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HTML Reflections on Palantir
fijiaarone wrote 10 min ago:
Now that the surveillance state has won, people want to be on the
winning side.
botanical wrote 35 min ago:
There is no grey area working for a company like Palantir. Palantir is
as IBM was during the Holocaust.
Apartheid Israel has used the American military industrial complex and
companies like Palantir to kill a majority of civilians in Apartheid
Israel's genocide in Gaza. 65% killed have been women and children; 50
children a day killed since Oct 7th. 2% of the population have been
culled. And all this to stay and make money in a lucrative market.
If you listen to Peter Thiel, he uses the same propaganda talking
points that Apartheid Israel uses. There is zero morality supporting or
working for companies like Palantir or people like Peter Thiel.
forgotoldacc wrote 30 min ago:
There was an interview somewhat recently where someone asked his
connection to Israel's military, and he squirmed and rapidly
stuttered in sheer terror for about 15 seconds before he finally put
together a sentence where he said something like "I'm not allowed to
criticize Israel." It was weird seeing one of the richest men on
earth suddenly have absolute fear in his eyes and talking like he had
a gun to his back.
Twitter has since had the videos wiped, but I'm sure they're still
out there somewhere. I've seen other people like Zuckerberg dodge
questions, but I've never seen a man with such wealth and power
suddenly become so completely terrified.
aidenn0 wrote 1 hour 31 min ago:
> Every time you see the government give another $110 million contract
to Deloitte for building a website that doesnât work, or a
healthcare.gov style debacle, or SFUSD spending $40 million to
implement a payroll system that - again - doesnât work, you are
seeing politics beat substance.
Dismissing it as politics beating substance is not useful, since there
is so little substance present. Figuring out which of the bidders is
incompetent is non-trivial when what they do is far from your
expertise, and if it's close to your expertise, you wouldn't be hiring
outsiders to do it. I have heard similar things coming from DOTs
where, when the infrastructure is something that hasn't been done this
generation, they get bent over a barrel by the contractors.
TL; DR: when people who can't write software hire other people to write
software for them, what non-political signal do they have to separate
the sheep from the goats?
fnikacevic wrote 59 min ago:
Hire internal software folks who can judge the signals better?
whaaaaat wrote 1 hour 54 min ago:
> During the 2016-2020 era especially, telling people you worked at
Palantir was unpopular. The company was seen as spy tech, NSA
surveillance, or worse.
I mean, it is those things. I think just because it's listed on a
market doesn't change those things. People are just like, "I value the
money it makes me more than the ethical qualms I have about what
Palantir is".
ks2048 wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
The age old tale of âlibertariansâ getting filthy rich on taxpayer
dollars.
EFreethought wrote 53 min ago:
This is even better than that: "Libertarians" getting rich on
government contracts to run surveillance for governments.
jongjong wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
That's the story of the entire big tech sector and they can't deny
it.
If tech leaders actually believed that they were adding value and
receiving fair proceeds, they wouldn't spend so much energy trying to
control the media. They wouldn't be increasingly distrusted. Society
wouldn't be so divided. They wouldn't need a monetary system based on
unlimited money creation.
It's interesting that morality is often mentioned when discussing
such companies. It must be a significant challenge for them to find
people who are both intelligent enough and immoral (or amoral) enough
to do the kind of work which still yields profits in a system such as
ours. They now have to signal their moral status far and wide to
every corner of the globe attract the 'right' candidates.
trenchgun wrote 4 hours 29 min ago:
This wad also a great read on Palantir, from 2020:
HTML [1]: https://logicmag.io/commons/enter-the-dragnet/
asdasdsddd wrote 4 hours 33 min ago:
I worked there in the weird era. A couple things.
1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even
close to being the most dubious things.
2. I agree that the rank and file of palantir is no different from
typical sv talent.
3. The services -> product transition was cool, I didn't weigh it as
much as should've, but I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd
4. The shadow hierarchy was so bad, it's impossible to figure out who
you actually needed to talk to.
worstspotgain wrote 1 hour 59 min ago:
Let's hypothesize that a would-be administration in a Western country
would like to accomplish full Russian-style autocracy relatively
quickly. Let's say they have stated publicly that their plan is to go
after immigrants first, opposition leaders second. Numerically, these
are two small categories, relatively speaking.
The first question is, what about the third and fourth categories?
Would they be dissenters in general, or specific kinds (judged to be
riskier for the autocratization process) and which?
The second question is, how would they go about identifying them? Are
there products and services at Palantir that may have been designed
for this goal?
avmich wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
It would also be interesting to hear thoughts on the company of
somebody like Cory Doctorow.
Edit: aha, found. [1] "Palantir is one of the most sinister companies
on the global stage, a company whose pitch is to sell humans rights
abuses as a service. The customers for this turnkey service include
Americaâs most corrupt police departments, who use Palantirâs
products to monitor protest movements.
Palantirâs clients also include the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantirâs products for
their ethnic cleansing..."
HTML [1]: https://doctorow.medium.com/how-palantir-will-steal-the-nhs-...
serguzest wrote 25 min ago:
I think things are getting worse, JD Vance is Peter Thiel's
high-rank implant to possible upcoming Trump administration.
Will evil techno-cons replace neocons?
asdasdsddd wrote 40 min ago:
as I said, ICE is not even close to the spiciest thing it worked on
saturn8601 wrote 1 hour 23 min ago:
Man his speaking and writing style get so annoying after a while
and I speak as someone who has seen him talk at DEFCON and HOPE
multiple times. He has got this god like reputation among the
hacker community. Might there be someone who isn't as attention
seeking and who isn't just trying to make catchy speeches talking
about the same ideas?
lmz wrote 3 hours 5 min ago:
I wonder why Americans are so against cracking down on illegal
immigration. Is it all that repressed guilt from invading Indian
lands or something?
mc32 wrote 1 hour 49 min ago:
Not really, Bill Clinton was famously against it and so was
Bernie Sanders, and, arguably so was Obama. Itâs the
progressives who took over the vanguard of the Dem party that
espouse the position of open/porous borders. Not even a majority
of regular democrats want illegal aliens coming in unfiltered.
Of course some would like to forget that prior to the
progressives taking over policy, Bill, Bernie and Barrack were
all against illegal immigration. We have the interviews, the
statements, speeches, etc.
Octoth0rpe wrote 26 min ago:
> Itâs the progressives who took over the vanguard of the
Dem party that espouse the position of open borders
There are no federally elected democrats who espouse the
position of open borders. None. Zero. Every single member of
the democratic party in office today in federal office supports
some degree of border control, and frankly the degree that they
want is not worlds apart from what most republicans want.
The GOP has successfully planted the idea that they are for a
wall that lets no one through and the dems will let everyone
in, but it's much more like two sides bickering over whether
the wall should be 10m or 15m tall, whether or not there should
be razors at the top, and exactly how many palantir/anduril
terminators should be purchased for intercepting people, 1000
or 1200.
avmich wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
[1] The immigration has always existed, laws of it shifted, and
AFAIK the current level of illegal immigration is not that high.
So it's not really a large economical or humanitarian problem,
and looks like it's much bigger political one.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus
IgorPartola wrote 2 hours 35 min ago:
Basically because everyone here is an immigrant of some sort just
maybe not first generation. Also because the vast majority of
people who show up at the Mexican border are fleeing horrific
violence and when you are fleeing horrific violence it is
difficult to always do things by the book. And also it is a
reaction to just how poorly these people that otherwise would be
classified as refugees get treated. Under Trump in particular
family separation became the norm and courts who oversaw
immigration cases had kids as young as 4 brought before a judge
without family or legal representation.
mc32 wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
The majority are in no way fleeing âhorrific violence.â
Thatâs made up. The great majority come for jobs. Lots of
job figures by the Fed are inflated by jobs going to illegals.
Theyâre not coming from violent war zones âbut even in war
zones people go on living their lives, though interrupted by
war. By and large itâs not the janjaweed or isil as Obama
calls the other baddies.
MrLeap wrote 45 min ago:
A week ago Alejandro Arcos was decapitated right after he
took office as mayor of the city of Chilpancingo, a city of
around 280,000 people.
Some approximate stats:
Mexico has 45,000~ murders a year. The United States has
about 25k a year.
The population of Mexico is 130m. The population of the US is
350m.
One can't derive the distribution of motivations that bring
immigrants from these statistics. That said, I'd call that an
alarming about of horrific violence. It's safe to say it's
not evenly distributed over the whole of Mexico. It's easy to
imagine being motivated to move by those statistics/events.
Like everything, it's probably a spectrum of motivations.
More opportunities, better schools, fewer decapitations?
mc32 wrote 39 min ago:
People get murdered in the US too. We had a presidential
candidate who had two attempts on his life this election
cycle. Dems glaze over that.
Should kids in Chicago get a pass to move to buenos Aires
because Chicago is so violent? Thatâs our problem to
solve. Mexicans have their own problems to solve. Of
course electing a socialist probably wonât help. They
need their own Milei.
Early in our history we had a violent Wild West. We fixed
it ourselves. They can fix their own things too.
Theyâre not incapable.
worstspotgain wrote 1 hour 24 min ago:
They're fleeing Putin's strategically-created crises in
Syria, Venezuela and elsewhere. He gives you the flu, blames
the aspirin, and sells you the Ivermectin.
mc32 wrote 1 hour 20 min ago:
Maduro shat the bed himself with perhaps the aid of his
indoctrinated chavistas. They used to get help from Cuba.
In any case, itâs their problem. Even Columbia, their
neighbors and co-Bolivarians donât like them going into
their country illegally. They also want them out.
Man up and do what we did. Armed resistance and overthrow
the repressive government and create a new beautiful
shining beacon in the southern cone.
An implication of your statement is that Putin does this to
undermine the US thus bolstering the position that these
people weaken rather than strengthen us.
worstspotgain wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
Maduro is a 100% Russian product and service.
mc32 wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
Then kick him out of office. Do a Panama and turn it
around.
chipotle_coyote wrote 1 hour 40 min ago:
[citation needed]
carom wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
It is because corporations benefit from exploitable labor and
competition among workers. For this reason they promote a
narrative that opposing illegal immigration is racist. The
counter narrative would be that preventing it gives power to
American workers (of all races) but no one seems to discuss that.
bongodongobob wrote 5 hours 4 min ago:
Palantir was working on my companies data for months getting ready to
show us what AI could do for us. Internally I was asking "what could
they possibly show us that we don't already know, even theoretically?"
No one really had any idea either, but we were skeptically optimistic.
Palantir said just wait, this AI shit is amazing and we'll have so many
new insights for you.
The day finally came and the execs were all in the office for the big
presentation. I wasn't there, but from what I heard, it was basically a
handful of unfinished, incomplete Power BI type reports outlining
information that we already had/knew. They were literally laughed out
of the room and the meeting was cut short. It was a huge waste of time.
I wish I could have been there, from what I heard it was hilarious.
ninetyninenine wrote 4 hours 38 min ago:
I agree, the business use case was zero. Was it impressive though?
In the sense that Palantir found out information that you guys
already knew... but how much time did it take? How much man power and
how much money? What is that compared to the resources your company
spent to build that internal knowledge?
Also what company was it if you feel comfortable revealing?
Cloud98 wrote 5 hours 9 min ago:
This was a refreshing read! I like to think Software is eating the
world, but it's unable to digest the data and use it effectively.
Perhaps the shift from services to a product business adds a layer of
RWE (real-world evidence) to solving hard engineering problems.
xrd wrote 5 hours 22 min ago:
As someone who has always dismissed Palantir, I really loved this. It's
very powerful and makes me reconsider what I felt about them.
But, I'm really stuck on the point about Trump being a capable meme
generator. I mean, this feels like someone saying that a monkey
produces lots of BS. It is close to technically accurate, monkeys do
produce feces, and the cosine distance between that and true bullshit
is small. But, it misses the larger vibe-stench.
bdjsiqoocwk wrote 3 hours 34 min ago:
> It's very powerful
If you bought that garbage I have some ice to sell you.
ak_111 wrote 5 hours 30 min ago:
Note that Palantir's moral stature isn't as grey or debatable as made
in the article, it is basically clearly complicit in the genocide in
Gaza.
In other words, if you read the article I would add one more bucket to
the three categories the author provided to classify palantir's work -
genocide assistance.
from [1] """
Not only did it provide information to the US military during the
invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but over the past 10 months in
particular, Palantir has provided AI-powered military and surveillance
technology support to the Israelis in its war on Gaza.
It has, in the words of Palantir's co-founder Alex Karp, been involved
in "crucial operations in Israel".
Palantir says it offers defence technologies that are âmission-tested
capabilities, forged in the fieldâ to deliver âa tactical edge - by
land, air, sea and spaceâ.
These capabilities include supplying Israelâs military and
intelligence agencies with the data to fire missiles at specific
targets in Gaza - be it inside homes or in moving vehicles.
"""
HTML [1]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-jd-vance-peter-thiel-fou...
slibhb wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
> Note that Palantir's moral stature isn't as grey or debatable as
made in the article, it is basically clearly complicit in the
genocide in Gaza.
That there's a genocide in Gaza is objectively debatable. In the
sense that people debate it.
kevinventullo wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
Them and every American taxpayer
samatman wrote 4 hours 25 min ago:
That was covered in the article, a quote:
> I canât speak to specific details here, but Palantir software is
partly responsible for stopping multiple terror attacks. I believe
this fact alone vindicates this stance.
Defeating Hamas is a moral imperative. I am sure the engineers at
Palantir sleep well at night knowing they are helping achieve that
goal, and I commend them for it.
bdjsiqoocwk wrote 4 hours 11 min ago:
> Defeating Hamas is a moral imperative.
In that case what do you call the Netanyahu governament strategy of
propping up Hamas?
HTML [1]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-...
slibhb wrote 3 hours 44 min ago:
A mistake? The Israelis didn't understand the extent to which
Hamas views itself as engaged in a holy war. They (and many
others, including me) thought that Hamas would prioritize
building Gaza and providing services to its people over
murder/kidnapping raids.
mulcahey wrote 4 hours 41 min ago:
The war in Gaza is a moral gray area
pphysch wrote 4 hours 22 min ago:
To what extent is repeated mass-murder of civilians, total
destruction of healthcare and education systems, etc. part of the
"moral gray area"? That's just not a serious argument.
You can be pro-Israel without pretending to hold humanist values
and so on.
dralley wrote 3 hours 5 min ago:
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.
pazimzadeh wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
You would start by not sending them money. Unless of course you
needed a justification for your political/expansionist goals.
[1] [2] Anyway, the idea of embedding military targets within
civilian populations is also not exclusive to one side: [3]
Neither is the use of terror: [4] [5] [6]
HTML [1]: https://archive.ph/2023.10.14-033824/https://www.haare...
HTML [2]: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hamas-israels-own-crea...
HTML [3]: https://www.haaretz.com/2012-06-09/ty-article/.premium...
HTML [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
HTML [5]: https://web.archive.org/web/20121226235336/http://www....
HTML [6]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-jus...
HTML [7]: https://www.thetorah.com/article/israels-incomplete-co...
ks2048 wrote 2 hours 55 min ago:
Imagine the reaction to Palestinians blowing up a residential
Israeli apartment building with hundreds of civilians inside
and justifying it by saying they wanted to kill an IDF member
inside.
huqedato wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
I read the article. It sounds like a Laudatio to amorality for a S&P500
behemoth whose goal is to enable other companies to purge human from
their workflow, pardon... to digitalize the business. I'll give it a
pass.
kayo_20211030 wrote 6 hours 28 min ago:
I loved the comment about Airbus
> âAsana, but for building planesâ.
Would you use Asana for even building a project plan?
workflowing wrote 6 hours 24 min ago:
Smartsheet.
wg0 wrote 7 hours 20 min ago:
TLDR - Basically deployed developers in the field who scoured various
archaic data sources into mostly read only dashboards in a hacky way
and the other half kept generalizing it into a product.
Now they have a platform that's hard to replace because the businesses
that rely on them are extremely slow to adapt themselves that's the
very reason Plantir was able to get into the space.
csomar wrote 10 min ago:
Essentially their competitive advantage is having access to these
companies. You can't just show up at Airbus and propose to build them
a system for their data flows. Palantir does that and charges
multiples of the market rate.
maeil wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
It's funny to read this. The reality is the opposite - Palantir
pushes the custoner all day to go with actual operational usecases
(i.e. CRUD, not R) and oftentimes some highlevel exec says no, I just
want my reports.
Most companies like the mentioned Airbus though do nowadays get
convinced to do more impactful things, and they do reap the rewards.
It doesn't help that the product has evolved ridiculously over the
years. Just in these comments there's people who e.g. worked there in
2016. Productwise they might have well have been at an entirely
different company, unless they were on the gov side of things.
nickff wrote 7 hours 13 min ago:
Seems like an application of "do things that don't scale".
HTML [1]: https://paulgraham.com/ds.html
km144 wrote 8 hours 0 min ago:
> The combo of intellectual grandiosity and intense competitiveness was
a perfect fit for me. Itâs still hard to find today, in fact - many
people have copied the âhardcoreâ working culture and the âthis
is the Marinesâ vibe, but few have the intellectual atmosphere, the
sense of being involved in a rich set of ideas. This is hard to LARP -
your founders and early employees have to be genuinely interesting
intellectual thinkers.
This mythical idea that certain successful tech founders are successful
because they are highly contemplative intellectuals is so exhausting to
me. The amount of self-aggrandizement engaged in by people who merely
_interacted_ with these founders is also insane. I can no longer take
seriously the "I make software and then sit and think about ancient
political philosophy" trope.
gen220 wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
When you onboard at meta (circa 2020) the execs like to make vague
references to this rare out of print book on media studies that they
say presaged everything and explains a lot about how they think about
their role in the media ecosystem. They liked to lift quotes from it
to justify certain decisions or whatever. They encouraged you to buy
the book âif you could find a copyâ.
I like reading old books and philosophy so I found a copy. It was
basically completely unfollow-able, and at best tangentially related
to anything they were doing.
I think having some biblical text to appeal to, in order to justify
what is otherwise completely self-dealing, self-serving behavior is
some foundational principle of the VP lizard school in Silicon
Valley.
Itâs a sleight of hand. People will come up with brilliant
illusions to distract you from the convenient hand thatâs wrist
deep into your coin purse.
Not to say there arenât interesting or valuable intellectual ideas
in these books â in Girard, or what have you. But ultimately you
have to judge people objectively on the sort of behaviors they
exhibit, not on the âillusionsâ of the intellectual or
philosophical explanations they give for those behaviors.
mmooss wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
> The amount of self-aggrandizement engaged in by people who merely
_interacted_ with these founders is also insane.
It's the same thing as self-aggrandizement by interacting with (texts
of) ancient philosophers.
Somehow the lessons learned always come out as, 'more power and money
for me'. Ancient philosophers, and many since, certainly had much to
say about that.
bschne wrote 6 hours 39 min ago:
I'm not sure most people would claim their success comes down to the
intellectual stuff. It's just that a certain type of nerd who is also
very competent at what they do likes hanging out around other nerds
of a similar type. If you read the descriptions of the actual work,
at least among the FDEs, it seems striking how much it sounds like a
relatively normal consulting engagement â we're not really talking
developing foundational new algorithms or infrastructure here. But
the kind of person who enjoys working at and does well in places like
Palantir probably wouldn't enjoy Accenture. I agree it can veer
pretentious, but I think it's more about clustering a certain kind of
person together, similar to what you hear about e.g. places like Jane
Street.
ants_everywhere wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
In tech, founders tend to pick philosophers based on the ones that
flatter their politics. That suggests they aren't actually engaging
with the ideas so much as trying to appear smart for having the
opinions they already had.
mydriasis wrote 7 hours 42 min ago:
Nothing worse than sniffing each-other's farts when we're already
working hard. Eek. I'd prefer levity any day.
thimkerbell wrote 8 hours 3 min ago:
I very much liked this essay, and the HN comments are clarifying too.
Recommended.
aduffy wrote 6 hours 26 min ago:
This is the most Tyler Cowen-coded response I could imagine, and I
mean this in the best way possible.
sien wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
But what is the Straussian interpretation of your comment?
aduffy wrote 2 hours 16 min ago:
Those new service sector jobs: get paid to respond to HN comments
sien wrote 1 hour 10 min ago:
Markets in everything.
renegade-otter wrote 8 hours 35 min ago:
Palantir is neck-deep in Ukraine: [1] From what I understand, their
software is also responsible for deep-strike drone path planning,
avoiding air defenses through Russian terrain.
HTML [1]: https://time.com/6293398/palantir-future-of-warfare-ukraine/
bdjsiqoocwk wrote 4 hours 1 min ago:
I'd be curious to understand what speciality they have that they can
do drone path planning better...?
master_crab wrote 9 hours 22 min ago:
For all you backend engineers: Itâs basically Grafana with a bunch of
support engineers in the backend cleaning up the data source (like a
splunk index) that feeds it.
Palantir does UI and visualization well but needs an inordinate amount
of field support engineers to groom the dirty disparate data that
governments do a poor job cleaning (either due to incompetence, field
conditions, or both).
The amount of manual labor doesnât justify its market price, but
because governments rarely change their vendors, there is significant
lock in that probably supports some amount of their market cap.
itsoktocry wrote 7 hours 35 min ago:
>inordinate amount of field support engineers to groom the dirty
disparate data that governments do a poor job cleaning
Getting clean data seems like a universal need, but the job is still
difficult, under-appreciated and underpaid. How come?
kidros wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
This is such a hilarious oversimplification.
Taikonerd wrote 9 hours 5 min ago:
But they have 80% margin, according to the article... so those
engineers are generating a lot of revenue per capita.
JumpCrisscross wrote 8 hours 56 min ago:
> they have 80% margin, according to the article
I have a pet theory about private equity: they're in the business
of laundering boring jobs for college graduates. Few kids dream of
graduating college to work at a chemicals plant in Baton Rouge. But
working for Accenture in New York or Atlanta, now that's sexy. Even
if you spend your entire work week *checks notes* working at a
chemicals plant in Baton Rouge. (Investment banking is similar,
though the transaction orientation makes the division of labour a
little more sensible.)
Palantir pays less for its consultants (sorry, FDEs) than Bain et
al. Few in their generation dreamed of graduating college to work
at a soulless corporate consultancy. But a tech company, now that's
sexy.
More pointedly: It's remarkable how an ostensibly 80% GM business
only barely became profitable last year. Palantir's Q2 '24 cash
flows from operations at 40% of revenues looks closer to the mark
[1]. (Palantir's cost of revenue "primarily includes salaries,
stock-based compensation expense, and benefits for personnel
involved in performing [operations & maintenance] and professional
services, as well as field service representatives, third-party
cloud hosting services, travel costs, allocated overhead, and other
direct costs" [2].) [1]
[2]
HTML [1]: https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001321655...
HTML [2]: https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001321655...
gen220 wrote 4 hours 6 min ago:
I like the pet theory!
just quibbling on profitability. it's not ostensibly 80%, it's
80%. gross margin != "net profit" != cash flow positive, thanks
to GAAP.
Compare the margins (gross, operating, net) here [0]. Observe the
historical changes in cash on hand (i.e. cash flow) here [1].
They have been accruing cash-on-hand on a YoY basis since 2021Q4.
80% gross margins on 2.5B TTM revenue is really impressive.
For comparisons, Cloudflare sits around 77% (on 1.5B TTM
Revenue), Salesforce around 75% (36.5B TTM revenue), Datadog
around 80% (2.4B TTM revenue).
It does remain to be seen on whether they can translate that into
meaningful operating margin over time. But they're well on their
way [1] [0]: [1]:
HTML [1]: https://macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PLTR/palantir-tech...
HTML [2]: https://macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PLTR/palantir-tech...
g_sch wrote 4 hours 49 min ago:
Matt Levine had a funny similar take recently:
"You could have a model of Harvard Business School that is like:
1. Harvard Business School teaches you skills that would make
you good at running a company.
2. There are lots of companies that could use those skills.
3. But you donât want to run those companies, because they
make, like, ball bearings.
4. You want to run a fancy company; you want to run a hedge
fund or a tech startup or something.
5. Meanwhile, the people currently running the ball bearings
company would not be all that excited about you, a fresh-faced
business school graduate who has never run anything, coming in to
run their company, even if you did learn a lot of useful skills
at Harvard.
6. Therefore various industries exist whose principal
business is laundering ball bearings companies into opportunities
that appeal to Harvard Business School graduates. You wrap the
ball bearings company in a name like âprivate equityâ and
suddenly it is legible to the Harvard students, so they flock to
it.
7. Those industries are also in the business of getting the
ball bearings companies to accept the Harvard Business School
graduates, which in practice means not so much âmake the ball
bearings company excited about its new Harvard CEOâ but rather
âbuy the ball bearings company and install new management.â
Source:
HTML [1]: https://archive.is/8IUCA#selection-1795.0-1869.303
m463 wrote 4 hours 54 min ago:
I think the other side of the chemical plant job is that the
salary is higher than a college grad would get from the plant
itself out of college.
Nobody at the chemical would ever pay a college grad VP^h^h
consultant salary to work there.
(I did stuff like this out of college - got paid hourly ~ 3x
normal employee salary at non-sexy location)
wg0 wrote 7 hours 30 min ago:
Hilarious if true. Still hilarious if not.
OisinMoran wrote 8 hours 22 min ago:
I like this theory! And I don't think it's a cynical one
eitherâthis "laundering" could actually be really useful.
The worker gets the status and security of a tech/consulting job,
while having more variety than actually working at the chemical
plant, not being at the whims of their org chart, and also just
the reframing probably makes it more enjoyable anyway. All the
while, the important work is getting done.
JumpCrisscross wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
I don't think it's cynical at all! I do think it's a
decision-delaying choice, however, in that it treats one's work
as a series of electives. The person working at the plant,
gaining seniority and building deep connections is on their way
to industry expertise. It's trading wealth and power for
prestige. (It makes sense it's like catnip to our graduates
from elite schools.)
okino wrote 9 hours 12 min ago:
Leaving this here for people interested in what the software actually
is.
HTML [1]: https://www.palantir.com/docs/
JumpCrisscross wrote 9 hours 15 min ago:
> needs an inordinate amount of field support engineers
Hey now, they're forward-deployed engineers. Nothing like Oracle or
SAP consultants.
throwup238 wrote 9 hours 0 min ago:
Do they dig latrines too?
âForward deployedâ sounds like theyâre in a FOB out in the
sticks somewhere.
master_crab wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
Touché
nxobject wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
I imagine back in the LBJ and Nixon days IBM would've been doing
similar classified work.
hiAndrewQuinn wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
Huh. I finally have a name for what my own job really is.
I should probably look into this Palantir operation.
Finnucane wrote 9 hours 34 min ago:
"I remember my first time I talked to Stephen Cohen he had the A/C in
his office set at 60, several weird-looking devices for minimizing CO2
content in the room, and had a giant pile of ice in a cup. Throughout
the conversation, he kept chewing pieces of ice. "
" Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water or
rainwater? And only pure grain alcohol?"
fnwbr wrote 9 hours 57 min ago:
> you can work on things like Google search or the Facebook news feed,
all of which seem like marginally good things
lol, where has the author been in the past decade? both of those are
bad, especially the feed algorithms are scientifically proven to have a
strong influence on the decline of trust into democratic institutions
FactKnower69 wrote 9 hours 47 min ago:
he worked at palantir for 8 years dude, do you think he has the
capacity to discern if the Facebook news feed was a net positive for
society
eezing wrote 9 hours 58 min ago:
Itâs Salesforce v2. A ridiculously expensive proprietary
âeasy-to-buildâ application platform with an ecosystem of
ridiculously expensive consultants.
SpicyLemonZest wrote 9 hours 18 min ago:
Salesforce v2 is a pretty bull case for Palantir! This bias people
have against against application platforms requiring a consultant
ecosystem and per-customer installations is just not accurate - in
software, as in the rest of the world, there are some areas where
it's the right model to get things done efficiently. Walmart can't
use an off-the-shelf CRM platform any more than US Steel could use an
off-the-shelf furnace.
wbl wrote 7 hours 56 min ago:
US steel very infamously did not do any R&D and stuck to outmoded
technology.
akira2501 wrote 10 hours 2 min ago:
So this entire article seems to actually describe a _single_
work/consultation product, then spends the rest of the time describing
and backwardly lauding the absurd cult of personality that seems to
encompass this entire operation.
"A boring dystopia as a service."
Or maybe I'm just not cognitively ready to read this yet this morning.
I guess I'll set my A/C to 60 and chew on some ice to see if that
helps. :|
partomniscient wrote 7 hours 58 min ago:
I agree. I still didn't fully understand what value Palantir adds,
and it partly felt like they were justifying the 8 years spent
working for them to themselves. It sounds kind of interesting from a
corporate culture point of view but that was about it.
tolerance wrote 7 hours 39 min ago:
It's public relations. Palantir is Not Badâ¢.
tdeck wrote 10 hours 9 min ago:
> During the 2016-2020 era especially, telling people you worked at
Palantir was unpopular. The company was seen as spy tech, NSA
surveillance, or worse.
Lots of people still see it in exactly this way. The fact that Palantir
IPO'd and is a magnet for investors doesn't contradict this. Palantir
always had a reputation for champagne and surveillance.
paulpauper wrote 8 hours 3 min ago:
Almost all tech acts as surveillance. Anything that records an IP
address or GEO data is surveillance.
orochimaaru wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
So does AT&T and Verizon which would fall in the morally neutral
category. Even big tech - Google/meta are probably classified as
morally neutral but in reality gray areas. The US government probably
has access to all that data - with our without warrants.
I also agree with his premise. There is really no gray area working
for defense tech in the US. In my opinion people have a rather
lopsided view of that. You would rarely find any other nation that
where defense tech companies are turned away from job fairs. Kinda
ridiculous.
moolcool wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
> Google/meta are probably classified as morally neutral but in
reality gray areas
I don't think so. I see tons of people with moral objections to
Meta specifically.
Shog9 wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
You're being pretty generous toward the "phone companies" here -
their reputations have decades of bad press and shady behavior to
shoulder as well. The big difference being, in addition to their
roles as data brokers and fig-leaves for the spooks, they also
provide phone service.
So... Y'know. You could just let people assume that you're a
lineman or something.
julianeon wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
Factually untrue.
I'm going to quote ChatGPT here, just because finding links outside
of that is hard (it's an obscure topic) and this summary is good
enough.
> The phenomenon of compensating wage differentials for working in
"sin" industries is observed not just in the U.S., but
internationally as well.
About "sin" industries:
> "Sin industries" (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pornography,
miltech) can be seen as morally contentious by some workers. As a
result, individuals may seek higher wages to compensate for any
discomfort or societal stigma attached to their work in those
sectors.
bigstrat2003 wrote 7 hours 9 min ago:
ChatGPT is not a valid source to substantiate a claim.
rabf wrote 2 hours 42 min ago:
What sources do suggest as superior?
xk_id wrote 6 hours 9 min ago:
Itâs veiled spam and i donât know why HN isnât outright
prohibiting it
tolerance wrote 8 hours 10 min ago:
Julian,
I know that on the Internet the demand for sources can be a
preemptive concern when structuring an argument.
Howeverâpleaseâthere is no need to resort to large language
model applications in order to support your subjective claims.
You can do this on your own, son. If the machine can find it, so
can you! Take your time, think things through. What you're saying
would sound more reasonable in your own words.
rabf wrote 2 hours 44 min ago:
I find the disdain for LLM's somewhat troubling when they they
are easily in the top 1% of commenters on most subjects.
julianeon wrote 6 hours 59 min ago:
Since you asked, I think I'll explain myself.
I did look for sources. I estimate it would've taken about 15
minutes to collect the sources and link them. Basically if you
do the search yourself, you'll see the first page or so of
links is very academic ones. So I would need to scroll past all
those, and read the abstract to find one that corroborated my
argument.
This is not, as they say, a paid position: it's fair to say
"that takes to long" and choose not to do this. Which is what I
did here.
Now I'm not sure what the correct thing to do here was, in
retrospect. I can see that an LLM is not a popular choice,
though I thought it was a defensible compromise between "no
source" and "spending too long finding actual sources."
I could've handwaved and said "academics say" without sourcing
(probably the best choice).
I won't cite an LLM next time. I'll probably just frankly say
"you can look it up, I won't do that because it takes too long,
but..." I believe that's a fair compromise between "saying
nothing" and "spending 15-20 minutes on a thankless research
task."
The one thing I'm unwilling to do here is to just spend 15-20
minutes on this, however. I'd rather be downvoted, or simply
say nothing.
tolerance wrote 5 hours 44 min ago:
I feel you.
The cost of defending a reasonable sentiment on the internet
always outweighs the benefits...because whether there are
"winners" in online arguments is questionable.
It takes a lot of forbearance to express an opinion, an
observation, an anecdote or provide even objective
information, and move on. Or, turn the 15â20 minutes into
an entire weekend; researching, analyzing, drafting, revising
and publishing a report to substantiate the claims for the
next guy (and for the AI scraper bots who will use for work
to support the argument of the next guy).
nonameiguess wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
I want to be as charitable as possible, but it sounds like
you're saying here your alternative was to skim a bunch of
sources until finding one that agrees with you, then citing
it as if it's the only authority out there and the matter is
settled. While the more cynical part of me doesn't doubt
that's what everyone on the Internet actually does, it's not
exactly in the spirit of honest inquiry and I rarely see
people flat out admit to it.
I can't help but be a little skeptical because both my wife
and I have worked in either the military itself or on
military technology for most of our adult lives, and while we
live comfortably and have no complaints, the pay is nowhere
near what you'd get in finance or ad tech or most successful
B2C web companies. Quite to the contrary, rather than being
compensated for the stigma, there is no stigma. Outside of
comments section bubbles, the US military is a widely
respected institution and the people holding these kinds of
jobs have great pride in their missions and willingly accept
less money to work on something they care about and believe
in.
I can't comment on porn and drugs, which seem quite
different.
tolerance wrote 5 hours 41 min ago:
> I want to be as charitable as possible, but it sounds
like you're saying here your alternative was to skim a
bunch of sources until finding one that agrees with you,
then citing it as if it's the only authority out there and
the matter is settled. While the more cynical part of me
doesn't doubt that's what everyone on the Internet actually
does, it's not exactly in the spirit of honest inquiry and
I rarely see people flat out admit to it.
Outside of the spirit of honest inquiry, perhaps no. But I
commend his honesty in general.
NegatioN wrote 8 hours 34 min ago:
"Right now there's this thing where ethics aren't what they used to
be. This idea that people are trying to replace the ideas of good
and bad, with better or worse." -Dave Chappelle
What you're writing should naturally lead to the conclusion that
working for Google, Meta, Verizon, AT&T etc are all in the category
of companies one shouldn't strive to use their hard earned talents
for. For some reason I cannot fathom, you seem to land on the idea
that Palantir is okay, because all these others somehow have snuck
under the radar of many people?
orochimaaru wrote 8 hours 29 min ago:
Iâm saying Palantir and defense tech is better because they are
upfront about their association. In contrast you have what the
author calls as morally neutral companies that are in fact gray
areas.
nxobject wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
I'm sure there are plenty of people who say no to working on
improving Facebook engagement, DoubleClick etc. for that reason! As
opposed, to, say, something like the calming algorithm YouTube uses
with its comments.
(Also, there are plenty of reasons why the American defense
industry is both quanitatively and qualitatively different from
those of other nations, e.g. France, Sweden â i.e. its
disproportionate involvement with arms sales, its involvement with
defense boondoggles and the opportunity cost, etc. Regardless of
the grays, when the system is black, entire countries are painted
black.)
stackskipton wrote 9 hours 28 min ago:
>You would rarely find any other nation that where defense tech
companies are turned away from job fairs. Kinda ridiculous.
Probably because US MIC is weird political place. On one hand, it's
turns out really cool tech and US needs defense. On other hand, who
are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world
police when we have a ton of internal problems? Throw in some pork
barrel in there to add to political stuff.
When people post memes about "You are about to find out why US
doesn't have free healthcare." with some overwhelming American
firepower equipment in the image, it's not hard to see why a lot of
people find it a grey area.
mega_dean wrote 4 hours 4 min ago:
> On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending
all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal
problems?
Reminds me of this scene in Wag the Dog: [1] "The war of the
future is nuclear terrorism. It is, and it will be against a
small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst to perhaps their own
governments, have blah blah blah blah blah. And to go to that
war, you have to be prepared."
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwgPnYVg74Y
psunavy03 wrote 8 hours 57 min ago:
> On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending
all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal
problems?
Because someone has to be this if you want the continuation of
the post-WWII rules-based international order that underpins the
entire global economy. The Department of Defense and US hegemony
are essentially overhead that is the Least Bad Option to stop
WWIII from kicking off or the world from fragmenting into spheres
of influence (which is starting to happen already). Who else
would do this and not screw over everyone else even worse?
Russia? China?
walleeee wrote 7 hours 16 min ago:
You may be correct on at least one point: the DOD may have
stepped us all down from WW3 recently, to the chagrin of other
elements of the establishment who have gotten used to
whispering foreign policy into the relevant ears with no
pushback
saturn8601 wrote 7 hours 56 min ago:
Great. So Americans get to be the suckers propping up the
decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of
Asia and the ME.
This country has a collapsing middle class, horrendously bad
health outcomes, ever increasing amount of corruption and
little chance to turn things around because of entrenched
interests.
I can just picture the thought process going in your head(and
many others) right now. If you hate it so much why dont you
leave.
yks wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
> Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent
lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia
and the ME
America benefited greatly from this position though, it's
just the gains have not been equally distributed, and one can
make an argument that Americans simply vote for that outcome.
It is very unclear to me how the situation of the middle
class in the US becomes any better if the US gives up its
leverage for Chinese to dictate the terms. FWIW pre-WW1 the
US had even worse inequality while not propping up anyone's
lifestyle abroad.
saturn8601 wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
>It is very unclear to me how the situation of the middle
class in the US becomes any better if the US gives up its
leverage for Chinese to dictate the terms. FWIW pre-WW1 the
US had even worse inequality while not propping up anyone's
lifestyle abroad.
This was explained in the other post which I will reproduce
here:
"looking at history of the US, the only time the people at
the top ever gave any semblance of crumbs to everyone else
was when they knew they were in deep trouble and were
forced to part with whatever little they could give to calm
the masses.
Think of Medicare, Social Security etc. We saw it again
with Obamacare. The country was in a rage so out came the
bare minimum. Elimination of barbaric things like
pre-existing conditions in exchange for guaranteed income
for the insurance companies. Absolute breadcrumbs but it
was something.
We just need something like that on a worldwide level.
Maybe China rising will finally put pressure on the US
given that the EU never amounted to much more than being a
US vassal state."
We saw the best of the US system during the cold war. The
system had to prove itself. Im not advocating for communism
nor Chinese style fascism just more competition.
The third world is already taking advantage of this
situation. Nearly every country in the global south has
been negatively damaged by the US or Europe at some point.
They don't have many options other than to tough it out and
hopes the West leaves them with whatever scraps they can
get by. If they got too powerful, then the West topples
them over. See Pakistan or Bolivia as a recent example. Now
China has entered the scene and it has provided the ability
for countries to start playing the US and China off of each
other to see what they can get out of both countries.
Djibouti and its military bases is a small example but we
see it with countries like Brazil and Pakistan as well.
How would this help the middle class in the US? Well if the
elite in the US start to think they will lose out they will
start to enact change that will bring the middle class up
to snuff in order to better compete...and lets be honest
for a moment, whatever they say goes.
yks wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
If you believe that the progress is achieved when the
masses have it the worst, then the deteriorating
condition of the American middle class will naturally
help it. What's the point in this accelerationism with
allies as casualties then?
saturn8601 wrote 54 min ago:
>If you believe that the progress is achieved when the
masses have it the worst, then the deteriorating
condition of the American middle class will naturally
help it.
Thats what we have seen historically. People always
demand improvements. The leadership of this country
hasn't actually done it until they really have a pissed
off populace at their doorstep. I wouldn't believe it
if it weren't for the historical precedent.
>What's the point in this accelerationism with allies
as casualties then?
Americans should be first in line when it comes to who
the government serves but if you just look at the US
government's actions vs other governments in the west,
the US government clearly does not have their citizens
interests first and foremost.
Think of all the rights and regulations the EU(or hell
even many third world countries) have vs the US.
It manifests itself in so many ways:
Some easy examples demonstrating small issues as well
as big ones:
1. EU countries mandate physical addresses for VOIP
number registration. US spends years not implementing
its half assed regulations Result: Americans are
drowning in spam calls
2. EU negotiates drug prices as a government and
refuses to pay more than a specific %. Companies would
rather get something vs nothing from the EU market. US
despite being the largest market, refuses to negotiate
as a government even though they have a universal
health program(for seniors only but thats a different
issue). Result: American made drugs are sometimes up to
10x more expensive in the US than elsewhere. A vial of
insulin in EU: ~9$ USA: ~99$
3. US sends its Navy to patrol world seas, ensuring
flow of goods. Result: EU does not meet required 2% of
NATO spending and instead funnels that money into
social services like subsidized colleges. Result: US
citizens either drown with a lifetimes worth of college
debt or take a chance in the Military for subsidized
college after giving up 4+ years of their young adult
life serving their military contract while EU citizens
graduate debt free and take a gap year traveling
instead.
I can go on for literal dozens of examples. I
specifically chose to go from small to big to show that
the problem is systemic and permeates all aspects of
American life. In many ways the American system is one
giant scam and they only people benefiting are people
who have managed to survive in the upper echelons of
the income stratosphere or are foreigners.
If the US changed its focus to be more inward, it can
focus on rebuilding manufacturing which would increase
jobs availability and give more power to workers which
would lead to other rights for the common man such as
demanding more from the government to help US peoples
among many other examples.
nxobject wrote 6 hours 26 min ago:
I think there's some clarification that needs to happen,
though: what would it mean for "China to dictate the
terms", and does that necessarily happen if the US "steps
back" (and what does that mean?) In a charitable
interpretation, the US remains an important trading,
industrial, technological, and educational world power.
Perhaps it might even keep the spending on worldwide
surveillance (e.g. spy satellites). Geopolitical influence
allows for many strategies.
yks wrote 6 hours 9 min ago:
Stepping back from enforcing post-WW2 world order means
letting China, Russia, Iran to freely install their
satellite and unfriendly-to-the-US regimes around the
world, by force if needed. Which means access to the
foreign markets will be curtailed for the US or otherwise
"dictated" by other powers. It's hard to see how that
leads to more prosperity for Americans, especially since
the political forces trying to bring that about are also
not very pro-"trading, industry, technology and
education".
The GP says that they don't want to prop up foreign
lifestyles because the middle class in the US is
struggling but isolationism in the 21st century will not
make things better for the US middle class. Nor for
middle class of any other country really, although the GP
doesn't care about those.
saturn8601 wrote 4 hours 11 min ago:
>Stepping back from enforcing post-WW2 world order
means letting China, Russia, Iran to freely install
their satellite and unfriendly-to-the-US regimes around
the world, by force if needed.
The US isn't going anywhere. In fact China has serious
structural problems that may make all this conversation
pointless. But there needs to be some sort of pathway
for the global south to move forward. If that involves
having China rise up and then countries accepting that
all they can do is play the US and China off of each
other to get the best deals out of them then thats
still a step forward. If climate change comes to pass
it may not even matter. The US and the West is the
cause for the majority of the historical pollution yet
its the unprepared global south that will bear the
worst brunt of climate change. So the best I am
advocating for is that the global south take one step
forward and hope they don't end up five steps backwards
in the long run.
>The GP says that they don't want to prop up foreign
lifestyles because the middle class in the US is
struggling but isolationism in the 21st century will
not make things better for the US middle class. Nor for
middle class of any other country really, although the
GP doesn't care about those.
As to improving the middle class, we need to understand
the structural reasons why they are sinking. Decades of
erosion to US institutions has led to a situation that
can only change if things get really bad and the
citizens really demand change..or the US elite are
challenged with some real competition. I dont see how
it can happen naturally in the US anymore. Every time
people get fed up, there is a "release valve" or a
distraction in the form of crumbs offered to people so
that enough settle down or fixate on something else. We
saw it after the "Occupy Wall Street Protests" with the
beginning of the culture wars as well as the passing of
Obamacare which eliminated the most barbaric provisions
of health care in the US. It is not meaningful change
but it calmed people down. This method will lead to
decades of the elite retaining their leverage. I dont
want to see my life pass before my eyes and no real
reform ends up happening.
In terms of the second method of having the elite being
challenged, We saw in the cold war how the US system
had to prove itself and that led to a strong taxation
on the wealthy, good institutions, positive movement
for the middle class, all to show the Russians that the
US led system is the best. There currently is no
forcing function to return to that situation at this
time.
yks wrote 1 hour 37 min ago:
> We saw in the cold war how the US system had to
prove itself and that led to a strong taxation on the
wealthy, good institutions, positive movement for the
middle class, all to show the Russians that the US
led system is the best.
I don't think anyone sane thinks that Russians or
Chinese masses have it better in economic terms. In
fact, the message of Russian propaganda including its
American extension is that everything sucks
everywhere.
saturn8601 wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
>I don't think anyone sane thinks that Russians or
Chinese masses have it better in economic terms. In
fact, the message of Russian propaganda including
its American extension is that everything sucks
everywhere.
Uh did I say anything of the sort?
When the Cold War was going on the communist system
was initially out producing and out maneuvering the
US but eventually the fallacy of a communist (and
subsequently fascist takeover of the government)
made it inevitable that it was going to fail.
However during this fight between the two powers,
the US saw great advances in the prosperity and
rights of its middle class. As the USSR started to
fall, we saw the beginnings of corporate takeover
of all layers of the US government and it really
accelerated after the USSR fell. You are making
this argument that the US had it so good while
ignoring how it got so good and also failing to
acknowledge why it has declined so much over the
last few decades. If you don't buy my argument then
I challenge you to provide an alternative
explanation.
ngcazz wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
We should stop defending an imperialist establishment which
relies on the rampant exploitation of the global south and is
committing genocide and calling it rules-based order. More like
America rules.
The containment rhetoric/logic is long past its use-by date -
the US's pretense as guardians of a common moral high ground
was shattered at the very latest with the Vietnam War, and in
2024 it is an absolute tragedy of a joke in poor taste.
You gotta think this rules-based order is designed to drive
anyone decent crazy. What else can happen when you hear pieces
of shit like Blinken wax lyrical about the human rights of
Palestinians while supercharging weapons deliveries to Israel,
or the very existence of the UNSC veto which will guarantee
outcomes that reinforce unforgivable and unforgettable mass
crimes, beckoning awful consequences for the whole world.
itsoktocry wrote 7 hours 37 min ago:
>You gotta think this rules-based order is designed to drive
anyone decent crazy.
All complaints, no solutions. Typical.
So who does have the moral high-ground around the globe? It's
unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all peace
and harmony if the US disappeared. I can imagine much worse,
just by reading a history book.
mistermann wrote 4 hours 10 min ago:
> It's unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all
peace and harmony if the US disappeared. I can imagine much
worse, just by reading a history book.
What is the relevance of this to the content of the comment
you are replying to?
bigstrat2003 wrote 7 hours 11 min ago:
> 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.
scottyah wrote 4 hours 45 min ago:
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 by living well when others aren't, just
because they other people were born elsewhere. This
applies on all levels: Country, State, County, City,
Neighborhood, block, house, etc.
saturn8601 wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
What are you smoking? Have you not seen the list of all
the governments that have been "removed" by the US?
Most recently Pakistan which was a year ago
[1]
HTML [1]: https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan...
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_in...
saturn8601 wrote 7 hours 34 min ago:
I'd like to think that Pakistan would be on a better road
if their democratically elected leader wasn't ousted by the
US.
Thats one example, there are many others.
In terms of solutions, well looking at history of the US,
the only time the people at the top ever gave any semblance
of crumbs to everyone else was when they knew they were in
deep trouble and were forced to part with whatever little
they could give to calm the masses.
Think of Medicare, Social Security etc. We saw it again
with Obamacare. The country was in a rage so out came the
bare minimum. Elimination of barbaric things like
pre-existing conditions in exchange for guaranteed income
for the insurance companies. Absolute breadcrumbs but it
was something.
We just need something like that on a worldwide level.
Maybe China rising will finally put pressure on the US
given that the EU never amounted to much more than being a
US vassal state.
mistermann wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
Force is only one of many methods to achieve certain outcomes,
not all methods that could achieve the same general outcome are
known, very little cognitive effort is put into searching for
alternatives, leaving few options other than speculation if one
is obligated to form a conclusion on the matter.
scottyah wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
All deliberate actions to achieve certain outcomes are
"force", it is a scale not a binary option.
mistermann wrote 4 hours 13 min ago:
I am skeptical, let's run an experiment and see what the
response is:
Is feeding the homeless so they are not hungry "force"?
Is lending a compassionate ear to someone suffering so they
may feel a bit better "force"?
Is making myself a nice sandwich and watching a movie
because I find it pleasant "force"?
nuz wrote 10 hours 11 min ago:
Since will come up, Thiels response to some of current geopolitical
critiques of Palantir:
HTML [1]: https://youtu.be/bNewfkhhwMo?t=3755
EasyMark wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
Thiel knows how to get rich and Iâll give him that, however I would
never trust his reptilian takes on geopolitics or anything else
outside of business strategy and even then I might limit it to stuff
heâs working on in the past.
jedimind wrote 6 hours 55 min ago:
Thiel is such a propagandist, his speech reminds me of Nazi
propaganda where the Nazis claimed that Jews had declared war on
Germany. This narrative was part of a broader anti-Semitic campaign
to justify the persecution of Jews. The Nazis cited several instances
as evidence of this purported declaration of war by Jews, most
notably a headline from the British newspaper The Daily Express on
March 24, 1933, which read "Judea Declares War on Germany." This
headline was in response to a worldwide boycott of German goods
organized by Jewish groups to protest against the early actions of
the Nazi government, such as the boycott of Jewish businesses in
Germany.
The Nazi regime used this headline and other similar international
actions to claim that the global Jewish community was an enemy of
Germany. This supposed declaration of war served as a convenient
pretext for the Nazis to intensify their anti-Semitic policies, which
eventually led to the Holocaust. The narrative fit into the broader
Nazi ideology that portrayed Jews as an existential threat to the
German nation and the Aryan race, and it was used to justify the
systematic genocide that was to follow. This is akin to Thiel stating
"well, if the jews had the power, they too would have committed a
holocaust against the Germans", this is sheer insanity, he uses a
similar argument to justify the Palestinian genocide. Stating "they
didn't dresden Gaza", huh? What Israel did to Gaza is, by any
measurable metric, much worse than what happened to Dresden. His
defense of Israel's Genocide of Palestinians is not just factually
wrong but filled with statements that are evidence of his denial of
reality.
At 1:03:05 Thiel states: "the intent to commit a crime is where the
crime gets committed". LOL, and the audience clapped - what absolute
insanity. Legally and pragmatically, that statement is absurd. One
can not judge people based on their "intentions", which can't be
separated from personal bias and interpretation, but only on their
concrete actions and not their perceived "thought crimes".
So Thiel dishonestly removes all context of a century of brutal
colonialism and ethnic-cleansing to paint the crudest zionist
propaganda of "they just want to kill all jews" instead of a
colonized people whose children, in the same year - months before
that event, were brutally murdered by the israeli occupation as they
have done for decades: At least 507 Palestinians were killed in the
West Bank in 2023, including at least 81 children, making it the
deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began recording
casualties in 2005. [ [1] ...]
Weaponizing antisemitism to disguise colonialism is extremely heinous
and cheapens real antisemitism - would it make any difference if the
occupiers were Scientologists? If you lose your land and property why
would you care about the identity of your oppressor?
Even Ahmed Yassin the founder of hamas has a famous video shared
across social media where he states: âWe donât hate Jews and
fight them because they are Jews. Jews are people of a religion, and
we are people of a religion. We love all people of religion. My
brother even if he is my brother and he is a Muslim, If he steals my
house and kicks me out, I will resist him.â
Although the zionist propagandists know very well that it is their
oppressive occupation for which they are hated, they still prefer
peddling a false narrative that their targets of colonization just
"hate the jews", because it's a very potent narrative that plays into
islamophobic and orientalist tropes which the western world finds
appealing.
HTML [1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/shocking-spik
jgalt212 wrote 10 hours 17 min ago:
246 PE, with a $94B market cap. [1] Alex Karp has something figured
out. The investor class loves him.
HTML [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PLTR/
specialsits wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
It's always amusing when armchair investors throw around financial
metrics meant for entirely different types of companies, just to
sound knowledgeable because they've heard others repeat the same lazy
jargon.
cgh wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
Honest question from someone who "armchair invests" in broad-market
ETFs: what metrics would I look at for a company like Palantir? I'm
not asking for investment lessons. Just your opinion and some links
would be fine.
airstrike wrote 8 hours 3 min ago:
Always forward multiples, never trailing ones. Palantir likely
trades on Enterprise Value / NTM Revenue (next 12 months).
Don't just take the average provided by something like Yahoo
Finance. You need to look at which analysts are providing
estimates, decide which of those analysts are reliable (e.g. a
Bank of America analyst can be trusted, a Morningstar bot that
writes research reports cannot), write down all their estimates,
take either the mean or average
Because few analysts provide quarterly estimates, you need to use
annual estimates instead. But the next twelve months are going to
be made of some part of 2024 plus some part of 2025. Palantir's
fiscal year is 12/31/2024 so it's a bit less annoying to
calculate.
Their most recently reported quarter was Q2 2024, so the next 12
months = Q3 2024 + Q4 2024 + Q1 2025 + Q2 2025[1].
Then you have to calculate enterprise value, which is easier said
than done. In a nutshell, it's the total equity value + debt -
cash, but there are always minor things to adjust. Equity value
is the number of diluted shares outstanding[2] multiplied by
today's share price. To calculate diluted shares, you will need
to know the options that are outstanding on the company and use
the Treasury Stock Method to assume all of the in-the-money
options are exercised, with the proceeds from those options being
used to buy back shares. Debt you can get from financial
statements, unless the company has publicly traded debt in which
case you might need to adjust for its current value rather than
its book value. Cash you can simply get from financial
statements, but there can be issues there too depending on how
complex the company is. Add all of that together (subtract cash!)
and you get Enterprise Value.
Divide Enterprise Value by NTM Revenue and you'll get a revenue
multiple for this company today. But if you want to calculate
what the company _should_ be worth relative to competitors, you
can do the same thing for all of its competitors, then take the
mean/average EV/Revenue of those comps and say "PLTR should be
worth this much"
Also separately you can build a DCF if you have sufficient
visibility into the future cashflows of the company.[3]
You can take some shortcuts or go even deeper in all of the
above. It comes down to how much scrutiny you need for the
investment you're making. Are you SAP trying to acquire Palantir?
You're going to do all of the above with more detail than I
explained. Are you deciding whether to rebalance a bit of your
portfolio out of Palantir as an individual trader? Maybe Yahoo
Finance Pro estimates are serviceable enough (I wouldn't know).
OR just find an analyst whose views on the company you happen to
like and who you think is generally right and look at their
multiples so you don't have to do all that legwork yourself. But
you'll need to be a client at their bank to get access to their
research...
----
[1] Some people like to do (days left in 2024 / 365) * FY 2024
estimates and take the remaining days to make up a year * FY
2025, but that's totally wrong for many reasons, the most obvious
being that investors aren't updating their models (and thus the
valuation multiples those models output) on a daily basis.
There's no new news about the company every single day, so
estimates should be stable over the course of the quarter.
[2] NOT from the earnings report, as that "diluted shares" for
EPS means something else: to simplify, it means diluted over the
course of the year rather than today, which is what we want.
[3] For fast growing companies, this is harder because you need
to extrapolate all the way until you get to a year with
relatively low growth cash flows in order to get to a "terminal
year" for a DCF analysis, but if you're projecting 10-20 years
into the future, chances are you're wrong!
cgh wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
Fantastic response, thank you for taking the time.
airstrike wrote 5 hours 16 min ago:
My pleasure! Wall Street likes to gatekeep this info (it's
very simple math but banks charge millions for it) and
there's a disheartening shortage of publicly available
repositories with this knowledge (most of it can be
automated, except for one-off adjustments you need to make
for each company here and there for accounting reasons or out
of the ordinary occurrences)
The bit I forgot to add is that you kinda have to do the
reverse too, if you're valuing the company based on
comparables: take their mean multiple, then apply that PLTR's
forward revenue to get to some enterprise value, then
subtract net debt (i.e. minus debt _plus_ cash now!) and get
to equity value. Then divide by the diluted shares (you have
to imply the Treasury Stock Method dilution in some somewhat
circular Excel math) to get to a final dollar value per share
You can take this one step further and draw line charts over
time with these multiples vs. comparables to see how the
sentiment has changed for this stock (or for comparables)
over time. And many other similar analyses...
airstrike wrote 9 hours 45 min ago:
Not every company trades on P/E. Some trade on EBITDA, others on
Revenue. It's a spectrum. The more mature (code for more profitable,
lower growth), the more likely it trades on P/E.
Palantir has $0.09 earnings per share. 2023 was the first year they
were profitable. So P/E isn't the right metric to look at here.
Also no investor ever trades on _trailing_ metrics. It's all about
forward earnings, but 99.999999% of valuation multiples you see
online are trailing metrics (or use questionable forward estimates
pulled from some aggregate which is also just noise instead of
actually diligencing estimates)
jgalt212 wrote 10 hours 10 min ago:
As best I can tell only ARM has a higher PE and Market Cap.
HTML [1]: https://www.marketbeat.com/market-data/high-pe-stocks/
airstrike wrote 9 hours 40 min ago:
Those are trailing P/E numbers, so they are just plain wrong and
should be disregarded.
Also P/E doesn't matter for companies that have not been profitable
for long. Any PE number above 100x is very likely just noise. I
wouldn't look at anything too far above 30x, maybe 40x to account
for the craze behind NVDA today
jgalt212 wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
> they are just plain wrong and should be disregarded.
Are you saying Palantir's previous 10-Ks and 10-Qs have material
misstatements of fact?
airstrike wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
No, it's just the trading multiples derived from them that are
totally wrong for the purposes of valuing the company today,
because the Ks and Qs pertain to the past, which we cannot
visit.
nonameiguess wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
Kind of conveniently cut off the first part of the statement
there. The basis of fundamental valuation, discounted cash flow
analysis, looks at all cash flows, forever, into the far future
until the company dies. For a sufficiently mature company,
current earnings are reasonably considered a good approximation
of future earnings. For a newer company that is growing rapidly
and spending most of its cash on long term investments rather
than current year operations, it is not. Otherwise, every new
company that has no earnings yet would be worthless, or if you
consider losing money to be negative earnings, you're saying
they should be paying you to own them.
jgalt212 wrote 9 hours 27 min ago:
Fine, but it is notable / extremely notable that there is only
one large cap more expensive than Palantir on a PE basis. I'm
not splitting hairs here, I'm talking about extreme outliers.
airstrike wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
It isn't really notable because those PE multiples are
literally just noise. There are many companies with negative PE
on that list too, even though that makes no sense.
To take that even further, imagine ACME Corp.'s stock price is
$1.00 today. You're a research analyst and built a very robust
model based on your understanding of the company, the market in
which it operates, corporate guidance, competitor performance,
your experience, phone checks with the sales channel, etc. Your
model currently says the company will have negative ($0.01) EPS
over the next 12 months. Based on this information, its implied
forward P/E multiple is -100.0x.
The next day, you come to work and update your model based on
some new information like the Fed cutting rates by 25 bps or
revised labor market assumptions, what have you, such that your
expected next twelve months EPS is now positive $0.01. The
implied trading multiple is now 100.0x.
Do you think a $0.02 change in the expected EPS should result
in a 200.0x P/E difference? No, it shouldn't. The P/E ratio for
a company with negative or near-zero earnings has no meaning.
jgalt212 wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
> . The P/E ratio for a company with negative or near-zero
earnings has no meaning.
Only true in a ZIRP world, which no longer exists. Companies
have bills to pay, and if you're constantly bouncing around 0
PE gambler's ruin is not far ahead
airstrike wrote 5 hours 48 min ago:
This is factually incorrect. Plenty of negative P/E
companies in the market with positive implied equity value.
The least objectionable defense of my argument is that many
such companies are choosing to reinvest so much of their
cash flows into more growth because that creates higher NPV
than the alternative. If they wanted to, they could be
profitable, but they choose not to be in order to be MORE
profitable in the future.
Also note EPS is an accounting metric, so it's just
"theoretical" stuff. It's not cash flow. These companies in
general have positive operating cash flow... including PLTR
giraffe_lady wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
> The company was seen as spy tech, NSA surveillance, or worse.
At the risk of "getting political" which obviously the original post
can't possibly be ever. It was seen as those things because it is those
things.
Palantir is to the palestinian genocide what IBM was to the holocaust.
This guy is going to lie to his grandchildren about what he was doing
during this time.
No "reflection" on palantir without grappling with its role in
oppression is worth writing.
newprint wrote 1 day ago:
Can someone explain to me what is the Palantir's business model ?
I haven't heard any large, meaningful project they been involved in,
but I keep hearing the company name & how hot they are and their stocks
are going to blow-up any day (some of my friends kept their stocks for
the last 4-5 years with very little gain compared to other software
companies).
I know of the smaller software companies that are less than 100 people
and have a very meaningful impact in DoD & Gov space.
sleepybrett wrote 3 hours 50 min ago:
your own private digital cia, for hire to the highest bidder.
sangnoir wrote 5 hours 4 min ago:
> Can someone explain to me what is the Palantir's business model
AFAICT, it is government & government-adjacent contracting using
techniques borrowed from big tech and WITCH, since big tech won't
directly court government sw contracts, and WITCH may fail at getting
clearances for foreign-based personnel.
ericjmorey wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
WITCH?
sangnoir wrote 3 hours 21 min ago:
Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, and HCL. i.e. "large tech
consulting companies" if you're feeling generous, "body shops" if
you're not.
wpasc wrote 3 hours 31 min ago:
I was curious too; here's an HN link spelling it out and
discussing in context of working there:
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27571707
dullcrisp wrote 3 hours 36 min ago:
WITCH!!
swordsmith wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
I use Foundry for work. It makes data ingestion, cleaning, quality
check and automation easy. After all the data is ingested, running
analysis/RAG on them become extremely easy.
Basically, it's end-to-end data engineering and analytics. And the
more a company uses/invests into the platform, the more benefit and
locked-in they are.
alexpetralia wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
"End-to-end data engineering and analytics" is quite a bold claim
from a single service provider.
Here is the link for anyone interested: [1] and a YouTube
explainer: [2] Given you've used it, just how self-service is it?
To me this seems like such a large claim that - if it's doable -
I'm surprised there are not more competitors in the "vertically
integrated data providers" space.
HTML [1]: https://www.palantir.com/platforms/foundry/
HTML [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGGRCTTjLfQ
maeil wrote 2 hours 56 min ago:
> Given you've used it, just how self-service is it? To me this
seems like such a large claim that - if it's doable - I'm
surprised there are not more competitors in the "vertically
integrated data providers" space.
It is both very self service and not very self service. That's
why they employ the FDE model from the article, to actually
ingrain it into the client company to the point that it becomes
self service.
It's extremely hard to build such a product from scratch and have
it actually be good, that's why there's no competitors.
Especially providing the finely grained security controls that
the article talks about, and have the platform be secure. There's
a reason their security team wins the biggest CTFs half the time.
hermitcrab wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
RAG?
mandevil wrote 5 hours 20 min ago:
Retrieval Augmented Generation. [1] Basically, using your actual
data/documents to supplement a general purpose LLM and generate
better answers for your specific use case.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrieval-augmented_genera...
joewhale wrote 7 hours 20 min ago:
It all comes down to if you have the right sales people that can land
large govt contracts. The rest is figuring it out as you go. This is
an incredible moat for them. Whoever gets these large govt contracts
first in their space wins.
melling wrote 7 hours 41 min ago:
The stock has blown up. It has more than doubled for me. Almost
tripled.
Itâs quite expensive now.
I would encourage you to do your own research.
For some reason, HN has very little depth in stock market
understanding. HN passed on META at $100.
I know there are some very knowledgeable people here. Wish there was
a way to create a âsubreddit â here without all the Reddit noise.
nodesocket wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
HN has always lacked economic and stock market knowledge and
instincts generally speaking. Most comments tend to say itâs
rigged, evil capitalist, etc. Guessing because hackers generally
tend to swing far left and socialist though weird as a lot of
founder and entrepreneurs are active on HN as well.
There is a long tradition of show HN were the comments poo poo
startups and ideas which end up being huge and the opposite is also
true with praise and admiration of failures.
rabf wrote 2 hours 59 min ago:
One of the reasons I still frequent this forum is to countertrade
the espoused opinions. Meta@100 was such an easy buy, Everyone was
talking as if they were going out of business because they did not
like the idea of the metaverse. A quick look at their earnings said
that was utter nonsesnse. So bizarre to see all jounalists and many
users here to attribute the turn around to them pivoting to AI when
that was not at all what the CEO was saying during that time.
Always look for primary sources, opinions are funny.
sakopov wrote 5 hours 20 min ago:
If you were buying in the $6s, it nearly 7x'ed in like a year
stephencoyner wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
They have a few brand new products that are quite compelling.
Warp Speed: Aims to integrate ERP, MES, PLM, and factory floor
systems into a single AI-driven platform. As opposed to legacy ERP
systems, it focuses on production optimization rather than just
financial tracking. Warp Speed has the potential to relegate legacy
systems to backend data storage, shifting the entire intelligence
layer (and value) to Palantir's system. Warp Speed targets both
innovative new manufacturers (they note Tesla and Space X alums
starting new companies) and traditional large-scale operations.
Mission Manager: enables other defense contractors to build on
Palantir's platform and benefit from their security infrastructure
and position of trust within government. You can think of it as an
AWS for defense companies; plug and play with the foundations handled
for you. While the product just launched in Q4 2023, they just
received a new $33 million CDAO Open DAGIR contract. While this is
possibly just an advanced POC, it represents significant potential
for future growth and wider adoption in the defense sector. Now is
the perfect time. From 2021 to 2023, VC firms invested nearly $100
billion in defense tech startup companies, a 40% increase from the
previous seven years combined. Time is the most important thing for
these startups and Mission Manager shows the potential to save lots
of it.
NicoJuicy wrote 9 hours 9 min ago:
> Now is the perfect time
The perfect time is yesterday. All defense companies already went
way up.
Palantir... Not so much
stephencoyner wrote 9 hours 5 min ago:
The stock is up 152% YTD. I think they went up?
Manuel_D wrote 10 hours 28 min ago:
When I interned at Palantir (summer 2014) their business was mostly
in data ingestion, visualization, and correlation.
A typical workflow for a Palantir customer was that Palantir would
come in and dump a ton of data out of old crufty databases and into
Palantir's datastore. Then, they'd establish connections between that
data. This is all sounds kind of hand-wavy, but the gist of it is
that a lot of government agencies have data that lives in separate
databases and they can't easily correlate data between those two
databases. Once the data was in Palantir's system, they could do
queries against all their data, and make connections and correlations
that they wouldn't otherwise be able to find when the data was
previously siloed.
One of the sample use cases was identifying people filling
prescriptions for schedule II drugs multiple times on the same day,
and correlating that with pharmacies run by people connected to known
drug traffickers. Previously, this was hard to do because the
database of prescription purchases was disconnected from the database
of drug convictions.
sroerick wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
People dismiss this type of work as no big deal, but in my
experience this is the actual hard work of producing something
useful for companies, and what 90% of SaaS resellers will never be
able to deliver on.
jeltz wrote 5 hours 25 min ago:
Yes, it is very hard. But does Palantir succeed? Or do they like
some other companies just trick customers with big wallets to
buy?
osrec wrote 2 hours 18 min ago:
We used them at a bulge bracket investment bank and they failed
miserably...
trenchgun wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
To me it seems they do
HTML [1]: https://logicmag.io/commons/enter-the-dragnet/
thimkerbell wrote 8 hours 6 min ago:
So if they are dumping data out of old crufty databases and into
Palantir's datastore, which one is the active database going
forward?
In 2024.
browningstreet wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
In many of the enterprise orgs I've worked in, the two tech teams
that are chronically understaffed are 1) info sec, 2) DBA/ data
architecture/ data science. I'm lumping those 3 together on
purpose, because they're always understaffed and typically not
empowered to build anything.
hitekker wrote 7 hours 42 min ago:
You're right to group Data teams together. They seem to share a
common plight.
In my experience, internal employees outside Data have a funny
relationship with Data. They hate to manage it but they love to
blame it, especially in analytical / decision-making scenarios.
Teams that "own" the data usually get the blame, on top of having
to deal with a mass of rotting pipes and noncompliant teams,
while also losing out on credit when non-Data teams report big
wins.
Based on what the GP says, it sounds like Palantir knows how to
exploit common internal politics around Data. They build up
technical & social expertise in ETL'ing disparate data sources,
and they can avoid blame by being hired by executives as an
external third party.
hammock wrote 10 hours 25 min ago:
So itâs hygiene and structure
danudey wrote 10 hours 19 min ago:
IIRC part of it is that the software itself can make connections
between separate data sets. You're not just ingesting data about
purchasing information and drug convictions and so on, you're
getting automatic relationship detection. For example, figuring
out that the cust_ss_num field in one dataset correlates to the
conv_ssn_full field in another dataset, and knowing that those
fields are the "SSN" field from a third dataset, and being able
to automatically give you a view where those three datasets are
correlated. This saves people having to go through every data set
and manually map each field to each other equivalent field in
each other related dataset.
I could be mistaken, but I think this is how it was explained to
me originally.
hammock wrote 10 hours 3 min ago:
That makes sense and sounds really useful
mperham wrote 3 hours 39 min ago:
Building a panopticon is always justified as a way to fight
crime and then becomes a way to control the population.
Tracking women getting Plan B, tracking people buying birth
control, etc.
Manuel_D wrote 10 hours 22 min ago:
That, and a really powerful visualization suite. In the example I
gave above, you could plot the prescription purchases on a map
and see that people were driving along the highway and hitting up
pharmacies along the interstate. Better yet, you could drop into
Google Street view in front of one of the pharmacies, and look at
it from the street level and see that it doesn't even have
signage indicating it's a pharmacy.
swells34 wrote 5 hours 18 min ago:
I used it quite a bit early on during military operations. The
ability to see the timing component was key; not only would you
plot the purchase locations, but you could play the timeframe
of records, work out the timing so you knew the order in which
they visited the locations, where they must have stopped for
gas along the route. In a classic workflow, you'd then
investigate the gas stations, attach them to the event with
confidence intervals, pull CCTV footage, see if you can get a
payment receipt, and enter all of that data back into palantir.
A few days of doing this, and you can build up all a map of
every aspect of the drug run; the who what when where and why.
It's a fantastic organization system.
lapphi wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
I appreciate the technical achievements here. However, I
wonder how long before itâs standard practice to track all
peoples movement, not just those suspected of a crime. I know
of at least one YouTube channel that is always recording all
traffic camera streams in Washington so there must be some
State entities doing the same. Back in 2020 there was a
twitch channel that would play a 9x9 grid of all the
livestream footage from the George Floyd protests. Iâm sure
an archive of that exists somewhere on a LE server.
beeboobaa3 wrote 1 hour 34 min ago:
nsa is storing everything
maeil wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
They basically have two. Just like e.g. Amazon has both retail and
cloud infra as separate, independent business models.
One is described well in the article, originally aimed at commercial
clients. The article isn't short but we're on HN, not Reddit, so we
should read the articles. Parts 2 and 3 describe it. The linked note
at the end of 3 is very relevant.
The other one is the gov one, which is also mentioned as "Palantir
has prevented terrorist attacks".
The article actually links to lots of product docs. It isn't
secretive, plenty of videos on Youtube demoing the software. The docs
are public, which is more open than can be said for 90% of software
in their price range.
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