1,000+ Theranos Documents Power New Elizabeth Holmes Desk Site

A website published this week lets visitors click through a simulated version of Elizabeth Holmes' desk circa 2016, complete with a flip-open MacBook Air and a lock-screen iPhone, both populated with documents pulled from the criminal trial United States v. Holmes, according to TechCrunch.

What is the website that lets users sit at Elizabeth Holmes' desk?

The project was built by Bo Lau, an engineer at the document-processing company Extend, and recreates a 2016-era workspace belonging to the former Theranos chief executive, TechCrunch reported. Visitors can click around the environment to open the MacBook, unlock the iPhone with a finger swipe, and browse files as if they were sitting where Holmes once sat. Lau described the project on social media, writing that she "built a website where you can sit at elizabeth holmes' desk open her macbook, scroll her iphone, run the theranos edison machine," according to the post cited by TechCrunch.

How many documents does the project draw from, and where did they come from?

The site is built on more than 1,000 emails, slides, texts, and other documents that were unveiled as exhibits during the Holmes criminal trial, TechCrunch reported. Lau said the materials — "her texts, emails, slides, documents, and theranos machine records" — are real and sourced directly from the court exhibits, according to her post quoted in the TechCrunch story.

By the numbers

• More than 1,000 emails, slides, texts, and documents were pulled from trial exhibits, per TechCrunch.
• The simulated environment is set in 2016, built to run on a MacBook Air using OS X El Capitan and a home-button iPhone, TechCrunch reported.

What can visitors actually do on the site?

Beyond browsing the laptop and phone screens, users can operate a simulation of the Theranos Edison machine — the blood-testing device the company said could run dozens of tests from a single finger-prick sample, TechCrunch reported. Amanda Silberling, a senior writer at TechCrunch who covers the intersection of technology and culture, wrote that the experience "takes you right back to 2016" and called it "an interesting way to peruse the documents from one of the most infamous court cases in tech history," noting it is easier than tracking down the underlying material across multiple court filing systems.

Why did an engineer at Extend build this?

The project also doubles as a demonstration of what Extend, the company where Lau works, says its technology can do. Extend's stated pitch, as quoted by TechCrunch, is that it can "parse, extract, and split your hardest documents with unmatched accuracy." Silberling wrote that she was not entirely sure what that description meant in practice, but added, "if it makes something like this Holmes desk simulator possible, then I guess that means I'm bullish on B2B SaaS."

What is the Nathan Fielder documentary connection?

TechCrunch reported that Lau is also using the site to promote a watch party her company is hosting for an upcoming documentary about Holmes directed by Nathan Fielder, titled "You Can See Everything." The desk simulator, in other words, functions simultaneously as a courtroom-document archive, a company showcase for Extend, and a promotional tie-in for the Fielder project, according to the TechCrunch account.

What should readers watch for next?

• Whether Extend uses the attention from the desk simulator to promote paid document-processing products beyond the one-off project.
• Additional coverage or reaction tied to Nathan Fielder's documentary "You Can See Everything" ahead of its release.
• Whether other trial exhibits — civil or criminal — get similar interactive treatments now that a public template exists for repackaging court discovery material.

The underlying appeal, per TechCrunch's writeup, is less about Holmes herself than about access: a thousand-plus scattered PDF exhibits from a federal fraud trial, reassembled into something a reader can click through in minutes rather than requesting document by document from court systems.

For readers following the broader Theranos story, the original TechCrunch report, linked above, includes Lau's full social media post describing how the materials were sourced and verified as authentic trial exhibits.

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