-2014-Slide...](http://www.illc.uva.nl/COST- IC1205/documents/Caen-2014-Slides/Scozarri.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> I find it amusing that Holder and Obama are making this their focus given the extreme gerrymandering in the state of Illinois.

<comment><USER24> If you look at why the districts are drawn the way they are they kind of make sense.

For instance, the fourth district looks ridiculous:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional_district)

The funky shape ensures that minorities get representation though. The weird path it takes is because of the 7th district, which I live in, which is 54% black. If it was cut any farther East, black people would be a minority.

I think the shape is a bit ridiculous, but it would be possible to make a more fair looking shape that had a white majority in each district, so I think this is the lesser of two evils. There is probably a better way to district this area though, but proportional representation would make the entire situation a bit less ridiculous overall.

<comment><USER23> So, the district was carved up to ensure the electorate matched a certain demographic voting block... Sounds like gerrymandering to me. I guess it is OK when the demo isn't white, eh?

<comment><USER24> I'd say it's more like the decision was made to make sure that the districts represented the demographics of the state. It would be significantly less fair if every single district was majority white just because the white areas were more contiguous than the minority areas, especially when the reason that minorities live in those areas is in part because they were forced there due to policies like redlining.

The way you've represented what I've said is absurd. If representatives are to be representative of the population you'll have to create some funny looking districts somewhere. If Illinois was really gerrymandering as much as say, Wisconsin, our district map would look like a tentacled monster extending from Chicago and reaching down through the rest of the state.

<comment><USER23> You literally defined gerrymandering, so don't get too sanctimonious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been having the amusing thought lately that one possible solution is perhaps making the system a bit more chaotic. Maybe with the safety of levels through tricameralism or maybe even tetracameralism.

So.. in the house of rep districts you allow for popular vote to recall reps and also to hold popular referendum in said districts on whether to split them. If people are upset enough with their representation and can get enough to vote to spit the district then the district is split. This would intensify the situation some however you enable merging so when the popular will exists to merge then there is the chance as well.

A lower level would exist under the house of representatives in which instead of people in the district voting for that lower rep, people from a random generated district that votes differently would have the ability to vote someone in. Essentially San Fransisco would be able to vote for a lower rep in some random super conservative district and vice versa. The entire point of the lower rep is to essentially troll the house of rep. We'd give them powers such as being able to call for a town hall meeting twice a year, a direct debate twice a year, petitions without the usual required permits, an an ability to freedom of information act everything the house rep does.

The upper end of the tetracameral system would be two senators appointed by the state legislature prior to the 17th amendment restoring some state power. The mid level would be directly elected senators, however states would gain a few more based on population.

Nonetheless, the districts portion is what I wanted to cover but felt I'd share most of the idea so there would be more background around the concept. The ideal would be both on the state level and federal level, the lower houses would be open to recall and open to popular vote for district splitting or merging. With a lower house rep voted on by outside parties to try to curtail silo thinking. While the upper chamber returns state interests back to the federal government; some populist sentiment I personally feel needs to be curtailed and think our biggest constitutional mistake was that of the 17th amendment.

It'll never happen of course. But it's fun to think about.

</comment><comment><USER26> _Bouncing things off of diverse audiences has taught me things I didn't already know about how rhetorically accessible different ideas are. This is well-known to educators: Once you achieve a certain level of expertise, it can be hard to find the difficult spots and the reasoning anymore because they're so familiar to you._

A lot of the Dunning-Kruger problem in the Programming field is due to this. I think that Programming has a number of problems with training and making information accessible to its practitioners. Furthermore, I think many of these problems have tribal and sub-cultural elements to them. (Along language community lines, not ethnic ones.)

</comment><comment><USER27> I've said before that after long thought I think the right way to deal with gerrymandering is to increase the number of districts (and therefor make them smaller). The primary problem is how would we fit all those extra people on the Hill? Also that I imagine there would be some muathmateically based demographic issues due to the center of the country getting more seats than the coasts which could be offset in a few different ways.

The size of my district is larger than most states! It was also gerrymandered in 2003 by the R's seeking to regain territory from D's who had a suprising grip in Texas up until the late 90's.

</comment><comment><USER28> This computer programmer solved gerrymandering in his spare time

By Christopher Ingraham June 3, 2014

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this- computer-programmer-solved-gerrymandering-in-his-spare- time/?utm_term=.615f246b5f38)

</comment><comment><USER29> I recently saw an illuminating video about how Robert Mercer, a billionaire quantitative wall st. trader and computer scientist, not only backed Trump with $15 million, but madeover his whole team. Mercer's analytics companies, which make him money faster than Warren Buffet, were set to the task of winning the election.

Not to mention Peter Thiel.

Now, we don't know how they did it, but I can only imagine that with deep learning, etc, this is only going to get worse.

Shameless plug for the video. I doubt it'll get traction on HN, but it was 100% a wakeup call for me.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719646)

Now I recognize it for what it is. Its a techno-hyper-capitalist power grab.

<comment><USER30> In 2012 there was a bunch of gee-whiz about how software built by a dream team of engineers drove Obama's re-election: [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when- the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/)

I suspect that it's fun to read and write about new tech applied to Presidential elections but that the new doesn't actually matter more than the same old. If you wanted a _really simple_ model to predict Presidential elections, this would be it: incumbents get re-elected, and then after 8 years American voters are sick enough of one party to try the other party again. One-term presidents are rare.

Maybe you remember the idea of a "permanent Republican majority" from GWB's first term. That wasn't very permanent at all. Maybe you remember the post-2012 fear among conservatives that demographic changes had given Democrats a permanent lock on the presidency. That was short lived too.

<comment><USER29> well bla•sé (blä)

:p

seriously though, whether or not you are concerned about the role of data technology in elections, check out that documentary clip I linked to. it helped me peel back the curtain on the wizard of trump.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Gerrymandering won't go away because it is beneficial to both major parties.

<comment><USER16> It is a zero sum game so that statement cannot be true unless you mean over time and in different places. If that is the case then it is a great argument for coming up with a set of rules beforehand that both parties agree is fair.

<comment><USER32> I agree with your comment; but I do have to point out the comment you're replying to specifically conceives a political landscape with more than two parties, that can indeed be considered as zero sum as well, yet two major parties can feasibly agree on something at a net loss for others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The best way to get rid of gerrymandering of congressional districts is to get rid of congressional districts.

<comment><USER34> Why not take a step further and get rid of states?

<comment><USER35> American states are sovereign entities, not mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Feds.

<comment><USER36> The sovereignty of states most definitely _does not exist_ outside of the Constitution. For example, states can be split into two; Kentucky was originally part of the State of Virginia and became a separate state in 1792, the 15th. West Virginia was a part of Virginia, Maine was a part of Massachusetts, Vermont was a part of New York. This is covered in Article IV, Section 3, clause 1 of the Constitution which says:

      no new State shall be formed or erected within the
      Jurisdiction of any other State...
      without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States
      concerned as well as of the Congress.

This too can be changed.

States _are_ mere administrative districts that exist at the pleasure of the Constitution. This state sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation was done away with by the Constitution.

<comment><USER33> No they are not. The states share sovereignty through the Federal government. That's the very definition of Federalism. We are not a single Unitary state.

The mere fact that any partition of union requires the approval of the legislatures of the involved states is demonstative of this.

<comment><USER36> That was litigated in the 1860s.

<comment><USER33> Are you referring to West Virginia?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What is wrong with gerrymandering?

It is a political solution to political problem. It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People" but with a built in delaying mechanism to smooth out changes. It generally leads to competitive (but not toss-up) districts (the goal is to get as many seats as possible so huge margins are wasteful).

What's not to like?

<comment><USER38> The problem is that it prevents people from voting out representatives that fail to advocate for their constituents and represent their interests. The entire concept of a representative democracy is that we elect people to represent our interests, and then if they fail they can be voted out when their term ends. With gerrymandering on the table, they're able to almost literally move the goalposts. It also violates the principle of "one person, one vote", because politicians are manipulating districts to essentially make votes opposing them meaningless. This is the reasoning that was recently used to reject Wisconsin's redistricting, specifically because they exceeded a reasonable "efficiency gap"\- the number of votes wasted in a district.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/23/wisco...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/23/wisconsins- gerrymander-being-struck-down-should-scare-republicans- nationwide/?utm_term=.656d3c810e20)

>>It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People"...

I would love for you to elaborate a little more about this. I happen to think that it does the opposite by making representatives less accountable to their constituents (they can just pick new ones).

In general, it seems like a mechanism designed to advance the power of a given political party by repressing the will of the people. That just doesn't seem like it can possibly lead to better outcomes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are Linkedin allowed to cloak Google results with a login wall? - <AUTHOR> Google normally forbids showing one thing to the google bot and another to the users, that you should be able to click on the search result and see the page you found, but Linkedin forces you to login to see the result?
How can it be that LinkedIn are allowed to that?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en <comment><USER2> Haha you are right. they don't even load the content in the background, what loads to make it look like there's content behind the modal window is this background image:

[https://static.licdn.com/sc/h/734ll15l5cvbbovgvzso1x7oj](https://static.licdn.com/sc/h/734ll15l5cvbbovgvzso1x7oj)

They used to allow you to view public profiles without being logged in. Perhaps try reporting them?</comment>


U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-files-criminal-charges-against-theranoss-elizabeth-holmes-ramesh-balwani-1529096005 <comment><USER2> Excellent news for American society.

"The Chickenshit Club" by Eisinger recently explained why the lack of criminal charges had emboldened white collar crime.

Basically, individuals need to have the risk of criminal charges if they do something very egregious - they need to have skin in the game.

The US Justice Dept has in the past two decades largely only been fining corporations. And so companies estimate risk and budget for these numbers. So fines are not a completely effective deterrent. The book explains this and how the DOJ policy grew out of backlash to the Enron verdict.

Ps we talked about this in May, and @danso predicted criminal charges would come - and he was right. This is good news for the US DOJ. Too bad the US can't retrospectively prosecute bankers for 2008 and claw back their size- subsidized, low risk premium profits.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17123315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17123315)

Edit: book review here. It's a really good book. [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the- chick...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the-chickenshit- club-jesse-eisinger-.html)

<comment><USER3> Even speeding tickets or anything most normal people would find a burden are nothing to super rich. But making few days in jail mandatory is a major deterrent.

Then again even people texting and driving are not swayed by fines. In my region of the world a $3,000 fine is not a deterrent to many people. I say jail time would change that attitude.

<comment><USER4> > Even speeding tickets or anything most normal people would find a burden are > nothing to super rich.

I'm not sure how it works in your country but in the UK too many speeding tickets and you will loose your license. The exact number depends on the severity of each offence, but we get max of 12 points over 3 years [1] so they stick with you - repeat offenders are given even stricter rules after getting their license back.

I get a sinister smile when observing rich people in those big shiny 4x4s on some stretches of motorway I know are littered with speed traps... It's a funny equaliser - I do the limit, but those types of people always gota be in front of someone with a shitter car - but the regret is apparent in their latent brake lights after the flash.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/driving-disqualifications](https://www.gov.uk/driving- disqualifications)

It's a shame this type of law that equalises wealth isn't more common, for instance in a related matter - I've heard plenty of stories about rich people basically using parking fines as parking tickets, there doesn't seem to be a limit or anything beyond a monetary disincentive. It's also more common to see expensive cars parked in places they shouldn't be, and i'm convinced this is the reason.

<comment><USER5> So?

What is stopping someone who loses their license from just driving anyway? They've already shown not to give a shit, so they'll continue driving without a license.

My dad lost his license many years ago and never stopped driving. He gets arrested once in a while, doesn't stop him.

<comment><USER4> > My dad lost his license many years ago and never stopped driving. He gets > arrested once in a while, doesn't stop him.

You live in a very strange country, in the UK your dad would have had his car taken away from him and crushed... and if he repeatedly found other cars to drive without a license he would probably end up in prison.

<comment><USER5> My dad has been to jail before for driving without a license, but driving without a license is not a life sentence so he's back out on the road driving next month.

<comment><USER4> There is no repeat offenders law?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect money but without even the faintest idea how to produce one.

Does anyone know? Did Holmes have any insight that caused her and the investors to believe she could do the blood tests?

<comment><USER7> This interview with John Carreyrou [1], the Wall Street Journal journalist who is largely responsible for exposing Theranos, goes into a lot of detail. It's long, so if you want a shorter answer, jump to the question "What technology did Theranos actually develop?":

 _Basically there were three iterations of the technology. The first one used microfluidics, which are basically the repurposing of the micro-fabrication techniques that the computer chip industry pioneered to move tiny volumes of liquid. Theranos tried to work on that for several years before Holmes lost patience in late fall 2007 and abandoned it. At that point she pivoted to what was essentially a converted glue-dispensing robot. One of the engineers ordered a glue-dispensing robot from a company called Fisnar in New Jersey, studied its components and rebuilt a smaller version of it. It was a robotic arm on a gantry with three degrees of motion and a pipette stuck to its end, and it replicated what the scientist does at the bench. That ended up being called the Edison and it could do only one class of test, known as immunoassays. It was also error-prone. The third iteration of the technology was the miniLab, which Holmes wanted to be able to do more than just immunoassays. The miniLab didn't invent any new techniques to test blood with. It miniaturized existing laboratory instruments and packed them into one box. By the time Theranos went live with its tests, the miniLab was a malfunctioning prototype._

The interview also explains how Holmes was able to attract so many influential people on her board. The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" \-- she was exceedingly good at convincing non-scientists that their science worked.

[1] [http://m.nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark- the-...](http://m.nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark-the-peak-of- the-silicon-valley-bubble)

<comment><USER8> > The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" \-- she was > exceedingly good at convincing ...

Considering this and the lack of substance behind her claims, I would personally bet money that she is a clinical psychopath.

The most disturbing thing I have ever observed about human beings is our tendency to follow psychopaths. Psychopaths seem to have this gravity around them and people just fall into line. I've observed some spectacular examples. A psychopath can say the most questionable or even absurd things and people will just believe, whereas people will be skeptical of even very sane things that come out of the mouths of non-psychopaths. It's as if clinical psychopaths have some special instinctive ability to generate body language, vocal cues, and linguistic patterns that manipulate others very effectively.

I am not claiming that everyone with a "reality distortion field" must be a psychopath, but I've definitely observed a positive correlation.

<comment><USER9> I don't know about Holmes (other than having read Carreyrou's book) but I've been around pathological, charismatic narcissists enough to be as fascinated as you at their ability to lie to the face of _very_ accomplished people and be completely believed. It's almost like executives need a training course in spotting and dealing with them.

<comment><USER10> my outsiders view of management training is that they work so hard at cultivating confidence that they start thinking that confidence, not competence, is what they need to select for in roles outside of leadership.

As far as I can tell, "leader types" are far more vulnerable to confident people than the rest of us because of this.

<comment><USER11> I also think falling for this is implicit in the notion of the MBA. Previously, management was mainly company founders, founder families, and people who had come up through the ranks. That is, all people who spent years learning the specifics of the business. But the theory of the MBA is there's some universal set of "business skills" that makes actually understanding the business domain irrelevant.

In practice, I think this means falling back on a limited sort of finance understanding and some generic notions of top-down business process. There's not much there, so they make up for it by leaning hard into their human instincts and skills.

Unfortunately, that leads to many problems, including over-trusting people who present well and seem confident.

<comment><USER10> I personally think the MBA system is a big step up from just choosing leaders based on how closely related to a powerful person they are. (I mean, I understand there is a lot of overlap between the two... I'm just saying that the MBA system is a step forward, not that it's _good_ )

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately I think the MBA enables a power-and-politics system. If people have to work their way up and learn an industry, competence and a long-term focus are more rewarded than if a credential makes you a supposedly universal expert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For anyone interested in the Theranos story, the reporter that wrote this article (John Carreyrou) is the same one whose investigation brought down Theranos. He wrote a book called "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" ([https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon- Startup/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon- Startup/dp/152473165X)). He was also recently on the podcast This Week in Startups to discuss Theranos: [http://thisweekinstartups.com/john-carreyrou- bad-blood/](http://thisweekinstartups.com/john-carreyrou-bad-blood/) or [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWQYKVasMoY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWQYKVasMoY) ).

Basically, Elizabeth Holmes wanted to be a billionaire and restore her family's fortune. She started a medical tech company but didn't include any scientists or doctors on her board. Demos and employment were tightly controlled by NDA, and structured so as few people as possible knew about the scam. Somewhere between 1-8M (10-100%) of blood tests Theranos performed on hacked machines from other companies are suspect or outright wrong. Her company rode the "unicorn" wave at just the right time to get lots of funding and publicity, even though it has been operating since 2006.

</comment><comment><USER13> While Theranos was flying high, much was made of the company's connections to DC power elite - Kissenger on the board, etc.[1]. And the implication usually seemed to be that the deep bench of Serious And Important And Powerful People allowed the company to get away with things that otherwise would not have been possible.

I think it's worth pausing to consider: when's the last time you heard of a startup CEO/CTO team getting indicted for wire fraud? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, and I have no position on whether Holmes and Balwani are guilty of these or other charges.

But I do have to wonder whether the degree of attention from the DOJ has more to do with avenging the reputational and possibly financial losses of those same board members, than garden-variety "the DOJ prosecutes fraud".

In which case, there'd be a civics lesson as well. Live by .gov, die by .gov.

(Edit to clarify, lest I be accused of insufficient virtue signaling: fraud is bad, don't do it, if they committed fraud they should be punished, etc etc.)

[1] e.g.[https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/03/14/theranos...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/03/14/theranos- board-mattis-kissinger-schultz-holmes.html)

<comment><USER14> > _I do have to wonder whether the degree of attention from the DOJ has more > to do with avenging the reputational and possibly financial losses of those > same board members_

The response to evidence against a conspiracy theory is not to flip the conspiracy theory.

If you defraud investors out of billions of dollars _and_ lie to Medicare _and_ Streisand effect the _Wall Street Journal_ when it investigates you, you're going to get busted.

<comment><USER15> The banking crisis says otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how Tim Draper will argue this is a conspiracy to take down "another great icon"[0]

[0] [http://fortune.com/2018/05/11/tim-draper-theranos- elizabeth-...](http://fortune.com/2018/05/11/tim-draper-theranos-elizabeth- holmes/)

<comment><USER17> He's probably too busy now trying to split up California into pieces.

[http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california- split-t...](http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-split-three- states-20180612-story.html)

<comment><USER6> That guy is nuts. It scares me that with his money he has a lot of influence.

<comment><USER18> I realize the ongoing support of this founder looks pretty bad. But in all my interactions and work with Tim Draper, I've found him to be an ethical and good person. He is nuts in an amazing way, and of all the investors I have met in the valley, I can't think of any other one I'd entrust with his influence.

<comment><USER19> That may be true, but if Holmes wasn't stopped, thousands could have died...people trusted her to get accurate blood test results. What if some major medical ailment went undiscovered due to the poor accuracy of her machines?

Holmes is a ruthless, despicable humnan being. Cheating people out of money is one thing. Cheating people of their health, denying when caught for years and years is on a complete another level. And what she did to the poor whistleblower? Almost ruined his life and went a few rings below murder to her chief scientist. Not to mention the mafia style shakedown of John C, the reporter who broke the story.

If someone knows all that about a person, and still glowingly praises them, in my opinion they are NOT ethical and not a good person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> DOJ indictment: [https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/theranos-founder-and- fo...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/theranos-founder-and-former-chief- operating-officer-charged-alleged-wire-fraud-schemes)

<comment><USER21> "The defendants are charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. According to the indictment returned yesterday and unsealed today, the charges stem from allegations Holmes and Balwani engaged in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, and a separate scheme to defraud doctors and patients. Both schemes involved efforts to promote Palo Alto, Calif.-based Theranos."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Theranos / Holmes, also demonstrated how superficial, almost down to malpractice current so called journalism is.

Complete lack of analysis, expertise in the fields they are covering, and clear initial non-biased position.

Instead, we get this flood propaganda + sensationalism garbage from these so called 'reputable' news sources.

And, as a consequence, con-artists, career politicians, and 'celebrities' \-- leverage this legalized malpractice for their purposes.

While we, the consumers of 'news' \-- are being exploited and treated like as dehumanizing 'advertisement revenue points/votes. We are essentially being suffocated by this 'carbon dioxide of information'.

So in my view, it is not just the case of E. Holmes misleading investors, board members and consumers -- it is also the case of journalism malpractice.

<comment><USER14> > _Theranos / Holmes, also demonstrated how superficial, almost down to > malpractice current so called journalism is_

Theranos was exposed by a _Wall Street Journal_ reporter investigating and exposing the fraud. He was threatened multiple times and never budged. This is a story of journalistic excellence.

<comment> eric-hu I think that reporter did good work, but isn't this like pointing to a hackathon bug fix that saves a company as engineering excellence?

The parent is seemingly saying that quality journalism would have better scrutiny to not allow the situation to get this far in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reading the theranos story, what's going on in the political spectrum today, watching the steps people seem to have taken to get where they are to influence the society and then seemingly failing at it, I am always reminded of the documentary "Enron, the smartest guys in the room". It's such a simple idea that likely one thing led to another and they have climbed a ladder to defraud investors and tried to cause public harm. Those first steps were maybe of good intentions or maybe of bad ones. But somewhere along the way, they clearly created a bubble of their own where they assured themselves that it's ok what they are doing. Never lose the outside reference point. Never.

</comment><comment><USER24> "The defendants are charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud."

WHY DO THIS. Each count of wire fraud is 20 years in prison [1]. If 9 counts are proven you are looking at a 180 years in prison. (life sentence). You are better off doing 2nd degree murder 3 times - at least it is a challenge to prove. Proving wire fraud sounds pretty simple - they just read a bunch of emails and text messages in court. Everyone will turn nasty on each other due to the harsh penalties. Wire fraud = bad times. Just be honest with your investors.

[1] [https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/wire- fraud.h...](https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/wire-fraud.htm)

<comment><USER25> This is inaccurate in two ways.

First, 20 years is the _maximum guideline sentence_ available for wire fraud. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines has a points-like system (with points added for various attributes of the crime, like whether the accused took steps to conceal their crime, or crossed some dollar threshold) that heavily counts the prior criminal history of the accused. This is an egregious wire fraud case, but it's still a little unlikely that any one count will see the maximum sentence applied.

More importantly, the norm in federal sentencing is for similar charges to group, and for the longest of those counts to set the sentence. It is _not_ the norm to serve (here) each of the "nine counts" consecutively.

Google [whale sushi sentence] for more details.

<comment><USER24> +1 Thanks man. Amazing article.

[https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi- sentenc...](https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence- eleventy-million-years/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a lot of research money in microfluidics. It has huge potential to revolutionise an awful lot of the tedious time consuming laboratory work in health care.

Instead of painstakingly pipetting samples into well plates all day, trains of thousands of droplets can be fed into the microfluidic conveyor belt and processed accurately and automatically.

It can work very well. I once worked in a startup that was able to achieve exactly this however it was enormously challenging. The core technology was developed in a university and eventually spun out. Then it grew into something much larger as fully functional systems were developed for customers. The cost was enormous and the reliability not particularly fantastic but the customer was thrilled with the potential. Eventually we were bought out and while I took another path colleagues formed another hugely successful startup.

There are many many similar stories just like this in this space.

Holmes it seems was a highly effective pretender wanting to leapfrog the research she would have glimpsed while at Stanford by promising something that could do it all. So the money rolled in and she no doubt hired good technical people but instead of building something, anything worthwhile she doubled down on the lie.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's people like Tim Draper that encouraged the fraud. From a totally logical point of view:

1\. How do you invest millions in technology you cannot even look at even in year 10?

2\. How do you defend a CEO in public by attacking credible journalists and not even once question the actual concerns in the company?

3\. A medical company run by a first year drop-out and one without a single licensed doctor on the board?

C'mon. Even Steve Jobs did not get that leeway.

</comment><comment><USER28> For your Friday drive home here is the recent Jason Calacanis interview of the WSJ reporter who broke the story. Great listen. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-startups- au...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-startups- audio/id315114957?mt=2&i=1000413578016)

<comment><USER29> Same episode, but it doesn't require itunes:

[https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/this-week-in-startups- audio...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/this-week-in-startups- audio/e/54866804)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Holmes is a master obfuscator:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqYHwI87cDQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqYHwI87cDQ)

</comment><comment><USER31> The indictment shows "No bail, arrest warrants issued" [0]. She'll be sitting in a prison cell by tomorrow morning.

Wow.

[0] [https://www.justice.gov/file/1072521/download](https://www.justice.gov/file/1072521/download)

<comment><USER32> It does not show that.

Being familiar with the process, it looks like they're out on supervised release. Non-custody. No point in putting a warrant out for someone when they're at the courthouse to be arraigned.

<comment><USER31> I must be confused then. Why does the defendant section say "Warrant, no bail"?.

<comment><USER32> Probably chalk it up to a very confusing and esoteric form. No bail could just mean they don't have to post bail to get out.

"Warrant" could just mean they came in on a warrant vs. a summons.

More important is the top of the form: "Defendant is NOT in custody".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Biannual reshare of a pilot I wrote for a TV parody of Theranos: [http://www.blakeross.com/pricks.pdf](http://www.blakeross.com/pricks.pdf)

:)

<comment><USER34> Are you bummed that they didn't go with your screenplay for the big screen adaptation starring Jennifer Lawrence [1]? :)

[1] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5795144/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5795144/)

<comment><USER33> No, but I'm bummed they didn't steal the name "Pricks"!

<comment><USER35> I was thinking Unicorn Blood

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Martin Shkreli is in prison now - he deserves it, though he was guilty of _far_ less then Elizabeth Holmes.

Holmes should already be in prison for massive fraud. The fact she is a female and mimicked Jobs seems to have saved her so far though.

<comment><USER37> That's an interesting read on what Shkreli did vs Holmes.

At least Holmes "victims" AFAIK were mostly rich folks losing other people's money they're gambling with and should have known better.

Shkreli fleeced normal folks just looking to get their day meds.

<comment><USER38> > At least Holmes "victims" AFAIK were mostly rich folks

why would that make it any better?

<comment><USER39> I think the argument is that stealing $1 million from a billionaire could be considered ethically less bad than stealing $10,000 from someone who is $50,000 in debt due to medical bills. The second theft will have much more impact on the victim than the first.

<comment><USER38> > The second theft will have much more impact on the victim than the first.

That hardly makes it OK though, Are you saying that the first case doesn't deserve the same punishment as the second?

<comment><USER37> I can't speak for anyone else but Shkreli was convicted for Securities fraud, Holmes charged wire fraud. The court cases are pretty much moot. They will likely have similar outcomes.

Morally and Ethically however I'd consider Shkreli guilty of far more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > "The indictment further alleges that Holmes and Balwani knew that many of > their representations about the analyzer were false. For example, allegedly, > Holmes and Balwani knew that the analyzer, in truth, had accuracy and > reliability problems, performed a limited number of tests, was slower than > some competing devices, and, in some respects, could not compete with > existing, more conventional machines."

</comment><comment><USER41> [http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html)

 _4\. Naughtiness

Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination._

 _Sam Altman of Loopt is one of the most successful alumni, so we asked him what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they 'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers. It has become one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications._

<comment><USER42> PG is absolutely correct in my experience. The best founders are Chaotic Good on the alignment chart.

> Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about > observing proprieties.

Holmes does not match that description at all.

Lying to investors, lying to the FDA, secretly using your competitors' tech to mask the fact that your core product does not work.

She did not care about getting the big questions right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> >Theranos's investors, most of whom poured money into the company after its commercial rollout in Walgreens stores in late 2013, have collectively lost nearly $1 billion. They include the Waltons, heirs to Walmart Inc. founder Sam Walton, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Atlanta's Cox family and the family of Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education. Each invested more than $100 million in Theranos—investments that are now worthless.

edit: sometimes you are brought to justice b/c you conned the wrong people...

<comment><USER44> You're saying there is no hope for my Kickstarter campaign investment

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's great news for justice. These guys should do time. I read back in March (I can't find the link but I think it was the Economist) that the case had been dismissed.

</comment><comment><USER44> Serious question were they both in sexual relationship... Because I feel the old Indian guy took over her... And influenced her to continue lies

<comment><USER44> yes they were.. found it

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-inc-s-partners-in- bloo...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-inc-s-partners-in- blood-1526662047)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> if WSJ is behind a paywall:

[https://outline.com/dUwMC4](https://outline.com/dUwMC4)

</comment><comment><USER47> Non-Paywall Link: [https://archive.fo/Sd8AC](https://archive.fo/Sd8AC)

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone can weigh in how much can they possibly get?

</comment><comment><USER49> Behind a paywall. Would anyone kindly help me with a link that's free?

</comment><comment><USER50> Paywall bypass:

[https://outline.com/dUwMC4](https://outline.com/dUwMC4)

</comment><comment><USER51> It's about time, what these two did is disgusting and shameful.

</comment><comment><USER52> Here's Tim Draper's interview on CNBC telling people in 2018 that Elizabeth Holmes is an icon and hero. He was an early investor in Theranos and likely responsible for bringing in a lot of the major investors. As far as I'm concerned he should also be investigated for his part in this massive fraud.

[https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/10/vc-draper-theranos- fou...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/10/vc-draper-theranos-founder- elizabeth-holmes-was-bullied-into-submission.html)

</comment><comment><USER53> "Wire fraud" \- it's amazing the litany of things one can do, and ultimately get caught up in this specific basket. Al Capone went down for tax evasion ...

<comment><USER44> Was thinking the same thing

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Someone asked how she hadn't been indicted a few weeks ago, and I said that the investigation was ongoing but she would surely been indicted. Everyone following this case closely saw this coming.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wait, what?! Ramesh Balwani was Ms. Holmes's boyfriend? I don't recall seeing that covered anywhere else before.

<comment><USER56> Really? Wow, that's a weird couple...

<comment><USER57> I don't want to excuse Holmes of her many crimes nor rob her of agency, but the circumstances in which they met do not reflect well on Balwani's character.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Oh good. Glad the investigation finally got some charges.

</comment><comment><USER59> So I mean like, fraud is definitely not a good thing, but _COUNTLESS_ government contractors committed outright fraud and embezzlement during the Iraq War, and none of them were ever held accountable.

One of them even made 8 billion USD completely disappear from the "Iraq Reconstruction Fund".

<comment><USER7> How is this whataboutism relevant?

<comment><USER59> Because many people smoke weed, but only some are jailed for it.

THAT'S why whataboutism is important. Enforcement bias.

<comment><USER60> Because not everyone who smokes is caught, and some plead guilty to get an easy sentence, laws differ based on location, and case circumstance is not always the same? This is how the system works.

<comment><USER59> "The system" is logical and ethical, in your opinion? I'm trying to call into question here if "a crime" on paper is a crime worth enforcing.

When the black man in New Orleans is thrown in jail for smoking weed, but the black/white/asian male in Iowa goes unprosecuted, how much of a crime is the crime really?

You either need 100% prosecution or 0%. Murder is murder, fraud is fraud, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Holmes is a charismatic delusional sociopath. Potent mix.

</comment><comment><USER31> Between this and Manafort being sent to jail, what a wonderful day for the DOJ. God I love this country so much.

<comment><USER62> The American Criminal Justice system rightly faces many criticisms, especially serious charges for being used against minorities. But yes, knowing that even the most powerful person in the country is not above the law and can and is prosecuted seriously, and that scammers like Holmes and Balwani are made to pay for their crimes.... this kind of thing is certainly what makes the US unique among nations.

<comment><USER63> it is also what makes this country great. not that someone like Trump understand that. For a society to function harmoniously, it must believe that their society is just, and that those who commit crimes will face justice, whether its pusher on the street, or the President of the United States, and that, not only will justice be served, but clemency granted in equitable fashion when so deserved.

For those interested, here is an interesting essay that touches on some of those issues [https://www.lawfareblog.com/donald-trumps-pardon-power- and-s...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/donald-trumps-pardon-power-and-state- exception)

<comment><USER63> The moderation on HN is so capricious that I think I'll no longer participate. My stupidest and even insulting comments get upvoted and my thoughtful ones downvoted. Whatever. Good bye.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> What about all the MIC heavies on the board.

</comment><comment><USER65> People were defending Theranos on HN... surely must have been an investor or an insider. Surely no one else would be so daft.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have been in this exact place before. For the two of them, this day will be just about the worst of their lives.

This is ordinarily when hard-core criminals are taken into custody. If their experience was like mine, they had to show up in front of a magistrate with their lawyers, plead not guilty, then go to a dungeon for about 30 minutes while they get handcuffed, fingerprinted, mugshotted, and DNA-swabbed. Then, off they go until trial. It's basically like being free, but you have to stay out of trouble and report all contacts with law enforcement.

Being rich (or from money), they won't have to worry about federal defenders or CJA representation, which wouldn't be near as bad as dealing with a state- funded public defender. There's a small chance they'll have to go this route anyway, since the government can snatch the money in dispute and block you from spending your ill-gotten gains on high-priced legal representation.

Don't let the "sticker price" fool you. They're not going to have to serve consecutive 20-year terms for what they're accused of, even if they take it to trial and get found guilty.

They will probably get their first plea offers in about a year. Most people take the plea. In the event they refuse to plead guilty, trial will probably take about 2-3 years from today.

Holmes will be offered, I'm guessing, about 6-9 months and a joint-and-several "money judgment" (restitution + forfeiture). Balwani, about 5 years and a joint-and-several "money judgment". This may be a package deal too, so Holmes may not be able to take it if Balwani won't. Why the discrepancy? The 28th amendment hasn't been ratified yet.

Before my experience with this world, I would have been eager to join in the collective bloodlust, with the pitchfork-and-torch crowd clamoring for these overprivileged defendants to sit through a trial and rot in prison. Take it from me: I wouldn't put my worst enemy through even just the trial.

<comment><USER66> Can you expand on your experience with indictments like this?

It rings true to me that, in general, the average person would have much more compassion for 'bad' people in 'bad' situations if they could live a day in their shoes.

<comment><USER32> mattchannon dot org.

Eerily similar experience, down to the charges and the 11 counts.

I don't disagree, but the average person on a jury just does what the lady in the skirtsuit tells them to do so they can get out of there. Most people you want on a jury throw away their summons with zero risk to the practice.

<comment><USER16> I looked into your case a bit and I agree your sentence is unduly harsh. You fraudently redeemed rewards for a bunch of fake people and make $100k, I don't feel like this warranted everything that happened to you and your family. Sucks to be made an example of :/

<comment><USER32> I know you're trying to be nice, but I think you missed something.

"Mr. Dufresne, you killed your wife and her lover, I don't feel like you should have gone to Shawshank."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Anybody have a link that talk about Holmes, personality, career, why she is special, etc. I have heard she is referred to as the next Steve Jobs...

Actually this has enough info for most people: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes)

<comment><USER68> Steve Jobs definitely wasn't engaged in criminal fraud, so the prosecutor will definitely be trying to demonstrate she wasn't "the next Steve Jobs". Given what we know we should hear that prosecutors' argument.

<comment><USER67> Why the down vote, she is referred to as the next Steve Jobs: [https://mashable.com/2018/03/14/elizabeth-holmes-theranos- se...](https://mashable.com/2018/03/14/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sec-fraud/)

<comment><USER68> Because being popular doesn't make you above the law. The comment is at best irrelevant, at worse morally noxious.

<comment><USER67> But I asked why is she considered that way. I'm not saying she is special but why do people say she is the next Jobs.

<comment><USER57> _but why do people say she is the next Jobs_

Because she put considerable effort into fostering that impression, even dressing like Jobs in the same trademark black turtleneck sweaters he always wore. All part of the con.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> So much for the conspiracy theory people were floating here about her being protected by her influential family and powerful connections.

<comment><USER70> We will have to wait and see what deal they make if pleading guilty.

<comment><USER71> And what cushy behind-the-scenes appointments they get after 'doing time' by playing golf at a minimum security resort for 6 months.</comment></comment></comment>


What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect - <AUTHOR> http://www.hugs.io/2015/04/18/makerbot-and-the-osborne-effect.html <comment><USER2> The MakerBot's problem is simply that low-end extruder-type 3D printers don't work very well.[1] They're easy to make, so there are lots of variations on that theme. TechShop has, over time, had one or two of all the major flavors. They're useful for making relatively thin parts, but anything taller than 3cm or so usually founders on the basic fact that ABS has too big of a coefficient of expansion to build something tall without delaminating due to thermal stress.

The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker Dojo in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the working fluid, so that's how they make their money.

Eventually, somebody is going to get low-cost laser sintering of metal powder figured out. But not quite yet. The Aurora Labs 3D metal printer turned out to cost about 10x the original $4000 price. MatterFab hasn't shipped their device. There's a low-end electroplating printer, but that's inherently a very slow process.

[1] [http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should- kno...](http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it- fo-508176750)

<comment><USER3> > The frontier in 3D printing seems to be to get the cost down on the high-end > processes, which are now very good. The Form1, the low-end stereolithography > printer, is a nice little machine, and it's real. TechShop SF and Hacker > Dojo in Mountain View both have one. Form1 charges $145/liter for the > working fluid, so that's how they make their money.

High quality desktop CNC Mills are out.

[http://carbide3d.com/](http://carbide3d.com/)

$3000 for a proven technology. Home-made CNC mills have always come in between $1000 to $3000, and now professional turnkey solutions are available in that price range.

I do realize CNC machines are the "opposite" of a 3D Printer. But if a CNC machine can get a software stack as easy to use as the 3d printers, then I think they'd get a lot more use.

<comment><USER4> Easy-to-use already exists, it's getting it at a reasonable cost that's missing. ArtCAM, for instance, will gladly sell you something in the automobile-priced, dongle-secured range, that can handle all of the toolpath calculations, tool swaps, etc. (so you don't need to be a machinist to understand what's going to break and what's going to burn, etc.) But if you need $10K software to turn a model into instructions for your $2K mill, there's a bit of a prohibitive imbalance there from a hobbyist's perspective.

<comment><USER3> MeshCAM (what comes free with the Nomad 883) is easy to use... although speeds and feeds still need to be manually inputted. But still, if you break your block of wood because you feed was too high, you just drop down the feed (or increase those RPMs) and spend $5 on another 2x4 block of wood.

Or if your RPM was too high and you smell burning, you drop it down on the next run.

In the worst case, if you catastrophically fail at those numbers and break say an end-mill ($20 to $50), that's still not that big of a deal. A major mistake / catastrophe still is cheaper to deal with than regular maintenance of say... a Form 1 stereo lithography plastic that costs something like $150 per liter.

I'd bet you that MeshCAM (again, free with the Nomad, $200ish otherwise) will create more precise parts than your typical Makerbot stuff anyway. Waterfall + Pencil Finish is more than enough to get the majority of projects done. (Steriolithography from Form1 looks... _very_ impressive though, but the running costs are absurd in comparison)

ArtCAM, and other professional toolsets, are probably much better suited for professional artists who need to keep track of the grain of wood and the cutting direction. But... you can ignore the details of wood-grain and still come up with something with _far_ more detail and precision than anything Makerbot can ever hope to do.

Basically, you start to care about those minor details with CNC machines because you actually have a machine that has such accuracy that those details matter. Also, $5 wood blocks and $20 leather (Drag Knife on a CNC machine: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMoRUZnvbXw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMoRUZnvbXw)) honestly feel more "artisan" than the $100+/liter plastic that comes out of a Form1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The challenge of being an open source hardware manufacturer in the presence of an economy that is better suited to create hardware than you are (China in this case) is that you really have to execute well. I agree it was a huge mistake on Bre's part to leak the upcoming Rep 2. Without incoming orders you have to fund current orders and R&D out of cash on hand, and that doesn't work without a big line of credit.

But it is also really unfair to second guess someone who is riding a bucking bull in a nursery. That is what running a very successful startup can be like, lots of money coming in, decisions needing to be made with too little information, large outcome swings based on them with precious little runway to correct for errors. When you are in that space and someone reaches in and offers to lift you out, it can be hard to be rational about the choices you are making. It seemed to me that Stratasys knew exactly what they where doing, and less so for Bre and crew.

Unfortunately for Stratasys they failed to understand _why_ Makerbot had been growing like it had, probably taking the late product launch as all the rationale they needed for a cash short company. I believe that had they understood what they had stepped in to, they would have approached it very differently and made very different choices. Not the least of which would be a mixed model of open and proprietary gizmos for their printers.

I am convinced that their lack of openness lead directly to the C.F. that is their "SmartStruder" which now has people calling for class action lawsuits.

A company with the Goodwill of a Printrbot and the resources of a Stratasys would have dominated the 3D market completely. Instead small printer companies are flourishing and kickstarters for new printers regularly cross $1M in pledges (and that is for printers no one has any right to believe can even be built!)

I found it hugely ironic that Bre is on the cover of this month's Popular Science [1]

[1] [http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention- awards](http://www.popsci.com/2015-invention-awards)

<comment><USER6> > I am convinced that their lack of openness lead directly to the C.F. that is > their "SmartStruder" which now has people calling for class action lawsuits.

What is the story of this? (I tried searching for "SmartStruder class action" and all I found was this particular comment.)

<comment><USER7> It's actually called the Smart Extruder, you should find more results if you search for that. Rumour has it they knew they were dodgy, shipped them anyway, and then quietly redesigned them a few months later: [http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/2ovd27/makerbot_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/2ovd27/makerbot_aware_of_faulty_extruder/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm pretty tech savvy, and I honestly can't find a reason, other than tinkering, to buy a 3d printer. In almost every case, the thing the printer would be making for me, at huge effort in time and materials, is solvable with a cheap, sub-$1 Chinese made part or some other more convenient alternative.

The lack of real use-case is what's killing consumer-level 3d printers. Most people just don't need to run off a couple copies of a 3d trinket or toy with enough frequency to make it worth it. And the subset of those people with useful 3d-modeling skills is some tiny fraction of that number.

Whenever I see somebody using a 3d printer at the consumer level for something useful, it always seems to have just been for a one-off Arduino case or something like that. That's really just not incentive for me to spend the time and money to get setup with 3d printing, when I can just buy a case off of Amazon or whatever and be done with it.

The cost of the parts is the cost of your time + materials + setup costs (the printer). Is an Arduino case really worth $1400-$6500? That price only comes down if I print off more stuff I suppose, but at what point do the trinkets and dodads I'm printing off start to make economic and time sense? That's pretty far down the production chain, and I simply don't have that much stuff to print.

<comment><USER9> I was in the same boat, until very recently.

I am the founder of OpenPnP, an Open Source SMT pick and place platform. I eschewed 3D printing for my design work for several years thinking that it was not accurate enough, not strong enough, etc. Having experience with CNC mills I kept comparing 3D printed parts to ones cut accurately from aluminum and found them lacking.

What I recently came to realize is that the power of 3D printing is in it's instant turnaround and the ability to quickly iterate. Now, I design my parts for 3D printing. They look and function differently than they would if I had cut them from aluminum and I have to take the limitations of 3D printing into account, but they work. And most importantly, I can test a new design simply by hitting "Print" and waiting an hour or two.

I agree that much of the consumer market is dominated by people who buy a 3D printer and then use it to print trinkets until they get bored, but there are also a lot of people out there who are engineering new devices and machines using the ability to quickly test new designs on a 3D printer.

<comment><USER10> Are there advantages to the 3D printing process besides the speed? That is, if a fool-proof CNC mill was available for the same price, would you switch back? Is the price difference of the consumables a significant factor?

I have trouble shaking the feeling that printing 3D parts with little dabs of plastic has a lot in common with putting ink on pages with a dot-matrix printer. While they were revolutionary for the time, you don't see many dot- matrix printers these days.

<comment><USER9> The primary advantage is that a 3D printer is truly able to create features in any orientation in 3D while a typical mill cannot. The price of consumables isn't really something I consider important, especially when prototyping.

The thing that a lot of people don't realize about traditional machining operations is just how long they take to set up. I didn't, myself, until I bought a CNC mill. I thought it was just a matter of sticking a big hunk of metal in it, hitting Go and then coming back when it's done.

The first problem is that for a typical 3D axis milling machine you have to find a way to mount the material you intend to cut without getting in the way of the cutter, and if your part is at all complex this can be very tricky. Different materials and thicknesses all require different methods of mounting, and learning how to mount and setup a part is an education in itself.

The second problem is that a 3 axis mill can really only cut down. That means if you want a hole in the up/down Z axis, you are fine. If you want one in the X/Y axes you are out of luck. You have to finish your Z axis operations, unmount the part, turn it, find a new way to mount it, zero the machine to the new part configuration and then do more operations. If you have a part that has, for instance, mounting holes on several sides you are looking at a LOT of manual work to complete that part. And each time you remount the part you have to be able to tell the machine exactly how the part is mounted so that everything lines up.

Industrial machine shops get around this by using 5 or more axis mills. These are insanely expensive and not really available to the home / hobby engineer, although I am quite interested in what [http://www.pocketnc.com/](http://www.pocketnc.com/) is doing.

3D printers, on the other hand, are truly 3D. You can have features in almost any configuration and it's no more difficult to print than a simple cube. It is literally a matter of starting it up and coming back when it's done.

I don't think 3D printing is the be all end all of machining, especially FFF, but for the home or hobby engineer it's an incredibly powerful and easy to use technology right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To avoid the Osborne effect, they could simply have produced new versions and only open the source once released.

That's not the real problem. I guess it was a combination of chinese knockoffs and stratasys proprietary instincts.

In any case, IMHO, the layoffs are a result of losing the open community, which is now being serviced by true open-source proponents like Aleph with their excellent Lulzbot printers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, I only buy LulzBot printers (I own 3 now), pretty much a direct result of MakerBot's decision to go closed.

<comment><USER12> Just got a taz 5 a few days ago. Been really impressed with them. I still don't have the bed fully level but the PEI surface has been wonderful compared to everything else i've ever used. it's like it's a completely different kind of machine. I looked at them for the same reason, open source but they really deliver on the actual product. my only complaint is one i'm going to fix myself if i can't find any other way. the LCD is bright at night when printing in the dark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Osborne effect whee announcing a future product before it is made way too early cancels sales of the current project.

People forget when Osborne was losing sales, the IBM PC and PC-DOS was gaining sales and CP/M systems like those made by Osborne had a lot of competition. Microsoft/IBM had a converter program that could convert CP/M-80 programs to DOS programs. [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608077.aspx)

Also Kaypro had won over Osborne customers with their own CP/M machines that reached the market before the new Osborne models.

Commodore had the VIC-20 and later Commodore-64 that provided cheaper computers as did the 8 bit Atari line. Some people would rather buy a $399 Commodore or Atari computer and hook it up to their TV screen.

So announcing a new product too far ahead of time was only one factor in the Osborne effect.

Makerbot has Chinese competition, and they had technical issues as well. There are more factors here than just announcing a new product too far ahead of time. Instead of Osborne it is more like the Apple III [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III)

<comment><USER14> And Osbourne probably preannounced so early _because_ of the competition (to pre-empt users switching). Preannouncement and failure were correlated due to a common cause.

OTOH MS vapourware has scuttled competitors. So it depends on your market power. Osbourne was against IBM and a disruptive tide.

<comment><USER15> Right - it was a move of desperation. Perhaps Osbourne could've marketed/distributed their way out. But it's hard to position yourself as the brand that no one gets fired for buying when someone's already got that spot.

With MakerBot, another issue may be that the market is approaching saturation. As they're being eaten by cheaper competitors, they haven't been able to create a new market to grow into. I suppose the Replicator is an attempt to do that - how has that done?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16>
        Gee, thanks, Bre. Again, why do you think that's true?
        How did you come to that conclusion?
        What do you know that those of us still in the "fantasy world" don't know?
        Aha, that's it!
        MakerBot fell victim to the Osborne effect, where talking openly about future products hurt the sale of their current products.
        Sales dropped, so they got scared and went closed.
        That sounds like a way more honest and real answer than the non-existence of an open source steel bender.

Commenting on the tone alone, this strikes me as the logic of someone who has already arrived at a conclusion (the MakerBot founders are concealing the real reason behind their abandonment of open-source), and is merely searching for evidence to back up a conclusion they've already arrived at.

<comment><USER17> My thoughts exactly. If the statements about open source hardware don't fit your worldview, just deride them and make up some other explanation!

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't deride his statements because they didn't fit my worldview, I derided them for making no sense. He was the one that kept coming up with new explanations. His latest (which I quote in the post) is other-wise known as the Osborne effect.

<comment><USER17> Ok. But you blew off the main justification he gave for no sensible reason I can see. You just didn't like it, so you found some other explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Makerbot is doomed because not only will nobody in the hobbyist market buy their printers anymore, but when the people who are in the hobbyist market get asked about what printer to buy, the will recommend _against_ makerbot (well, more specifically against Bre Pettis).

<comment><USER19> We just bought a 3d printer and noticed this. There were so many negative comments about makerbot

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Perhaps an open source model might have mitigated the atrocious quality of the 5th generation Makerbot. I must have replaced our extruder 5 times already, and the entire machine had to also be replaced once. This is all on a maker care warranty, so no matter what they charge, there is no profit left.

If I could have replaced the extruder with an open source clone that functioned better, I would have.

</comment><comment><USER21> This seems like a normal result of post buyout restructuring by Stratasys. Does anyone have sales numbers to know if they are actually having issues?

<comment><USER22> This is what the business press is reporting, and it makes sense. The author of the article obviously has a grudge against MakerBot and decided to go postal against them when he read the layoff headlines without doing due diligence first. (Wait until he finds out they closed their retail stores!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious to see how 3D Robotics handles a similar situation. Their drone platform has been open source hardware plus open source software. There are Chinese companies cloning the hardware and selling it for much cheaper than 3D Robotics sells it for.

3D Robotics just raised $50M in a series C. It will be interesting to see how their commitment to openness holds up.

<comment><USER24> 3D Robotics only open source the flight controller hardware and software and ground control software. delivering a safe drone platform requires a lot more hardware (the aircraft itself, camera and radio gear) and firmware (camera, gimbal, speed controller radio gear).

<comment><USER23> My guess, though, is that as the industry matures, low-level components like ESC & radio firmwares are not really going to be where most value gets added. Software is definitely going to eat the drone world, and it's going to be at the higher levels: First it will be flight software with amazing new features (VSLAM, sense and avoid, swarm control) and then once that's more mature, it will be the operations-level super-ground-control-system stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What I generally do is "I've got Rev C for sale. Source and schematics for Rev A remain available on my wiki, sources and schematics for Rev B now are available on the same wiki."

</comment><comment><USER26> I interviewed for a software job there twice. It seemed pretty dysfunctional to me. For one project, they had 20 people working on something that I thought would take 3-5 people.

<comment><USER27> I've found that's the case with almost all software projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This leaves out some really important background. Makerbot quietly sold out to Stratasys in 2013. When they did that they lost their soul and their independence. The first sign of that was when they went closed source alienating a huge portion of their customer base. This is just another shoe dropping now that Stratasys owns them they are moving to more tightly integrate Makerbot into the rest of the company. These layoffs are supposedly to remove duplicative positions due to the buyout. There is a good documentary on Netflix about the 3d printing revolution called "Print the Legend" It covers a lot of the history behind Makerbot including the fact that there were really 3 co-founders instead of just the one that gets regularly mentioned in news coverage.

</comment><comment><USER29> TL;DR - If your corporation is extremely open/transparent, including R&D, you may risk losing sales from people willing to wait for a version 2.0. If so, don't close up/make opaque your business as a response, or you'll end up killing your core audience.

</comment><comment><USER30> doomed is a strong word, and the article makes no attempt to argue that makerbot is doomed, but rather assumes it without any argument or demonstration at all.

i have no stake in it myself, but if you're gonna make a strong statement like "doomed" you should back it up. layoffs != doomed

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't just layoffs. "Stratasys also announced a $100 million write-down on Makerbot's valuation in February."

Link: [http://makezine.com/2015/04/17/makerbot-lays- off-100-employe...](http://makezine.com/2015/04/17/makerbot-lays- off-100-employees-closes-retail-stores/)

But you have a point, they're not dead yet. They might turn the corner, hire again, and regain that $100 million in value someday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Did no one see "Print the Legend" on Netflix. Pretty well discusses this matter in detail. It also deals with funding a new business and the various pitfalls.

<comment><USER32> It was discussed in the article but the author didn't find the answer given in the documentary convincing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Personally, I'm wondering how many on HN actually owned an Osborne machine.

<comment><USER34> I still have one! Flyback is shot on the CRT though =(

<comment><USER35> Heat and vibration rubbing the coil wires against each other is what kills flyback transformers, you can usually get replacements for about $50 or so and replacing them isn't hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anecdotally, I stopped hearing people talk much about Makerbot right around 2012. Seems to coincide with when they closed source their stuff.

</comment><comment><USER37> The author is somehow making a connection between what "doomed" Makerbot and why they went closed source. Makerbot biggest growth year was 2013 (approximately quadrupled booking rate over the course of it), the year immediately after going closed source.

</comment><comment><USER38> MakerBot is still in business. Yes, a 20% layoff is not a good sign, but it's a little early to say MakerBot is "doomed".

Taking it one step further and saying that it's the Osborne effect which caused their troubles is even less valid. There are a ton of different possible causes for MakerBot's troubles. The only honest answer here is that we don't know why MakerBot is having trouble, although there are a number of very good guesses we could venture.

The OP seems to be frustrated with MakerBot going closed-source. I share that frustration, but let's call that what it is, a frustration with MakerBot going closed-source, rather than using MakerBot's failures as an excuse to gloat.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think they would have been fine had they shipped a better product. When I was doing research to buy a 3d printer every review I read said that the closed source metal version was every bit as unreliable as the previous plywood laser cut makerbot.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not quite sure we are at the stage where 3D printers are a home market item. I figured they would go into copy shops first with models priced like big copiers. It just seems a little early days.

</comment><comment><USER41> MakerBot has just not been very innovative. I see their contribution more like that of a cheerleader of 3d printing (who layer got involved with too much sugar-dadiness).

</comment><comment><USER42> 'doomed' , really?

we are in an epic financial bubble right now that DWARFS all previous bubbles of the past 20 years so much so that janet yellen herself said "cash is not a good store of value"; meaning the bubble is so big that those who created and sustain it with unlimited cash are so scared of it popping that they will publicly allude to the possibility of unending limitless printing ( and the inevitable hyperinflationary boom it would conclude with ) .

all of the self congratulatory lying and self deception of silicon valley is that it is 'libertarian' and 'independent' , when in fact ALL THE NEW MONEY IN SILICON VALLEY COMES FROM THE FED THROUGH EITHER BANKS OR THE TREASURY BY WAY OF VC AND THE MILITARY RESPECTIVELY.

the boom will end as all booms do and the headline of what 'doomed' makerbot will seem like a joke.

laying off 20% isn't 'doom' by any stretch of the imagination.

if there are problems with makerbots business model, then they were relegated to the parent company which now owns it.

bri pettis is a political genius for ousting his 2 compatriots and keeping the control, and the spoils of the buyout , all for himself.</comment>


Ask HN: What should Product Managers spend most of their time doing? - <AUTHOR> I'm a new Product Manager at a FinTech and spend most of my time either writing process documents or putting together models in Excel. I feel more like a Business Analyst, but was wondering what PMs out there spend most of their time on? Or if you employ a PM, what is the most valuable work they do for you? <comment><USER2> Varies a lot depending on the type of product you're on. If you have a B2B product, you're probably talking to the customer a lot, charting out plans with sales and marketing. On the other hand, if you have a B2C product you're looking at engagement numbers (which would hopefully in the order of thousands/millions), running experiments and doing surveys etc.

It also depends on what phase of the product lifecycle your feature is in. Early on, you're writing a lot of strategy docs putting together vision decks to convince people. During active development, you're keeping track on day-to- day activities, prioritizing features and putting out fires. You're also hopefully figuring out a GTM plan. If your product is already launched, you're thinking of v2, listening for feedback etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> My product people spend a large percentage of their time talking to customers. They're the customer surrogate in any meeting we have, which is a role they collaborate with salespeople to fill.

Is your product sold to external clients? Or is it internal?

<comment><AUTHOR> External - and that's really good info, I don't spend much time at all speaking with clients</comment></comment>