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Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

blog.palantir.com

11–20 of 41 posts

Re: Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

#12
post #4
post #3

Gah! Cognitive dissonance! How can I assign a good/evil score now?

Palantir is definitely True Neutral

That is what I always admired about the Ferengi. Whatever beef you had with them, you knew they could be counted on not to take sides, as long as you had money you were good.

It seems they are kinda the same.

Re: Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

#14
post #10

I was surprised to see Swing. Is that still a fairly common foundation for UIs?

I remember seeing a demo of their UIs when they gave an infosession at school. They look nothing like Swing--as far as I could tell, all the widgets were either custom or redesigned. If I remember correctly, it looked more like MS Office 2007 than anything else.

Since Swing is "lightweight"--all the widgets are drawn in Java instead of using native ones--using it to make a completely custom UI makes sense.

Re: Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

#15
post #6

it would be interesting to see what the internal divisions of palantir are, and what are their government/defense contracts like vs. their commercial products division. fight for government money can always get a little dirty. i'm sure good engineering happens there but they will always be colored by the HB Gary episode. plus the fact that partnering with a shady right wing corporate law firm and the HB Gary Federal…

I am often very perplexed why legitimate comments get downvoted. This is one of those times. WTH everyone, this isn't Reddit.

I don't see how caycep's comment enhances my understanding of the released software. It's just a big dump of ad hominem (as are practically all the other comments).

Re: Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am often very perplexed why legitimate comments get downvoted. This is one of those times. WTH everyone, this isn't Reddit.

I don't see how caycep's comment enhances my understanding of the released software. It's just a big dump of ad hominem (as are practically all the other comments).

Palantir open sourcing their software could and should be viewed through a PR lens, an action meant to build favorable reputation in the developer community. Maybe caycep could have elaborated on this more, but I understand the point: Palantir has a mixed history, so we should take the positive with a grain of salt and beware.

Re: Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

#17
post #2

I think these were the same crowd drawing up plans to sell the government on how to crush wikileaks amid other miscellaneous dirty tricks. ( http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-11/tech/30050719... )

To be fair, Palantir says their name was associated with that HBGary proposal in error, severed all ties with HBGary, and denied offering any software that could be used for the tactics in the HBGary presentation.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/11/palanti...

Anyone is of course free to believe them or not, but our threads shouldn't be forwarding the vague allegations without also including the more specific denials.

Re: Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

#18
post #2

I think these were the same crowd drawing up plans to sell the government on how to crush wikileaks amid other miscellaneous dirty tricks. ( http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-11/tech/30050719... )

How could Palantir software even accomplish what was claimed in the above links?

I don't see how data visualization software can be used to crush wikileaks in the manner that the article says.

Re: Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

#19
post #2

I think these were the same crowd drawing up plans to sell the government on how to crush wikileaks amid other miscellaneous dirty tricks. ( http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-11/tech/30050719... )

Tinfoil hats like to say that facebook is probably tied to the CIA, but Palantir is the one that actually is.

"Palantir was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, Dr. Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings. Early investments came in the form of $2 million from the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel and $30 million from Thiel and his firm, The Founders Fund. Dr. Alex Karp is Palantir's CEO. Palantir’s name comes from the "seeing stones" in the Lord of the Rings.

Palantir was built through iterative collaboration between computer scientists and analysts from various intelligence agencies over the course of nearly three years, through pilots facilitated by In-Q-Tel."

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