This stuff was out at least 10-15 years ago. It’s different from the ancient local ntlm hash cracking everyone used to get admin in high school, yes, but it’s not a novel technique.

on cursory google, https://github.com/NotMedic/NetNTLMtoSilverTicket/blob/maste... is 6 years old and was old news when it was committed, and https://crack.sh/netntlm/ has been around online for at least 10 and I think more like 15+ years.

I see this theory a lot (sometimes to justify their valuation, sometimes as a moral judgement, sometimes as an alarmist concern) but I genuinely don't see how this line of thought works in any of these dimensions. My understanding is that they're consultants building overpriced data processing products. As far as I know there isn't even usually a separate legal entity or some kind of corporate shenanigan at play; my understanding is that they send engineers to the customer to build a product that the customer owns and operates under the customer's identity as the customer. I certainly see how businesses like Flock are a "loophole;" they collect data which is unrestricted due to its "public" nature and provide a giant trove of tools to process it which are controlled only by what amounts to their own internal goodwill. But this isn't my understanding of how Palantir works; as far as I know they never take ownership of the data so it isn't "laundered" from its original form, and is still subject to whatever (possibly inadequate) controls or restrictions were already present on this data.

The big legal loophole is that the government needs a particularized warrant (per the 4th Amendment) to ask for any user data, but if the government buys commercial data, well, there's no warrant needed.

I would also submit that it's possible that sending everything through a giant computer-magic-bullshit-mixer allows you to discriminate on the basis of race while claiming plausible deniability, but SCOTUS has already constructively repealed the 14th Amendment between blessing Kavanaugh stops and the Roberts Court steadily repealing the Voting Rights Act, Bivens claims, etc.

See also: Parallel Construction (i.e. evidence tampering) and most of the times a "drug-sniffing" dog is called to "test" something the police already want to search.

On a somewhat related note, it always bothers me that the discussion is about whether it’s appropriate for the government to buy this sort of data as opposed to whether it is appropriate for anyone to sell, or for that matter collect, that data.

I would prefer if neither the government nor any data brokers or advertisers had this data.

Right; but as far as I know Palantir don't sell commercial data. That's my beef with this whole Palantir conspiracy theory. I am far from pro-Palantir but it really feels like they're working as a shield for the pitchforks in this case.

1. They provide tech that is used to select targets for drone strikes and apparently also for targeting violent attacks on US civilians. I don't know too much about how the algorithm works but simply outsourcing decisions about who lives or dies to opaque algorithms is creepy. It also allows the people behind the operations to avoid personal responsibility for mistakes by blaming the mistakes on the software. It also could enable people to just not think about it and thus avoid the moral question entirely. It's an abstract concern but it is a legitimate one, IMO.

2. I don't know if this is 100% confirmed but we have heard reports that Elon Musk and DOGE collected every piece of government data that they could get their hands, across various government departments and databases. These databases were previously islands that served one specific purpose and didn't necessarily connect to all the other government databases from other departments. It's suspected that palantir software (perhaps along with Grok) is being used to link all of these databases together and cross reference data that was previously not available for law enforcement or immigration purposes. This could enable a lot of potential abuse and probably isn't being subjected to any kind of court or congressional oversight.

I certainly think that Palantir has ethical issues; as I stated in my parent comment, it wouldn't be high on my list of choices for places to work.

But, when it comes to things like (2), this is a failure of regulation and oversight and needs to be treated as such. Note that this doesn't make Palantir "right" (building a platform to do things that are probably bad is still bad), but there's no reason anyone with basic data warehousing skills couldn't have done this before or after.

Essentially, I think people give Palantir specifically too much credit and in turn ignore the fundamental issues they're worried about. Panic over "dismantle Palantir" or even the next step, "dismantle corporate data warehousing" is misguided and wouldn't address the issues at hand; worry about government data fusion needs to be directed towards government data fusion, and worry about computers making targeting decisions needs to be directed at computers making targeting decisions.

If you couldn't go backwards Palantir wouldn't have a market. So, I would consider that a loophole.

Do they? I don't think they even do this, either.

I have really strong knowledge of this from ~10 years ago and weak knowledge from more recently. I'm happy to be proven wrong but my understanding is that they don't sell any data at all, but rather just consulting services for processing data someone already has.

One of those consulting services is probably recommending vendors to supply more data, but as far as I know Palantir literally do not have a first-party data warehouse at all.

I'm not trying to argue Palantir is an ethical company; my views on "company ethics" are nuanced but I wouldn't put them anywhere near my "places I want to work" bucket. But (contrary, perhaps, to their name), they're not some weird deep demonic trove of personal information; that's supplied to them by their customers, which is where change needs to happen.

Anyone in disagreement needs to read about Palintr and what has intentionally been said about it

Well, at least they're paying those consultants a lot of money, since they're charging a lot for them... right? Right?

The line blurs when you consider Thiel's personal motivations (e.g. Project 2025) and investments/involvement in the current administration.

However, my concern with the Palantir conversation (and your comment) is that people are giving them too much credit, essentially: there is a public opinion (stoked by Palantir leadership) that Palantir is some kind of superpowered evil fortress full of data allowing the government to circumvent checks and balances. As far as I can tell, really it's a consultancy with a graph database, and the checks and balances never existed in the first place. These two things are very different problems to solve.

> I guess IBM didn’t tell the nazis who to kill either, they just sold them the punchcards so they could round them up.

As an aside, this is a common talking point but has also struck me as odd because this is the foundational legal and ethical argument by which IBM continues to exist today. It's definitely food for thought but it's also not exactly a hot take.

EDIT: I realized I have plenty of these contracts archived and don't need to believe HN conspiracy theorists:

(a) Use Restrictions. The following restrictions apply to the use of the Vehicle:

• The Vehicle will not be operated by anyone who is not an Authorized Driver;

• All occupants in the Vehicle must comply with seat-belt and child-restraint laws;

• The number of passengers in the Vehicle will not exceed the number of seat-belts and child-restraints;

• Renter will only operate the Vehicle on regularly maintained roadways;

• Renter will ensure that keys are not left in the Vehicle and will close and lock all doors and windows upon exiting the Vehicle;

• Renter will not (i) transport people or property for hire; (ii) tow anything (with the exception of an attached trailer if rented pursuant to this Agreement); (iii) carry or transport hazardous or explosive substances; (iv) engage in a speed contest; or (v) load the Vehicle or transport weight exceeding the Vehicle’s maximum capacity;

• Renter will not engage in reckless misconduct which causes the Vehicle damages or causes personal injury or property damage; and

• Renter will not use the Vehicle for the commission of a felony or for the transportation of illegal drugs or contraband.

So unless you are trying to reuse the vehicle for hire or tow a non-Home-Depot trailer (which I admit is kind of restrictive, but nothing like what the parent post says), it seems fine.

I’m actually far from a pickup truck hater; they certainly have their place (my parents live in a rural area and I can’t really see them not having one), and I occasionally miss owning one, but I’ve never managed to make the economics come even close to balancing out vs. renting for myself.

I'm also interested in whatever LLM was used not being able to use Google to determine that CADY is the Starlink internal clock module, and that on the latest board revisions it isn't present and I think the `false` state is expected and maybe a red herring.

Figuring out which laptop to get was horrible because of their completely inexplicable branding, which I'm glad to see them roll back, but the computer is fine. I'm not sure I can agree with all of the "Dell computers are bad/dying" arguments.

I think they went through a huge quality slump from ~2020-2023, as did most things, but so far my experience has been that they're quite good now. I haven't had any standby issues (or issues of any kind, really) using Windows. Windows 11 is Windows 11 but Tahoe is also Tahoe so that's a net medium. A little bit of Group Policy tweaking to remove the junkware and a little wince when hit with new-Notepad aside, it's good enough. I also tried running Linux on it and everything was straightforward except for the webcam (most modern Intel laptops use a new Intel thing where the CPU has the ISP on it and the camera is attached over CSI, and the kernel support is quite bleeding-edge) and the usual Nvidia graphics switching and arcane Linux power management problems, but I really got it for Windows anyway.

My only beefs are the terrible virtual function bar (this was stupid the first time vendors tried it, and trying it again in 2025 is a really incredible choice, I'm glad they backed down on this ludicrous idea) and that the OLED model only comes in touchscreen form and the digitizer is ever-so-slightly visible. Otherwise I like it as well as my M2 MacBook Pro; the screen is square and notchless, the performance-to-dollar ratio was far superior, and the physical build quality is quite good. The "infinity" touchpad that's not really infinite is a stupid gimmick on paper but overall I don't notice it at all - it works just as well as any non-Apple touchpad I've used, which is to say about 85% as well as an Apple one.

Something else is going on here - perhaps there’s an edge case where Starlink can be made to perform poorly without falling back away from GPS, but I wouldn’t expect this since it’s been “tested” in the most GPS hostile places for quite some time now.