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Shifty Pony posted:They have been doing things like charging patients $7 for a test then paying UC San Francisco >$300 for a comprehensive panel on it because Theranos's wonder machines don't actually work. I've read through Theranos' partially-redacted 483 forms from their FDA inspection last year, and frankly, they're straight up hosed even aside from profitability of their business model. They're a great case example of pushing an idea without any means of actually backing it up or implementing it adequately. Just as Uber "disrupted" taxi markets while conveniently ignoring local regulations, operating illegally in some places, etc etc, Theranos was/is trying to operate without even the most basic of legal requirements met for their product design, validation, filing support, etc. They had two observations for trying to draft documents to support their validation and device designs after the FDA asked for them, when they're all necessary pre-requisites (e.g., why is your IQ/OQ documentation all signed and dated yesterday, when you performed the validation nine months ago). They failed to characterize any design spaces or perform any risk analyses for their device validations. They didn't provide any references, supporting data, dates, times, anything on a lot of their reports and procedures. Their validations didn't mimic actual-use or even simulated-use conditions, but were not even representative of their real product. All of these things are enormous no-nos in the industry, and they're nowhere near big enough or valuable enough to apply any clout to the FDA to sway decisions (not that bigger companies should be able to either, but they do). Edit: Oh, and trying to push their product for well over a hundred different tests/diagnostics when they only have approval for a single test. Not allowed either, and fines for repeated off-label offenses in the last few years have been larger than the entire estimated value of Theranos. They're a total mess, and odds are that by the time they get their act together, they're going to be bankrupt. Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 18:29
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:This sounds retarded. Retarded, but extremely common. I'm on my fourth company in eight years now, specifically due to the huge disconnect between outside hire wages and internal raises/promotion benefits. quote:If swapping jobs every time you want to "move up" is the only way to go how does anyone ever get long service leave? Is portable LSL common in the tech industry or something? If by long service leave you mean "more vacation due to years of service," you negotiate it into your contracts when you get an offer. "Hey, I have ten years of experience; I'd be getting 15 days of vacation at place X, so you have to beat that." Then the employer either meets your demand or they don't, and you decide if it's worth it. At my current role, I was offered 5 days of vacation (company's year-one vacation total) and settled on 15 after negotiation. The place job-hopping does break down is in pension eligibility (if it's even offered). You never really accrue any pension credits at your workplaces. That being said, it's so easy to legally nullify a pension in the USA that there's no point banking on one anyway. Bank on the salary and put your own money away, because hoping for a pension (even one you've vested in) is a fool's game.
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Mar 13, 2016 00:22
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quote:It's like they hammer into us in engineering - a decent engineer with great people skills will do orders of magnitude better than an exceptional engineer with no people skills. This is because most work is team oriented. Also, 50% (arbitrary) of any given engineering project is convincing the people controlling the checkbook to get out their pens. That's another place where having 'people' skills is essential.
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Mar 14, 2016 01:37
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I spent way too much time writing something to call a function to check for a string return contents on question(string $interview) being "fizzbuzz" and then terminating interview.cpp if it's true, only to remember about 10 min later that I can't actually code in anything but GML.  Fizzbuzz: The inevitable end result of any remotely CS-related thread.
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Mar 30, 2016 20:13
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Subjunctive posted:Creating AI isn't some arcane summoning spell that requires all the winds in the Pacific to blow in the same direction while people in every time zone shout words without vowels. It's programming and math, experimentation and testing.  The AI will see your post and realize you are useful!
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May 5, 2016 19:56
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Schnorkles posted:They get bought by GSK and the company pushes into trials. At this point, when companies are heading into trials, there's a god awful amount of money being thrown around. The infrastructure for a company to just do the science can push into the hundreds of millions. Once you hit the complexity of trials, the costs just baloon up and up and up. The trials get real far, probably Stage 3 [though I'm not 100% sure of this] and it finally comes to light that the entire thing is crap. It's not working in humans and the trials are a big nothing burger. There's probably good science behind all of it, but ultimately it just doesn't do anything. It's funny how history repeats itself so often. PFE spent over a billion while I was working there on a miracle drug they licensed from a start-up, which... ding ding ding... did jack loving squat in Phase III. The project was such a disaster that it spawned a NCBI review paper as a warning to future generations.
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Jun 2, 2016 05:17
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Roger Craig posted:Jet.com won't be around it 2020. They have some pretty great deals on stuff now but I can't see them being able to compete with amazon while still being able to turn a profit. Wasn't Jet the one that was literally buying stuff from Amazon if they couldn't stock the customer's request, then charging a lower price and taking a loss on the item?
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Aug 8, 2016 19:55
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Discendo Vox posted:Also, courtesy of Sundae in the TPS thread, meet Josephine, an excellent way to die from botulism poisoning. I actually got Josephine from this thread originally.
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Aug 26, 2016 06:17
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Surprise Giraffe posted:Im wondering what amazons version of monopolistic assholery is going to be. Would that sort of thing even work in e-retail? Maybe theyll go fully automated and fire all of their pickers packers or something Combine the squeeze they currently put on their digital goods sellers (ebooks, apps, etc), and then combine it with the supplier manipulation that you get from Wal-Mart right now. That'll be Amazon in a few years.
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Aug 29, 2016 16:48
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Non Serviam posted:Could you elaborate on this? I've only bought a single ebook from Amazon, so I'm not sure about what you mean. Same with the supplier manipulation. I could go on forever on this topic. Going to keep it short because otherwise, three hours will pass and fifty pages of effortpost will appear. Primary sources here are my own experiences and the experiences of the writing community, plus articles and observations over the past few years. For the supplier manipulation, check that article someone posted above me about Wal-Mart's practices. It's pretty accurate. Same thing with Amazon once you get to any degree of scale, and doubly so if you don't have a B&M backup presence. The more you rely on Amazon, the more money you make them, and the more money you stand to lose from not playing ball, the more likely that they'll gently caress with you. On the e-book front, Amazon is constantly at war with both traditional publishers and self-publishers, trying to cut their share of the sales price as much as possible. They have everyone by the balls now that book stores are basically a thing of the past and every other ebook vendor decided they didn't like money. For most intents and purposes, self-publishers (who make up a huge portion of Amazon's book revenue now) don't actually have say in how much money they get in the end. Amazon's KU program pays them by pages read rather than cover price. Amazon has demonstrated, to anyone paying attention, that they will manipulate the payouts however they damned well please. They have also removed access to a lot of the information that used to be available to self-publishers so that they can't effectively be audited on any of their numbers. You can still sell through the default platform (where you set your price and get a fixed percentage royalty), but they manipulate your visibility in the store based on your participation in other programs. Meanwhile, on the trad-pub front: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/12/amazon-hachette-ebook-publishing This plays out over and over again. Anyone pushes back on Amazon during annual contract renegotiations, and suddenly their books can't be purchased anymore. Buy buttons just disappear, new releases have 2-4 week lead times, etc. As the only game in town these days, Amazon has trad-pubs by the balls as well. To add another issue (one source: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-war-against-publishers-like-hachette-2014-5), Amazon also charges trad-pub a "market development" fee of 5-7% on top of all the royalty splits, and often additional charges similar to the old co-op model from the very same bookstores they put out of business. (Want your book in the store? $. Want us to recommend it? $$. Want it to be up front and center where people see the cover clearly? $$$.) quote:... Brad Stone describes one campaign to pressure the most vulnerable publishers for better terms: internally, it was known as the Gazelle Project, after Bezos suggested “that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” (Company lawyers later changed the name to the Small Publisher Negotiation Program.) quote:Here are a few of Amazon's more imaginative high-pressure strategies: Long story short, the less competition Amazon has with customers, the more awful they get to their suppliers, authors, publishers, etc. It's really not pretty right now how much they'll dick with you if they think they can and if they think you matter enough to dick with you. Sundae fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Sep 1, 2016 |
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Sep 1, 2016 05:02
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MickeyFinn posted:This isn't aimed at you specifically, but isn't market 'efficiency' great? Oh yes, I love it ever so much. I especially love how the new-found efficiency never seems to make its way back into my wallet. Honestly, it's a weird love-hate relationship right now. I absolutely despise Amazon, but I also have to acknowledge that they effectively created the market I used to pay off my entire family's student loans. It's also not like trad-pubs treated the majority of authors any better, in the old days, than Amazon does now. quote:Around this time, Bruce and I were sharing personal concerns and he confided in me that he had let Michael borrow $50,000 from his personal savings Jesus loving Christ.
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Sep 1, 2016 16:51
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IndustrialApe posted:Man, I got to watch them (the trad publishers) bully the public libraries when Amazon/Bertelsmann ate their lunch, not a pretty sight. Yeah, that whole ebook 'wear and tear' thing was atrocious, and it's part of why I don't exactly feel bad for the trad-pubs either. They'd do (and did) everything they could to be Amazon in the absence of Amazon. But gently caress Amazon anyway, because there are more than enough fucks to go around in that industry. quote:Books should just be free and nobody should get paid for them. Sure. You can write them. Vaguely on topic: http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/ quote:It was just a dumb thing. Then we put a chip in it. Now it's a smart thing. Sadly, even as lovely as these things are, at least some of them represent real (useless) products, which is still more than 99% of the current SV startups will ever accomplish.
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Sep 1, 2016 22:31
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Hillary Clintons Thong posted:slow the gently caress down. Ebook wear and tear? Long story short, in order to counteract the fact that library books wear out / get damaged / whatever (thus requiring a library to buy new copies of the book) while e-books clearly don't, some major publishers built clauses into their e-book library licensing agreements that require the license to be renewed and paid for again after the e-book has been borrowed 26 times. This was put into place based on it taking approximately, by the publisher's estimation, 26 borrows before a paperback library book was damaged enough to warrant a replacement. It's a 'wear and tear' clause for e-books in order to avoid losing extra revenue due to digital book format. Oh, and then they also charge the libraries approximately six times the going rate for an e-book license. https://www.boston.com/news/technology/2014/06/27/why-its-difficult-for-your-library-to-lend-ebooks posted:Publishers put restrictions not just on which ebooks libraries can offer, but how they can offer them. Some publishers only allow for an ebook to be borrowed 26 times before the library has to purchase the license again. Others opt for the license to expire after a year. And still others instead charge libraries significantly more than they do consumers for ebooks. For example, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s best-selling “Lean In,’’ released last year by Random House, was available as an ebook to consumers at $12.99, but cost libraries $74.85 to purchase. Librarians generally find this system perplexing, considering the overhead costs for creating an ebook—without physical production—are much lower than print books. In fairness, I believe these clauses have been dying (not the pricing differences, but the wear and tear clauses) because they are so patently ridiculous and make for such terrible optics once they're in the public eye.
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Sep 2, 2016 01:35
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You can tell how garbage their "case" is from the gloriously unprofessional tone of their statement. It's like the sort of thing Leonard J. Crabs would've been responding to in 2004.
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Sep 2, 2016 22:14
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blah_blah posted:I think the thing that mystifies (or maybe impresses, in a perverse way) me the most is that Theranos had a large number of smart, highly-paid, reasonably intelligent people working for them, and it doesn't seem that they ever pieced together that the product they were working on every day was complete snake oil. Obviously their culture of paranoia and compartmentalization contributed to this, but still you'd think that something like that would have been hard to conceal. I'd be willing to bet that a large number of them absolutely knew their product was garbage but either (1) were hoping that someone could fix it, or (2) really just needed a paycheck and were waiting for their own exit strategies to develop. Also, potential of (3) knew the thing was a "work in progress" but had no idea what the biz side of their company was claiming it could already do. If it's this obvious a disaster from the outside, the scientists and engineers absolutely knew it (and probably a lot more that we'll never get to see).
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Sep 6, 2016 22:18
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namaste faggots posted:I'm still amazed that Holmes got this far without I think I posted these six months ago, but just in case I didn't... here, have the Aug 2015 483 citations from their factories last year. Note that some of the concerns actually date from 2014. http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/@fdagov-afda-orgs/documents/document/ucm469395.pdf http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/@fdagov-afda-orgs/documents/document/ucm469396.pdf Anyone who had any experience in the medical device or pharma industries who took a look at these would never give a dime to this loving company, at least not after the initial pre-product hype phase. These are seriously some of the most blatant failures of GMP standards I've seen, and I've worked for some serious shitholes in pharma. These people straight up did not have a product, period.
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Sep 7, 2016 02:36
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Subjunctive posted:Did Amazon jack up prices? They go the other direction and grind down suppliers / payouts while forcing you, as a supplier, to maintain the same price.
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Sep 14, 2016 23:04
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Paul MaudDib posted:Isn't that Brother? Everyone I know who owns one of their laser printers raves about how awesome they are (myself obviously included). Simple, reliable drivers (minimal package is like 5 MB), Linux compatibility (including scanner functionality and generic CUPS drivers), small footprint, hardware that keeps ticking for a decade+, and no BS about DRM'd refills or whatever. Yep - I have a Brother laser printer I bought for $90 or something two years ago and it's loving awesome. The only complaint I have is that their toner cartridge design starts saying it's running out with a quarter of the ink left. It's nothing a sticker over the cartridge's level sensor can't fix, though. Never buying an inkjet again.
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Oct 16, 2016 07:26
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Shifty Pony posted:do you print a lot of small print jobs? the idling before and after the print causes the toner/carrier to wear out and not print as well so a lot of printers will indicate toner low when they detect that the toner isn't going to be charging correctly. it would be more correct to indicate "toner life nearing expiration" instead of "toner low" but people would be so confused and pissed off by that. Typically 400-600 pages at a time, but with long periods of inactivity between (I basically use it to print draft documents since I can't get distracted by the internet while hand-editing). It could be the age factor.
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Oct 16, 2016 22:03
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I'm going to make a startup where I source a livable diet from only nonliving stones for a new breed of ultra vegan who wants to live without killing. Would you like to partner with my disruptive new open-sourced, shared-expertise oral health service, Dent*.*? You refer your customers to our app after they eat your chewable stone mixtures, and we'll cut you in on the profit-share from our independent, unlicensed dental contractors.
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Oct 21, 2016 19:58
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duz posted:Oh no! Entertainment! What ever will we do if people enjoy themselves! Accursed bodice-rippers! Women in our modern Victorian era need not such flights of fancy in their literature, staining the moral propriety of our great nation and disinclining us to learn of the latest developments in child-rearing and upright citizenry! Books may be a lovely means of information transfer and education, but as the masses prefer to indulge in idle sinfulness instead of learning, we should burn all the books and forget the means by which we ever made paper.
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Oct 31, 2016 22:35
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Discendo Vox posted:Let's not forget the most successful of all the digital startups. Like 20 years of continued existence with no server downtime, a consistent, positive message, and not a single down round or hostile takeover attempt in its entire history. Their net profit is higher than Uber, too! 
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Nov 7, 2016 21:45
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quote:Another sign that there's a housing bubble that needs to pop: a 1986 2700-foot ranch in my ordinary (i.e. not Menlo Park, Atherton, or Palo Alto) Peninsula town just sold for $2,300,000. So far, so Silicon Valley. But it sold for $300K over asking price after 8 days on the market. You don't happen to live in Burlingame or San Mateo, do you? The property prices here are loving ridiculous. I'm in pharma (drugbro?) and even with all the money in that field, it'd be two years of pre-tax salary to make even a 20% down payment on a condo in my town. Almost four years for the median single-family.
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Nov 19, 2016 02:42
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That is one of the worst study designs / justifications I think I've ever seen. Holy poo poo. Can I assume, from the lack of any publication reference and it being on arxiv, that it underwent all the peer review scrutiny of, let's say, my grandmother's secret curry recipe?
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Nov 20, 2016 22:30
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quote:The whole "sharing economy" thing is pretty much abandoned at this point, right? There is a McDonalds billboard ad on the main highway into San Francisco for 20-piece McNuggets, referring to them as the new sharing economy or something of that sort. (I just wanted to plant that little factoid in your brain where it will linger and rot forever, much like McNuggets.)
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Dec 16, 2016 18:21
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FlamingLiberal posted:I agree, but considering the level of fraud it's amazing they didn't lose their license There's still plenty of time for that. CMS controls their licensing as a blood lab, but the FDA has separate jurisdiction over their ability to manufacture / sell / market anything whatsoever. The FDA is also much, much more likely to sink its teeth into Theranos, given the number of 483s they've issued against the company already.
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Apr 18, 2017 04:40
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w00tmonger posted:I would kill for a web enabled fridge that can tell me its contents etc for when I'm out grocery shopping. This sort of exists. Samsung makes a fridge with a webcam so that you can see what's on the shelves. I prefer this new-fangled kitchen accessory: 
Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Apr 19, 2017 |
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Apr 19, 2017 17:55
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quote:Who thinks to themself, "uh-oh, almost out of corn, better make a grocery list"? Anyone born before 2010 (or so I thought)? The grocery list is on the fridge door. If I see something is low or out, I write it on the list along with all the groceries I know I need for next week's intended meals. On Saturday, I buy it, stock the fridge and then start the next list. No webcams or fridge apps required. Edit: ^^^ That too. I'm made of corn. Roll in lemon juice and cayenne, then grill myself and call it a day. 
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Apr 19, 2017 18:12
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WrenP-Complete posted:Google Keep always saves my prep vegetables reminder as "pet vegetables," though. 
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Apr 19, 2017 19:20
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WrenP-Complete posted:Deploy guillotines on fruit and vegetables, in my opinion. No, that'd effectively chop them. Too good for this thread.
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Apr 22, 2017 00:24
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pangstrom posted:I have another revolutionary disruptive tech idea it's called Obtusero and uses a worm drive generating four tons of force that squeezes the self-driving-car talk out of the thread. 
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Apr 22, 2017 01:29
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Lawman 0 posted:I literally can't wait for this too ruin City infrastructure while they attempt to bore a test tunnel. I think Uber should start a competing firm and bore test tunnels without pulling permits or using licensed contractors.
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Apr 28, 2017 23:35
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The latest bullshit from the Bay Area: http://www.filld.com/  One of their trucks was in front of me in traffic today, painted with big block letters that read "LOW ON GAS? THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT." That name... oh god, they're reading the thread! All it needs is to be organic and cold-pressed double-filtered gas and they've got BINGO.
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May 24, 2017 17:33
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boner confessor posted:so i guess WeFuel, Yoshi, Booster, GasNinjas, FuelMe, MobileFuel, and Purple weren't enough for the "expensive tank of gas delivered to your car" space? And here I thought you were making poo poo up. 
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May 24, 2017 19:01
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Konstantin posted:Meh, petroleum gas is on the way out, if they really wanted to disrupt they would offer electric car charging, CNG, LNG, LPG, Biodiesel, and Ethanol blends. I'm in the Bay Area and all my friends brag about their alternative fuel vehicles, so surely they will completely replace dirty fossil fuels in a few years. If my alternative fuel vehicle is a bicycle, will they come shove pie in my mouth when I use the app?
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May 24, 2017 20:19
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Klyith posted:If Uber needed to burn cash on subsidies to compete with Lyft, how exactly was Lyft delivering rides so much cheaper? They were trying not only to compete with Lyft but hopefully drive them out of business before they established any foothold. Given Lyft was also playing "burn to grow" games with their capital, Uber apparently decided they were going to burn even more in hopes of effectively loss-leading the competitors off the field entirely. I will gladly clap and laugh at both companies as they loss-lead themselves straight off the map. Stupid loving sharing-economy bullshit...
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Jun 1, 2017 08:02
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Baby Babbeh posted:So wait, if they're just buying bags of teenager blood from blood banks and reselling them to rich assholes at a 1000% markup, is there anything stopping me, as a private citizen, from just buying blood from those blood banks, storing it in my fridge, and giving myself transfusions to extend my life? Other than sanity and common sense, I mean. Are you rich? If not, it's probably a crime. quote:Here if money gets stolen off your credit card you can make a claim and get it back, but if it's stolen off your debit card you're poo poo out of luck. Same for faulty products/bad services/generally not getting what you pay for. Chargebacks are really handy. One minor quibble here: You have consumer protections regarding fraud, theft, etc for your debit card, but until the claim gets settled, you're seriously short on money / flat broke. That's the major drawback compared to a credit card where you're just locked out of the card for a while. Agreed on the faulty product / bad service stuff though. Sundae fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jun 2, 2017 |
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Jun 2, 2017 20:58
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Discendo Vox posted:~5 year old Vox had a thought process something like this: I think your work is damned interesting.  
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Jun 19, 2017 20:12
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jon joe posted:How can I get some of this sick "no where else to put it" money? Just download and subscribe to my new app PitchR and we'll do the rest! Seriously though, someone make this one: A VR app for phones where it streams multi-angle cameras from an ongoing dinner in another country so that it feels like you're there at the table. Funding comes from people paying for tickets depending on how prestigious / special that particular dinner's location is. Your slogan: SedR - This Year, in Jerusalem. (I'll take my share of the royalty checks in bitcoins, please.)
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Jun 21, 2017 20:09
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Panfilo posted:Citizens of the United States pay less for food annually than any other country on the planet (something like 9% of their gross income) yet one in 7 children in the US doesn't get enough food to eat It's a hill, but nobody's going to die on it because pretty much everyone either hates the working poor or are perfectly willing to ignore their existence. SV / the bay area is not economically progressive in the slightest, whatever image they may attempt to portray to the contrary. Remember, this is an area where people voted against a homeless shelter and in favor of allowing police officers to confiscate homeless people's tents and possessions on the same ballot. Palo Alto (iirc?) residents also just voted to block a low-income senior housing development which would have had no additional tax burden for them because it would have "changed the character of the neighborhood" and "increased traffic," which are the two go-to reasons here whenever you want to block anyone from potentially impacting your property values. Nobody out here gives a poo poo about the bus drivers, cleaning staff, etc.
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Jul 25, 2017 20:32
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Is this a hill tech companies really want to die on?