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>Not long after obtaining his doctorate, he received an inheritance from his grandfather >“How could it be the case that this person is cofounder and CEO since
by diydsp 13y ago
>Not long after obtaining his doctorate, he received an inheritance from his grandfather
>“How could it be the case that this person is cofounder and CEO since 2005 and the company still exists?” The answer dates back to Karp’s decades-long friendship with Peter Thiel,
>Thiel had cofounded PayPal and sold it to eBay in October 2002 for $1.5 billion.
>Enter Karp, whose Krameresque brown curls, European wealth connections and Ph.D. masked his business inexperience.
And thus we enter the Establishment's presentation of hippie-cum-suit stories, presenting data miners for the Man as rock stars [1]. Sound familiar? It's the same story that worked on the baby boomer generation. "First I was a hippie, then I was a stock broker, now I am a hippie again."
[1] Let's see them give the token opposing community activist on page 4 the same photography treatment instead of photographing him on the margins of the frame so he looks even more obese and distended.
- VladRussian2 13y ago>presenting data miners for the Man as rock stars [1] these jobs and these companies are cool. You want to work for them. You want to be cool.
- ethanbond 13y agoThey are cool, though. Why the snarkiness?
- andrewcooke 13y agonot everyone agrees with you, i'm afraid. more generally, this is something you'll learn as you get older - a lot of things you thought were cool, aren't. not even one direction. reality's a bitch, son. sorry.
- VladRussian2 13y agoyep, the article is thoroughly seeded with absolutely not subliminal "cool" stimuli especially effective for young males. Living in the Valley, that one struck home with me, was hard to stop laughing. Aura of danger and secrecy... Dragging with you a 6ft+ 270lb ex-Marine bodyguard _conspicuously_ in Palo Alto. Friday night on University: I'm Dork, James Dork. Well, everybody has his own way to overcompensate.
- ethanbond 13y agoOr maybe the tech company has, Idk, cool tech. Although I guess appreciating it would take more than a reactionary pants-pissing any time a writer happens to mention 'PRISM' and another (unrelated) company in the same article.
- ethanbond 13y agoHave you ever seen a Palantir product demo? It's technologically damn cool, regardless of your take on a Forbes writer's take on one employee. If someone watches their demos or tours their offices and doesn't walk out at least slightly giddy, they're either paranoid of the solutions or ignorant of the problems. Or both.
- VladRussian2 13y ago>It's technologically damn cool, regardless of your take on a Forbes writer's take on one employee. If someone watches their demos or tours their offices and doesn't walk out at least slightly giddy, they're either paranoid of the solutions or ignorant of the problems. Or both. i guess this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209907 explains maximalism and arrogance of your statements. As i said - "cool" stimuli for young males.
- ethanbond 13y agoMy comments are arrogant? You clearly know nothing about neither the company nor the product, yet you assume the allure of it comes from the "cool" stimuli? Maybe you and I have different definitions of "cool," because Palantir's offices certainly aren't "cool" in any "stereotypical young male" type of way. The entire company is filled to the brim with nerdy Tolkein references - not "cool". One of their product lines is versioned by Carebears for god's sake - not "cool". What makes them cool is the fact that their products solve actual problems (and create some, sure) instead of selling ads or trying to conquer to-do lists. Also for me as a designer, I like their product development structure and cycle. I guess it would take more than a Forbes article-worth of exposure for you to see something appreciable.
- VladRussian2 13y ago>What makes them cool is the fact that their products solve actual problems [...] instead of selling ads or trying to conquer to-do lists. yes, The Pitch that youth is falling so easily prey for. Any country, any historic period. The great lie of this pitch only smartest(or luckiest) among us understand from the start, and it takes many years for the rest of us to understand it.
- samstave 13y agoThey may be "cool" - but they are morally unscrupulous. Just because you can get drunk on the tech power of the NSA doesn't mean you're right.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- applecore 13y agoI laughed at the notion of a Ph.D. (in social theory, no less) masking one's business inexperience.
- badman_ting 13y ago"presenting data miners for the Man as rock stars" Yes, this really bothers me as well. We should believe in the power this tool has, and that should cause us to be afraid. Biz-mag dorks are always going to eat up such things, but who cares about that. The adulation by people who seem like they should know better is what rankles.
- saraid216 13y agoBe afraid, be very afraid!
- dylangs1030 13y agoTo be fair, I don't think you have to do much propaganda to sell people on the idea of emulating Palantir. Movies and novels like the Bourne series do that for you. The idea of a brilliant government agent who understands science, math, and law and who frequently has to skirt the murky waters of government intrigue is kind of a sexy zeitgeist in America.