Live data from Hacker News

Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

the307.substack.com

151–160 of 832 posts

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. The reports are 42 total killed, 12 civilians including 2 children. "Operation Grim Beeper" (seriously) on Wikipedia cites these numbers from Lebanese government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...

Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets. In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians o…

I didn't say 42 targets.

Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#152
I’ve said this before and cannot be said enough. Palantir is a data platform. I think they optimize for knowledge graphs (ontology). It has several uses. It’s seems to be fashionable to blame Palantir these days. But then wouldn’t you also blame other things - Java and database open source, Python, Linux foundation, etc. for all this.

I think people just want to blame without analyzing what else could be blamed to. Really it’s most of the free software community too.

Disclaimer: I don’t consider what Israel did unlawful. They were under attack by hezb and Hamas. They were within rights to retaliate. And no, hezb and Hamas don’t care about civilian casualties.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#153
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. The reports are 4,000 wounded and 12 killed unintended targets in order to kill 42 targets. On what planet is that “very few actual civilians”? I think you knew full well before posting that’s a ridiculous claim which is why you did it anonymously.

For the IDF, a 28.6% civilian death rate is actually quite good. Their own classified data reveals an 83% civilian casualty rate in Gaza—nearly three times worse. The Lebanon pager attack: 12 civilians (including 2 children) killed out of 42 total deaths (28.6% civilian casualty rate). Gaza genocide: Leaked IDF intelligence documents show 8,900 militants killed out of 53,000 total deaths as of May 2025 (83% civilian…

According to Hezbollah sources 1500 of their terrorists were taken out of commission due to this attack. Making the death ratio 42/1500 or 3% while if only taking the civilian ratio that's even lower.

Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels...

Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere.

But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed.

Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets. In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians o…

I didn't say 42 targets. Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.

Several of those initially claimed to be civilians were later acknowledged by Hezbollah, so that number is still a bit fuzzy.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#156
post #7

Back when Google's motto was "Do no evil" we used to joke about Palantir embracing the opposite ethos.

Would that be "Do all evil" or "Do exclusively evil" or "Do no good"?

evil(x) -> not(do(x)) which equates to not(evil(x)) or not(do(x)).

The negation would be evil(x) and do(x) by DeMorgan's law.

If what you mean is all(x), evil(x) -> not(do(x))

then the negation would be exists(x), evil(x) and do(x).

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#157

> Palantir ended up having to rent a second-floor building that housed its Tel Aviv office, to accommodate the intelligence analysts who needed tutorials Has anyone here tried using their software? It's salesforce-level fucked. They did a great job spewing lofty concepts, with their ontologies and their kinetic layers, but in the end it all ends up being a giant wormy ERP. There might be one good idea in there (artic…

I think Foundry is insanely impressive tbh. If you set it up correctly, its insanely powerful

I second that. My company is really changing its point of view on data at scale thanks to their tools. [note: SAP announces DataSphere for 2026, and their stack is surprisingly similar :)]

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, 12 total only includes the original pager attack, not the subsequent radio one. However, you seem to have made the same mistake. 42 people were killed total, but that does not mean that there were 42 targets. In any case, if Hezbollah themselves admit that 1500 of their fighters were injured by the attack (according to your own source), it seems extremely dishonest to claim that all 4000 were civilians o…

I didn't say 42 targets. Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.

The report is 4,000 civilians injured (which means they just didn't die -- people lost fingers, limbs, eyes, etc.)

Presumably if you have thousands of Hezbola people walking around within their homes, businesses, hopistals, shops, etc. it makes sense you'd have many civilian injuries when these went off. There wasn't a geo fence around them and if someone was in an NICU or preschool the explosions were indiscriminate.

So while there was some element of precision in placement of who had these pagers, there was zero awareness (by design) to where they actually were when they all exploded.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say 42 targets. Per the report: 42 dead, 12 of which were civilians. It follows that 30 were considered Hezbollah.

Several of those initially claimed to be civilians were later acknowledged by Hezbollah, so that number is still a bit fuzzy.

I'm not claiming absolute knowledge of numbers, just going off the public reports which are all we can go on.
Post reply on HN