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Inside Palantir

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Re: Inside Palantir

#51

Post by striking »

DasIch wrote: post #48
laxatives wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buzzfeed was also respnsible for outing tennis fixing in The Tennis Racket using statistical analysis of players' matches.

Buzzfeed is shaping up to be the one of the best sources for investigative journalism. Who would have thought?

A lot of other places can't pull it off because investigative journalism doesn't pay all that well. But it looks like drawing a strict line between "clickbait" and "investigative" while serving both is actually a win for Buzzfeed. Clickbait makes money from "most people", investigative journalism encourages thought and shows off how good Buzzfeed can be.

Re: Inside Palantir

#52

Post by ginger_beer_m »

Lxr wrote: post #44

> “One of the things we did well early on was to recognize and invest in the unique talents of each Palantirian” I find it a bit weird how tech companies make up names for their employees now. Googler, Palantirian... does this make people work harder because they feel like they belong or something?

it appeals to that primitive instinct of belonging to a pack, fostering an us-vs-them mentality. this way, you are less likely to leave and are encouraged to give your 110%

Re: Inside Palantir

#53

Post by twoodfin »

DasIch wrote: post #48
laxatives wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buzzfeed was also respnsible for outing tennis fixing in The Tennis Racket using statistical analysis of players' matches.

Buzzfeed is shaping up to be the one of the best sources for investigative journalism. Who would have thought?

AFAIK, that was always the plan. You need a huge audience to have the revenue to do great journalism online, and one of the few proven ways to build that audience is with clickbait and listicles.

So while it may seem like Buzzfeed has a split personality, it's very much intentional.

Re: Inside Palantir

#54

Post by gkoberger »

l33tbro wrote: post #45

Confusing company on many levels. On one hand such huge clients, top talent (until recently), and Thiel's famous success pre-requisite of having unique offering. But then ... they go and do really, really weird stuff like making recruitment videos shot on someone's Iphone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMqPoCQ5Q8 I think for a long time they got away with seeming really cloudy and potentially mis-managed because o…

I have no problem with that recruitment video. When you have the reputation of a secretive, shadowy company, it makes sense to forego a polished video and instead aim for something more organic and "real".

People want to work at something that mirrors Google, not LexCorp.

Re: Inside Palantir

#55

Post by chimeracoder »

selectron wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it's creepy, but there's also something else I've been suspecting about all this surveillance for years: it doesn't really work. Moral, ethical, and political problems aside is mass surveillance snake oil? Is there really any credible evidence that mass surveillance has stopped any significant terror attacks? Can you really find needles in haystacks reliably without drowning in false positives?

It is possible that no significant terror attacks were even attempted against the US since 9/11. And if an attack was stopped they wouldn't necessarily want to publish how they stopped it. So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything.

> It is possible that no significant terror attacks were even attempted against the US since 9/11

The TSA itself has literally admitted that there is no evidence of terrorist plots against aviation in the US[0].

That doesn't cover everything that could be possibly labeled 'terrorism', but given that piece of evidence, it does raise more than a little doubt about the prevalence of threats elsewhere.

[0] https://boingboing.net/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-terrorists-in-a....

Re: Inside Palantir

#56

Post by massel »

jbob2000 wrote: post #10

I want to see what Palantir actually produces. Like does Coca-Cola get a monthly report that says "Hey, you guys should bring back Cherry Cola in Montana for an expected 4% increase in sales" or what? What does $1mil/month actually get you ?

Actually maybe they do - they just brought back Cherry and Vanilla coke in Canada. I for one will be contributing to an increase in sales.

Re: Inside Palantir

#57

Post by ryanSrich »

DasIch wrote: post #48
laxatives wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buzzfeed was also respnsible for outing tennis fixing in The Tennis Racket using statistical analysis of players' matches.

Buzzfeed is shaping up to be the one of the best sources for investigative journalism. Who would have thought?

No one would have thought.

That's why these comment threads are always the same. People remarking how surprised they are that something of this quality came from buzzfeed. I see this as a desperate need to separate their investigative brand from their click bait one.

Re: Inside Palantir

#58

Post by us0r »

selectron wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it's creepy, but there's also something else I've been suspecting about all this surveillance for years: it doesn't really work. Moral, ethical, and political problems aside is mass surveillance snake oil? Is there really any credible evidence that mass surveillance has stopped any significant terror attacks? Can you really find needles in haystacks reliably without drowning in false positives?

It is possible that no significant terror attacks were even attempted against the US since 9/11. And if an attack was stopped they wouldn't necessarily want to publish how they stopped it. So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything.

>And if an attack was stopped they wouldn't necessarily want to publish how they stopped it. So it is impossible to really know if the surveillance does anything.

A trial, send a group to gitmo, a drone strike? If they could provide an example it would be plastered all over the place. Hell they even post youtube videos of their drone work - https://www.youtube.com/user/centcom/videos.

Re: Inside Palantir

#59

Post by ethanbond »

freyr wrote: post #50
ethanbond wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the timestamp on the video... their products look sweet now.

> Ethan Bond > Palantir, Product Designer; Starting June 2016, New York City, NY I realize you're not technically a Palantir employee quite yet, but there's definitely the opportunity for bias here.

Yes, true. I removed the claim re: the quality of the team, hopefully it's a bit less misleading.

Re: Inside Palantir

#60

Post by callmeed »

My understanding is that Palantir is running an engineering mill/sweatshop using fresh out of school CS grads (particularly from Stanford). That much of their time is spent simply writing client-specific code that imports and cleans up data from disparate enterprise systems. That its not challenging, innovating, or exciting.

Of course this is all anecdotal based on what I've heard from friends and a Palantir engineer I met at bar.

Anyone with more insight know if this is accurate?

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