[andy_ppp]

Are there any demos of Palantir out there, what sort of things does it do and has anyone tried making an OSS alternative - I don’t really understand why any government would trust them.

[_diyar]

AFAIK their business model is to send skilled engineers to client sites to be consultants and developers. Their selling point is not some product/code per-se (ie. they have a code base with existing analysis tools, but nothing crazy), but the fact that they jump into whatever situation and grind through problems.

The problem is that they also keep close ties to law-enforcement and (para-)military clients, and while they promise to keep your data safe, they would never inform you if they received a warrant from the government to share the data.

[themafia]

They dump all your stuff into a schemaless database and then attach widgets to it.

That's literally it.

It's not even particularly good technology.

[rorylawless]

So, they’re basically a traditional consultancy firm focused on data analytics, particularly record linkage?

[worldsayshi]

If that's an accurate description it's very puzzling that European countries buy services from them.

[nimrody]

They have an entire youtube channel. For example, see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF-GSj-Exms

Some of their stuff for handling data and versioned pipelines seem very well done.

[estetlinus]

Michael Burry is extremely bearish on their business model and has written excellent pieces on why he is shorting Palantir.

[impossiblefork]

The valuation is obviously insane. You can't have that kind of P/E ratios.

Same thing with Tesla.

[asdff]

Burry is probably right, but he forgets that Thiel is friends with Trump, so the merits of business don't matter for Palantir to secure lucrative government contracts.

[infinitewars]

The government IS Palantir at this point, at least J.D. Vance was hand-picked by Thiel.

Musk+Thiel is also in the mix with Golden Dome, the space weapons program that was always Musk's mission. The inside "joke" is that Mars = Wars.

[mullingitover]

And Golden Dome is just the reheated leftovers of the 80s Star Wars space-based scheme literally dreamed up by Dr Strangelove himself, Edward Teller, and promoted by the Heritage Society as a way to get past MAD and allow the US to start and win WWIII. These clowns will absolutely kill millions if they’re not put in check.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire

[deaux]

There are a ton of demos. There's nothing special about it. They're bad guys for sure, but in a similar vein to AWS and Microsoft. Those hospitals using AWS would be just as concerning but gather 1% of the comments on HN.

[renewiltord]

What’s there to trust? You use a tool, it finds things you did that you didn’t bill for, you get paid. Where in this is trust required? The guy you’re billing will complain if the bills are inaccurate.

[crimsoneer]

You can just go sign up...?

https://www.palantir.com/developers/

[SilverElfin]

No one can explain what it is. They have some bullshit “ontology” thing they talk up on every investor call and bots spam about it on twitter and reddit. I think they are basically a software consultancy firm that the government can outsource all evil deeds to. Like warrantless surveillance

[fatherwavelet]

Their "ontology" is not bullshit but they speak about it in a bullshit way. I think they refer to it like a product or something they invented as a form of marketing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)

If you just google ontology you probably end up reading some Heidegger and conclude how deep these guys must be.

Whenever I hear Karp say it I always think of it like he is saying "Database" or "The Database". "What makes Palantir different is Database".

I think so much of Palantir is performative and for sales performances.