Earlier quoted context omitted.
The options are a) they have to decide between starving their family or continuing compromise their morals and increasing the capabilities of immoral company X, or b) a more ethically aligned company removes them from the resource pool of immoral company X. Which world do you prefer?
If they're good enough to be hired to palantir as an engineer, I very much doubt at any point they were desperate.
‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
421–430 of 433 posts
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... "We" (a lot of people, not everyone who posts here) don't believe that. Lots of people disagree with immigration control as a concept period. I mean sure but you have to acknowledge that is an extremely fringe belief that basically no one in the USA supports. The debate is on "how" it's being done not that we shouldn't have immigration control.
All of this misses the point of the moment, which is that the federal government is completely lawless and is incapable of responding to democratic or popular will . There is no debate happening. It does not matter which ordinary people "support" which position. Any political project (other than the current regime) in the USA in 2026 must contend with the fact that just establishing a democracy must be our first step…
Trump won the election mostly on a strong anti-immigration policy this is the popular will of the people.
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they're good enough to be hired to palantir as an engineer, I very much doubt at any point they were desperate.
You're missing my point. If all 'ethical' companies treat all ex-employees of 'unethical companies' as unemployable, they are effectively only going to work at 'unethical companies' regardless of whatever mindset has shifted over time.
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're missing my point. If all 'ethical' companies treat all ex-employees of 'unethical companies' as unemployable, they are effectively only going to work at 'unethical companies' regardless of whatever mindset has shifted over time.
I agree they shouldn't become outcasts, but it feels disingenuous to say that the reason for wanting to work for palantir is anything but "they wanted A LOT of money".
That said, if some ex-Palantir worker was somehow working for UNICEF – to take an extreme example – it would be a little awkward unless they had denounced their old company in a fairly public manner.
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
I blame infiltration by bots slowly shifting the Overton window. Did this site not get "weird" in the last few years? Not to think to highly of ourselves, I for one am a genuine idiot, but the crowed here likely has more influence than a lot of other online forums. Making it a worthwhile target, especially on the AI front. Plus the site is an easy to integrate into a bots with the minimal website and all.
HN got a lot of refugees from Twitter and Reddit the past few years as well.
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
> believing that an immigration queue should exist and skipping it is immoral and should be illegal. Honestly, There is no queue for poor people, this is their only way, most of these people aren't even eligible for farm worker temp visa. US has created bureaucracy over the years in such a way that these people can never become legal. They are not skipping the line and taking some tech worker's spot or anything.
They're still illegal. You can and should defend yourself from poor strangers who view their circumstances as justification to infringe upon you. You can and should enforce your border.
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked at a company using it. Wrote this below. > Probably mostly just people who work at companies that bought their software and know it's not special. It's a souped up version of Databricks. If you've worked with it it's always a laugh to see both their supporters on X who drank their koolaid, bought their stock and think it's some kind of one-of-a-kind magic, as well as people on places like HN who think the…
What other Databricks providers are designing “daddy’s home” style apartment complex bombing target solutions, in order to have AI provide 100x more targets per day than human processes were able to achieve? I understand such tech is not magical to achieve but I don’t believe that’s the accusation
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is reductionist. Surely you’ve heard of the Torment Nexus? This is along the lines of “If I don’t do it, someone else will get paid to, so it might as well be me that gets paid to do it” which I personally find morally abhorrent.
The "torment nexus" is just as reductionist a claim. It is almost always an ad hominem selectively invoked under arbitrary standards. If one consistently follows the argument raised in the meme to its ultimate conclusion, then nothing should ever be invented or accomplished for fear of some speculative harm at some undefined point in the future.
I have unfortunately lived long enough to see my passion cross this line.
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "torment nexus" is just as reductionist a claim. It is almost always an ad hominem selectively invoked under arbitrary standards. If one consistently follows the argument raised in the meme to its ultimate conclusion, then nothing should ever be invented or accomplished for fear of some speculative harm at some undefined point in the future.
Reasonably foreseeable is the tonic to cure your attempt at a dilemma. There's a certain beyond which you don't build things because it's evident that society can't be trusted with it . I have unfortunately lived long enough to see my passion cross this line.
> There's a certain beyond which you don't build things because it's evident that society can't be trusted with it.
Where does one draw the line and under what conditions? Reasonable minds can differ on the definition of foreseeable.
After all, Some of the most beneficial inventions to mankind have also aided its worst tendencies. For instance, the 20th and 21st centuries as we know them wouldn't exist without the combustion engine. Simultaneously, it's this same device that has significantly contributed to the pollution of the air.
Secondly, how does one mean to stop society or any individual from learning and building on new ideas in the Information age? Is such a thing even possible?
Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
#430Only an idiot will think all of this is about "illegals"; this is a whole infrastructure of mass surveillance and "rogue" police. They might be after specific targets now, but once it's fully normalized, you are next. From data collection and aggregation, the invasive surveillance like Flock and Ring, the use of AI and apps, it's being carefully planned and rolled out for such a mission. There should be a platform to…
if you go by “morals” every FAANG employee (current and previous) would need to go plumbing school