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MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

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Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#21

Post by gonzo41 »

padolsey wrote: post #11

Can anyone familiar with the technology help disillusion naive people like me as to why on earth palantir needs to exist? It feels like a big pile of nothing. But tbf that's how I feel about Salesforce and Jira too. Big fat database schemas with big fat CRUD atop and layers of snazzy sparklines to make PMs and clients feel nurtured and fuzzy that they've done something material.

They have magic consultant power mode.

In government you have to deliver, most of the time the mode of delivery is boring, small, conservative, and disjointed from other government groups because large efforts of work attract big budgets, oversight and doubt.

Consultants are magic, because they come with no baggage and promise the world. They take you hostage with sunk cost fallacy and then after years they deliver something.

At the end you're so tired you think that what they did was beyond your government agency and the cycle continues.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#22

Post by spiderfarmer »

captainbland wrote: post #17

Honestly it's really weird that it was ever allowed to get this stage. Their leadership has been pretty "mask off" for a good while now.

That's what you get when decisions are made by people who don't understand anything about the stuff they vote on.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#23

Post by hobs »

callamdelaney wrote: post #20
Skgqie1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiw does "woke" pose a threat to national security? What exactly do you mean by "wokeness"?

[flagged]

You do not define wokeness except as an opposition to... nations? You are deep in the propaganda hole and you should attempt to claw yourself out a bit before trying to convince others of your irrationality.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#24

Post by Eridrus »

padolsey wrote: post #11

Can anyone familiar with the technology help disillusion naive people like me as to why on earth palantir needs to exist? It feels like a big pile of nothing. But tbf that's how I feel about Salesforce and Jira too. Big fat database schemas with big fat CRUD atop and layers of snazzy sparklines to make PMs and clients feel nurtured and fuzzy that they've done something material.

Companies need databases lol.

I don't know how you think a b2b company could run sales without a CRM like Salesforce.

To give your question a generous interpretation, Salesforce is more valuable than Apptio or your home grown CRM because it already has all the features any sales org needs, and all the fragmented sales and marketing tooling are already integrated with it.

And Sales is a very expensive and also high ROI activity. You don't want your sales team hung up trying to figure out how to get the random CRM to do something. You're not looking to cut costs in this area, you're looking to enhance the overall productivity of the org. Sales tooling overall is very expensive for this reason, any marginal edge is worth a lot.

It's also worth noting that a big value of things like Salesforce is that it lets management check up on what people are doing, because as much as HN doesn't like to admit it, people are often not very careful or diligent, and you need to perform supervision on the vast majority of people to improve their performance.

Jira is similar, in that eng is very expensive, and its probably better than what these companies were doing beforehand, even if it is suboptimal.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#25

Post by coldtea »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #22
captainbland wrote: post #17

Honestly it's really weird that it was ever allowed to get this stage. Their leadership has been pretty "mask off" for a good while now.

That's what you get when decisions are made by people who don't understand anything about the stuff they vote on.

...but understand and appreciate bribes very well

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#26

Post by edgyquant »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #18
padolsey wrote: post #11

Can anyone familiar with the technology help disillusion naive people like me as to why on earth palantir needs to exist? It feels like a big pile of nothing. But tbf that's how I feel about Salesforce and Jira too. Big fat database schemas with big fat CRUD atop and layers of snazzy sparklines to make PMs and clients feel nurtured and fuzzy that they've done something material.

Why does Palantir specifically need to exist? To funnel those juicy government budgets into shareholders' pockets. Why does anyone bother to use them? Because they have convincing marketing (which may or may not include buttering government palms with, um, "incentives" ...) Occam's razor: It's a big pile of "list of things being handled by an outside entity so I neither have to think about it, nor hire for them."

If Palantir wasn’t highly effective at aggregating data no one would care about the. They are considered a threat to privacy and freedom because they are a good product

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#27

Post by oncallthrow »

padolsey wrote: post #11

Can anyone familiar with the technology help disillusion naive people like me as to why on earth palantir needs to exist? It feels like a big pile of nothing. But tbf that's how I feel about Salesforce and Jira too. Big fat database schemas with big fat CRUD atop and layers of snazzy sparklines to make PMs and clients feel nurtured and fuzzy that they've done something material.

Palantir’s product is light years ahead of anything any government IT project has ever, and in my opinion can ever, deliver. They’re not even in the same league.

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#28

Post by coldtea »

GaryBluto wrote: post #4
cjs_ac wrote: post #2

TIL that the head of Palantir's UK arm is the grandson of Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.

Sins of the father are not sins of the (grand)son.

You'd be surprised how often the beliefs of the father/grandfather are those of the son/grandson, not to mention how often they feel the need to avenge for the perceived injustices or slights done to their parents

Re: MoD sources warn Palantir role at heart of government is threat to UK security

#30

Post by angiolillo »

padolsey wrote: post #11

Can anyone familiar with the technology help disillusion naive people like me as to why on earth palantir needs to exist? It feels like a big pile of nothing. But tbf that's how I feel about Salesforce and Jira too. Big fat database schemas with big fat CRUD atop and layers of snazzy sparklines to make PMs and clients feel nurtured and fuzzy that they've done something material.

Plenty of companies don't "need to exist". A company exists because someone decided to start it (usually to make some money) and lasts until someone decides to end it (usually when it stops making money).

If you're asking why Palantir (and Salesforce, Jira, etc) continue to make money despite not having any novel or complex technologies, my experience has been that these are not prerequisites for solving the vast majority of business problems. Usually network effects, customer relationships, brand identity, user interface, inertia, etc are all more important than the technology.

It is not always easy for a technologist to admit, but companies whose ongoing success is primarily due to some sort of (non-UX) technological superiority are the exception rather than the rule.

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