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Palantir No Longer Works With The NSA
- tjpnz 9y agoWon't address all the negative PR.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mwnivek 9y agoDiscussion of actual source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14169389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14169389
- dkarapetyan 9y agoI don't get the hype around palantir. It's a regular consulting shop like any other. Same as SAP, IBM, HP, etc. but a lot cheaper because their labor is a lot cheaper. So what does it mean it no longer works for the NSA? Like they stopped taking government contracts? Of course not. They still work for big banks and big corporations and they still have government contracts. Whether the contract is with NSA or CIA or FBI I don't think makes a difference.
- unexistance 9y agobecause of Peter[0], otherwise you're right. Unless there's something else non-American like me cannot see :p [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
- tribby 9y ago> Unless there's something else non-American like me cannot see :p there is -- palantir is a privately held company. in his interview with charlie rose, alex karp mentions that being a private company is essential to palantir, though he doesn't specify why. at a minimum, it means they have no obligation to shareholders and they can take whatever contract they want without public scrutiny.
- burntrelish1273 9y agoI wouldn't automatically jump on the conspiracy-theory bus: SOX and other regs for public companies are a great deal of work (while they provide some assurance to investors). Private companies get to keep more things secret, choose what/whom to reveal certain details and don't have to do as much reporting/audit, although it's still a good idea.
- jonathankoren 9y agoSOX compliance is overblown. If it was that arduous no one would go public, and that's clearly not the case.
- Anderkent 9y agoGoing public does mean that your company is obliged to maximise shareholder profit, rather than achieve whatever goals the founders envisioned.
- jonathankoren 9y agoThis old canard. No. They have to act kb the interests of shareholders, whatever interest that is.
- Anderkent 9y agoAnd what exactly is the interest of the shareholders, rather than maximasing share value / dividend payout?
- manigandham 9y agoThis is a good article with much more detail: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... >> Serving shareholders’ “best interests” is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value. "Shareholder value," for one thing, is a vague objective: No single “shareholder value” can exist, because different shareholders have different values. Some are long-term investors planning to hold stock for years or decades; others are short-term speculators.
- burntrelish1273 9y agoIt's not an everyday platform. It was created to compete with/replace the terrible systems FBI and others have spent billions on without results. It's used by large corporations, nonprofits and domestic and foreign governments to make sense of intelligence. It's like Google for intelligence... can be used to find human traffickers, LAPD infiltrating political groups or other govts assassinating journalists. https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/protest-palantir-muslim-registry https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/protest-palantir-muslim... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-22/palantir-the-war-on-terrors-secret-weapon https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-22/palantir-...
- riffraff 9y agopalantir might be "Google for Intelligence", but judging by previous discussions on HN it looks like it's actually "Accenture for Intelligence". I.e. they don't seem to have scary innovative technology as much as a horde of people doing integration work (and some good reusable tools) See discussions from 1 year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11646587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11646587 And 2 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8872054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8872054 Google for Intelligence is what they have been selling, but it's unclear they have actually delivered.
- demonshalo 9y agoGoogle's bet is that technology will replace humans. Palantir's bet is that technology works best when combined with human intuition. So yes, they do horde a lot of people but the idea is to bet on the intersection between man and machine rather than trying to replace one with the other!
- praneshp 9y agoPalantir might not be "Google for Intelligence", but there is some unfavorable bias on HN against them, so the "Accenture for Intelligence" nickname might stem from wanting to be condescending.
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- TuringNYC 9y ago>> but a lot cheaper because their labor is a lot cheaper. Why is that? (genuinely curious here.) Do they employ younger people with hopes an IPO?
- salesguy222 9y agoat first glance, yes i think this is the case, especially people straight out of college a similar trend happened with dell, hp, oracls and ibm- gone are the older, whiter males making over 100k base to sell to corporations as "trusted advisors" in are the thousands of young kids fresh out of college dialing for dollars and making 45k
- heartbreak 9y ago> whiter males What does that have to do with sales aptitude?
- cryptarch 9y agoI think there's a lot of cultural bias favouring older white males in situations where authority and trustworthiness is important.
- acdha 9y agoDepends on the audience but the senior management at a lot of places is often disproportionately older white men of a certain background (MBA from one of a few schools, former frat / current country club member, etc.). This is relevant to consulting and sales because a lot of clients like to think someone like them is in charge. I've known a few salesmen who were quite open about their role as the senior guy on the contract was literally to take the client it for a round of golf and reassure them that the 25 year-olds weren't going to suggest too much change too quickly. Sharing the same cultural background, wearing a good suit, etc. gave them instant credibility on that front so they could spend lunch talking about which colleges their kids/grandkids were looking at, which pro golf/baseball/football team was going to do well, etc. and get the deal because the client now felt confident that they'd get what they asked for.
- adventured 9y ago> I don't get the hype around palantir. Is there still hype around Palantir? It's 13 years old. I think the hype has been gone for years now, similar to Airbnb or Uber. They're just regular big companies now like an eBay or Priceline. Certainly there's some curiosity focused on Palantir due to their somewhat secretive nature and who they've worked with historically.
- vermontdevil 9y agoI think the hype is around Thiel.
- kolbe 9y agoExcept Palantir doesn't do work that's valuable to anyone except the government. Palantir doesn't have advanced tech. They had a profitable government rent to exploit. The government is not allowed to spy on citizens as freely as the private sector is, so the former administration leaned on Palantir to do the spying on behalf of it.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago>but a lot cheaper because their labor is a lot cheaper. Wait.. what? Aren't they still on the top of the list for Stanford students?
- TP4Cornholio 9y agoI thought they were supposed to pay fairly well.
- coretx 9y agoIt makes absolutely no sense to /directly/ work for your client when facilitating intelligence laundry is you core business or simply a opportunity for exponential growth. How long must causality chains be in the shady data business for it to always be legal ?
- codecamper 9y agoWhether Palantir does not like Trump or, as other have said here, Palantir does not have any sort of special technology. In either case I'm happy that the Trump administration won't be given the tools to dominate others. To me, Trump should not be allowed to use any more technology than he can scrap together himself: a rock, a stick, a pile of dirt. That's about it. If you don't believe in science, you should not be allowed to benefit from it.
- muninn_ 9y agoI'm pretty sure he "believes in science". I don't want these tools in the hands of any president when they don't respect the people. Whether it's Obama spying on us or Trump. Both are bad.