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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

#151

Post by ZeroGravitas »

beachstartup wrote: post #142
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

You were clearly trying to paint "the other side" as unreasonable zealots, who pretend that upstanding, hardworking immigrants are under threat, when really it's only the classic illegal immigrant stereotype that your side have a problem with. (This stereotype is also BS but that's a different story...)

Unfortunately for you, someone right at the very top of the Republican party that is in charge right now said something that blatantly contradicts your stated claim that this is an invented concern. Trump has also made comments about the 1965 change in immigration laws that makes it clear that the skin color of immigrants is more important to him than their legality, numbers or skill level.

So feel free to apologize for misrepresenting their opinions or defend your original claim, rather than pretend you said something else.

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

#152

Post by mlmlmasd »

otalp wrote: post #36
redwood wrote: post #4

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

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…

> I don't think he has a problem with government spending as long as it's towards corporations instead of people.

That's exactly what every right-libertarian and ancap thinks and acts according to. Most of the right-libertarian and ancap 'movement' is funded and supported by corporate and pro-corporate interests, the people that fall for the bullshit are social lobbyist for corporatism and neo-feudalism.

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

#153

Post by kiliantics »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #25
lightbyte wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American libertarianism is about excluding the government from as much as you possibly can. Mass surveillance of a states citizens if practically the antithesis of that.

I never understood the mentality that unchecked power is only unacceptable when wielded by a government. For example, it's wrong for the government to surveil all its citizens but fine for a private company to do so, even if the end result makes life just as untenable (e.g. unable to get a job/housing because of credit checks, get access to healthcare because of pre-existing conditions). Given the trajectory of Ameri…

You're spot on. The original use of the term libertarian actually referred to socialist anarchists who were not only against the unjust power of the state but also against other forms of authoritarian power structures like the capitalist economy and social stratification by gender, race etc. Nowadays they have to go by left-libertarian or libertarian socialist (or just plain anarchist).

I don't know how "Libertarian" came to mean what it does now but it is a very incoherent ideology for exactly the reasons you point out and it probably continues to exist due to powerful interests in the "ruse" you mention too.

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

#154

Post by humanrebar »

beachstartup wrote: post #138
humanrebar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

wow, i must suck at writing because you just made the same point i did. namely: legal and illegal immigration are completely different things and anyone who says otherwise is disregarding law and social norms.

I was saying that social norms and ideal laws aren't uniform and it's more productive to start from there.

The point about legal vs. illegal immigration being different is well taken. I presume even Trump agrees with that given his immigrant family.

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

#155

Post by Teever »

clydethefrog wrote: post #9
redwood wrote: post #4

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

Look at the people behind Y Combinator that condemn Trump because according to them he represents a real threat to the safety of women, minorities, and immigrants[0], but at the same time have many financial ties with Thiel's practices. They have financial power to take a stand against this threat, but decide not do it. [0] http://blog.samaltman.com/the-2016-election

That means two things either they don't care enough to do anything or Thiel has greater power over them than we assume.

What could he have over them?

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

#156

Post by humanrebar »

foldr wrote: post #126
humanrebar wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can realize that:

* half of all pregnancies are accidental

* pregnancies only happen by accident with heterosexual couples

* unprepared parents is a social and economic issue

...without being anti anyone.

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

#157

Post by acoard »

jdminhbg wrote: post #145
trevyn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>persistent connection and availability

I can't really comment on the ownership model, but surely a persistent connection and availability is an incremental change.

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #128
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.

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…

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by unprepare »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #124
api wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

You seem to be arguing that innovation is good.

api seems to be arguing that invention is good.

these are not mutually exclusive ideas, and i dont see where api is saying the innovation is bad or we should have less of it, only that we should have more invention (and presumably, more of both)

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

#160

Post by zzzeek »

consentist wrote: post #143
zzzeek wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

who enforces it?
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