This "argument" has been going around since electric vehicles were in production. It's obvious that once electricity generation shifts from fossil fuels to renewables, electric vehicles (and everything else that uses said electricity) will naturally become cleaner. If you buy a car with a regular old engine, you're stuck burning gasoline. Non-story.
Part of the MO for TPP was to have America's trading partners conform to better environmental/safety/health regs, but any chance of that happening now is a pipe dream, let alone with either China or India.
That being said, both countries are attempting to move rapidly away from fossil fuels and dirty industries as their burgeoning middle classes start to clamor for cleaner air.
Like I've mentioned before, Theranos needs to shut down. The technology doesn't work (and likely it never will since blood constituents are not evenly distributed at small volumes) and its investors and executives are complicit in fraud. While half-completed/non-working solutions are fine in software world and with consumer electronics, a misreading or missed reading of blood parts can easily cost the health or life of a person. I'll be glad to see the SEC/FDA put an end to this.
Actually, mortgage interest deduction was considered to be limited to only 1 home. It causes higher demand than without, which helps to drive house prices up, and at this point, out of reach of many in some cities.
Same with the availability of cheap loans and grants for colleges - it only really serves to increase the price of an education.
Theranos doesn't have anything behind it - this company needs to go away and return its money to its investors. A single drop of blood is far too little to provide an accurate representation of your own blood components, the blood that's gathered from a fingerprick might end up containing a much higher or much lower concentration of 'x' than the rest of your blood. It's why traditional blood tests gather much larger amounts of blood - to increase the sample size.
I've been reading Hacker News for a long time, and until now I've resisted creating an account. It used to be that this forum was a collection of scrappy founders, talking about building out their companies or particular engineering techniques, or the latest front-end library. A lot of posts revolved around helping each other out, either emotionally or technically.
This post represents its slide into a vapid gossip rag. Another reddit. Why does it matter if a founder comes from an Ivy League school? Does that prevent you from founding a company? People who end up going to Ivy League schools represents a self-selecting bunch of go-getters, that's it. Successful founders don't ask these sorts of questions, they just build.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2015/11/20/marissa-ma...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/01/10/marissa-...
http://www.growthbusiness.co.uk/the-worst-ceos-in-corporate-...
I suggest you get off your high horse.