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NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

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Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#91

Post by mcast »

colek42 wrote: post #61
rdtsc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true universally. While there is a hot market for startups based on Angular ( or is React these days?) and microservices or other such things the market for enterprise desktop software is still there. Try writing a serious CAD application in HTML5/JS for example.

I don't think writing a browser based, professional, CAD application is out of the question. Especially with WASM gaining support in modern browsers and WebGL2. I think this was done a few years ago, but it still amazes me. http://www.meshlabjs.net/

For a company like Palantir, I would imagine most of their clients are running older browsers, possibly even IE I'm not familiar with their product, but a web app would certainly introduce more developer time spent on keeping cross-compatibility with older browsers while a Java/native app is practically WYSIWYG.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#92

Post by kirillzubovsky »

tyingq wrote: post #3

NYPD gets their source data, but not the algorithm. Hard to say if that's unfair without knowing the nature of the contract. It's certainly not unusual to sell analysis without selling the "exactly how".

Definitely makes sense, especially if NYPD contracted with some firm to replace Palantir, and now wants the algorithm because that's the hard part to copy. Obviously the methods by which they are able to process information is the reason governments pay them big bucks.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#93

Post by kirillzubovsky »

Interesting the aim at Palantir's supposedly bad Java stack. It might be uncool, and even bad from the programmer's POV, but many government agencies have regulations that actually prevent them from using "cool" technology. I know of orgs settling gov-nt and medical software, for example, and they use Java and .Net because those things are easy to sell. Doing anything in Ruby requires jumping through a thousand additional hoops. EOD, the language for them is just best business decision.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#94

Post by lmeyerov »

mcast wrote: post #91
colek42 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think writing a browser based, professional, CAD application is out of the question. Especially with WASM gaining support in modern browsers and WebGL2. I think this was done a few years ago, but it still amazes me. http://www.meshlabjs.net/

For a company like Palantir, I would imagine most of their clients are running older browsers, possibly even IE I'm not familiar with their product, but a web app would certainly introduce more developer time spent on keeping cross-compatibility with older browsers while a Java/native app is practically WYSIWYG.

Maybe two fun data points:

-- We achieve magnitudes higher visual scale via GPU client/cloud computing... while running in a browser

-- We intersect with some of Palantir's customers (though we're more fortune 2000 sec/fraud/etc.), and are deploying fine. WebGL is ~5 years old.

This may also be a good point to note.. The Graphistry team is ~doubling! If scaling visual analytics for cybersecurity, anti-fraud, etc., sounds worthwhile, please send your CV/LinkedIn/Github to build@graphistry.com !

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#95

Post by linkregister »

nl wrote: post #4

With no technical details it's hard to know what is going on. "Analysis" can mean many things, and sometimes one person's open analysis data is another's proprietary visualisation.

This is almost certainly the saved file with all the entities and relations. I can't describe it except for compare it to other network analysis suites: Maltego and Analyst's Notebook.

Without the Palantir appliance, the analyst can't create or update relationships or entities, or search/filter data sets. The saved file would simply allow him or her to view the set of entities along with any reports generated.

I actually feel for Palantir in that regard because it would take lots of work to port this format into the new system. Likely there are things that don't translate, so the information will be lost.

Caveat: I've only messed around with Palantir, never done any actual work with it.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#96

Post by linkregister »

Maxious wrote: post #27
kendallpark wrote: post #14

> The department has created a new system to replace Palantir. > The new system, named Cobalt, is a group of IBM products tied together with NYPD-created software. You really have to wonder about the quality of this internal product. From what I've gleaned about Palantir over the years, they supposedly have one of the hardest dev interview processes. People that work there are on top of their game. My gut feel is tha…

IBM acquired a company called i2 in 2011 that already was a competitor to Palantir for defence/law enforcement analysis https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/35255.wss Even if you don't have the roughest and toughest devs in the market, surely spending more time with NYPD than the Palantir FDEs (are engineers part of the skeleton staff mentioned in the article?) would get a more valuable result?

This is Analyst's Notebook, a product that has been around for at least as long as Palantir. I imagine i2 continuously improves on it.

In the past, it lacked the huge amount of transforms in Palantir to get data into the worksheet. Of course these transforms were written by expensive Forward Deployed Engineers to write glue code and convert disparate protocols and file formats. It turns out that doesn't scale well, and it looks like Palantir had to raise prices.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#97

Post by bm1362 »

obmelvin wrote: post #62
jitl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This dig at Palantir’s stack is outright false. A ton of their “products” are modern TypeScript + React UIs over reasonable open-source datastores, and they open-source plenty of stuff from that stack. Check out this React component, which is pretty cool: https://palantir.github.io/react-mosaic/ Plenty more examples here: https://palantir.github.io

Lol. Sure, a good UI is important, but what's even more important is the backend data analytics and that's were palantir is the lacking

How is Java/Spring an issue here? Guess what powers Amazon, Google, Apple etc.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#98

Post by linkregister »

foolfoolz wrote: post #35
svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

I interviewed there a couple years ago. the guy forgot to call me for the phone screen. I emailed the recruiter and they said sorry they can reschedule for 7pm that night when he got home. on the call (which started at 7:15) he talked 90% of the time. he would ask me two or three questions at a time, and when I would get a chance to answer one he would jump in and answer the rest of them for me. I was rejected for la…

I interviewed there. It was extremely challenging, but somehow I passed it. I had a very positive impression of the company and its culture. Recruiters and interviewers were super-responsive.

It was in the early days, so it was a very startup-y attitude, "we're so smart" sort of thing. The engineers were smart, from Stanford and CMU, so it was partially justified. I ended up not taking the offer. Not for a particularly good reason, it just didn't fit with life circumstances.

Looking back, it would have been a bad idea. I didn't understand the product, which is pretty essential when joining a company. The stock was granted as options, so without an IPO it is illiquid. The salaries were all low, but at the time someone could have lived in Palo Alto on them.

It turns out they thought they could tackle this problem of disparate data silos and change the world while respecting privacy. They weren't able to automate away the expensive process of having Forward Deployed Engineers do data integration work.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#100

Post by sytelus »

ProAm wrote: post #44
svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

Technology stacks do not make or break businesses..... It's foolish to think so.

No, they often do. Netscape couldn't catch with IE because of their convoluted stack. Friendster couldn't catch with Facebook for same reason from what I hear. If you are building web app in COBOL or Fortran, you are certainly at huge disadvantage with someone else doing stuff with modern more richer platforms.
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