Why is it inappropriate to be outraged that international humanitarian laws are actively being violated by Israel, in Gaza? Can someone help me understand?
Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#192So, what exactly did Palantir provide? I'm staying out of commenting whether or not this was legal/justified and asking strictly what service this was that was sold. Is this like, live location information provided from social media/carriers/etc? Is it AI guessing who might be a target based on collected data? EDIT: I ask because this sort of claim could just be marketing on Panantir's end and the quotes and this pos…
Most likely as a data lakehouse, but the Palantir angle is most likely overstated - Palantir has a tiny presence in Israel, and has had a history of overstating it's intel and defense credentials (eg. A three letter agency that churned Palantir was named for years after before they stopped calling them out).
That said, I have heard some positive feedback about Palantir's data integration capabilities - most other vendors don't provide bespoke professional services to build niche integrations for even low ACV customers.
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#193[flagged]
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
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And here you are regurgitating some dissent, blissfully ignorant that Hamas has precisely zero to do with this event.
I am simply pointing out OP's double standard: when it comes to Israel, everything is to be distrusted; when it comes to Israel's enemies, everything is to be believed. I am well-aware of the differences between Hamas and Hezbollah and have studied this conflict for well over two decades.
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#195There are a few different angles to this.
1. If any other state had done this, we'd be correctly calling this a terrorist attack and there wouldn't be any question about it; and
2. Palantir was a partner in developing several AI systems used for targeting missile strikes in Gaza. Collectively these tend to be called Lavender [1][2]. Another of these systems is called "Where's Daddy". What does it do? It targets alleged militants at home so their families with be collateral damage [3]; and
3. These systems could not exist without the labor of the humans who create them so it raises questions about the ethics of everything we do as software engineers and tech people. This is not a new debate. For example, there were debates about who should be culpable for the German death machine in WW2. Guards at the camp? Absolutely. Civilians at IG Farben who are making Zyklon-B? Do they know what it's being used for? Do they have any choice in the matter?
My personal opinion is that anyone continuing to work for Palantir can no longer plead ignorance. You're actively contributing to profiting from killing, starving and torturing civilians. Do with that what you will. In a just world, you'd have to answer for your actions at The Hague or Nuremberg 2.0, ultimately.
[1]: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
[2]: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
[3]: https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-ai-system-wheres-dadd...
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two things Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized. Secondly, even if you only kill generals, that doesn't mean you didn't cause terror for everybody else. Imagine for example that Hezbollah found a way to poison the food for Israel's top X military personnel. It would cause a state of emotional terror for many people in Israel about their food safety for decades most likely, even if they weren't in th…
Terrorism doesn't mean "anything that makes someone scared," or else all wars would be acts of terrorism. There isn't a universally agreed upon definition, but generally it refers to targeting non-combatants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism For example, when the Allies tried to assassinate Hitler with a smuggled briefcase bomb during WW2, that wasn't terrorism: that was just regular warfare. Hitler was the le…
So you're arguing if the US declared war on Venezuela, that Venezuela could just use a drone to blow up the US president and that's just how war should work from now on?
Because it's only a matter of years until drones get small and stealthy enough that nobody is safe; exploding pagers are a clear first step in this direction.
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Everything you say here is false.
1. Israel's stated goal is to neuter Hamas and return the hostages, not kill civilians.
2. Arabs speak a semitic language; the "semites" in "anti-semite" has always referred to Jews.
3. Jews, including white Ashkenazi European Jews, are levantine in origin. Their lineage traces to Judea.
4. "Antisemitic" means anti-Jew. You are using it to mean anti-Arab, but arabs are not semites
5. You did make all that up!
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics as war in Isreal, Donald Trump (be it "stolen elections", or foreign politics), or Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Nobody will ever think "That was a well-reasoned argument I now believe war crimes were, or were not, committed". The best thing to do on posts like this is avoid reading them, or flag them. It feels like there's an obviously correct side to most of t…
> There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics I think there are useful discussions to be had on these topics, and in fact, we must have those discussions. The issue is that, if we want to do so productively and a comment section is the only venue for us to speak to each other, then we must be extremely patient with others and ourselves and reflect on what they say and what we say (i.e., discuss in good fa…
You might believe there are useful discussions to be had, but when a faction of readers like the GP flag or downvote every thread they don’t like, then it’s impossible to have any conversation, no matter how much good faith is brought to bear.
Manually appealing to dang for unflagging is not a workable solution either.
This really is an entirely unsuitable forum for this discussion.
Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion. flagging been used forever to silence "inconvenient facts" and "dissenting opinions" as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
> 95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently. > as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221396 ? No, you'd see "[flagged]" if that were the case. The comment is [dead], but it was killed…
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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon
#200I actually consider the pager attack to be legal. There's obviously criticism of it, but I'm fairly sure you're allowed to do this kind of thing by laws of war. Obviously this creates a huge problem for pretty much everyone though, since we can imagine that our ordinary consumer products from all sorts countries could similarly explode if we ended up at war with the manufacturers.
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