Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

http://blog.palantir.com/2011/12/14/introducing-palantirs-first-open-source-releases/

by regs • 15 years ago

105 37 15 years ago

blog.palantir.com

gbhn• 15 years ago

I think these were the same crowd drawing up plans to sell the government on how to crush wikileaks amid other miscellaneous dirty tricks. (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-11/tech/30050719...)

gojomo4• 15 years ago

To be fair, Palantir says their name was associated with that HBGary proposal in error, severed all ties with HBGary, and denied offering any software that could be used for the tactics in the HBGary presentation.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/11/palanti...

Anyone is of course free to believe them or not, but our threads shouldn't be forwarding the vague allegations without also including the more specific denials.

loopdoend2• 15 years ago

That's funny, how did HBGary get Palantir's site license for Kapow Katalyst if they had nothing to do with them?

http://leaks.anonamegame.com/aaron_hbgary_com/13188.html

How did they get a pt-themis-bcc@palantir.com forwarding address?

You call them vague allegations, but they look like facts to me. "In error" meaning "oops we got caught", or, facetiously "oh dear did I push the plan and scheme and conspire button again?"

jchonphoenix4• 15 years ago

How could Palantir software even accomplish what was claimed in the above links?

I don't see how data visualization software can be used to crush wikileaks in the manner that the article says.

rhizome3• 15 years ago

Anything's possible in the world of government contracting.

nivals2• 15 years ago

I spent two years working on this problem as my masters thesis. It's possible, not trivial.

jchonphoenix4• 15 years ago

Additionally, this comment shouldn't be downvoted. I realize that people like to hate on Palantir, but I'm asking a legitimate question. And up to this point, nobody has given me a good answer.

Those of us that have been on HN for awhile know that you don't downvote things just because you disagree with them. This comment is really constructive and I'm disappointed that people are instinctively downvoting it because it can be construed as supporting a company they're biased against.

lawnchair_larry• 15 years ago

Tinfoil hats like to say that facebook is probably tied to the CIA, but Palantir is the one that actually is.

"Palantir was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, Dr. Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings. Early investments came in the form of $2 million from the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel and $30 million from Thiel and his firm, The Founders Fund. Dr. Alex Karp is Palantir's CEO. Palantir’s name comes from the "seeing stones" in the Lord of the Rings.

Palantir was built through iterative collaboration between computer scientists and analysts from various intelligence agencies over the course of nearly three years, through pilots facilitated by In-Q-Tel."

seiji• 15 years ago

At least they don't try to hide it. Be sure to watch their recent startup school talk/video/awakardness.

presidentender• 15 years ago

Palantir also develops some very big-deal intelligence communications stuff for all branches of the military, except the Army: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/89048-us-army-spent-2-7-b...

Vivtek• 15 years ago

Gah! Cognitive dissonance! How can I assign a good/evil score now?

jforman• 15 years ago

Palantir is definitely True Neutral

tomjen3• 15 years ago

That is what I always admired about the Ferengi. Whatever beef you had with them, you knew they could be counted on not to take sides, as long as you had money you were good.

It seems they are kinda the same.

balloot• 15 years ago

I dunno. I definitely consider Palantir evil no matter how many open-source goodies they put out.

lwat• 15 years ago

Lawful Evil is my take on it.

rhizome3• 15 years ago

You wait.

mwhite• 15 years ago

"Open source"? Definitely evil.

caycep• 15 years ago

it would be interesting to see what the internal divisions of palantir are, and what are their government/defense contracts like vs. their commercial products division.

fight for government money can always get a little dirty. i'm sure good engineering happens there but they will always be colored by the HB Gary episode. plus the fact that partnering with a shady right wing corporate law firm and the HB Gary Federal clown will alway reflect badly on their general common sense judgement...

Karunamon• 15 years ago

I am often very perplexed why legitimate comments get downvoted. This is one of those times. WTH everyone, this isn't Reddit.

tedunangst• 15 years ago

I don't see how caycep's comment enhances my understanding of the released software. It's just a big dump of ad hominem (as are practically all the other comments).

vlokshin• 15 years ago

VERY good engineering/thinking/development happens here.

I was in a recruitment process with them back when I really wanted to make an immediate west coast jump, and the intelligence/competence across the board for their collective is simply unmatched.

jf• 15 years ago

And posted to GitHub no less. Nice!

ap22213• 15 years ago

I was surprised to see Swing. Is that still a fairly common foundation for UIs?

spullara• 15 years ago

It is pretty common for enterprise desktop applications.

tikhonj• 15 years ago

I remember seeing a demo of their UIs when they gave an infosession at school. They look nothing like Swing--as far as I could tell, all the widgets were either custom or redesigned. If I remember correctly, it looked more like MS Office 2007 than anything else.

Since Swing is "lightweight"--all the widgets are drawn in Java instead of using native ones--using it to make a completely custom UI makes sense.

guelo• 15 years ago

It is one of the few viable cross-platform desktop app frameworks.

Introducing Palantir's first open source releases

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