5 ms·

In light of all the stuff about Thiel and friends, I'd really stay away from Tolkien/Middle-Earth themed startup names for now...

• m_a_g 7mo ago
  Any naming related to LotR in the tech industry is a glaring red flag, including this company.
  • matsemann 7mo ago
    It's called out in the post: > Despite its Tolkien-inspired name, Earendil is not a tech company with fascist tendencies. Quite the opposite. They are basically well-meaning hippies in my book
    • flumes_whims_ 7mo ago
      That's how Sidney Gottlieb seemed in his retirement.
• gostsamo 7mo ago
  don't let the nazis take lotr from us
• mijoharas 7mo ago
  Ooooh. I didn't know palantir was a tolkien thing[0] until just now! Oh god, that was my first guess but thought some more and it turns out that anduril is too[1]. (I was similarly unaware) Anything else I missed? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palant%C3%ADr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palant%C3%ADr [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril
  • trymas 7mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithril_Capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithril_Capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithril https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithril
  • xg15 7mo ago
    The irony is that "technology" in LoTR (both the arcane, Elvish variant and the more conventional "industrial" variant) always occurs either in cautionary tales or straight up as tools of evil. E.g. the "Palantíri" were devices for long-distance communication and observation from an ancient civilization - which eventually got captured and corrupted by Sauron and turned into mind control / propaganda devices. The depiction of the One Ring, is of course well known. Tolkien himself also had some personal experiences with landscape destruction through industrialisation and experienced WWI, the "first industrialized war" firsthand, which I think gave him a profoundly negative outlook on technology. Given all this, I find it sort of interesting that so many "Techies" are diehard fans of him, not to mention even naming startups after his works. Torment Nexus goes again... (There is probably some hypocrisy in his works, in the sense that only "modern" or "magical" technology gets that treatment. Everything at medieval or pre-medieval level is fine)