It seems to me that journalists and activists could benefit from software that could help track networks, timelines, etc., and organize unstructured data the way an intelligence analyst would. Anything like that out there?
Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
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Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#2Not exactly what you're asking for. But http://www.jplusplus.org/en/ have mailing lists and is a community of journalists looking through data. I'm sure they have alternatives or suggestions.
Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#3[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#4Its called Wikipedia [ https://youtu.be/ESVQknHESuA?t=2209 ]
The paid versions are called Google, Palantir, the CIA etc.
Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#5Because that capability is too valuable. So if you're interested in writing code that can do that you can find someone to make your life comfortable on the condition that they get to keep your code. If repo of code starts growing that can do that someone will come offering them candies :-).
As it gets a bit more common place, or if tools to do some of the heavy lifing get out.
Keep an eye on some programs like the one at CU Boulder, it should produce some interesting research that moves this along outside of the halls of industy.
Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#6I dunno, are there non-state actors with the capacity to inflitrate and disrupt militarized adersaries at a global scale in furtherance of the foreign policy motives of a super power on the world stage?
I wonder if they'd release under the GPL3 or or BSD licence. Maybe they'll let me fork them on github.
Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#7The only thing close that I can think of is: https://github.com/sirensolutions/kibi
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0O8UNM0B7Y
Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#8You can start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis_softwa...
Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#9GDELT project provides open data on everything that happens on the planet.
Re: Ask HN: Is there an open source equivalent to Palantir?
#10I've been working on a project called Aleph (https://github.com/pudo/aleph, live: http://data.occrp.org/), which is targeted at investigative reporters. It's supposed to handle a related set of problems, which is data integration of diverse public records and journalistic lead generation (i.e. what to investigate next). The road map for the coming two years includes some visual analytics similar to what I guess most people use Palantir for (we'll have to keep it very simple).
The big problem in NGO space is obviously finding engineers: we've got some budget for this stuff, but getting people to join us, work at a lower salary and then code their heart out (because teams are tiny) is hard.
On the fun side, you get to see your code applied to fighting real-world problems every day :)