

Fighting terrorism the Silicon Valley Way [video] - rantfoil
http://online.wsj.com/video/fighting-terrorism-the-silicon-valley-way/424BD389-E24B-4C54-950C-7AD050F6565C.html

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pmorici
This is the same submission that has been posted at least 5 times in the last
24 hours. Only difference is this time it's in video form.

ref:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=803968>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=803993>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=804681>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=805158>

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rantfoil
I used to work at Palantir (full disclosure). This is hardly spam. They're
legit -- they've raised $30MM over four years and cracked a market they said a
startup could NEVER crack: the government.

If this isn't a remarkable story, I don't know what is.

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pmorici
Startups crack government all the time. We just don't hear about it because it
is usually insiders and companies that have ownership structures that give
them special preference in the contracting process.

It could be an article promoting the American Cancer society that doesn't mean
it needs to be reposted multiple times per day.

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rantfoil
1) If you don't like the article, don't upvote it. As for how newsworthy it
is, this isn't some pork barrel IT project -- it's computer science being
deployed to catch terrorists in the field.

2) This is one of the first pieces of mass media coverage Palantir has gotten
-ever- -- they've been under wraps for years.

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breck
From what I've heard, Palantir seems like a damn cool company tackling really
interesting problems.

But the work ethic required does not appeal to me whatsoever. Does anyone work
there? How do you do it?

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jacobscott
I work there, in software development. I think I work hard, but certainly not
death march hard, or any harder than someone working at another random startup
might. Not fourty hours a week, but certainly not eighty, either.

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asdlfj2sd33
So is it 45 or 79?

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jyothi
This sounds like a damn cool place to work. A startup with government and
supreme security divisions as clients is definitely something thing different
and impressive.

It also impressive to know that they took the plunge to take technology, data
analysis to steer a field like this instead of a more chalked out field like
finance sector.

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zhyder
Interesting that they're opening up a financial analysis arm to serve hedge
funds. When they determine a terrorist attack is imminent, will they give the
hedge funds a heads up before the markets crash?

(I doubt that's the intention, but somehow a conspiracy theory alert went off
in my head, sorry.)

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wheels
It's almost certainly for detecting fraud / money laundering networks.

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srwh
I found Palantr very interesting but the article uncovers The US agencies
incompetency with zillion of dollars in Research?

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sho
I know an even better way to save US lives in Afghanistan: _get out of
Afghanistan_.

