U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#411

Post by StreamBright » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 1:42 PM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #116

This doesn't surprise me, Palantir was funded by the CIA (yay libertarianism eh Thiel?), and as such, is probably suspicious of asian minorities. Remember Wen Ho Lee?

Yes we and Wikipedia as well do remember him.

"After federal investigators were unable to prove these initial accusations, the government conducted a separate investigation and was ultimately only able to charge Lee with improper handling of restricted data, one of the original 59 indictment counts, to which he pleaded guilty as part of a plea settlement. In June 2006, Lee received $1.6 million from the federal government and five media organizations as part of a settlement of a civil suit he had filed against them for leaking his name to the press before any formal charges had been filed against him.[2] Federal judge James A. Parker eventually apologized to Lee for denying him bail and putting him in solitary confinement, and excoriated the government for misconduct and misrepresentations to the court.[3]"

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#412

Post by burkaman » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #403

burkaman wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not illegal in most of the country: https://tcf.org/content/commentary/what-can-we-learn-from-st... And minority enrollment tends to decline in states where affirmative action is banned, so I don't think there are any conspiracies involved: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/24/us/affirmative...

It is illegal in the entire country. That is the general idea of the Supreme Court; it has national scope. Specifically, the motivation "correct the effects of structural racism" is illegal when a public school is engaging in affirmative action. Affirmative action is generally legal, as long as you have a legal motive. It turns out, though, that it's really easy for people to lie about their motives.

What supreme court decision are you talking about? You might be right, but the only decisions I could find eliminated quota systems, and required schools to take more than just race into account. I would be interested to see the case you're talking about.

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#413

Post by DavidHm » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:22 PM UTC

palunon wrote: post #350

DavidHm wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is fascinating. Anecdotally, in European universities, bachelors are the "get in as many people as we can for the tuition fees", while masters are the "let's be as selective as we can get away with".

Sometimes it's even worse... For example, in France, a university is required by law not to be selective for it's first year programs, as long as the candidate graduated high school.

So...what is that, first come first served basis?

I assume there's an upper limit on the number of students an university can take in for the first year, determined by staff and classroom availability.

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#414

Post by hackuser » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #404

thaumasiotes wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you'll have to work with what I could find in about a minute of searching the internet, which is only suggestive: > As elsewhere in the United States, the Jews of postwar Los Angles made their most spectacular fortunes in property development. S. Mark Taper, an English Jew with experience in London home construction, arrived in Los Angles in 1939 to lay the basis for one of California’s great real estate empire…

> Being "excluded from society" doesn't mean you get shut out of good jobs. It means you get shut out of certain good jobs That may be true, but I'm not sure what your point is. Certainly it's prejudiced against, and harmful and oppressive to people, even if not everything is bad or someone else has it worse. > Jews weren't exactly popular in Europe from the Middle Ages forward, but everyone acknowledged that they ne…

I'll add to my comment above: The example in the grandparent post was the most successful people in one community at one time; I'm not sure what it actually represents.

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#415

Post by Zigurd » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 8:14 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #199

Zigurd wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both sides of this issue are wrong. On the one hand, If I knew, based on online articles about the interview process, that there is a set of 100 questions out of which I might get asked 20, I'd prep on those 100 questions. It seems like the interviewees are underpreped for interviewing. That's sloppy. Maybe that's a reason not to hire them, but it probably isn't the best way to select hires. On the other hand this pr…

You'd have a good point in your second paragraph if we were talking about implementing a Fibonacci Heap or an AVL tree. But the comment you're responding to is about people failing FizzBuzz.

Good point, FizzBuzz should take a couple minutes. AND it's the sort of thing a prepared interviewee should nail. I'd hope the rest of the interview would focus more on real-world considerations.