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Palantir acquires Kimono

kimonolabs.com

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Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#81

Post by [deleted] »

whorleater wrote: post #63
misterrobot wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have the ability to intern at Palantir you have the ability to intern at any number of more responsible companies. Palantir has a bigger booth at the career fair, but I'd bet working at Apple or Uber is just as much of a resume boost at much less of a societal cost. (source: am a college student)

Interning at Apple or Uber has much more stiff competition though. The barrier to entry for Palantir is remarkably low considering their pay, it's not surprising that college students apply for Palantir. (Source: am college senior)

[deleted]

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#82

Post by argonaut »

whorleater wrote: post #38
misterrobot wrote: post #34

The worst part about Palantir is their ability to masquerade as this hip startup, as though working for them is as innocent as working for Imgur or Twitter or whatever. They recruit the hell out of MIT students, and it sucks seeing my friends interview for this incredibly shitty company that has openly said it won't go public since that would make running their business "very difficult" (hm, because you're doing repr…

Interning for Palantir is a pretty big resume boost for college students, and they have one of the highest paying internships in the valley. There's some serious benefits to going to Palantir.

It's a big resume boost yes. The pay is competitive but not especially higher than any other top companies/startups, though.

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#83

Post by argonaut »

randycupertino wrote: post #67
jonnybgood wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is targeting software? How are they responsible for assassinations and disappearing people? What is this big brother tech?

First of all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#Contro... Also: > When intruders from the hacker group Anonymous gained access to thousands of emails stored on the servers of the security firm HB Gary Federal, the emails revealed that Palantir had worked with HB Gary Federal to develop proposals for attacking WikiLeaks’ infrastructure, blackmailing its supporters and identifying donors. http://www…

The sex accusations ended up being baseless, and Stanford reversed their ban on Lonsdale entering the campus (and Stanford has a lower evidentiary standard than the courts)

Also, your quote doesn't appear in that article at all any more.

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#84

Post by joering2 »

assocguilt wrote: post #79
joering2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I can't stop myself: Interning as a prison ward in Auschwitz is a pretty big resume boost for anyone who served in a prison system, and Nazis have one of the highest paying internships abroad. There's some serious benefits of becoming a prison ward in Auschwitz. That's how I see this parasite company.

Curious to know what Palantir are doing that you have a such an issue with - surely they aren't committing genocide?

Directly not, but to say the company is adding any benefits to our society would be a long stretch.

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#85

Post by danso »

From the FAQ:

https://www.kimonolabs.com/faq#faq-303

> Will Palantir (or anyone else) have access to my personal data?

No. All of your user data including names, email addresses, passwords and APIs will not be shared with anyone and will be securely purged from our servers on March 31, 2016.

Uh...but what about the scraped data? I don't think I've used Kimono since it was first announced on HN as a side project...but I'm assuming that you got to save scraped data semi-privately with Kimono? Is that considered "user data"? Kind of a vague term, and one I usually associate with data of the personal information variety. I'm sure someone at Palantir can find some interesting meta-insights from analyzing the data collected by the kind of people (data scientists, etc) who would use Kimono heavily.

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#86

Post by equivalentideas »

You can host scrapers you need to migrate on morph.io ( https://morph.io ) a free platform for hosting and running scrapers, storing your data and providing access to it in a range of formats (JSON, CSV, SQLite). It’s free, open source, supports a bunch of languages and is run by an Australian non-profit, where I happen to work ;-).

Here's a tutorial all about running a scraper on morph.io https://www.openaustraliafoundation.org.au/2015/10/13/ruby-w...

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#87

Post by p4wnc6 »

orng wrote: post #37
smegel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it because what they do (helping governments snoop on social media) or are they actually a bad place to work?

For morality reasons I would never be comfortable working there. The workplace could be heaven on earth and pay really well but there are simply things that are more important.

The company culture is quite shitty as well.

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#88

Post by pbreit »

misterrobot wrote: post #34

The worst part about Palantir is their ability to masquerade as this hip startup, as though working for them is as innocent as working for Imgur or Twitter or whatever. They recruit the hell out of MIT students, and it sucks seeing my friends interview for this incredibly shitty company that has openly said it won't go public since that would make running their business "very difficult" (hm, because you're doing repr…

Care to identify any of your concerns?

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#89

Post by argonaut »

misterrobot wrote: post #34

The worst part about Palantir is their ability to masquerade as this hip startup, as though working for them is as innocent as working for Imgur or Twitter or whatever. They recruit the hell out of MIT students, and it sucks seeing my friends interview for this incredibly shitty company that has openly said it won't go public since that would make running their business "very difficult" (hm, because you're doing repr…

I know some engineers who work or worked there. Aside from the normal engineers (tools, backend, etc.), they are essentially high-priced tech consultants sent to companies and orgs that have no internal software talent at all, to help them analyze their (atrociously stored/managed) data. None of them work on anything shady. They essentially build web apps and backend apps to analyze and visualize data. Nothing vodoo military about it, although the military is a customer.

The pay actually isn't actually particularly high for SV standards. I think Facebook outpays them, for example - and Facebook is less selective than Palantir. But their reputation is that they're full of top engineers and you'll learn a ton there, and that's why the people I know work/worked there.

The downsides I've heard about are no work/life balance and fratty culture. Those are real downside, not the FUD about ethics.

Re: Palantir acquires Kimono

#90

Post by outdooricon »

kumarski wrote: post #39

Relevant Scraping/Crawling Lead Mining Tools: http://grabby.io http://fullcontact.com http://emailhunter.co http://clearbit.com http://toofr.com http://import.io http://kimonolabs.com http://apifier.com (favs) http://elink.club http://www.eliteproxyswitcher.com/ - ;)

Was really hoping someone would share a comment like this, thank you. I feel like I just got completely screwed by Kimono...
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