finally a topic comes up on HN that I'm an expert in, and yet I'm legally unable to talk about it. ... crap.
Which is also why Palantir folks don't talk about what they do.
Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
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Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#62This is our future. A fascist with asymmetrical hair standing in front of a hip, edgy bit of art, who's funded by a fascist who calls himself a libertarian, waxing eloquently about how good a person he is because the company he founded is protecting the shire by injecting the increasingly unaccountable security apparatus into every single aspect of our lives where they will enforce conformity.
Likable people succeed in roles that put them in front of people? What a dystopian nightmare!
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#63The link between the U.S. government's program codenamed PRISM and Palantir's internal software called Prism is completely coincidental. If you take a look at their site, you will learn that Metropolis is Palantir's alias for their finance product[1]. This is obvious just looking at the page in question as it [2] describes how to add Timeseries data. Timeseries data is usually composed of information about stocks or derivatives.
I don't dispute that Palantir deals with much of the nation's intelligence, but attempting to draw a link between two pieces of software that happen to be named the same seems like pretty bad reporting to me. Even if there is a disclaimer at the top of the page.
Full Disclosure: I'm an ex-Palantir employee.
[1] http://www.palantir.com/platforms/#metropolis
[2] https://docs.palantir.com/metropolisdev/prism-overview.html#...
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#64Guys, guys. Listen. They both start with a 'P'. We've cracked it. It's them. We can all unclench now.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#65Palantir has hundreds of employees swarming around downtown Palo Alto. Hundreds. Somebody is paying that company a LOT of money for something. There is something very weird about the employees in Palo Alto: I never see them at local meetups, events, parties, and such. They are truly strangers who keep to themselves and don't engage with the local community... and very young. I get the feeling they come from afar and…
One of the most visible Palantir employees is Michael Lopp (aka Rands), ex-Apple and Borland engineering manager and now a director at Palantir.
Lopp is pretty visible, writing a blog (http://www.randsinrepose.com), publishing a few books, and speaking at numerous conferences.
But you're right, it seems Palantir takes a lot of it's culture from Apple as opposed to Google.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#66Not really a surprise. Palantir has always been secretive about what exactly it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a large part is government intelligence work. Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-lunch version of Blackwater.
Be careful with moral judgements like that. You basically work in an industry that exists due to it's role in preparing for nuclear war.
Whats wrong with preparing for nuclear war, especially if preparation is an effective deterrent to actual nuclear war. Ensuring a credible second strike ability is probably one of the more rational ethical actions someone can take outside of pacifism.
Of course creating a credible second strike ability is so easy ( merely hide x weapons with delivery systems controlled by PALs ) that it has been a solved problem from the 1960s.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#67Okay I may be nighmar-ishing here, but is it possible that since Peter Thiel owns/owned large chunk of Facebook and also owns Palantir that works for government contracts, is it possible that Thiel could have been passing by info from Facebook servers via Palantir to the Government? Wouldn't that make sense? I mean, lets say you own Facebook so what you say needs to be programmed or Facebook employees get pink slips,…
The CIA's venture arm invested in Facebook and the political pressure is probably far greater than any pressure that small owners could generate (Thiel/In-q-tel owned a few percent by the time of the ipo)
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#68That's not how Palantir works. Palantir is a platform, if it were part of Prism the government would still be the one collecting and storing the data. They may have had a hand in setting the system up so that it integrates with that data but at the end of the day it would be no different than the government using IBM's or Oracle's big data tools.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems a quick run through the open positions at Palantir can tell you a lot more... http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPositionLanding "Embedded Analyst, Government: Canberra" "Embedded Analyst, Government: London" "Embedded Analyst, Government: New Zealand" "Engineer, Developer Support Team (McLean, VA)" "Forward Deployed Engineer: Singapore" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Government: Berlin" "Forward Depl…
Ugh, a quick review on glassdoor makes their hiring practices sound soul sucking http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-Int...
They have a really strong college recruiting organization, which seems to be how they hire most of their people, so glassdoor probably isn't as representative.
For the "FDE" positions, it's much closer to being onsite support/tech/contractor. I assure you Palantir is less shitty to interview for/work for than virtually any "traditional defense contractor", which is their comparison (I've never interviewed at Palantir, but know a lot of people there, including their recruiters, and have worked for the alternatives.)
This is all independent of their "mission". (I support national security but not unlimited monitoring of US citizens; It's annoying that stuff like PRISM deters good people from working for government, lowering our capability to respond, and thus hurting national security...)
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#70Not really a surprise. Palantir has always been secretive about what exactly it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a large part is government intelligence work. Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-lunch version of Blackwater.
Be careful with moral judgements like that. You basically work in an industry that exists due to it's role in preparing for nuclear war.
I'd go further than that. A bunch of people are expressing surprise/outrage that a bunch of companies that spy on for profit you at the service of the advertising industry are sharing the fruits of that spying with the government for national security.