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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Palantir loses legal challenge against Swiss investigative magazine
irsagent wrote 3 hours 34 min ago:
Here are the series of articles that the Swiss investigative magazine,
Republik + WAV, published and Palantir looked to silence:
HTML [1]: https://www.republik.ch/dossier/die-republik-vs-palantir
dyauspitr wrote 5 hours 35 min ago:
Get this cancer out of Europe.
mentalgear wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
To all investigative Journalists: Thank you for your hard work, and for
being an inspiration and beacon of hope in these dark
techno-feudalistic times.
timoth3y wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
Palantir is clearly a mind-boggling on-the-nose, but terrible name to
those familiar with the book.
The Palantiri consistently provided their users technically accurate
intelligence that lead to disastrous strategic decisions.
Denethor committed suicide out of despair, after a palantir showed him
the black fleet approaching, but he did not know that it was actually
Aragorn who had captured the fleet and was coming with reinforcements.
We don't know specifically how the palantir deceived Saruman, but it's
pretty clear it was one of the key factors in his corruption and
downfall.
And even Sauron himself was misled in this way! The palantir showed
him, correctly, that a hobbit and Aragorn were at Helm's Deep, and he
concluded that Aragorn had the ring. So he prematurely moved his armies
out of Mordor and left the plains and Mt Doom unguarded, which
permitted the destruction of the ring.
I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that provides
intel for strategic decision making.
pdonis wrote 1 hour 42 min ago:
Well, Aragorn used the information he got from the Palantir of
Orthanc to make a correct and very important strategic decision, to
take the Paths of the Dead so that he could stop the Corsairs in time
to save Minas Tirith.
So the lesson is that you have to use the intel you get wisely, or
else very bad things will happen. I'm not sure if that makes the name
any better for the tool it's applied to, though.
jltsiren wrote 24 min ago:
The actual lesson was that you need to be the trueborn king who can
claim the palantiri by birthright if you want to use them for good.
Even then, it requires great effort. Bad things will happen if
anyone else tries to use the palantiri, no matter how great and
powerful they are.
GolfPopper wrote 4 hours 29 min ago:
>I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that provides
intel for strategic decision making.
Yet the choice is very effective at telling those with eyes to see
that the one who chose the name possesses only a surface-level
understanding of what appears to be his favorite piece of literature.
themafia wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
Or he's broadcasting his intention to destroy world governments and
institute a new global order under technocratic control. He's
banking on a US General not understanding the deeper lore behind of
the name.
anonymars wrote 2 hours 9 min ago:
He literally considers Saruman the good guy, Mordor the good
place, and Gandalf the bad guy (holding back technological
progress)
Discussed previously e.g.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901389
GolfPopper wrote 3 hours 54 min ago:
In folklore, supernatural monsters are often compelled to show
their true selves in non-obvious ways.
teravor wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
someone will name their company Ashnazg, probably an AI company
LargoLasskhyfv wrote 3 hours 1 min ago:
Already happened. Ashnazg Enterprises LLC [1] No AI though, just
fully stacked...
HTML [1]: https://ashnazg.com
warumdarum wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
Its cellphones ? They show the rulers accurate predictions of human
behaviour after the the fall of the towers proofed that the left only
had enbarassing cofabulations to explain behaviour at scale. Thats
the most valuable thing you can gain out of social network sensor
data.
BLKNSLVR wrote 5 hours 2 min ago:
I've pointed this out before, but there's an interview clip of Alex
Karp saying that Trump won the election in a landslide[0].
If you look at the actual numbers, no one, with any idea of
mathematics or statistics or even just basic analysis skills, would
call Trump's election victory a landslide.
It calls into question the fundamental raisin d'etre of Palantir. It
makes Palantir look like a pure propaganda tool.
Therefore, also entirely useless for strategic decision making.
Interesting analysis of Palantir and Alex Karp:
Part 1, Palantir: [1] Part 2, Alex Karp: [2] [0] [2] &t=1119s
HTML [1]: https://youtu.be/PpEg0XIeFtA
HTML [2]: https://youtu.be/6YWFDhOps6I
HTML [3]: https://youtu.be/6YWFDhOps6I&t=1119s
SepiaSapient wrote 25 min ago:
I would argue that it just shows Karp understands that the US is
transitioning to a hybrid regime.
pstuart wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
Alex Karp's transformation from progressive to MAGA is fascinating;
more so knowing that his father was jewish and his mother was
black.
I can understand a zeal to "protect the country", but FFS, to be
the brains of the secret police is a bit much.
HTML [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/opinion/alex-karp-palan...
holistio wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
It's _raison_, but "raisin d'être" would make an excellent name
for a haute cuisine dessert.
BLKNSLVR wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
Thanks, damn.
I usually look up that phrase so I can copy and paste it with the
proper accents (and, uh, spelling).
antonvs wrote 5 hours 16 min ago:
I can think of a worse name: Peter Thiel. Oh wait I'm confused.
That's a better name for this.
AndrewKemendo wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
As though the ego of Peter Thiel has any grounding in reality or
ironic metaphor
WhatIsDukkha wrote 6 hours 7 min ago:
Saruman was already rotted by lust for the ring when he began to use
the Palantir and then came into the presence of a dominating and
corrupting will.
So yeah... plenty of real world versions of that.
baobabKoodaa wrote 6 hours 19 min ago:
Fine. Thiel will just fund a Hulk Hogan lawsuit against the Swiss
magazine, then.
Yokohiii wrote 6 hours 34 min ago:
Wait europe doesn't want to buy spy tech that spies on europe?
Shocking.
scottyah wrote 5 hours 58 min ago:
Some people in Europe don't want new sources of data coming in
outside of their control.
zzzeek wrote 6 hours 41 min ago:
> Palantir, whose software is widely used by US defence and
intelligence agencies, has faced growing scrutiny in parts of Europe as
governments reassess their dependence on American technology companies.
I think it's great. Europe and other regions will be building out
their own tech stacks, decreasing global dependence on big US players
like AWS and Palantir, creating lots more jobs for programmers and much
broader ecosystems for doing things.
inigyou wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
No evidence for this. Europe talks a big game and consistently fails
to deliver.
tremon wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
> âWe welcome that the Zurich Commercial Court confirmed our right to
publish a counterstatementâ
Well that certainly is one way to spin having 22 of your 23
counterstatement requests dismissed by the court.
saghm wrote 6 hours 27 min ago:
Their right to publish multiple counterstatements is left unsettled
by current law
holistio wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
Anyone who has read The Lord of The Rings has exactly zero reasons to
trust Palantir.
gmerc wrote 2 hours 53 min ago:
Well itâs kind of the same with Rand. Thatâs their thing, they
read these books as preteens and the nuance is lost on them
za3faran wrote 5 hours 5 min ago:
It's enough to hear what their genocidal maniac of a CEO says.
emptybits wrote 6 hours 56 min ago:
Indeed. The corporation name is literally (in literature!) an example
of all-seeing surveillance tools causing harm when (not if) they fall
into evil hands.
DoktorDelta wrote 7 hours 0 min ago:
Crazy that there's a weapons company called Anduril as well
inigyou wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
I'd call my company Sauron's Eye (we'll figure out what the company
does later), but sadly that's trademarked to the LOTR franchise.
alterom wrote 5 hours 15 min ago:
Crazy? It's backed by Thiel as well IIRC.
goldenarm wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
Anduril is quite a positive name, it is a broken sword reforged
later to save humankind. Quite a metaphor about western
reindustrialization.
Barrin92 wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
except of course that Tolkien, as a Catholic was quite adamant
that he didn't write a story of Western chauvinism. The sword is
not a metaphor for industrialization, which is quite literally
the villain of the story, it's a symbol for restored kingship and
hope.
DaedalusII wrote 3 hours 12 min ago:
tolkien largely copied the nibelungsenlied and accidentally
inherited western chauvinism and many other ideas from that
lore, including especially a great amount of racism
cmrdporcupine wrote 4 hours 33 min ago:
Right, and his concept of nobility and just kingship was about
mercy love justice and a love of nature, good food, merriment,
harmony, and treating others with respect. His works are full
of cautionary tales of people who reached for immortality,
power, self-aggrandizement, and control over others and fell as
a result.
(Though he was obsessed with lineage and blood quotients and
pale skin)
holistio wrote 4 hours 11 min ago:
It's very difficult to judge the attitudes and held values of
people who lived in the past - I mean the parentheses.
We don't know how much of it is real flaw or corruption and
how much is just the zeitgeist they lived in.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Musk's capital T today
would end up becoming the beginning or turning point of a
cautionary tale in the future. And, for better or worse, I
know a lot of otherwise great and talented people who are
still his fans.
scns wrote 6 hours 52 min ago:
Creative people seem to be rather pacifistic. Warmongers seem less
so, they have to "borrow" from the creative ones.
nickff wrote 6 hours 55 min ago:
Why? Naming a weapons company after Aragorn's sword makes sense.
"The Daily Beast" on the other hand is a rather cynical name...
mistrial9 wrote 7 hours 50 min ago:
> officials in Denmark and the Netherlands have similarly expressed a
desire to uncouple from the US-based software group
oh that is clever writing
tokai wrote 7 hours 29 min ago:
I wonder which Danish official they are talking about. Lots of voices
against it, but not from officials. The danish state is going full
steam ahead. Just yesterday the Greenlandic police was integrated
with Grotham from Palantir.
sschueller wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://archive.ph/lXw7j
cluckindan wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
Please donât use these sites, they alter archived content and use
visitor browsers as a ddos botnet.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...
themafia wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
Then I'd have to ask of publishers please don't use subscription
oriented paywalls. I'd be happy to pay for an article here and
there. I do not want to understand your subscription model,
compare benefits between "tiers" of subscriptions, or think about
how to cancel when I eventually realize I'm not getting the value I
hoped for.
This is the price of that dark pattern. These sites wouldn't exist
if they acted like publishers instead of retailers.
catlikesshrimp wrote 7 hours 20 min ago:
If Cannot resolve archive.ph host
Access the .is domain [1] internet archive cannot resolve either
HTML [1]: https://archive.is/lXw7j
buildsjets wrote 5 hours 5 min ago:
Find a better network service provider, you are being censored by
yours.
akerl_ wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
What makes you say that?
kay_o wrote 2 min ago:
Other way around. archiveis is the badly behaving one.
tremon wrote 7 hours 10 min ago:
archive.ph works fine for me. Resolves to
168.222.241.49 archive.ph
2a09:b280:fe00:5a:d197:eab6:9aa0:f22 archive.ph
akerl_ wrote 6 hours 59 min ago:
Archive.ph returns different results to Cloudflareâs resolvers
intentionally, preventing Cloudflare DNS users from resolving it
correctly.
DIR <- back to front page