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‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

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Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#291

Post by stevenwoo »

speedgoose wrote: post #265
fudged71 wrote: post #150

To tech leaders and hiring managers at other companies: If you're reading this, please consider publicly stating that your company will interview Palantir engineers who want to exit on moral grounds. Create an explicit off-ramp. Lower the barrier to leaving. Make it a tech industry norm that we offer refuge to engineers trying to do the right thing.

You could focus on having positive projects for the society, and a good reputation. That works. I don’t think I ever seen a CV from an ex Pal*ntir employee though. Perhaps they are automatically filtered or working for good morals doesn’t attract them.

I think they might be a little desperate for new employees since I haven’t worked in about ten years and both Palantir and Anduril contacted me with cold calls in past year.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#292

Post by xiphias2 »

periodjet wrote: post #134

Why have we all lost the ability to think in a nuanced way? It’s very disturbing to witness, particularly on a forum like HN, ostensibly populated by smart people. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that ICE has a clear and ethical mandate while also believing that they are going about fulfilling that mandate via bad methods that need to change. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that people shouldn’t be ma…

It's because there is extremism both on the left and right: the left thinks that the right wants a power grab to stop left from coming back, and the right thinks that if they don't keep their power now, the left will take it and keep it using immigrants.

Both of them are right: unless there's a civil war or moderate president (which probably needs ranked choice voting) the most probable scenario is that one of the 2 extremes succeeds.

I also miss the old HN btw and wish that there wouldn't be any right/left politics, just the old classic libertarian property/privacy/opennes right debates, but it looks like those days are gone.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#293

Post by 20after4 »

bri3d wrote: post #211
jakelazaroff wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure GP is saying that the data Palantir sells are commercial because they're being sold by Palantir.

Right, and what I’m saying is that to the best of my knowledge, Palantir don’t sell data at all, which is the fundamental misunderstanding people seem to have about them.

There are two really two major concerning issues with Palantir:

1. They provide tech that is used to select targets for drone strikes and apparently also for targeting violent attacks on US civilians. I don't know too much about how the algorithm works but simply outsourcing decisions about who lives or dies to opaque algorithms is creepy. It also allows the people behind the operations to avoid personal responsibility for mistakes by blaming the mistakes on the software. It also could enable people to just not think about it and thus avoid the moral question entirely. It's an abstract concern but it is a legitimate one, IMO.

2. I don't know if this is 100% confirmed but we have heard reports that Elon Musk and DOGE collected every piece of government data that they could get their hands, across various government departments and databases. These databases were previously islands that served one specific purpose and didn't necessarily connect to all the other government databases from other departments. It's suspected that palantir software (perhaps along with Grok) is being used to link all of these databases together and cross reference data that was previously not available for law enforcement or immigration purposes. This could enable a lot of potential abuse and probably isn't being subjected to any kind of court or congressional oversight.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#294

Post by therobots927 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #292
periodjet wrote: post #134

Why have we all lost the ability to think in a nuanced way? It’s very disturbing to witness, particularly on a forum like HN, ostensibly populated by smart people. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that ICE has a clear and ethical mandate while also believing that they are going about fulfilling that mandate via bad methods that need to change. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that people shouldn’t be ma…

It's because there is extremism both on the left and right: the left thinks that the right wants a power grab to stop left from coming back, and the right thinks that if they don't keep their power now, the left will take it and keep it using immigrants. Both of them are right: unless there's a civil war or moderate president (which probably needs ranked choice voting) the most probable scenario is that one of the 2…

Yeah, remember when Biden deployed a personal army on red states and threatened to cancel the election?

What world do you live in where you would expect equally extreme behavior from a democrat president?

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#295

Post by vitaflo »

periodjet wrote: post #134

Why have we all lost the ability to think in a nuanced way? It’s very disturbing to witness, particularly on a forum like HN, ostensibly populated by smart people. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that ICE has a clear and ethical mandate while also believing that they are going about fulfilling that mandate via bad methods that need to change. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that people shouldn’t be ma…

Companies have advertising to sell. Nuance doesn’t sell very well.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#296

Post by therobots927 »

mmmlinux wrote: post #173

Palantir damage control got to this thread faster than the last one.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a whole team dedicated to running an online bot army to counter dissent. It wouldn’t surprise me if they plan on selling that service to their customers.

Ironically the best solution for this is for websites to start de-anonymizing users to the extent necessary to block fake accounts from polluting the airwaves.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#297

Post by hairofadog »

xiphias2 wrote: post #292
periodjet wrote: post #134

Why have we all lost the ability to think in a nuanced way? It’s very disturbing to witness, particularly on a forum like HN, ostensibly populated by smart people. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that ICE has a clear and ethical mandate while also believing that they are going about fulfilling that mandate via bad methods that need to change. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that people shouldn’t be ma…

It's because there is extremism both on the left and right: the left thinks that the right wants a power grab to stop left from coming back, and the right thinks that if they don't keep their power now, the left will take it and keep it using immigrants. Both of them are right: unless there's a civil war or moderate president (which probably needs ranked choice voting) the most probable scenario is that one of the 2…

> the left thinks that the right wants a power grab to stop left from coming back

It would probably help if Trump didn't fantasize about this publicly all the time

> the right thinks that if they don't keep their power now, the left will take it and keep it using immigrants

The left will "take it" by being elected, if they are in fact elected. That's the extremist threat the right is worried about?

What does "keep it using immigrants" mean?

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#298

Post by therobots927 »

jorl17 wrote: post #244

When I was 19, an ex-student of my Alma Mater came to give a talk about TDD. While I found the lecture interesting, I vividly remember that a portion of our community rallied against him, attempting to boycott his presence because he worked for Palantir. At the time, I remember thinking how extreme that seemed, and how I was "sure" nothing is black-and-white and that, certainly, while Palantir had shady connections,…

Welcome to the downvote club. Anyone who criticizes tech oligarchs on here gets downvoted by bots.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#299

Post by therobots927 »

pixelready wrote: post #68
randommar wrote: post #21

Ah yes, beta-tested on Palestinians, how generous of them to ship the polished version to everyone else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang

Welcome to the downvote club folks. It’s an honor to serve here with you.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#300

Post by palmotea »

idle_zealot wrote: post #275
palmotea wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretending that immigrants are the underlying cause of every societal failure is how you get MAGA. Enabling that big lie bolsters it. What are you going to do, win elections by lecturing everyone about how they're wrong and they need to think just like you? People thought the Biden administration's immigration policy was too lax, and that was a major contributing cause to the second Trump term. Deporting people who…

> What are you going to do, win elections by lecturing everyone about how they're wrong and they need to think just like you? I'm partial to the strategy of selling voters on a set of policies that will improve their lives and address their problems. Unfortunately neither party in my country is keen on that idea. > People thought the Biden administration's immigration policy was too lax, and that was a major contribu…

> I'm partial to the strategy of selling voters on a set of policies that will improve their lives and address their problems.

It's a seductive idea, but it's the attitude of an authoritarian technocrat. However, the US is supposed to be a representative democracy, which requires being sensitive to the problems voters have, as voters see them. And that's probably a big part of Trump's actual appeal. My understanding is at his rallies and in his rhetoric, he gave the appearance of being responsive to many concerns that had been willfully ignored or denied for a long time (for instance: free trade dogma, which destroyed a lot of things and insisted people be satisfied with the easily-quantified cheap junk they were being given).

> People thought that once they were told to think that.

Don't pretend your thoughts are any more independent than those of the people you're othering.

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