Palantir is extending its reach even further into government • Hacker News Board

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#121

Post by lolive » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #89

lolive wrote: post #84

I will comment only on the Foundry stack that we work extensively with, at my company. Given the complete havoc that the other IT ecoaystems has become, we are constantly struggling with proper data access data exchange data transformation and data alignment. To a point where a political layer has appeared on top of that, which looks like the middle age baronies. Foundry has been in the company for the last ten years…

> more efficient and sane than going for yet another war with data barons and IT (so-called) enterprise architects Do data barons attempt to replicate silo control within Palantir? > Foundry is definitely the vision I was expecting from the Linked Data initiative With this profitable existence proof in the market, are there competing products based on the original open standards for Linked Data?

> are there competing products based on the original open standards for Linked Data ?

I am pretty sure PoolParty and some other integration stacks exist. But they lack the insane scalability and the proper stacking of layers that Palantir is implementing.

For the moment, the killing stack that Palantir proposes is:

- Spark

- PipelineBuilder

- OntologyManager

- Workshop

And I see nothing like that anywhere else. [but I would love to]

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#122

Post by RajT88 » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

tylerchilds wrote: post #100

RajT88 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for demonstrating you have not looked up the definition of Treason in the US legal system. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S3-C1-...

so if i understand exactly correctly it would not be treason for drone armies of automated bots deployed in the field because they aren’t human? if there were the same number of people standing on street corners collecting the same data as ring doorbells and waymos in san francisco, to sell for political and military applications, where does the treason begin? how many humans need to conspire to erode democracy for i…

No. Because we are not at war, and have not been since WWII.

Treason requires a war.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#123

Post by tylerchilds » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

RajT88 wrote: post #122

tylerchilds wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so if i understand exactly correctly it would not be treason for drone armies of automated bots deployed in the field because they aren’t human? if there were the same number of people standing on street corners collecting the same data as ring doorbells and waymos in san francisco, to sell for political and military applications, where does the treason begin? how many humans need to conspire to erode democracy for i…

No. Because we are not at war, and have not been since WWII. Treason requires a war.

hang on, the US has not been at war since WWII?

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#124

Post by cindyllm » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

username135 wrote: post #101

bpt3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These sound like the exact reasons we don't have a direct democracy. “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” - not Peter Thiel

Its always projection with megalomaniacs

[dead]

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#125

Post by jgalt212 » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

TriangleEdge wrote: post #65

TrackerFF wrote: post #45

We received a presentation/demo of their products when I worked in the gov (not the US gov. though) a couple of years ago. They seemed, okay? I mean nothing seemed mind-blowing. I worked on surveillance in a specific sector, where interagency collaboration is important. Hence why Palantir pitched their tools. I'm not sure how they've managed to blow up like that. Do they have some extensive network with gov. official…

Ex FDE here. Part of Palantir's pitch for Foundry back in the day is connecting disparate databases from agencies that don't collaborate well. They're also really good at getting demos up and running in a few days. The tech was good back when I was employed. They get hate because support war efforts / police / intelligence. They do 5 year contracts with the govt then bump the prices once they're sticky, like a J curv…

True, but government programs get cancelled all the time.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#126

Post by lolive » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

chpatrick wrote: post #109

lolive wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wake me up when SAP provides productivity tools of the level of PalantirFoundry’s Pipeline Builder, Ontology Manager, Data Lineage and Workshop.

I'm really glad I don't know what any of those things are.

They are the tools why PalantirFoundry is worth every penny

[not entirely true note: PalantirFoundry is a lowCode/noCode stack on top of a Spark cluster]

Pipeline Builder : https://youtu.be/WIQA7u1tbsY?si=iG-N9xHpUPPVAqDX

OntologyManager: https://youtu.be/SOW0IA_I0bk?si=u5eha0o-yrn4pHvu

Workshop: https://youtu.be/Uh0zpMUR6wY?si=BClTTbch70ZolRCb

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#127

Post by rayiner » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

miltonlost wrote: post #105

rayiner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founders created a representative government with a limited franchise and express protections for private property and economic liberty, precisely because of the concerns over populist democracy. That's why they provided for an electoral college rather than direct election of the president, and for senators to be selected by state legislatures. The push towards making that republican system more democratic starte…

[flagged]

> That's still voting, which is the portion Thiel wants to remove.

The founders themselves provided for a narrow franchise!

> But based on other comments where you call Republican dismantling of the US government right now just "Orwellian doublespeak", you're just couching a bunch of your right-wing tendencies

What is being dismantled? Executive agencies and ancillary entities that are 90% controlled by democrats regardless of who wins the election. There's nothing anti-democratic about that!

I'm not "couching" anything. I'm quite openly right wing! But the right-wing guy won the election, promising to do right-wing things! The entities that are preventing him from doing right-wing things definitionally are anti-democratic. Put differently, what some people really mean when they say "democracy" is "liberal democracy." A system of government where the people are allowed to vote for massive taxes to pay for universal healthcare, but not for mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#128

Post by Y-bar » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

bdisl wrote: post #99

ants_everywhere wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel. He says "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." The beginning of the essay > I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “liberta…

He’s right. You can see it every time people vote to restrict their individual freedoms, which in the west doesn’t stop happening.

I have knowingly voted for less freedoms for myself multiple times and I know it, for example I have voted:

- to have less freedom to pollute the environment.

- to have less freedom where I am able to defraud my customers.

- to have less freedom to have less ability to lie about medical "benefits" of fake cures.

I am also a big proponent of freedom-limiting legislation like GDPR which prevents myself and my employer from secretly collecting and processing your personal information.

And I am currently part of the "Stop Killing Games" initiative which will hopefully restrict the freedom of games companies to sunset and withdraw purchases without a clear roadmap or similar remedy.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#129

Post by ethbr1 » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #97

rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hostility to democracy is literally the bedrock of the 20th century american federal government. We live in the nation Woodrow Wilson created: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-study-of-ad...

The Great MAGA Cultural Revolution has shifted the overton window enough among right wing elite that anti democracy propaganda is now strong and spreading. But it's still our foundation, "we the people" and all that. If the right keeps pushing dictators I see a civil war in our future.

I mean, the US did have literal nazis publicly espousing fascism in the US before Pearl Harbor.

There have always been portions of the US electorate enamored with authoritarianism.

Re: Palantir is extending its reach even further into government

#130

Post by ilikehurdles » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #33

giancarlostoro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its really easy to read this and be scared without being given any context, not everyone in the room knows who you are referring to and if your reading of their remarks are accurate. You got a name and a raw source?

That's on the tame end of Peter Thiel's rather demented belief system. Another tidbit: he believes Greta Thunberg is very possibly the actual antichrist. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ao_umPlSV6o

Why is our media literacy so in the gutter? A few second clip of an easily accessible and free interview from a NYT podcast would not be accepted as gospel fact in the hn of the past.

You may very well and with good reason disagree with Thiel on the downstream effects of climate regulating agreements/regimes on global productivity and liberty, but regurgitating “Greta is the Antichrist” just replaces discussions of interesting issues to yelling at shadow puppets in Plato’s cave.