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

Reflections on Palantir

nabeelqu.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 658 posts

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#641

Post by bborud »

gnmlaxr wrote: post #405
bborud wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Biden administration had authoritarian, Russian style COVID policies. During the pandemic I read various descriptions of what disease outbreaks were like during various times. Including descriptions of the plague of 1665. What is interesting is that the approach to managing outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases hasn't really changed that much. Because we discovered relatively early on what helps. (Though w…

Either the lockdown policy before March 2022 was correct or the sudden "back to normal" after March 2022 was correct. The virus was still there and does not care about presidential edicts and speeches. Given the the world still exists, I think the pre-2022 policies were a gross overreach and the cancellations of the likes of Malone are an eternal shame for the U.S. that is comparable to what happened in the Soviet Un…

> Either the lockdown policy before March 2022 was correct or the > sudden "back to normal" after March 2022 was correct. > The virus was still there and does not care about presidential edicts > and speeches.

It is tempting to conclude from this that you are saying immunization, through vaccines and post infection, played no role and that the situation before and after the lockdown was essentially the same in terms of risk of poor health outcomes if exposed to covid?

> Given the the world still exists,

Yes, the world where there were vaccines and lockdown. Not the alternative version where these things didn't happen.

> I think the pre-2022 policies were a > gross overreach and the cancellations of the likes of Malone are an > eternal shame for the U.S. that is comparable to what happened in > the Soviet Union.

Two questions:

1) what precisely are you referring to when you say "comparable to what happened in the soviet union"?

2) In the face of an outbreak of a contagious disease, would you be comfortable with government not implementing any restrictions that might slow or stop the spread of disease?

Would your answer to question #2 change if the disease in question was Marburg or Ebola? If yes, why?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#642

Post by bborud »

lrewh wrote: post #515
mind-blight wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really take into account the advent of COVID vaccines, the evolution of the disease (it appears that less lethal variants), and how human immunology works (people create antibodies if they survive the first round of a disease). There's a tendency amongst folks who have strong opinions on covid measures to create false dichotomies and ignore how context changed over time. Lockdowns appear to have been a goo…

You would be right, except that the policy change was sudden. We went from hardliner measures like vaccine mandates (EUR 15,000 proposed fines in Austria), lockdowns, layoffs for the unvaccinated, gag orders for medical personnel up to December 2021 to almost complete freedom in March 2022. You could watch consent manufacturing in real time as former hardliner outlets like the NYT and the Atlantic started to insert t…

Are you saying that the measures would have seemed more warranted if the phasing out of restrictions had been more gradual?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#643

Post by notadoomer236 »

calgoo wrote: post #329
notadoomer236 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There has always been high immigration in the US, its a country built on immigration!! Like others have said, the current levels are not higher then in the past, its just the political parties that are using it to hide the real problems of ultra rich and corporations abusing the country. In regards to changing society; what is changing? The language? Again, the US is built on immigrants. Are the Italian - Americans i…

I regret that comment. I was upset and shouldn’t have posted it.

But what I would say is: countries have distinct cultures, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to preserve them, which implies controlling the rate of immigration from different cultures. The U.S. would be quite different if we replaced half the population with people from Iran, China, or even England. There is a happy medium.Pros and cons.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#644

Post by taskforcegemini »

arolihas wrote: post #581
andsoitis wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing..." ICE does ethnic cleansing? That sounds like an outrageous claim. Examples of ethnic cleansing includes the Turkish massacre of Armenians during WWI, the forced displacement and mass killings in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 90s, the Novia Scotia colonial gove…

Gaza...

..whose people try to remove all jewish people from the river to the sea

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#645

Post by edanm »

kombine wrote: post #420
dralley wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a military enemy that blatantly hides itself within civilian areas and builds its underground infrastructure underneath civilian infrastructure, and that military enemy kills 1200 of your citizens in an attack, that creates a fair bit of moral ambiguity.

Do you know where the ministry of defense is located in Tel-Aviv? Right next to its biggest shopping mall, inside of which at any point you will find dozens of young soldiers wandering around in their military uniforms with automatic rifles hanging over the shoulders. I am saying this because I have been to this shopping mall many times. According to Israel's own doctrine that makes this shopping mall a legit militar…

The argument isn't that Hamas put their HQ next to civilians. It's that they store their munitions and shoot rockets out of schools. Israel's military HQ (not the ministry of defense), which is indeed located in Tel Aviv - Yafo, is not where tanks will be rolling out of.

Nor does Israel build underground bunkers or areas to shoot rockets out of underneath civilian buildings.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#646

Post by pms »

beedeebeedee wrote: post #450

I'm amazed there's no discussion in the article about Palantir's role in Gaza and their development of Lavender and "Where's Daddy". That goes beyond the gray areas that the author mentions.

That's the kind of products Palantir develops, but is it confirmed that they developed Lavender and "Where's Daddy"?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#649

Post by ngcazz »

scottyah wrote: post #187
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all peace and harmony if the US disappeared. You've misread the situation. I don't think it would be global peace and harmony if we stopped playing world police. I simply do not care . It's not our responsibility to take care of other countries while we have serious problems at home that are going ignored.

Kissinger set out for a policy that prioritized stability, communication, and mutual understanding of each others' desires to live their own lives. If we do not "take care" of other countries (as in stop being world police, stop assisting in their problems like Clinton did with Ireland's Troubles, etc...) we would have their problems at our doorstep. Also, there is definitely a subset of Americans that cannot stand b…

You have to be joking

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#650

Post by aguaviva »

subjectsigma wrote: post #600
aguaviva wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, if $COMPANY is also providing munitions for "Gaza Israel blah blah", then by continuing to work for $COMPANY, you are also very much a part of that. It doesn't matter what department you are in, or the neat little Ansible scripts you get to write.

I suppose you’re also complicit in the deforestation of the Amazon, since humans did that and (I’m assuming) you’re human The point is that we should constantly demand better of our governments and leaders, but that doesn’t require throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I don’t think anyone should want to completely defund the people working on maintaining radios for EMS and 911 if they happen to work in a buildin…

Except in terms of aligning oneself with that $COMPLETELY_UNRELATED_EVIL, individually one has essentially zero choice.

But in terms of aligning oneself with $COMPANY and its various endeavours (whatever one may make of them -- as an individual, one generally has vastly greater choice.

Post reply on HN