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Can anyone using Palantir explain what it does? I've never heard or seen anything concrete - I had one redditor tell me his company looked into it and they just

Can anyone using Palantir explain what it does? I've never heard or seen anything concrete - I had one redditor tell me his company looked into it and they just put data into a database and make "connections".

nextcaller 2y ago
I think they monitor the world through satellites and AI. Intelligence software for NATO I guess.
mewpmewp2 2y ago
That is so ambiguous. It is also what we, commenters on Hackernews are technically doing.
okino 2y ago
https://www.palantir.com/docs/ https://www.palantir.com/docs/
tsol 2y ago
Military and intelligence contractor stuff, or so I've been told.
yeahwhatever10 2y ago
The product demos show some features but obviously not everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxKghrZU5w8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxKghrZU5w8
- extr 2y ago
  So it's like observability metrics but for ships and missles and such that people care about in the real world. Very cool. I did find the ending where the commander literally selects from a dialogue tree to resolve the situation a little ridiculous. Sorry commander, that choice of action is not ethical, is there something else I can help you with?
immibis 2y ago
You must have seen the same demo that I did... when they were recruiting at a university jobs fair... ten years ago... Something along the lines of: okay so you have this guy who's a criminal right? (expand node) here are his phone numbers (expand node) here are the phone numbers who called it (expand node) here are the phone numbers who called those numbers (expand node) here are who they're registered to (expand node) here are their addresses (expand node) here's who else lives there. I still assume their special sauce isn't their ability to build a node expanding UI, but the data sources they have access to. If they're used for so many government contracts, they're definitely using the data from, say, one police department to inform another. So when another department wants data about criminals, they sign up as a client for the company where that data already is. And don't discount that the government would pay a huge sum of money to build a surveillance state, even if that surveillance state turned out to be pretty useless.
- bottom999mottob 2y ago
  This sounds like the video game Orwell where you investigate social graphs to find dissidents of the state. Of course the NSA has been doing this for years, but their UI probably isn't as pretty as Palantir's :)
  - immibis 2y ago
    Pretty, but above all convenient , UI matters much more than programmers think. It's the difference between seeing a tree of comments like on HN, and a raw Usenet stream.
stephenhuey 2y ago
Back in 2011, I joined a software startup working on a product which aimed to prevent stuff like the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The founders talked about how throughout the industry and the world, tons more data was being generated than ever before (of course), but we (humanity) didn't have a good handle on making use of all of that data, so a lot of it was not being interpreted, reacted to, etc. Not long after that, I found out that Palantir got their first energy industry customer. Some employees in Palantir thought it wouldn't be worthwhile to go after oil & gas companies because they viewed them as old school and slow to adapt to new ways of doing things. However, in those days Palantir was focused on acquiring no more than one customer per industry, because they were trying to boost their valuation as quickly as possible and wanted to demonstrate how many industries they could serve. And then, due to a contrarian within the company, they did get an O&G customer, and it was the biggest single deal so far in the company's history. What I don't know is exactly how well they served that customer. What I do know is that they were selling the customer on the idea that they have sooooo much data and they're leaving tons of low-hanging fruit that could easily boost savings in the company. Stick all this data into Palantir's product and we'll help you on a million fronts and therefore boost your profits significantly. One example is the longevity of machine parts and all the data you can get about historical wear and tear, etc. Now, this is what they were selling, and I don't know which areas ended up being the most helpful, but yeah, as someone else in here said, they were insisting on customers putting in all the data they have and the product would make connections, or reveal insights, etc. Even if it's a crude product by Star Trek standards, you've gotta admit there is probably a ton of low-hanging fruit like that in most companies, and a lot of the time they don't go after all that because they're making money, but just don't have extra manpower or expertise to look into all that, so if Palantir delivers on the promise to boost the bottom line, then I guess it's worth it. It also means there's room to compete, although a big problem is even if you're a sharp cookie, Palantir probably started with way more business connections than most nerds will ever have.
chatGDPs 2y ago
Plenty of HN discussions (like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41855006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41855006). Pretty much a consulting company, they don't own their dev stack. People see 80% gross margins and think it's enterprise SaaS, but they are just great at selling their "FDEs" at 5x cost.

nextcaller 2y ago

I think they monitor the world through satellites and AI. Intelligence software for NATO I guess.

mewpmewp2 2y ago

That is so ambiguous. It is also what we, commenters on Hackernews are technically doing.

okino 2y ago

https://www.palantir.com/docs/ https://www.palantir.com/docs/

tsol 2y ago

Military and intelligence contractor stuff, or so I've been told.

yeahwhatever10 2y ago

The product demos show some features but obviously not everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxKghrZU5w8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxKghrZU5w8

extr 2y ago
So it's like observability metrics but for ships and missles and such that people care about in the real world. Very cool. I did find the ending where the commander literally selects from a dialogue tree to resolve the situation a little ridiculous. Sorry commander, that choice of action is not ethical, is there something else I can help you with?

immibis 2y ago

You must have seen the same demo that I did... when they were recruiting at a university jobs fair... ten years ago... Something along the lines of: okay so you have this guy who's a criminal right? (expand node) here are his phone numbers (expand node) here are the phone numbers who called it (expand node) here are the phone numbers who called those numbers (expand node) here are who they're registered to (expand node) here are their addresses (expand node) here's who else lives there. I still assume their special sauce isn't their ability to build a node expanding UI, but the data sources they have access to. If they're used for so many government contracts, they're definitely using the data from, say, one police department to inform another. So when another department wants data about criminals, they sign up as a client for the company where that data already is. And don't discount that the government would pay a huge sum of money to build a surveillance state, even if that surveillance state turned out to be pretty useless.

bottom999mottob 2y ago
This sounds like the video game Orwell where you investigate social graphs to find dissidents of the state. Of course the NSA has been doing this for years, but their UI probably isn't as pretty as Palantir's :)
- immibis 2y ago
  Pretty, but above all convenient , UI matters much more than programmers think. It's the difference between seeing a tree of comments like on HN, and a raw Usenet stream.

stephenhuey 2y ago

Back in 2011, I joined a software startup working on a product which aimed to prevent stuff like the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The founders talked about how throughout the industry and the world, tons more data was being generated than ever before (of course), but we (humanity) didn't have a good handle on making use of all of that data, so a lot of it was not being interpreted, reacted to, etc. Not long after that, I found out that Palantir got their first energy industry customer. Some employees in Palantir thought it wouldn't be worthwhile to go after oil & gas companies because they viewed them as old school and slow to adapt to new ways of doing things. However, in those days Palantir was focused on acquiring no more than one customer per industry, because they were trying to boost their valuation as quickly as possible and wanted to demonstrate how many industries they could serve. And then, due to a contrarian within the company, they did get an O&G customer, and it was the biggest single deal so far in the company's history. What I don't know is exactly how well they served that customer. What I do know is that they were selling the customer on the idea that they have sooooo much data and they're leaving tons of low-hanging fruit that could easily boost savings in the company. Stick all this data into Palantir's product and we'll help you on a million fronts and therefore boost your profits significantly. One example is the longevity of machine parts and all the data you can get about historical wear and tear, etc. Now, this is what they were selling, and I don't know which areas ended up being the most helpful, but yeah, as someone else in here said, they were insisting on customers putting in all the data they have and the product would make connections, or reveal insights, etc. Even if it's a crude product by Star Trek standards, you've gotta admit there is probably a ton of low-hanging fruit like that in most companies, and a lot of the time they don't go after all that because they're making money, but just don't have extra manpower or expertise to look into all that, so if Palantir delivers on the promise to boost the bottom line, then I guess it's worth it. It also means there's room to compete, although a big problem is even if you're a sharp cookie, Palantir probably started with way more business connections than most nerds will ever have.

chatGDPs 2y ago

Plenty of HN discussions (like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41855006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41855006). Pretty much a consulting company, they don't own their dev stack. People see 80% gross margins and think it's enterprise SaaS, but they are just great at selling their "FDEs" at 5x cost.