Seriously, there's a lot of FUD on this thread. Right now it's anecdotal evidence at best that there is a relationship there at all. But most people here seem to be talking about it as if it's already proven fact. Come on HN.
Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
71–80 of 168 posts
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're pretty upfront with the fact that a major portion of their business is from the US government, especially intelligence analysts. The other chunk is financial (hedge funds and the like as well as banks looking for fraud). Not that it excuses any of it but they really don't try to hide it.
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…
As some one who's just interviewed with them for a "Forward Deployed SE, Government" internship position, I did ask what's up with the government in the title and what kind of work I'd do for them. They informed me that the word referred to one of the two products I'll be working on (Gotham over Metropolis) and that Gotham used to be called "Government", something that you can see on Wikipedia as well.
Now I'm not saying Gotham isn't used by gov't, I just wanted to explain what the word actually stood for.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#73I cannot believe the link between palantir and prism is by the mere NAME of the software package as alleged in this article. That's some weak journalism. I mean, just check out github while you're at it: https://github.com/search?q=PRISM&ref=cmdform
I think the link is that, in addition to creating software under the same name, they received early funding from the CIA, and their software serves the same general purpose of sifting through large amounts of disparate data from various sources.
I attended a conference in Montreal where Palantir demoed their software. They used a large amount of data on an ecoli outbreak to map out and track the point of origin. Simply because a company isn't public about all its activities and deals with "large amounts of disparate data" is not grounds to call for their cruxifixion. This story had brought out the absolute worst in HN commenters.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#74Palantir 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.
It's probably hard to get a lot of government counterterrorism and military contracting work if you are dedicated to openness in the spirit of Google.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#75While links are never impossible, I am ever optimistic and hope that their employees actually do watch out for the red flags they just spoke about on their blog two months ago. "Every Palantirian is trained to look out for “red flags” at deployments that might indicate activities that are antithetical to our commitment to privacy and civil liberties." http://www.palantir.com/2013/04/dont-just-trust-us/ ;
And every elected federal official in the United States takes an oath to defend the Constitution.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of challenges? Please elaborate.
"The problem space we tackle is wildly diverse and growing every day. We enable the discovery of new financial relationships and strategies in capital markets. We uncover fraud rings and cyber attacks. We develop strategies for optimizing home lending default strategies. We are not domain experts; we are problem solving experts." http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000000...
something that isn't marketing recruitment speak would be more illuminating.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#77Anomaly Hunting: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-hunting...;
Not to be confused with investigating.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#78Palantir 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…
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.
Very similar behavior to Washington DC defense contractors.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The problem space we tackle is wildly diverse and growing every day. We enable the discovery of new financial relationships and strategies in capital markets. We uncover fraud rings and cyber attacks. We develop strategies for optimizing home lending default strategies. We are not domain experts; we are problem solving experts." http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000000...
> We are not domain experts; we are problem solving experts Eeek!
Sounds like my granddad's job he had in the 30s. He was a troubleshooter. It wasn't a euphemism.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#80Alexander Karp was interviewed by Charlie Rose[1]:
"Most of our business is in government, and it all involves both sides of this equation -- finding people who are up to essentially bad things..."
"So, let’s say you go to the market and you buy something. You talk on your cell phone, and you send an SMS. You send every little -- you write a report. All those are data, and massive scale, it is very hard for you to see that as a pattern.
So what is the pattern of Charlie Rose? Each Charlie Rose interacting with people that are up to no good?
And then it is very hard for me, the citizen of America, to look at the government and say, did they look at Charlie Rose because he was up to no good or did they look at Charlie Rose because they didn’t like his hair color?
And by the way, did they use Charlie Rose as a way to look at Charlie Rose’s audience and find out who is in the audience?"