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Theranos Elizabeth Holmes sold compilers to China?
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MrMobodies:
I was reading a Wikipedia article about Elizabeth Holmes to do with Theranos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes

--- Quote ---Holmes attended St. John's School in Houston.[17] During high school, she was interested in computer programming and claims she started her first business selling C++ compilers to Chinese universities.[18] Her parents had arranged Mandarin Chinese home tutoring, and partway through high school, Holmes began attending Stanford University's summer Mandarin program.[19][11] In 2001, Holmes attended Stanford, where she studied chemical engineering, and worked as a student researcher and laboratory assistant in the School of Engineering.[16]
--- End quote ---

I find that hard to believe not all because of the recent fraud but it is in China and they seem surrounded by a lot of things so why would they need to buy it from her overseas?

I question is there anything unique about these compilers that the she was selling to the Universities there.
MK14:
https://medium.com/cs183c-blitzscaling-class-collection/scaling-theranos-with-elizabeth-holmes-class-14-notes-of-stanford-university-s-cs183c-f2029b7c21a0

She seems to be talking about it (see link above) and said:


--- Quote ---Question from the audience:
 What was the business in China?

Elizabeth Holmes: This was in my C++ days, I was looking at the fact that universities in China didn’t have access to compilers the way US universities did, so I was distributing compilers to Universities in China.

Did it make a lot of money?
 — No (laughter)
--- End quote ---

Wild speculation:
Could the business, be helping the Chinese, get around possible US export restrictions, against China, perhaps ?
Or companies that don't like to sell in China.

I.e. Be a sort of grey market or even illegal operation ?
MK14:
Here is a direct link to her actually talking about it.

https://youtu.be/juhATwufdbc?list=PLnsTB8Q5VgnVzh1S-VMCXiuwJglk5AV--&t=4013

The link should start at around 1 hour and seven minutes, which is what I presume the REAL source of the information is from (as regards the Wiki in the opening post).
SiliconWizard:
Alright but why would that matter? I know she fucked up, but are we going to endlessly dig up all the details of her past life? Why not try and find something from when she was a kid and stole some candy from her kindergarten buddies? *puzzled* :popcorn:
MK14:
I have mixed feelings.
Maybe you are right, we shouldn't be discussing this.
On the other hand, it would be interesting to know if she was telling the truth or not, about selling the compilers in China.


--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on February 28, 2020, 12:52:18 am ---find something from when she was a kid and stole some candy from her kindergarten buddies?

--- End quote ---

Actually, the real life arguing over her, has got much, much worse than that.

Would you believe, they are arguing over her family history, from the 1890's ?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Elizabeth_Holmes


--- Quote ---"The family’s wealth, power and political connections date to the 1890s, when Christian Rasmus Holmes, a Danish immigrant and physician, married Bettie Fleischmann, heiress to the namesake yeast fortune and a Cincinnati socialite with a fondness for Chinese bronzes
--- End quote ---

Back on topic, the 'Talk' page also discusses her Compiler selling activities.


--- Quote ---Selling compilers to Chinese Universities
I highly doubt the veracity of the claim that a teenage Elizabeth Holmes sold C compilers which she wrote to Chinese Universities. At this time I know there were definitely free compilers like GNU which many programmers have and still do use for small projects. I don't know what the state of the Chinese university system was at the time, but I find it highly suspicious that a teenager with limited experience could take up the task of writing on a whim and then to sell it to a non-trivial institution such as a University. Do note that in the article source, there is no mention of the universities to which this compiler was sold nor the process of its design and manufacture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Margielamango (talk • contribs) 19:43, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Neither the source nor this Wikipedia article say she wrote the compilers. She just sold them. I guess she bought them wholesale in the US and sold them in China. It was in the late 1990s or early 2000s, so she may actually have sold boxes with DVDs and books. Or she may have sold licenses that she bought from the developer. Or maybe she had a contract with a company which made compilers and sold them for a premium... Many scenarios that are quite possible. Nothing special.
"free compilers like GNU which many programmers have and still do use for small projects" - Free compilers like GCC have always been used for huge projects, e.g. GNU/Linux, but other compilers may have advantages, e.g. you pretty much need Visual C++ if you want to build Windows programs. There are several other possible reasons why a university may prefer a specific compiler. Nothing suspicious here either. List of compilers#C++ compilers (And by the way, the source (and this article) say she sold C++ compilers, not C compilers. Closely related languages, but also quite different.)
Just to make this clear: I'm not trying to defend Holmes. Given here later history, it's possible she also lied about the compiler business. But so far, there's no good reason to doubt what's reported in a reliable source, and the part about the compilers hasn't been retracted.
P.S.: At least she admitted that her compiler business didn't make much money. Chrisahn (talk) 20:17, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

--- End quote ---

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