Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 207 posts

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#121

Post by sah2ed »

api wrote: post #54
otalp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he's a traditional American libertarian. If you read his book Zero To One, he states that he thinks a fundamental truth that most people don't realize is that improving technology is more important than globalization for the human race, which is fine, but that leads him to the conclusion that things like welfare and tax increases are an abomination holding back progress, which makes him against both. I…

That's a little bit of an oversimplification. Thiel thinks that globalization of development without massive technological advancement will lead to a kind of slow Malthusian catastrophe since current technology (fossil fuel energy systems, slow transit, inefficient power grids, etc.) cannot possibly support the entire human race at a modern developed world standard of living. I don't agree with everything Peter think…

Thiel is not the only one to make that observation. Alan Kay has said something along those lines -- that there have been virtually no compelling inventions in computing for a while now [0][1].

[0] http://stackoverflow.com/q/432922/177696

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941827

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#122

Post by nyolfen »

api wrote: post #89
humanrebar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lot of interesting writing. Thanks. Though I think the alt-right is an embracing of the worldview of identity politics that mainly comes from the left. It's a if-we-can't-join-in-fight-them response to picking sides. That's to say I don't think it's a social conclusion to a rejection of future improvements or something. Also, if you look at my sibling post, I indirectly point out how I think some of the impl…

Identity politics is quite regressive. I left that out but it's another example of 70s-liberalism and as such has become a part of the great synthesis. I'm not sure I buy the latter part. The still-innovative cities and regions of the USA tend to be more on the socially liberal side of the divide, and if you look into the people who were responsible for all that basic invention in the past you'll find quite a mixed b…

I think you may find this interesting: https://meaningness.com/countercultures

The entire site is pretty fascinating, but your comments specifically reminded me of this subsection

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#123

Post by StreamBright »

zzzeek wrote: post #52
muninn_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that is a result of government action and the government hiring private corporations, not private corporations acting on their own.

nonsense. Let's go to libertarian land. There's no government for internal affairs. We live in a town. Are there any police? No police? Really? Of course there are police. The townspeople got tired of all the poors breaking into their houses and shops and whatnot, didn't feel like all individually standing outside holding guard all night, got together to pool their money and hired a police force to handle the issue a…

And why does anybody think that a state run police is the best? It is like anything else:

- transportation

- health care

- financial system

Run by government guarantees that we get the lowest quality most expensive shittiest solution you ever dream of.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#124

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

api wrote: post #118
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your assessment. It is widely understood that shipping containers are responsible for more global trade than any other factor, which has lowered the prices of goods around the world at a scale never seen before. The unprecedented demand for trade necessitated their adoption, but they are essentially a metal box on top of other metal boxes on top of a flat surface. Shipping containers were a tremendous…

I'm not saying there is no value to incremental improvement, just that there is a qualitative difference between that and true invention and that the latter has stagnated since roughly the early 1970s. The former makes things faster/better/cheaper, while the latter makes things possible . You could still ship things across the ocean before containers. But before boats ? I predict that when the current zeitgeist final…

You're being ridiculous. I'm comparing the difference between a half century previous to shipping containers to the half century after. Boats have been around for thousands of years.

Your argument is very narrow and rigid. What you call "incremental" innovations or new uses of old technologies can vastly outweigh the impact of novel technologies, some of which take decades to reach the average Westerner, let alone the average human being.

Your argument also ignores the cumulative effects of fully utilizing existing technologies. The cure for polio existed long before coordinated efforts brought it to the brink of eradication.

Likewise, chemical birth control has been around for 50 years, and the only thing stopping it from widespread adoption - and thus a significant decrease in unwanted births and excess human consumption of scarce resources - is money and political will.

Another example - I really don't have all day but your line of argument is seriously flawed - is nuclear power. Modern reactors are safe and stable - the earthquake that flattened Fukushima left the reactor intact; it was the tidal flood that caused leakages - and we could produce a great deal of mostly-carbon-neutral energy with them, but we as a society choose not to. We don't need fancy new tech to make nuclear work, we just need funding and political will.

I suspect you, by the name of API, is falling for the old adage: to a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail.

Earth, humanity, and life itself is not an engineering problem with an engineering solution.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#125

Post by trevyn »

jdminhbg wrote: post #109
nickpsecurity wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud computing is the mainframe model. ALGOL was safe, maintainable language for systems with LISP being ultimate for scripting or flexibility. Current languages mostly do what the could already do. High-performance, NoSQL databases were how mainframes started. Clustering & early distributed systems by Dec's VMS & Tandem NonStop. Xerox PARC came up with desktops. Englebart's people demonstrated all kinds of stuff in…

> Cloud computing is the mainframe model. It really, really isn't. It shares one characteristic (computation done on behalf of one client by another remote client), but pretty much nothing else. The need to pigeonhole all developments in terms of historical patterns is just revisionism.

Computation done on behalf of one client by another (more powerful) remote client, with a timesharing model, is kind of the defining characteristic of both, though. ;)

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#126

Post by foldr »

humanrebar wrote: post #102
krath94 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that people generalize about people that vote Republican. Most republicans (or people that vote republican) I have met, including myself, have been supportive of the LGBT community. Not ALL Republicans are against LGBT, just like not all liberals want free government handouts. These generalizations about the "other side" are counter-productive. Also, I'm not saying you came across as generalizing, I know you…

If you're really Republican, I'd suggest you stop framing debates about social policy as "for" and "against" LGBT. Thinking that heterosexual couples have an acute and unique problem with maintaining two-parent households, for instance, isn't anti anything. I'm not aware of any serious Republican that wants bakers to be able to ban gay customers, either. Most of these issues are drummed up to form straw men and ad ho…

>Thinking that heterosexual couples have an acute and unique problem with maintaining two-parent households, for instance, isn't anti anything.

Well, it is anti something if it's code for being against gay marriage.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#127

Post by throwaway2048 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #113
throwaway2048 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple people can be bad for reasons entirely their own, "but shes doing it TOOOOOOO" is the reasoning and defense of a child.

You could have said the first part of the sentence, without the mockery and insult of the second part.

People that make such transparently bad faith arguements need to be called out for what they are.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#128

Post by nickpsecurity »

jdminhbg wrote: post #109
nickpsecurity wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud computing is the mainframe model. ALGOL was safe, maintainable language for systems with LISP being ultimate for scripting or flexibility. Current languages mostly do what the could already do. High-performance, NoSQL databases were how mainframes started. Clustering & early distributed systems by Dec's VMS & Tandem NonStop. Xerox PARC came up with desktops. Englebart's people demonstrated all kinds of stuff in…

> Cloud computing is the mainframe model. It really, really isn't. It shares one characteristic (computation done on behalf of one client by another remote client), but pretty much nothing else. The need to pigeonhole all developments in terms of historical patterns is just revisionism.

Mainframes combined most of the muscle in centralized location for weaker, thin clients (eg terminals) to use remotely. Alleged security and efficiency benefits of centralization with one set of staff handling issues for third parties. The CPU, memory, and I/O was metered with many locations charging departments per use. Used VM/370 to virtualize OS's that could run in parallel for various workloads. Scale up quickly. Later clustering and Sysplex for high availability with multiple datacenters. Specialist packages (aka platforms) for various languages or use cases. Hardware accelerators for I/O, databases, crypto, and so on.

Was I just reading a list of benefits and features of modern clouds? Young folks would think so but that was all mainframe stuff from 1960's to 1980's with key hardware & VM tech done by early to mid 70's.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#129

Post by pyoung »

api wrote: post #78
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theory has a major blind spot: the increase in demand for a Western standard of living at an unprecedented global scale enables innovation to bring down costs. Example: Africa has dealt with underinvestment for a long time in many areas, like telecommunications infrastructure. But because of that, many African nations have leapfrogged hardline telecommunications in favor of mobile, resulting in less spending bef…

All of that is incremental and evolutionary. Here's a good example of what I mean. Fundamental invention: radio. Before radio communication via invisible waves over long distances was impossible. After radio it wasn't. This is a fundamental qualitative change in capability. Innovation and evolution: morse code keys to 4G/LTE and WiFi. This represents a quantitative change in capability (faster/better/cheaper), but qu…

I think your analysis suffers from recency bias. Almost all inventions were incremental improvements on existing ideas and experiments, very few were huge Eureka! moments. Morse code was invented around 1840 and radio communication in around 1900. It took 60 years to go from wired to wireless. The first supercomputer was built in the 1960's and 50 years later we were walking around with internet connected computers in our pocket that had a few orders of magnitude more processing power than their early predecessors. That evolution took a lot of inventing to achieve, and it has fundamentally changed society. It may not have felt as transformative to you because you were alive to witness the transition and the different iterations that led us to where we currently are, but make no mistake, the level of technical advancement in the last 50 years is unparalleled to any other time in our history.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#130

Post by crazy1van »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #16
redwood wrote: post #4

I just don't understand how he can call himself a libertarian. Self-rationalizing has no ends.

How is blatant capitalism in conflict with libertarianism? I ask this question genuinely because I never know what Americans mean when they use the term libertarian with a small L. What specifically about this ideology is being broken here? I understand American libertarianism to be based in selfishness and greed to the collective benefit of society. So that if we're all greedy and act out of our own best interest so…

> ...I never know what Americans mean when they use the term libertarian with a small L.

Economist Arnold Kling has an interesting model called the three-axis model for libertarianism as well as conservatism and progressivism.

It contends that libertarians view the world on a freedom / coercion axis, progressives view the world on an oppressor / oppressed axis, and conservatives view the world on a civilization / barbarism axis.

For example, to take the immigration issue:

Libertarians - People should have the freedom to cross borders when they please.

Progressives - Immigrants regardless of legal status are being taken advantage of and should be protected.

Conservatives - The rules that restrict immigration should be enforced and those that violate them should be punished.

Post reply on HN