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NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

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Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#261

Post by aaaaaabbbbbbb »

joering2 wrote: post #219
kirillzubovsky wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely makes sense, especially if NYPD contracted with some firm to replace Palantir, and now wants the algorithm because that's the hard part to copy. Obviously the methods by which they are able to process information is the reason governments pay them big bucks.

No its not the algorithm, its an untamed firehouse access to Facebook data, all of it - not only what you see upfront, photos lead, or what marketers can target. It goes much much deeper than that. Its a well-known secret that only Palantir has this type of contract signed with Facebook. A funny insiders anecdote is that some people joke about how this agreement is being signed: left side: By Board Member of Facebook…

This is entirely fiction.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#262

Post by gaius »

kpil wrote: post #133
halflings wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Java/Spring? Google at least is known to use C/C++ for its backend. Python is (or was?) used in YouTube.

I think java comes out as one of the most efficient and battle tested backend languages. For data crunching, especially statistical jobs, Python is probably also a good fit although it's not as efficient but have a number of good statistical, mathematical and ai toolkits that seems to be more active. For running more specialized jobs, R have even more tools, but is a bit more shaky as a general language although it i…

A few companies ago I worked at a company like that - researchers in R, MATLAB, Excel, whatever, then once it worked chuck it over the fence to the developers to rewrite in C++ or Java. Then the CTO, who was a visionary guy, made the decision that we would be all Python end-to-end with occasional C permitted for performance-critical sections. There were some teething troubles at first but when it worked, it was wildly successful and no-one could believe we'd ever worked any other way.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#263

Post by gaius »

kpil wrote: post #168
munin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, do you have direct experience with big companies using R, python, etc in production? My sense from working with people from those companies (and a few internships at those companies) is that you could use something like R, matlab, or scikit-learn on your own workstation with a tiny data sample to explore the data, but then do crunching by translating that program into some Java or C++ code (sometimes us…

To be honest, until recently I'd say that everything would be rewritten in java - mostly since there were already deployment pipes for it. With the latest container-based toolchains I think it's not a bad idea to deploy some R-based services for certain type of tasks.

With the work Microsoft have been doing with the former Revolution Analytics, you absolutely can go into Production on R if you want to.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#264

Post by gaius »

lokedhs wrote: post #107
sytelus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they often do. Netscape couldn't catch with IE because of their convoluted stack. Friendster couldn't catch with Facebook for same reason from what I hear. If you are building web app in COBOL or Fortran, you are certainly at huge disadvantage with someone else doing stuff with modern more richer platforms.

> “Netscape couldn't catch with IE because of their convoluted stack” Wait what? There are several reasons why IE managed to crush Netscape, but the complexity of their software stack isn't even on that list. I was working in the industry when all of this went down, and I can assure you that Netscape's software stack had absolutely nothing to do with it. The actual story is mostly about Microsoft leveraging their mon…

but the complexity of their software stack isn't even on that list

Yes it was. Building an integrated web/email/etc client was harder than they thought it would be, and then there was the Javagator fiasco.

But what really killed Netscape the company - which was planning to give the browser away anyway to create demand for their expensive server products - was that version 3 of Netscape Enterprise Server was terrible. The only thing less reliable than it was the watchdog process that came with it that was supposed to restart it when (not if) it crashed...

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#265

Post by StevePerkins »

criddell wrote: post #250
StevePerkins wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do applets have to do with anything? I wish that applets had never been invented, too. But only because of market confusion. So many people who don't know anything about Java mix up applets (which haven't been relevant in almost 20 years) with Swing or JavaFX desktop apps, think that security vulnerabilities found in the browser plugin mean that standalone Java apps are "insecure" in general, etc.

I think applets gave Java a terrible black eye as a client-side because of how insecure Java in the browser turned out to be. The market confusion I would blame on Netscape for choosing "Javascript" as the name for their scripting language.

Applets have nothing to do with Java desktop app development, and I don't think anyone has confused the relationship between Java and JavaScript in over a decade.

I don't believe you really have anything to contribute to this thread, and are just bouncing from one tangential reference to the next to feel insightful.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#266

Post by tripzilch »

SeeDave wrote: post #156
fergie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup- when you start thinking of Palantir as an IBM, a Cap Gemini or an Accenture, it starts making a lot more sense.

There's a lot of truth to this and they use rather unique (bordering on gimmicky) job titles such as 'Forward Deployed Engineer' as opposed to 'Solutions Engineer' or 'Technical Consultant' to add an aura of spooky government mystery and mask exactly what they do.

"Solutions Engineer" is supposed to tell me more about their role than "Forward Deployed Engineer"?

The first is vague bordering on meaningless and trivially true for any engineer, the second is simply nonsensical without context. It's bullshit in both cases but I'd be much more inclined to ask about the latter, what it even means to deploy an engineer "forwards"?

I found that most forward deployed engineers are in practice deployed ever so slightly off-centre, and you really need to hire a couple of them to make sure it averages out. For tasks sensitive to robustness I sometimes like to stut them between a leftward and a rightward deployed engineer on either side.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#267

Post by ethbro »

CydeWeys wrote: post #238
ethbro wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only comment you can make is that, ceteris paribus, newer tech stacks indicate some awareness of newer ideas (who include agile / devops tooling). Old tech might, but also might not. I'm more inclined to think that Palantir's problems are inherent to the enterprise revenue equation. "Features and code quality that aren't contractually mandated" = profit The more things you can put in that category, the mo…

Newer tech stacks might also indicate chasing the newest/hottest thing without regards to long-term sustainability of the platform, however. You don't always want to be bleeding edge, as bleeding edge can easily be dead five years from now, whereas if you stick with a "boring" mainstream technology it'll still be around in five years.

True. But the enterprise shops I've seen tend to make the "not modern enough" error 20x more often than the "too modern" error.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#268

Post by wikibob »

rnprince wrote: post #240
specialist wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently took a job. Great team, great company, interesting problem, relevant work. Everything's nodejs, but I didn't worry. How bad could it be? While the prize for Worst Tech Used in a Professional Setting might go to InterSystems Caché ® (syntax errors will bork your entire runtime, with no undo). And it's all downhill from there. Nodejs (javascript + libuv, aka control flow obfuscation framework) is a strong co…

After working with MUMPS for some time, getting to use Node.js has been a religious experience for me. I feel as if an incredible weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

EPIC?

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#269

Post by joering2 »

aaaaaabbbbbbb wrote: post #261
joering2 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No its not the algorithm, its an untamed firehouse access to Facebook data, all of it - not only what you see upfront, photos lead, or what marketers can target. It goes much much deeper than that. Its a well-known secret that only Palantir has this type of contract signed with Facebook. A funny insiders anecdote is that some people joke about how this agreement is being signed: left side: By Board Member of Facebook…

This is entirely fiction.

Of course. A guy with karma score 1 would know. And NSA spying if entirely fiction too!

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#270

Post by CydeWeys »

brianleb wrote: post #245
bostand wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ. Have your ever tried to maintain a large js project? It gets harder the bigger the codebase gets.

Is there an alternate universe where this is not true? Where things get simpler while they get more complex?

He's saying that it gets proportionally more harder to manage a large codebase in JS than it does in statically typed languages like Java. This has been my experience as well.
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