199 pointsby jethronethro4 hours ago10 comments
  • tombert3 hours ago
    The more I read about Palantir, the creepier and weirder it becomes. The CEO brags about wanting to kill all journalists with fentanyl, or brags about how their software will be used to kill people, and how readily they're willing to work for the convicted fraudster that America felt fit to give the nuclear codes.

    And despite this company being creepy and weird and bizarre and secretive, they are also trying to make themselves a lifestyle brand by selling merchandise. If I felt like spending $150 for a Palantir-based hoodie, I guess I can normally do that [1], but disturbingly it is apparently "sold out". Apparently a lot of people really want to buy an overpriced sweater, or maybe they're trying to preemptively buy social credit.

    Who knows. Everything is terrible.

    [1] https://store.palantir.com/

    • MagicMoonlight12 minutes ago
      Aww, they’re sold out
      • tombert10 minutes ago
        I know! How will I get Alex Karp to notice me now????
    • gabaix2 hours ago
      Karp is a philosopher by training that has fallen into ideological blindness. He claims that he is on the right side of history. Democracies need Palantir badly.

      He preaches his views to his employees. No one in his flock seems to wonder what would happen if their tools were to be used against democracy.

      • tombert41 minutes ago
        I just find it odd, because their entire business depends on being a creepy entity that has access to "all the data". There would be no reason for ICE or any government organization to actually use their services if they didn't have access to a lot of data that they didn't.
      • jacquesm2 hours ago
        By that kind of reasoning the Mafia is doing just great.

        Not everything is about money.

      • assaddayinhan hour ago
        Karp is a philosopher who had to look at humanity as it is without the idealizations. Longtermism, dark enlightenment, yada ya.. all just fancy terms for enlightenment, actual progress. Not the delusions that you can talk yourself into when high on resources.

        The points made while on drugs are worse than worthless they are dangerous to longterm survival and those who engage in this are deeply amoral. Most of humanity is basically glorified stoners, congratulating themselves on how high they get while their futures starve. The opinion of the retarded about the warden is always that he is evil.

        Go, get yourself some access to a database collected from the seeing stones(aka cellphones) and write your own behavioural queries. Look at the damage and weep. Realize the best we can manage is stabilization in shitty conditions because the warmode species is to retarded. And then go on the web and listen to the blabber of the retarded. Fusion and mini reactors will save civilzation. Meanwhile they handed out proliferation "tracking nukes" aka lookalikes with gps) in every war since the coldwar and guess what the fanatics already have blown it up, several times. Thats why panopticon, thats why electric drugs (games), thats why scenario root hardening, including hardening against government tribalist retardation. Go buy yourself a hoodie. Oh, and its all good, we are going to mars.

    • nextos3 hours ago
      Ironically, the Danish Government is a heavy user of Palantir systems, including creepy predictive policing solutions.

      I would be keen to know if citizen data is being handled correctly, following GDPR/LED.

      Given previous Danish client-state-like cooperation with NSA to spy on other EU countries, I can imagine the answer.

      • lostlogin3 hours ago
        > including creepy predictive policing solutions.

        Minority Report coming right up.

      • anton001an hour ago
        Which predictive policing solution from palantir are they using?
      • izacus2 hours ago
        GDPR has carveouts for governments and law enforcement so they can do whatever for those purposes.
      • hexbin0102 hours ago
        I love how powerful the GDPR marketing was that it made people forget that there are massive exceptions for prevention of crime and for the government
    • gyanchawdhary2 hours ago
      This reads like someone who replaced thinking with the word “creepy” and hit paste until it felt like an opinion. If your critique is just moral panic (and I guess merch anxiety) you’re not exposing anything … and speaking of merch, their Karp “Dominate” shirt is absolutely killer
      • tombertan hour ago
        I'm sorry, which forum do you think you're on? This isn't a fucking "publication", it's a discussion forum for a bunch of software geeks. I'm not trying to "expose" anything, I'm saying that when I read about how much crap they do, how much they work with ICE, and how deeply unlikable the CEO is, then yeah they're creepy. It really is just an "opinion", so you trying to call that out shows a lack of comprehension of the forum and honestly the English language as a whole.

        Frankly, I think the fact that you're so willing to simp for a creepy billionaire and a creepy multi-billion dollar company so much as to call one of their shirts "absolutely killer" says a lot more about you than anything else.

        • gyanchawdharyan hour ago
          no need to apologise .. but see you are doing it again .. hiding behind “it’s just my opinion” after dumping a slurry of buzzwords and vibes .. also no one is confused about what forum this is … people here still expect opinions to have content…

          However screening “creepy billionaire” and then accusing anyone who disagrees of “simping” is reddit tier brainrot .. not discourse. If that’s your bar, don’t get mad when someone notices you cleared it by crawling ;)

          • noitpmederan hour ago
            I don't think the sentiment the poster you're interacting with is anything novel or surprising to find on HN. To be honest it's largely the prevailing outlook from what I understand (maybe with some more reserved language) ESPECIALLY for those not intimately connected with SV in America.

            I'd definitely be having these thoughts a bit more often if I was someone in another country that found out my govt is using their services, even more so with the recent migrate-off-us-tech momentum.

            • tombertan hour ago
              I mean, isn't this kind of the point of Palantir? Like don't they want to be known as a technological Big Brother? If they weren't Silicon Valley Big Brother, then why would a government even want to use their service?

              It feels like they want to have their cake and eat it too; they hate the negative press calling them creepy, but also depend on that press to do their marketing because if they weren't creepy then they wouldn't have a product.

            • gyanchawdharyan hour ago
              imn a software engineer/entrepreneur .. and i’m british, and that article is about UK public services ... so this isn’t distant or abstract for me .. aslo, SV isnt some monolith I’m disconnected from .. even without living there .. its companies (especially those ones that can be seen from this original poster (imbecile ?) view point as evil have materially shaped my career and opportunities in ways that wouldn’t have existed otherwise .. btw .. you can be skeptical of Palantir or US tech influence without collapsing everything into an us verus them narrative or assuming disagreement maps cleanly to geography ..
              • tombert22 minutes ago
                I didn't reduce it to "us vs. them", I said that they and their CEO are creepy. You took that personally because you parasocially love Daddy Alex.
          • tombertan hour ago
            "Please, senpai Alex, please notice me! I've been so loyal to you!"

            I'm not "hiding" behind anything. I made the assertion that what Palantir does (and discusses publicly [1] [2] [3]) is "creepy". I'm disappointed in your second grade teacher if you don't know what an "opinion" word is, but I guess I will assume the duty: subjective terms, like "creepy", are terms that typically describe a subjective perspective. As there's no claim of objectivity there's also no need to "prove" this, though it can be justified by specific claims, as were linked below. You are of course free to not think that stuff is creepy, that's fine, but I do think it's creepy and I doubt I'm the only one.

            I don't accuse everyone who disagrees with me as simping. I'm accusing someone who thinks that a really, really ugly T-Shirt with the word "dominate" written on it as "absolutely killer" of simping. You would not think that that shirt was "killer" if Daddy Alex weren't on there.

            That or you're one of those "social media consultants" that directly works for Palantir, in which case I have some other, less polite ways to describe you if you'd prefer.

            [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/palantir-delivers-ice-doss...

            [2] https://www.thestreet.com/politics/palantir-ceo-makes-anothe...

            [3] https://www.inverse.com/input/tech/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-sa...

            • gyanchawdhary39 minutes ago
              [flagged]
              • tombert33 minutes ago
                > and accusing people of being paid shills

                I didn't accuse you of being a paid shill, I said if you are a paid shill I have less polite things to call you. I know that Palantir hires people to try and do social media damage control and so it's hard to know where their reach is.

                > ur not defending an opinion > you’re advertising that you don’t have anything sturdier to stand on,

                I did provide citations for my opinion. Please feel free to click the links or search for yourself about the specific assertions I made if you'd like; they're not hard to find at all, so you're actively lying when you said "ur not defending an opinion"; just because you were too lazy to click a link does not mean I didn't provide substantiation as to why I think that Alex Karp and Palantir at large is creepy.

                > "senpai"

                If you're not a paid shill, then your perspective is considerably more pathetic. You are engaging in behavior that is honestly kind of sad. Again, behavior that is usually described by the term "simp".

                ETA:

                For the record, I didn't flag you. I don't really care if you insult me or call me an imbecile, it's far from the worst thing anyone has called me.

                Replying to your flagged response though:

                > I though you were just an imbecile, but you seem to be a paranoid one at that .. this is whats really creepy tom.

                I don't really see how what I said was "paranoid", considering that this all stuff that's directly publicly available, straight from the mouth of Alex Karp. Even if everything else Palantir did was good, I think what I linked is sufficient to determine that they're "creepy".

                You are of course to not think that Palantir is creepy. I'm not sure why you'd have that opinion, but you're welcome to have it.

              • defrost31 minutes ago
              • gyanchawdhary31 minutes ago
                [flagged]
      • popalchemistan hour ago
        The moral panic is justified, if you take 5 minutes to look into what they do, and who's behind it (YC's own neo-nazi billionaire, Peter Theil, of course, who is actively undermining western democracy and norms in conjunction with Trump, his hand-picked puppet JD Vance, and so on). For example, they created the facial recognition database and national surveillance system that ICE is literally currently using to hunt down and kidnap, torture, deport, and murder political dissenters who have previously been recorded taking part in their right to protest.

        If you are too lazy to Google all of that -- it's all fact, not conjecture -- here's one more thing:

        "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible". -Peter Theil, Palantir founder.

  • jacquesm2 hours ago
    Let's rewrite that: any big US tech company has no place in any EU or Asian or African public service. Public services should be as independent and as sovereign as technically feasible.
  • sscarduzio2 hours ago
    We’re at good point with European alternatives

    https://www.intelligenceonline.com/europe-russia/2025/12/02/...

  • deaux4 hours ago
    Correct. Neither do Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple - realistically they're even more dangerous, see the ICC. Ironically the first three being the main hosts of.. you guessed it, Palantir.

    Picking and choosing US big tech in this context is pointless, they're all as much of a risk as each other. And don't come with "you have to start somewhere", because you do, but then the place to start is slowly step-by-step getting off of the most critical ones, which are the first four I mentioned.

    • linkjuice4all4 hours ago
      It seems like there's a big opportunity for someone to hire a bunch of disenfranchised US devs that want to flee the country to build an EU-native cloud platform - but clearly there's enough talent on the continent already, so why hasn't this happened yet?
      • amarant3 hours ago
        It has! Here's a whole list of them, but others might exist too!

        https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cloud-computing-pl...

      • notpushkin3 hours ago
        Because it’s not a dev problem, it’s a sales problem.
        • rorylawless3 hours ago
          The sales problem being there isn't anything viable to compete with the established players. Europe has the capability, even without immigration from the US, it just needs a kick to make good enough products.
          • SilverElfin3 hours ago
            The EU should also create a new regulation to force everyone on the continent to move away from American companies. That’s one way to give the local startups a market to sell to.
            • bigfudge3 hours ago
              I’d be interested in arguments that EU providers could be equivalent to Azure … is it realistic to move a large university across for email and other cloud services? Might be the right time to start campaigning for institutions to divest from US tech stacks…
        • jacquesm2 hours ago
          It is much more complicated than that.

          (1) Europe has a fragmented market; linguistically, product wise (2) Silicon Valley is in the United States (3) The United States has a very large amount of capital to throw at companies (4) even if you managed to succeed in the EU your shares will most likely be bought out from under you if you raised capital (5) all of the above re-inforce each other over time

          Once you have that kind of an advantage it is very hard to lose it.

    • davidw4 hours ago
      Among other things, with everything going on in the US today, the CEOs of Apple and Amazon were apparently at the WH for a screening of the Melania film.
      • SilverElfin3 hours ago
        Amazon funded it. They paid $30 million or so for rights to the documentary for Amazon Prime. I doubt viewers will care about it, but I look at it as a bribe from Amazon to the administration. They give Melania and by extension Trump this money, and they will get better regulatory help and more government contracts.
        • add-sub-mul-div3 hours ago
          I didn't even know this existed, let alone that it was made by Amazon. This makes their Chris Pratt garbage look like cinema.
    • SpicyLemonZest3 hours ago
      It's easy to start with Palantir because it simply doesn't provide any legitimate value. They don't do anything, at all, other than enable spying by weaving snippets of private data into a coherent whole. You don't have to explain the decision to well-meaning people who are inconvenienced, nor provide a transition plan for essential services, you can just yank the plug tomorrow and tell everyone who complains to buzz off.
    • rvz4 hours ago
      Incoming big-tech sympathizers with defense contracts, boosters and hairsplitters in 3, 2, 1.
      • deaux4 hours ago
        "No way, not a cent of my nest egg funded by papa Bezos comes from AWS FedRAMP High GovCloud massive sweet enterprise contracts with the likes of Palantir to host them at scale!"

        The truth is there's thousands if not tens of thousands of people on here for whom it is incredibly convenient to imagine their vests were granted in a completely different universe to the likes of Palantir. Deep down they know their companies realistically play an unfathomably bigger role in surveillance capatalism, crippling addictions, furthering of current US Party strongarming and a whole lot more. Exactly why many find it so cathartic to latch on to these threads and reinforce that cognitive dissonance.

        I didn't even mention Meta who bring about as much harm in a day as Palantir wish it could do in a year - make no mistake, I'm not suggesting the latter is for a lack of trying. Although the idea that Zuck is somehow any more ethical than Thiel is of course hilarious.

        But after all, you and me too are quite culpable in this moment, providing marketing and engagement for the platform behind Flock(YC S17). The exact source of all that data we're so angry about being loaded into the Palantir platforms.

        • rvz3 hours ago
          Correct.

          I expect the author of the article must also recognize that Big Tech is in the same basket and are just as complicit for the sake of consistency. The problem is, we just don't hear about it often.

          When I brought this up last time in [0] all I saw was constant hairsplitting, attempts to seperate Big Tech from Palantir and lots of 'whataboutism' accusations, which doesn't work because I agree.

          So when I saw this in the article:

          > Palantir’s tentacles are already extending into our communities. In my constituency of Coventry, the Labour-run council awarded the company a £500,000 contract to develop an AI tool for children’s services.

          Google [1], Microsoft [2], Amazon [3] are no different and these are just a few of them and they are just as bad as Palantir and all of them are in the SNP 500 directly in the portfolios of pension funds.

          So it is indeed a waste of time trying to picking and choose US tech companies on this.

          [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46407683

          [1] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366634759/Google-wins-mu...

          [2] https://www.digitalhealth.net/2023/06/nhs-signs-new-microsof...

          [3] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366566172/AWS-secures-89...

  • ggm2 hours ago
    I'd be surprised if they cannot provide services which translate to outcomes successive governments want. So in that sense, "has no place" is about alignment to goals, as much as desires. Palantir is able to do things which the government wants done. If this pits government against citizenry in terms of what people think, thats not unusual.

    The big-4 would happily also do this. Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC Would take money to provide outlines and project management for an in-house, or an outsource to somebody other than Palantir. It wouldn't neccessarily be either cheaper, or faster, or for that matter any more socially acceptable.

    I don't like the source, I could agree with the opinion (broken clock write 2x a day..) but to pretend government doesn't want what Palantir is selling is faux naieve and stupid.

    What alternative is there, and why is "don't do it" viable?

    This is "defund the police" wolf howling at the moon stuff.

  • mc324 hours ago
    The UK is building/has built a surveillance state using the boiling frog method. So even if you change vendors, surveillance will continue. You have accepted it as par for the course. Unless you reject it and subsequent politicians don't double-cross you, surveillance will continue. No question.
    • pjc50an hour ago
      Just like the US, saying "immigrants" and "crime" gets the public, or at least the media, to demand authoritarianism.
    • ronsor4 hours ago
      UK society has always been surprisingly tolerant of mass surveillance. Whether Palantir is involved or not, I think it may be too late to get off the train.
      • throwaway1503 hours ago
        I know UK is ok with surveillance in public places because there is no expectation of privacy in public spaces. But are they really tolerant of surveillance in non-public places?
        • rorylawless3 hours ago
          No, not at all. The surveillance state nonsense is overplayed online.
        • hexbin0102 hours ago
          Brit here. Yes because the average Brit is insufficiently educated to understand the harm. They are very easily swayed by "think of the children" or saving just one life. They consume huge amounts of propaganda with little to zero critical thinking
    • secretsatan2 hours ago
      It’s something that always horrified me, but it was just done without the governments help, they just let private individuals do it and gave away public spaces to private interests
  • IndySunan hour ago
    The petition is now a 404.
  • inference-god4 hours ago
    It's hard not to see a sort of oligarchy vs the people battle shaping up, that's for sure.
    • hexbin0102 hours ago
      Well, protesting is illegal now
      • yuppiepuppie2 hours ago
        In which country? In the one I live in, its still alive and well
      • chrishare2 hours ago
        It's not illegal, you just get shot is all
    • dfxm124 hours ago
      Yeah, it's important to elect councillors and MP's that represent the people and not monied interests.
      • Nextgrid3 hours ago
        Problem is that you must already represent monied interests before you get anywhere near an MP/councillor seat.
  • smi-nvidia2 hours ago
    [dead]
  • nailer3 hours ago
    Zahrah Sultana is a racist conspiracy theorist and not someone to take seriously on any matter.

    https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/mps-mcdonnell-and-sultana-addre...

    Sultana is also on record stating the grooming gangs were a racist smear (which is odd as there were multiple races involved)

    • potamic3 hours ago
      As someone who is neither a Jew nor a Palestinian, I'm going to take this with a grain of salt, because there is so much mud being slung across from both sides.
      • boomlinde2 hours ago
        There's no need to even take it with a grain of salt. The factual circumstances described in the article are extremely mundane, but the article tries to paint her participation as a problem by supposing that anyone participating in a public event should only do so if they can answer for every disparate opinion of everyone else there.
        • nailer2 hours ago
          Part of the hacker news guidelines is to assume that everyone read the article, so obviously you read the sentence that started with:

          > One can never control what others say or do at any public gathering but if actions take place that I disagree with, once this has been pointed out, it is right and important to explain one’s own position

    • petesergeant2 hours ago
      Your article doesn’t support your claims
    • Daishiman3 hours ago
      That entire website looks like Israeli sponsored propaganda.
      • nailer3 hours ago
        Well Jews are from Israel so yes. What’s your point? Are you saying Zultana wasn’t at that event?
        • Daishiman2 hours ago
          Israelis may be from Israel. Jews live all over the world. Do we need to explain the difference between Judaism and Zionism?
        • bigfudge2 hours ago
          Being at an event with racists does not make you a racist. That would tar the entire Israeli parliament and anyone who currently works in the White House.

          Can you point to anything Sultana has said which you think is beyond the pale? - a direct quote rather than indirect smears. As gross as it was, the grooming gangs stuff has been used by the right wing press to smear the entire immigrant population. The vast majority of abuse happens by people the child knows. I think reporting which distorts that -is- a smear, no matter how incompetent, misguided or corrupt the police response to what went on in Rotherham and elsewhere.