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Reflections on Palantir

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#341

Post by ktagh »

worstspotgain wrote: post #236
asdasdsddd wrote: post #190

I worked there in the weird era. A couple things. 1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things. 2. I agree that the rank and file of palantir is no different from typical sv talent. 3. The services -> product transition was cool, I didn't weigh it as much as should've, but I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd 4. The shadow hierarchy was so bad, it…

Let's hypothesize that a would-be administration in a Western country would like to accomplish full Russian-style autocracy relatively quickly. Let's say they have stated publicly that their plan is to go after immigrants first, opposition leaders second. Numerically, these are two small categories, relatively speaking. The first question is, what about the third and fourth categories? Would they be dissenters in gen…

[flagged]

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#342

Post by kome »

dan-robertson wrote: post #338
austinjp wrote: post #330

The article reveals depressing reasons why someone might choose to work for the lines of Palantir: lots of talented people working on hard problems. That's pretty much it. No problem with the business model, just intellectual hunger. I'm sure the pay didn't hurt. We need to teach our students that the employment they take doesn't exist in a vacuum. Your choice of employee can impact not only yourself but the wider wo…

Doesn’t the article say the OP wanted to work on meaningful problems in healthcare and bio? I don’t think what you describe sounds like that.

he wanted, but he didn't - his first deployment was for airbus. then it follows a weak ethical discussion on why working for imperialist powers "is good, actually".

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#343

Post by munksbeer »

notadoomer236 wrote: post #321
avmich wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus The immigration has always existed, laws of it shifted, and AFAIK the current level of illegal immigration is not that high. So it's not really a large economical or humanitarian problem, and looks like it's much bigger political one.

[flagged]

> It’s in our face. And it’s changing our society.

I love the irony in this statement.

(Of which I suspect you're completely unaware)

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#344

Post by kuhewa »

jiggawatts wrote: post #331
kuhewa wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Urban conflict in general produces civilian casualties with women, men, and children dying in proportions matching the demographics. You are begging the question still. Citation needed. > In the Russia-vs-Ukraine war there are relatively few dead children because the demographics of both counties skews towards adults — not because of the military doctrine of either side. Children make up less than 20% of the popula…

Let me simplify this for you: Do you believe that 50kg shells or 500kg bombs dropped on apartment blocks selectively kill women and children, or that they kill the people in the apartment block indiscriminately? Because the arguments being made here are the former: that somehow the Israeli military is going out of its way to target not just civilians, but specifically an excess of women and children... or something t…

> arguments being made here

Being made where though? I google '65% of women children gaza' and among the front page of results, all but one reporting that figure do not indicate that women and children were selected for. Civilian infrastructure yes (e.g., "Israeli military has relentlessly targeted infrastructure indispensable to civilian survival." which is true, considering 14 hospitals were hit directly). The exception is the State of Palestine ("The Israeli aggression continues to target civilians in Gaza Strip" [1]), and I don't believe the wording is even incorrect — when you bomb a hospital knowing there are civilians inside (whether or not there were militants), you have targeted civilians.

> Certainly, the bare statement that 65% of the victims of the war are women and children is intended to make people think that.

Consider that is a subjective interpretation, others might find it indicates a strikingly indiscriminatory approach such that targeting is moot. That was my impression reading that figure. Let that be an answer to your initial question in the parent comment

I suspect that this is about to begin going in circles since no new arguments or evidence are being presented for your claims. So to conclude: I will reiterate that this is a matter that can be informed by empirical data, and the only data that has been provided in this thread with which we can interrogate the norms and outcomes of warfare (numbers from the example you invoked of Ukraine and other recent bloody and heavily urbanised conflicts in the Oxfam link) weighs heavily against assuming that mortalities should reflect the civilian population's demographics in a military action It strikes me as an undercooked, and insofar as it reflects reality, an appalling assumption.

Even assuming every adult male is a militant, they are killing two women/children per 1 militant. Killing that indiscriminately and ineffectively is, indeed, alarming: it does not matter if the goal of the dropped bombs is to preferentially kill women and children.

[1] https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/post.aspx?lang=en&ItemID=4614#_edn1

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#345

Post by robertkoss »

It is crazy how much misinformation is being spread here.

1. Palantir does more than government work. They have 3 core products:

- Gotham fka PG, used by government agencies for Intel and Mission Planning. Used to extract information from unstructured data, geographical analysis and much more. Just look up Meta Constellation

- Foundry, their commercial big data product, kind of comparable to Databricks or MS Fabric, but much more capable. You can build no code applications on top of your semantic layer (ontology) and even write back to the source systems (ERP).

- Apollo, their deployment product. Haven't used it and I don't know if they are really selling it or just advertising. They are using it internally very heavily though.

2. Palantirs commercial products are not a secret. There are tons of videos out there, the docs are public, you can even sign up for Foundry and use it immediately.

3. Palantirs commercial side of business is bigger than its governmental today.

4. Foundry is NOT "basically Grafana". As I said before, just watch some videos

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#346

Post by kome »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #190

I worked there in the weird era. A couple things. 1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things. 2. I agree that the rank and file of palantir is no different from typical sv talent. 3. The services -> product transition was cool, I didn't weigh it as much as should've, but I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd 4. The shadow hierarchy was so bad, it…

"1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things."

please tell us something

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#347

Post by munksbeer »

carom wrote: post #225
lmz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It is because corporations benefit from exploitable labor and competition among workers. For this reason they promote a narrative that opposing illegal immigration is racist. The counter narrative would be that preventing it gives power to American workers (of all races) but no one seems to discuss that.

>It is because corporations benefit from exploitable labor and competition among workers. For this reason they promote a narrative that opposing illegal immigration is racist.

This is just such an absurd take. How much reality do you have to suspend to believe that corporations around the globe have all zoned in on a policy of somehow propagating a narrative through public life about immigration so that they can exploit illegal immigration.

I know we're in the anti-capitalism, anti-big-corp zeitgeist, but come on.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#349

Post by lbotos »

reshlo wrote: post #334
throwaway2037 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: > I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd Sorry, my English is a bit weak. What is the meaning here? Did you buy shares post-IPO?

FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out.

sure -- what is fomo insurance?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#350

Post by rob74 »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #190

I worked there in the weird era. A couple things. 1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things. 2. I agree that the rank and file of palantir is no different from typical sv talent. 3. The services -> product transition was cool, I didn't weigh it as much as should've, but I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd 4. The shadow hierarchy was so bad, it…

The strangest thing for me were the article's first two paragraphs:

> Palantir is hot now. The company recently joined the S&P 500. The stock is on a tear, and the company is nearing a $100bn market cap. VCs chase ex-Palantir founders asking to invest.

[...] During the 2016-2020 era especially, telling people you worked at Palantir was unpopular. The company was seen as spy tech, NSA surveillance, or worse. There were regular protests outside the office.

I don't really see the contradiction here? The most morally repugnant companies are often the most profitable, and the stock market sometimes (not always) follows suit. And if the protests outside their offices have decreased, that's probably just a sign that there are other things to protest against now...

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