On the other hand, spending most of your time learning new syntax as opposed to actually solving creative problems makes one more like a glorified factory worker.
Once people graduate from the "I'm going to learn ALL the things because it's fun and I got surplus brainpower", they usually discover that there are lots and lots of problems out there that require plenty of brainpower and people will actually pay you for solving. It's somewhat silly to allocate your mental effort to things that get you nothing but intellectual gratification when you can allocate it to things that get you intellectual gratification and monetary compensation that will let you do many things you otherwise can't.
Exactly. I can learn syntax if it's going to pay me back for the effort - if it's going to enable me to avoid bugs, or to solve problems I couldn't, or to be more productive, or to get or keep a job.
Learning syntax that isn't going to pay me back? I don't have time for that.
It takes a lot longer to learn syntax to the point where I don't have to think about it, so that I can spend my time thinking about the problem instead.
Having to think about the syntax is like not being a touch typist. Sure, I can still press the right keys, but I have to think about doing so, which slows me down and takes my thinking off of what I'm trying to say.
You've answered your own question about why programmers don't like new syntax. Because most (interesting) coding takes more time thinking than typing, syntax is only a cost, never a benefit. If your language has familiar syntax, then they don't have to pay that cost. If it makes them learn new syntax, it better provide other benefits like access to a new platform, a job that pays much better, or eliminating a large class of bugs. And if two languages both offer that same benefit (like Erlang vs. Elixir, Matlab vs. Python, even Python/Ruby vs. Node.js) programmers will gravitate toward the one that doesn't make them learn new syntax.
(Something (a (small (set (of)) (((programmers have (been claiming) for) decades)) and yet) somehow they never, ever, take) off.))) ((I wonder) (why) that is))))?
The kind of problems that they help with are actually fairly rare, while their disadvantages are expensive. Basically the syntax sucks and all the really useful bits are now in all the other languages any way.
1. They are very "loud" - VC funding, visibility and large headcount are antagonistic features for a firm specializing in boutique data mining. It's not impossible, it just makes it harder to maintain a competitive edge in e.g. how long your data remains exclusive. On the other hand, these qualities are excellent for developing a moat around a product from which you can source data. Their website gives away quite a lot of information.
2. I have personally heard from analysts who mentioned that various forecasts of theirs were rushed, superfluous or simply incorrect.
3. I have personally "beaten" their team in finding, curating and analyzing data to produce a forecast which was in high demand by various clients.
It's not uncommon for funds to buy redundant forecasts from several vendors, so research firms tend to be at least peripherally aware of one another. Keep in mind that the more exclusive a source of data is, the more lucrative a forecast will be if it has a high signal. The two extremes are data which essentially only you are in possession of, and data which has no signal due to widespread diffusion in the market. Eventually your forecast slides from the first sort to the second sort, and letting other companies know what kind of data you have is inviting them to compete.
Me too. I always tend to wake up the exact same time (right down to the minute) every single morning, no matter how early or late I sleep. And I don’t set an alarm clock and use blackout curtain.
What I find irritating is this constant portrayal of them as this “secret, data mining, all-knowing” technology company that can predict anything. even though everyone saying they don’t know how Palantir works under the hood.
So yeah I definitely believe they are just a well-marketed, hip IBM.
I know how Palantir works under the hood because I was in the infantry and conducted many missions using information "curated" by various intelligence organizations and Palantir. Very easy to tell we were looking at intelligence products generated by Palantir because the company is (was?) fond of putting its logo all over the stuff it makes. What Palantir does is completely off-the-shelf kind of stuff that Google and Facebook do all day. Except that Palantir gets to feed classified metadata into its software to generate its graphs. It was impressive a decade ago. Today it's nothing that any HNer taking CS classes at university couldn't do over spring break. Don't get me wrong, it's still very useful, crucial stuff for battlefield intelligence. But there is absolutely no magic happening behind the curtain.
Incidentally, I would like to take this opportunity to state in no uncertain terms that this is an extremely dangerous thing for domestic law enforcement to be using against American citizens. Or anyone anywhere that we aren't trying to kill. We should be fighting tooth and nail against companies with access to mountains of metadata like Facebook and Google. I deployed before the widespread use of this kind of analytics, and I deployed after it became ubiquitous. It is the single most powerful force multiplier I can think of, right up there with nuclear weapons. And it will be abused.
Actually, I appreciate the reply as a prompt to clarify what I mean. I really hope I am able to decouple Palantir from the metadata analytics that I'm talking about in my endorsement of the technology. Speaking in sweeping generalities, the only thing special about Palantir is the fact that it's entrenched, which is what gives it the opportunities other companies don't have. Ignoring for a minute its highly-specialized workforce (needing a TS clearance just to get into the parking lot) and focusing on the process and technology. I would even go so far as to say that I think most other companies in this space would do a better job than Palantir, just because entrenched companies get comfortable and lose their edge.
I believe the point is that their tech stack isn’t that unique, it’s access to the data that let’s them apply standard stuff any HNer could come up with.
They've been offered a sinecure by politically aligned allies in the Federal government, which makes sense since P Thiel's strategy for innovation boils down to rent-seeking.
Palantir gets deployed on classified networks. There’s no central Palantir instance. Those instances get integrated with classified data sources by people with security clearance
And yes, getting access to that data is hard (and should be!) One of the reasons Palantir gets contracts is because of their large cleared workforce.
Google and Facebook give soldiers intelligence products? Or Palantir operates websites and does analytics of their users? I don't think I understand the comparison.
I worked for a competitor to Palantir at one point. Basically, they're using what you can think of as an adaptation of Google's PageRank- instead of ranking how important websites are by evaluating the links between them, Palantir and the like estimate a person's importance / influence by evaluating their connections to other people.
You can do some pretty interesting market analyses for commercial purposes using just data from Twitter, or Facebook if you can get access to it. What Palantir can do with covertly / illicitly gained data is much the same, only with much deeper wells of information to draw from.
That depends entirely on the product and market, though there are a few general uses. Generally speaking, find the people who are very passionate and vocal about topics your product addresses.
Now, you know two things: the types of words they use, and with a bit of digging, the sentiment typically associated with those words. This can influence your marketing copy and promotions.
Repeat with a few demographics to identify associated areas of passion. Now, you have a group of very passionate people, and maybe even a loose network. Dig in and see if you can find more common associations to tighten the network up a bit.
From there, you could run a targeted campaign- say, a contest with freebies awarded to a number of people who retweet a certain message or hash tag.
People who are tangentially interested hear about your product. People who would have heard about it anyway (by virtue of being in your target market) will now be talking about your product, using your specifically chosen wording.
For the cost of a few freebies, you now have reached your target audience- and thousands more, if they have a significant following. Further, you're not spamming airwaves, or cold emailing, or running ads that are blocked or ignored anyway.
Take all of this with a hefty dose of salt. I'm an engineer, not a sales person or marketer. I'm not on Twitter or Facebook or any other network, so I don't really know all the ins and outs of how to use the product itself, only how to build things those people found useful.
EDIT: for what it's worth, you can do all of this by hand. Doing it well, doing it right, is harder. I won't recommend anyone specifically, but if you're interested in marketing this way, I'd suggest finding someone who already knows how to calculate influence very well and using their services. Otherwise, you'll spend a lot of time on a pointless goose chase, because there is a LOT of noise to sift through to find a good signal, so to speak.
Much like Accenture or McKinsey, we were assigned a "partner", who was always looking to upsell more services and get more entrenched in the organisation. E.g. "we've built system X (which I assure you is better than what you have), how can we use it to do Y and switch off your existing system Z."
A lot of the times, they were just using stuff like Hadoop, and massively over-engineering simple data integration tasks.
What's the difference between a "Proposal and Capture" and a "Proposal and Capture Strategist"? What the heck is a "Forward Deployed Security Engineer"? Are these 20-somethings wearing camo, with an AR in one hand and a laptop in the other? This would honestly be pathetic if Peter Thiel weren't making enough money to build his own island. I haven't heard if he's in the Mars Rocket Club yet.
Forward Deployed means you're working at the client place and not in a Palantir office if I recall correctly the information I got when I interviewed with them.
The "Proposal and Capture Stategist" strategizes the job of "Proposal and Capture" employees and he reports to the "Proposal and Capture Strategist Proposal Capture Manager."
Personally I also remember (as a child) thinking that the US had 52 states but that's mostly because "51st state" is a common expression I likely came across frequently enough to think that there are at least 51 states, 50 feeling too rounded and 52 being a close enough number that frequently pops up elsewhere (52 cards in a deck, weeks in a year).
I don't like the term "Mandela effect" because of the pseudo-scientific connotations, though. It's just a false memory and in many cases it's not even a memory, just a misconception (like thinking there are penguins at the North Pole because it's easy to mix up the Arctic and Antarctic or to mistake puffins for some kind of penguin).
EDIT: As for Korea: googling yields several claims of people misremembering its placement on the map but if I had to guess I'd blame news reports that like to highlight countries on the map by showing them in isolation or exaggerating their borders by creating a small gap around them.
But the value of my data alone probably is worth less than a dollar to Google and Facebook. Given the choice of getting paid a dollar, or using it for free (in exchange for them using my data), I would choose the latter.
> But the value of my data alone probably is worth less than a dollar
Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually. Just take the market cap of the company divided by users to get an average.
Google is at about $700B with may ~2B global users, so global average is more like $350/user. The value of US users is probably 10X less developed parts of world (based on ad rates) so US users are worth more like $3000.
You are undervaluing yourself :) which is how they win.
>Calculating the value of your data is pretty easy actually.
No it's not. You're mixing up the value of the data with the value of your attention. The world has made a killing off of advertising long before personalization came about so saying it's all due to personalization is a bit silly imho.
It's also conflating a bunch of stuff that goes into Google's valuation that isn't directly tied to ownership of your data. Once upon a time, Google just made a search engine, and that search engine quickly took over the world. Google made a lot of money plopping ads on search results long before you could create a Google account or store all your email there. Presumably, the technical ability to build products like that is worth actual money. If Google deleted all personal data, the company would not be worth $0.
> If Google deleted all personal data, the company would not be worth $0
They would be worth less than zero because without the personal data they would have no ad revenue to subsidize their money losing loss-leader ventures that only exist to collect data and/or suck people in to watch advertising.
The search engine is just a targeting mechanism for ads. You tell Google what you are searching for and they serve you a targeted ad. That has always been the business model.
By that logic an ad in a travel magazine is using your personal data.
I personally wouldn't consider search ads with no data being stored or user level history being used as not being personalized or user targeted. They're to me no different from an ad in magazine or a static banner ad on a web page.
Problem is, I cannot take a single person and perform such test yet 10 million thats why I was looking for some solid stats or research/paper.
Maybe you don't hear. My grandparents were together since about 16 and my grandmother passed away 12 years ago. And I never seen couple more in love, including my grandma having tatoo of his name on her chest, something unheard of and frown upon back in the days. And my grandfather is turning 94 this summer.
I’ve thought the same thing about stories of South Korean gamers dying from marathon gaming sessions.
If a millions people have marathon gaming sessions day in and day out, doesn’t it only make sense that one of them will die in their chair once in awhile? Was gaming really the cause?
