Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

the307.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 832 posts

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#591

Post by orochimaaru »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #523
orochimaaru wrote: post #152

I’ve said this before and cannot be said enough. Palantir is a data platform. I think they optimize for knowledge graphs (ontology). It has several uses. It’s seems to be fashionable to blame Palantir these days. But then wouldn’t you also blame other things - Java and database open source, Python, Linux foundation, etc. for all this. I think people just want to blame without analyzing what else could be blamed to. R…

Palintir is people, specifically people who are tasked with onboarding customers to use the data platform. They get to choose their users in a way that Java and Linux do not. (I hold no ill will against them, I'd rather Israel win than the other guys)

Yes the foundations can mandate that the tools are forbidden to use in military and intelligence applications.

But they won’t. And I’m fine with that. My point is foundations have licensing power while corporations regulate it through sales. Each decision is connected to money. And no one is going to say no to more money.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#592

Post by jackling »

tptacek wrote: post #581
jackling wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do YOU know they were terrorist? What would you call people who were around the individual with that pagers?

Mostly, "uninjured".

So, we established that there were injuries among people surrounding those with the pagers. Therefore, the parent comment’s claim was false — the explosions could hurt people nearby and weren’t small enough to affect only the combatant.

My other points still stand, but it’s strange to me that the argument seems to go (not necessarily from you, but from other commenters above):

The explosions were too small to hurt others, so the reported number of civilians injured must be false.

We see that the explosions did hurt civilians.

Well, only a small fraction — the numbers must still be false.

Can you see how this is moving the goalposts? The argument shifted from “the explosives were so precise that Israel must have known exactly who was targeted, and those injured were combatants,” to, in the grandparent comment:

How do you know they were civilians?

Now we see that civilians were present and injured. Perhaps you're correct that the videos show only a small number, but the videos still confirm the core point: civilians were harmed.

@tptacek, I don’t have a problem discussing this with you, but each thread you respond to splits off into new points I have to address. It feels like arguing with two people making contradictory claims.

I’ll leave you with this: the videos show only a minority of the pager detonations. Civilian injuries are most reliably known by Lebanese hospitals and government sources. The idea of detonating explosives in civilian-populated areas without knowing who is immediately around those devices is deeply problematic. And there is no way Israel could have known who would be harmed with any reasonable certainty; the reported numbers only reinforce that fact.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#593

Post by cholantesh »

sysguest wrote: post #495
apical_dendrite wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a non-military political goal. It had a military purpose of taking out the communications network and personnel of a group that was actively engaged in combat.

this stark constrast to hezbollah's direct attack on civilians: 1. directly targeted civilians 2. direct action (not remote) 3. intentionally brutal (beheadings, rapes) ...what are they, animals? pager attack is, however scary it looks, rather more "reserved and gentlemen-ly way" of doing things: 1. targeted hezbolla militants (would average civilian use walkietalkie?) 2. indirect action for anyone saying otherwise,…

Hezbollah has not been known to behead and rape civilians and has in fact condemned the use of these tactics by Islamists. This conflation really draws into question the quality of your analysis.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#594

Post by tptacek »

jackling wrote: post #592
tptacek wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly, "uninjured".

So, we established that there were injuries among people surrounding those with the pagers. Therefore, the parent comment’s claim was false — the explosions could hurt people nearby and weren’t small enough to affect only the combatant. My other points still stand, but it’s strange to me that the argument seems to go (not necessarily from you, but from other commenters above): The explosions were too small to hurt ot…

I'm not moving the goalposts. Instead, what I'm pretty sure is happening is that you see this as an argument about whether the strike was good or justified. I don't. I'm not interested in that question, which will never, ever be resolved on a message board. I'm just interested in getting the clearest picture of what actually did happen.

Most of this comment is you arguing points that I don't disagree with. The one place we're clearly not aligned is your belief that there were more civilian casualties (or even a comparable number of civilian casualties) than combatant casualties. I've argued, at length and with specific details, as to why that doesn't seem possible, regardless of what Lebanon or Hezbollah reports. If you want to keep hashing this out, that's probably the place where there's something to actually discuss.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#596

Post by doka_smoka »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #344
aprentic wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal or not it makes me afraid of Israeli technology. I don't want to be part of their collateral damage.

Don't kill their citizens, don't launch rockets at them. Don't socialize with people that do.

[dead]

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#597

Post by NickC25 »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #586
NickC25 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> needs to have answers what to do with organizations that exist for the reason to destroy another country Organizations...like Irgun? Iran has existed for thousands of years....the Persian people's existence predates Judaism by hundreds of years. So how you equate Iran with being a state explicitly existing to destroy Israel, a state that is less than 100 years old, is beyond me. But don't let me get in the way of y…

Hezbollah exists to destroy Israel, not Iran. Iran current theological dictatorship just wants to see itself as leader of the Islamic world and uses Gazans as welcomed victims, just like Hamas. It famously fund terrorist activities like Hezbollah.

in the grand scheme of things, Hezbollah is a gnat going up against a fortified nuclear power.

Israel could eliminate them in a heartbeat but actively pursue the avenue that glorifies Hamas and hezbollah and keeps them active and new members pouring in.

It's hard to hate Israel when they are peaceful, don't encourage their "settlers" to colonize neighboring countries, aren't blocking aide, aren't blowing up hospitals and schools, and leveling entire cities of innocent people.

It's easy to hate Israel when their political body props up minor annoyances that can be used as convenient opportunities to have citizens rally 'round the flag, and ignore the fact that Bibi has been in power for decades and is actively trying to avoid jail due to gross corruption and heinous abuses of power. Oh yeah they also have a large amount of mission ready nuclear weapons available at all times.

Nukes versus a glorified caveman or two who have a few guns that predate the first Apple computer by a 2+ decades....hmmm.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#598

Post by inemesitaffia »

sporkxrocket wrote: post #589
underdeserver wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were Israel, I would have not invaded Gaza During the war Israel was attacked from the territories of Gaza, Lebanon, the west bank, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen. All of these were unprovoked, except maybe Iran. All by parties openly calling for Israel's destruction. Gaza had invaded Israel, killing 1200 and kidnapping 250. What do you think the above attackers would do if Israel showed there was effectively no retali…

Israel has been attacking Palestinians and its neighbors since its inception. They are the aggressors and always have been. > It has achieved the best civilian-combatant death ratio of any urban war in modern history. False.

The Yom Kippur and Six Day war were instigated by Israel?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#599

Post by inemesitaffia »

tptacek wrote: post #413
sporkxrocket wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unguided doesn't mean unaimed. Here's an example (of many) of the types of attacks Hezbollah had been executing: https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1710938611858780314 Edit: I'm now throttled from posting but I was able to go back and find more video of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel military facilities. I think people should watch these and judge for themselves: * https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1752035071047926029…

You don't want to miss a step holding Israel to account. I'm not interested in pushing back on you about that. But to accomplish that, you're defending Hezbollah. Hezbollah is indefensible. If you want to keep hashing out why, I'm willing to keep talking about it, but I suspect this isn't a productive conversation.

You all will figure out it's all about the Jews eventually.

There's a reason why there are still crypto Jews in Iberia.

All you have to do is listen to actual Arab discourse from people in the area (or Arab protesters in Arabic in the West). Where they insist repeatedly that's it's about the Jews.

All the talk about White Supremacy (Guess who calls black people Abeed?), Settler colonialism, genocide etc are just earworms for Western ears

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#600

Post by ada1981 »

GopherState wrote: post #187
ada1981 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IDF is only able to kill 17 people they classify as "Hamas" for every 100 people they kill in Gaza (per their own internal reports). They have a self assessed 83% civilian kill rate.

Not true. The "classification" is combatants killed and identified by the IDF with first & last name. There's a larger un-identified group of combatants due to Hamas fighting in civilian clothes, and falsely claiming all deaths are civilian

>> The Israeli military did not dispute the existence of the database or dispute the data on Hamas and PIJ deaths when approached for comment... https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...
Post reply on HN