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

theintercept.com

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

#141

Post by consentist »

zzzeek wrote: post #133
consentist wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The burden is on libertarians to explain exactly why this would not happen in the absense of any democratically elected government. This is why libertarian constitution is designed to be simple and objective, as much as possible. Corruption can happen anywhere but libertarian governments would be among the last to have it. The philosophy also happen to rely on technology to enforce the constitution which rules out…

> Corruption can happen anywhere but libertarian governments would be among the last to have it. which, as pointed out, is completely hypothetical and additionally defies common sense. burden is on libertarians to prove this extraordinary claim. unfortunately, most non-libertarians don't know/care enough about the whole issue to even demand such proof which is why we are stuck with all this "soft" libertarianism roam…

My claim is: highly objective criminal-code/constitution ==> low corruption. Do you disagree with this ? Any couter examples.

Note: "jailtime += 20yrs if skin_color==black" is objective but not libertarian.

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

#142

Post by beachstartup »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #106
beachstartup wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they deliberately conflate legal (skilled) immigrants and illegal aliens. to them, there is no difference. it is a hyper-egalitarian interpretation of the word 'immigrant' with no basis in law or social norms.

Stephen Bannon stated that having Asian CEOs running 2/3rds of the companies in Silicon Valley was bad for civic society. Are unskilled workers sneaking in from Asia illegally to run Google and Microsoft or are you wrong about whether it's only unskilled, illegal immigrants that are being targetted? (We'll ignore for now the fact that 2/3rds is an incorrect figure, he was presumably intentionally exaggerating to insp…

i'm saying that legal and illegal immigration are two different things. the fact that steve bannon dislikes both types and probably (almost certainly) dislikes non-white people has nothing to do with my point.

let's say all your worst fears are true, and bannon secretly is literally hitler. does that change the fact that legal vs. illegal immigrants are different, and should be treated differently, with a different set of laws and social acceptance? because i would say that even if he is literally hitler and mussolini combined, that would still hold true.

i mean, what is your actual point here? that you don't like steve bannon? okay, great.

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

#143

Post by consentist »

zzzeek wrote: post #135
consentist wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... hired a police force to handle the issue and built a jail to throw all the poors into Violates NAP. Cant Happen. But the state police does have constitution-granted right to confine you for repeatedly violating NAP such as by breaking into people's homes.

NAP by definition is an ethical stance. Your claim is that non-ethical behavior in all humans will vanish when governments no longer exist (going against literally all of written history). Burden of proof.

> NAP by definition is an ethical stance.

Following NAP is constitutional requirement irrelevent to ones ethics.

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

#144

Post by nickjarboe »

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…

And we also gave up on incremental and evolutionary improvements on the last great new thing, nuclear technology. The first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was on December 2, 1942. Nuclear bomb - July 16, 1945. Hydrogen bomb - November 1, 1952. Grid connected nuclear power plant - June 26, 1954. Nuclear aircraft program - canceled 1958. US nuclear rocket program NERVA - 1959 to 1973. Project Orion, a nuclear pulse spaceship design (with an interstellar variant) - ended with the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. Low radiation versions of nuclear explosives for seismology, mining, excavation, and construction (Project Plowshare) - canceled 1977.

I think you are right that 1970's was when society changed with the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 as the final nail in the coffin for nuclear technology advancement and use.

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

#145

Post by jdminhbg »

trevyn wrote: post #125
jdminhbg wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. ;)

That's not at all the defining characteristic of modern cloud computing; if it were, you would call VR systems (laptop or phone does computation on behalf of video system on your face) "cloud computing."

What's different about cloud computing is the persistent connection and availability, combined with the ownership model and the resulting implied scalability.

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

#146

Post by mlmlmasd »

Chris2048 wrote: post #107
nafizh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an immigrant and minority myself, you are being intentionally obtuse.

He should just drink the liberal koolaid?

Whenever I see someone who labels people that criticize Trump as 'liberal' I automatically label them as 'dumbass'.

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

#147

Post by Chris2048 »

mlmlmasd wrote: post #146
Chris2048 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should just drink the liberal koolaid?

Whenever I see someone who labels people that criticize Trump as 'liberal' I automatically label them as 'dumbass'.

Great. Was has that got to do with this?

OP didn't 'criticize Trump', they called another poster 'intentionally obtuse' for not assuming liberal premises.

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

#148

Post by mlmlmasd »

Chris2048 wrote: post #147
mlmlmasd wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I see someone who labels people that criticize Trump as 'liberal' I automatically label them as 'dumbass'.

Great. Was has that got to do with this? OP didn't 'criticize Trump', they called another poster 'intentionally obtuse' for not assuming liberal premises.

You don't get it. Calling them 'liberal premises' makes you look like a dumbass.

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

#149

Post by acqq »

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…

It sounds like an unsupported belief in the possibility of the "revolutionary" progress of technology which would still save the humanity in its present desire to keep "business as usual."

I'm not optimistic about that. The way I see it, the premises on which the world currently runs are unsustainable, and there's no technological miracle that will change that. Fusion is very improbable, fission can't support the growth that people got used to during the last 100 years, fossil fuels are clearly very limited, the amount of food which can be sustainably produced is limited, etc.

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

#150

Post by digler999 »

humanrebar wrote: post #105
beachstartup wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they deliberately conflate legal (skilled) immigrants and illegal aliens. to them, there is no difference. it is a hyper-egalitarian interpretation of the word 'immigrant' with no basis in law or social norms.

> no basis in law or social norms To push back a little... I'm generally pro immigration and didn't vote for Trump (partly for these reasons). But there are valid points to be made about: * what a healthy level of immigration is * what a healthy immigration process looks like * how much should family concerns affect immigration chances * how much should professional skills affect immigration chances * how to enforce…

* what a healthy level of immigration is

specifically, what reasons is it being used for? It's been discussed here many times that the H1B program for tech workers is being used to depress wages and remove the immigrants' rights to competition. So while a politician may seem so shiny and "progressive" for increasing immigration, you never know if their back pockets are being padded by the tech corporations who save billions of dollars by not paying the "free market" rate for the skilled work.

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