11 ms·

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

• avmich 2y ago
  It would also be interesting to hear thoughts on the company of somebody like Cory Doctorow. Edit: aha, found. https://doctorow.medium.com/how-palantir-will-steal-the-nhs-c234cacf3093 https://doctorow.medium.com/how-palantir-will-steal-the-nhs-... "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 America’s most corrupt police departments, who use Palantir’s products to monitor protest movements. Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing..."
  • lmz 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • carom 2y 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.
      • mu53 2y ago
        This is an obvious truth around immigration that makes me question the media's motivations. Asylum applications are often contingent upon finding and keeping employment. ICE immigration prisons sell prison labor sold to state governments and corporations. The public debate between "Immigration is a human right" and "Immigrants are criminals" is out of touch with the actual considerations motivating the laws and policies by US institutions.
      • pixelatedindex 2y ago
        I agree on both counts at a high level, but America always had cheap labor. It is what helps us have so much disposable income compared to other countries.
        • ab5tract 2y ago
          This is a bizarre take. Corporate towns and company stores and union leader assassinations are all a part of the history of cheap labor in the US. None of those dynamics contribute to higher incomes for anyone aside from bosses and investors. But maybe exploitation of cheap labor for personal gains is what you were referring to?
      • munksbeer 2y 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. This is just such an absurd take. How much reality do you have to suspend to believe that corporations around the globe have all zoned in on a policy of somehow propagating a narrative through public life about immigration so that they can exploit illegal immigration. I know we're in the anti-capitalism, anti-big-corp zeitgeist, but come on.
        • carom 2y ago
          I am very pro capitalism, but as a worker under capitalism it is very clear that immigration benefits corporations. Why do you think the impacts of immigration on American workers are not discussed by media? My conclusion is that discussing it does not benefit those who own those media companies. They are shareholders in other businesses, they employ people, and likely sit on the boards of companies that benefit from immigrant labor. It does not need to be a conspiracy, just self interest of those who control the narrative.
    • IgorPartola 2y 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 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • chipotle_coyote 2y ago
          [citation needed]
        • worstspotgain 2y 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 2y ago
            Maduro shat the bed himself with perhaps the aid of his indoctrinated chavistas. They used to get help from Cuba. In any case, it’s their problem. Even Columbia, their neighbors and co-Bolivarians don’t 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 2y ago
    • avmich 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus 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.
      • notadoomer236 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • yesbut 2y ago
          Our society kind of sucks as it is. Nice to get some new families in the neighborhood .
        • calgoo 2y ago
          There has always been high immigration in the US, its a country built on immigration!! Like others have said, the current levels are not higher then in the past, its just the political parties that are using it to hide the real problems of ultra rich and corporations abusing the country. In regards to changing society; what is changing? The language? Again, the US is built on immigrants. Are the Italian - Americans in NY going to stop being Italian - Americans all of a sudden? No, they will continue being who they are; maybe they will pick up another language or some new recipes for their cookbooks.
          • lioeters 2y ago
            > political parties that are using it to hide the real problems of ultra rich and corporations abusing the country Yup, same in Europe. There's constant fear mongering with racist undertones in the media about illegal immigrants and refugees, it's driving people crazy and violent against each other. All the while they're conveniently distracted from the root of their social ills.
            • int_19h 2y ago
    • mc32 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • Octoth0rpe 2y ago
        > It’s 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.
        • knowaveragejoe 2y ago
          The distinction you're drawing is called being intellectually honest about the subject. For people predisposed to the fox news cinematic universe, this is not something they will want to substantively engage with.
        • notadoomer236 2y ago
          Yet they haven’t they fixed it. It ballooned during the last four years, including federally funded flights bringing in people from South American countries
          • talldayo 2y ago
            Imagine how little Americans must care if they voted Trump out after a single term. Edit: and you don't believe in global warming? Too rich!
    • knowaveragejoe 2y ago
      "Cracking down" isn't what's needed, it's reform of the immigration system in the first place.
    • staticvoidstar 2y ago
      I think Darryl Cooper's take is interesting. It's actually original sin from the Holocaust put on all conservatives, not just Germans
      • razakel 2y ago
        So why do about 60% of people who consider themselves left or far left oppose immigration? Cooper also claims that the Holocaust happened by mistake, so I wouldn't pay too much attention to him.
        • staticvoidstar 2y ago
          I imagine for the same reasons people on the right, but it's forbidden to speak out loud I heard no such claims, but also he hasn't finished his WWII series yet, so a little premature to dismiss him Edit: When I said conservatives, I meant conservative values
          • razakel 2y ago
            Plenty of people of all political stripes were, are, and have been complaining about immigration. It was a key factor in Brexit. Cooper's deliberate misreading of the Wannsee Conference is Nazi apologeticism. "Well, they didn't really mean to commit genocide, they just whipped up public hatred, confiscated all their assets, and banned them from working! So of course they had to commit mass murder!" Who are his sources, David fucking Irving? And let's not get started on the pipelining of extremist views to people who would normally consider themselves moderate or centre-right and are now spouting insanity...
    • acdha 2y ago
      Most Americans are not opposed to having immigration laws. The disagreements come from whether those laws are fair and the way “illegal immigration” is used as a bogeymonster by racists. For example, when Trump and Vance were doing the “Haitians are eating cats!!!” thing recently, note how often their supporters would throw the “illegal” term around even for people who are here legally. Their concerns were quite transparently not about immigration per se but the ethnicity of the immigrants. That controls the general immigration policy debate, too. American employers in key industries like construction depend on immigrants for cheap labor, and the unwillingness to provide a legal path for those workers guarantees that people will keep taking huge risks to come here illegally because the conditions in their home countries are even worse. I would highly recommend reading this article: note both the former cop accurately stating that you can’t arrest your way out of a market imbalance and the lack of reception for the proposals from the construction company owner trying to have a legal path for workers. These people aren’t dangerous, they’re working hard and supporting families, but they’re brown and speak Spanish so we don’t respect them and businesses love to have workers who can’t complain about mistreatment. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/border-crisis-texas-solutions/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/border-crisis-tex...
      • oceanplexian 2y ago
        The reason they call asylum seekers illegal is because most asylum seekers are immigrating for improved economic opportunities, not because they are otherwise fleeing persecution from their government. If you want to immigrate somewhere for work you need to get in line for the correct visa. I would expect many legal immigrants here on HN would know this struggle. My parents did when they immigrated to the US. The problem is that the asylum seekers are committing fraud if they are immigrating for economic reasons, and that fraud is being encouraged by the government and NGOs. JD vance, Elon, and Trump have talked about this several times but the media usually interrupts then or make a straw man argument about racism instead of covering the real issue, which is that these immigrants are being brought in as low wage, temporary laborers to undercut American workers.
        • acdha 2y ago
    • red-iron-pine 2y ago
      Because American industry runs on illegal labor. They pick the fruit, they work in the slaughterhouses, they build the housing, they work in the kitchen prep lines. Like go to any construction site, any restaurant -- you're gonna see a bunch of Mexicans, Salvadorians, etc. As wages haven't gone up, Americans need cheaper and cheaper labor on the low end to be able to, like, eat, and lots of big business knows this. The GOP owned Congress under GW Bush could have locked this issue down, and if they felt so compelled they probably could have swung that during the Obama era if they were willing to push. Instead it's a boogyman they can use to rile up voters while keeping costs low.
      • dr-detroit 2y ago
        [dead]
    • bbqfog 2y ago
      I'm pro open borders. I see no downsides to letting whoever wants to live here, come here. I also think the US culture (think TGI Fridays and Macys) is pretty much the worst and can only improve as we import people with rich cultural histories.
    • throwaway0123_5 2y ago
      > Is it all that repressed guilt from invading Indian lands or something? I don't think you have to look that far back to find fairly convincing arguments that the US is the architect of much of its own immigration "problems." Most illegal immigrants come to the US from Latin American countries that the US spent a lot of time interfering with in very recent history. Consider Guatemala. Democratically elected president overthrown with CIA support in 1954 so that US fruit companies could keep up their profits by exploiting people. The 1950s weren't that long ago. Consider El Salvador. During their recent (ended: 1992) civil war the US funded the right-wing government that according to the UN committed 85% of atrocities during the war. The US government then refused to grant asylum and legal protections to refugees, which contributed heavily to MS13 forming in LA. The US then deported many of these gang members back to El Salvador, which did a huge amount of damage to their development after the war. Wrt Mexico's gangs, most of the demand for their products come from US customers. Wrt Venezuela, whether the sanctions are right or wrong there's no doubt that they're hurting people there economically. Given what the US has done to these countries (and others) in living memory, I don't think we have much of a moral right to turn these people away. I've also never had a single negative experience (and many positive ones) with immigrants from these countries (I live in an area with many of them), nor am I convinced that they're even an economic drag on the country.
      • rangestransform 2y ago
        We have the right to turn them away granted by our ability to use force, and we absolutely should if they are making our lives worse, period, end of story
        • throwaway0123_5 2y ago
          "Might makes right" is not only a pretty heartless ideology but one that I don't think works well most of the time. It seems like the prior application of that policy caused much of our immigration today. > if they are making our lives worse They (legal and illegal immigrants, for this discussion specifically from Latin America but I suspect more broadly) certainly are making my life better and I'm not convinced that they're making the life of the average American worse. I've seen a lot of convincing arguments for why immigration helps us, and they seem to mesh with my understanding of immigration to the US being historically a good thing. I can't say the same for arguments from the other side. Often the claims are totally baseless, such as claims that illegal immigrants are as a whole dangerous, despite having a lower incarceration rate than US-born citizens. Other times they're just myopic (most of the claims related to jobs imo). Sometimes they're just blatant racism (white-replacement theories).
  • saturn8601 2y 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?
    • BryantD 2y ago
      I tend to agree with you on this, but it's kind of an amusing comment given the linked article's comment on memes: "the most talented people tend to develop their own vocabularies and memes, and these serve as entry points to a whole intellectual world constructed by that person." Doctorow is not one of the examples he provides, but I'm not sure that any of this negates the point.
      • hitekker 2y ago
        "Above all things we should avoid often talking of ourselves and giving ourselves as an example; nothing is more tiresome than a man who quotes himself for everything." is the quote I reach for from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm
      • red-iron-pine 2y ago
        > Doctorow is not one of the examples he provides, but I'm not sure that any of this negates the point. lol what? Doctorow created "enshitification" to describe rent seeking and its behaviors, and has been creating a technocratic journalist vocab since the BoingBoing days.
        • BryantD 2y ago
          Yes, precisely. The point is that we tend to think of jargon creators as particularly insightful when their biases/viewpoints match our own, and annoying when they don't.
  • asdasdsddd 2y ago
    as I said, ICE is not even close to the spiciest thing it worked on
    • monkaiju 2y ago
      Are you ashamed of that or proud?
    • r00fus 2y ago
      Ah yes, but "banality of evil" is still evil despite being banal.
  • serguzest 2y 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?
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • 1oooqooq 2y ago
      you're some 12yrs late on that. the academic term is hyper imperialism... a tech globalist update on the interwar term ultra imperialism (which predicted, or suggested, the current pax americana).
  • okasaki 2y ago
    > Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing..." And don't forget the UK National Health Service
    • reshlo 2y ago
      That’s the main subject of the linked post by Doctorow.
    • Aeolun 2y ago
      Are you trying to say that working for the NHS is bad? I’d choose the NHS over a great many other things if given the option.
      • scott_w 2y ago
        The discussion of Palantir in the NHS is not a question of whether "Palantir are good/bad for taking NHS work," it's actually "should the NHS contract out to (and share sensitive patient data with) a company with a reputation like Palantir?" The first question makes no sense at all. The latter question, however, is an important one for democratic governments to tackle.
        • crimsoneer 2y ago
          I think the challenging question here is that while palantir obviously have a reputation, they're practically not that different to any of the big consultancies.
          • hobs 2y ago
            That is an important part that a lot of people miss, if you are working with McKinsey you've basically hired some of the worst scum on the earth. Their history on human right's abuses and opioids alone is enough to send them to the shadow realm.
          • scott_w 2y ago
  • andsoitis 2y ago
    > Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing..." ICE does ethnic cleansing? That sounds like an outrageous claim. Examples of ethnic cleansing includes the Turkish massacre of Armenians during WWI, the forced displacement and mass killings in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 90s, the Novia Scotia colonial government's removal of the French Catholic Acadian population, the Amhara security forces treatment of Tigrayans in Ethiopia, and of course the one that its perpetrators euphemistically called the Final Solution. How, exactly, is ICE doing anything remotely like this? If it were true, surely it would be in the headlines and surely people would protest it harder than what is happening elsewhere in the world today?
    • hylaride 2y ago
      Cory Doctorow doesn't understand that there's shades of grey the world, which is a shame as he could otherwise be one of the greatest socio-tech thought leaders in the world. ICE does things in a horrible way, but like most western government institutions, it's a symptom of a/the problem.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • euroderf 2y ago
      AFAICT, "examples of ethnic cleansing" can include Russia over-representing its subject nationalities in its Ukraine cannon fodder.
    • BlueTemplar 2y ago
      I'm not sure the ICE does/did, but remember that "ethnic cleansing" doesn't have to involve (direct) mass murder (even if it often does), for instance the expulsion of millions of Germans after WW2 from their homes (even when they were already living there before Nazis came to power) : https://theconversation.com/postwar-forced-resettlement-of-germans-echoes-through-the-decades-137219 https://theconversation.com/postwar-forced-resettlement-of-g... Also, Hitler's first planned "initial solution" was, as incredible as it might sound, relocating Jews to Madagascar (which of course would still have caused plenty of misery, since the core issue was that Nazis barely considered them as human beings). EDIT : Yeah, so after following the rabbit hole for a bit, this seems to be about "Trump's mass deportations". Which I remember him claiming himself (maybe in other words), but one should check how massive exactly they ended to be. https://theintercept.com/2018/03/26/facebook-data-ice-immigration/ https://theintercept.com/2018/03/26/facebook-data-ice-immigr... But one of the main gists of that article is about how Palantir is helping law enforcement with data integration. Which, as this blogpost points out, shouldn't be underestimated. And thankfully at least some of the lawmakers didn't underestimate it : there's a reason why it's illegal to build some national databases, and combine some other less sensitive national databases. Liberal democracy requires a balance of power, and giving too much power to the policeS (or the state in general) results in a police state (dystopia). (Including through the loophole of private companies like GAFAMs.) You can also see it as a reminder that tools aren't neutral and scale matters.
• worstspotgain 2y 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?
  • ktagh 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • bborud 2y ago
      > The Biden administration had authoritarian, Russian style COVID policies. During the pandemic I read various descriptions of what disease outbreaks were like during various times. Including descriptions of the plague of 1665. What is interesting is that the approach to managing outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases hasn't really changed that much. Because we discovered relatively early on what helps. (Though we no longer nail houses shut with infected people inside them and post armed guards outside). What policies would you suggest to manage outbreaks of infectious diseases? How many deaths do you think is acceptable? Can you pick a number? It will be interesting to see what happens during the next pandemic. Because there will be pandemics in the future. Do you think that a population disinclined to act cautiously in a situation where correct information will be scarce for months, possibly years, is a good thing or do you think it might represent a problem. The most sinister thing a government could possibly do would be to do as little as possible and just accept loss of human life.
      • gnmlaxr 2y ago
        Either the lockdown policy before March 2022 was correct or the sudden "back to normal" after March 2022 was correct. The virus was still there and does not care about presidential edicts and speeches. Given the the world still exists, I think the pre-2022 policies were a gross overreach and the cancellations of the likes of Malone are an eternal shame for the U.S. that is comparable to what happened in the Soviet Union.
• throwaway2037 2y ago
  This: > I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd Sorry, my English is a bit weak. What is the meaning here? Did you buy shares post-IPO?
  • reshlo 2y ago
    FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out.
    • lbotos 2y ago
      sure -- what is fomo insurance?
      • Aeolun 2y ago
        Think it means he bought Palantir stock? No need to fear missing out if you are on the gravy train.
      • insane_dreamer 2y ago
        Buying the stock so you don’t get left out in the event it skyrockets. Hedging.
  • 1oooqooq 2y ago
    he invested into the company (that is, funded the immoral work he was disgusted by and caused him to leave) by paying them for stock options while (or shortly after) working there.
    • dash2 2y ago
      He wasn't disgusted, argues most of the work was good not bad, and did not leave for moral reasons.
      • 1oooqooq 2y ago
        my bad i think i mixed comments
• kome 2y ago
  "1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things." please tell us something
• rob74 2y ago
  The strangest thing for me were the article's first two paragraphs: > Palantir is hot now. The company recently joined the S&P 500. The stock is on a tear, and the company is nearing a $100bn market cap. VCs chase ex-Palantir founders asking to invest. [...] 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. There were regular protests outside the office. I don't really see the contradiction here? The most morally repugnant companies are often the most profitable, and the stock market sometimes (not always) follows suit. And if the protests outside their offices have decreased, that's probably just a sign that there are other things to protest against now...
  • 1oooqooq 2y ago
    when you can profit from something all rules are off. your 401k is probably funding cocacola extract water from impoverished communities and then selling it back to them with sugar.
  • orochimaaru 2y ago
    Why are they considered more morally repugnant than big tech or telcos. All these share data with the government. Palantir just provides the software by the way - based on the palantir installation where I work. They don’t share data. The software is installed on my companies infra - not on palantir.