6 ms·

Sure, I'll give a few examples. A guy from BP told me in 2013 that they forked iPython, replaced all iPython references with Palantir and tried to sell it to t

by bazqux2 10y ago

Sure, I'll give a few examples. A guy from BP told me in 2013 that they forked iPython, replaced all iPython references with Palantir and tried to sell it to them for $500K p.a. For me; back in the day (2010) they were less secretive about their technology which was essentially an ontological reasoner. This was pre the Big Data hype boom - and AFAIK Palantir has never been about Big Data. Ontological reasoners have problems that prevent them from scaling or generalizing so they generally fail. Due to a long long history of failing ontological systems have a very bad name. But they look good for guided demos and has a ton of academic backing so it's easy to sell - as long as you call it something else - which is what they did. So if you want to use ontologies a better open source alternative software is Protege. But for the problems Palantir targets I'd recommend using standard machine learning technology where all the good stuff is open sourced. As an aside, Peter Thiel also helped found Quid. A start-up that ripped off the Gephi layout engine and charges people $20K p.a. a seat. They've since rebuilt it but like Palantir it's still not solving people's problem and they've evolved into a consulting firm.

asdfologist 10y ago
What does "p.a." mean?
- DominikPeters 10y ago
  per annum = per year
  - gaur 10y ago
    Why do people replace transparent English phrases with opaque foreign abbreviations? We're not writing with quills on vellum anymore. Even "$500k/yr" is an improvement on "$500k p.a.".
    - adenadel 10y ago
      As far as I know, per annum is actually a part of the English language. I typically have seen it used in the context of pricing or finance which seems to be verified. [1] I don't disagree with you about p.a. less clear than /yr though. 1. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/what-is-the-difference-between-per-year-and-per-annum http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/what-is-the-...
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Complaining about p.a. in a finance context makes about as much sense as complaining about "etc".
      - hueving 10y ago
        Well it makes sense to complain about etc when we have etcd now. Embrace the future!
    - trengrj 10y ago
      I'd argue "per annum" or p.a. isn't a foreign term and just standard English. English is full of Latin words, transparent, opaque, foreign, those are all words of Latin origin.
      - gaur 10y ago
        > I'd argue "per annum" or p.a. isn't a foreign term and just standard English. Did you notice that a fluent English speaker had to ask what "p.a." meant? Do you think that would have happened if it had been written "per year" instead?
        adenadel 10y ago
        The same could be argued for any jargon outside of one's own field.
        edoceo 10y ago
        How could one tell the OP was fluent?
        Tomte 10y ago
        As a counterpoint: I'm not a native English speaker, I do understand "yr" just fine, but it takes me a split second longer to read that abbreviation. Because p.a. is also part of my language.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Per annum, per centum, per mille, per capita, et cetera, et cetera. These are Latin phrases, borrowed especially in British English as Great Britain was occupied by Latin speakers for nearly 400 years -- 43 CE through 410 CE. Latin continued to be the language of diplomacy, religion, philosophy, and science through the 18th and 19th century. It is, for all practical intents, proper British English. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/per https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/per Though yes, $<value>/yr. is more frequently seen especially in American English.
      - gaur 10y ago
        > borrowed especially in British English as Great Britain was occupied by Latin speakers for nearly 400 years -- 43 CE through 410 CE. Can you explain how Latin loanwords were loaned into English during this period? In your explanation, please make use of the facts that (1) there were no English speakers in Great Britain before 410 CE, and moreover (2) there was, by definition, no such language as English until Anglo-Saxon migrations into Great Britain (around 450 CE) established a distinct West Germanic linguistic community on the island.
        bazqux2 10y ago
        You are being worse than Palantir.
        dredmorbius 10y ago
        You're more than welcome to explore this yourself. You are, otherwise, being what the modern English derivative of the Sumerian ansu describes.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
They apparently say it right here about the ontology approach: https://www.palantir.com/palantir-gotham/technologies/ https://www.palantir.com/palantir-gotham/technologies/ That's especially hilarious given that approach's failures are what led to investment in machine learning in the first place. Such approaches tend to assume precise information, variables, and rules about the world. Most problems Palantir wants to address... the hard ones... are imprecise with hidden variables/relationships. The machine learning techniques did very well on those kind of mess problems. So, research shifted. If Palantir is using ontologies for that stuff, then that would certainly be a sign for buyers to run. I still encourage academics to look into such approaches with probabilistic, simple methods in case any advances come up. Fuzzy logic was main one in my day. Just stumbled on a claim today a drone AI did human-level performance using that. Some corroboration for R&D in underdog solutions but not production apps. Haha.
- bazqux2 10y ago
  Huh, so they are open about it now. They definitely were not when I talked to them. I guess enough time has passed that people have forgotten the hard won lessons of the past. I worked on scaling and generalizing ontologies at university and had already switched to working with Big Data / ML at a big company when Palantir tried to recruit me. I talked to some of their senior engineers about their tech and made the point that their tech sounded just like ontologies. I tried to get them to admit what it was so I could be sure I was having an honest conversation with them. They flatly denied it and made it out like the whole thing was their great new idea. I was unimpressed. I was still interested in working for them. Access to hard interesting problems can be hard to come by. In the end I couldn't take their legendary arrogance and insecurities - to me these are bright red flags of a toxic corporate culture. And they low balled me. I would have temporarily put up with the toxic culture for large piles of money.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    "I was still interested in working for them. Access to hard interesting problems can be hard to come by. In the end I couldn't take their legendary arrogance and insecurities - to me these are bright red flags of a toxic corporate culture. And they low balled me. I would have temporarily put up with the toxic culture for large piles of money." Smart decision. Far as ontologies, the Cyc project to create common sense in machines was my favorite at the time. Used ontological, knowledge base if my broken memory is accurate. I was and still am firmly convinced that finding an architecture suitable to solve that problem is a pre-requisite for the AI's we really want. Deep-learning is approximating it but closer to how brain does vision than common sense. Minsky noted at one point he could count number of researchers doing common sense on a single hand or so. That's a hard problem if you want one. Also unbelievably hard to get funded. (sighs)

by bazqux2 10y ago

asdfologist 10y ago

What does "p.a." mean?

DominikPeters 10y ago
per annum = per year
- gaur 10y ago
  Why do people replace transparent English phrases with opaque foreign abbreviations? We're not writing with quills on vellum anymore. Even "$500k/yr" is an improvement on "$500k p.a.".
  - adenadel 10y ago
    As far as I know, per annum is actually a part of the English language. I typically have seen it used in the context of pricing or finance which seems to be verified. [1] I don't disagree with you about p.a. less clear than /yr though. 1. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/what-is-the-difference-between-per-year-and-per-annum http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/what-is-the-...
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Complaining about p.a. in a finance context makes about as much sense as complaining about "etc".
    - hueving 10y ago
      Well it makes sense to complain about etc when we have etcd now. Embrace the future!
  - trengrj 10y ago
    I'd argue "per annum" or p.a. isn't a foreign term and just standard English. English is full of Latin words, transparent, opaque, foreign, those are all words of Latin origin.
    - gaur 10y ago
      > I'd argue "per annum" or p.a. isn't a foreign term and just standard English. Did you notice that a fluent English speaker had to ask what "p.a." meant? Do you think that would have happened if it had been written "per year" instead?
      - adenadel 10y ago
        The same could be argued for any jargon outside of one's own field.
      - edoceo 10y ago
        How could one tell the OP was fluent?
      - Tomte 10y ago
        As a counterpoint: I'm not a native English speaker, I do understand "yr" just fine, but it takes me a split second longer to read that abbreviation. Because p.a. is also part of my language.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Per annum, per centum, per mille, per capita, et cetera, et cetera. These are Latin phrases, borrowed especially in British English as Great Britain was occupied by Latin speakers for nearly 400 years -- 43 CE through 410 CE. Latin continued to be the language of diplomacy, religion, philosophy, and science through the 18th and 19th century. It is, for all practical intents, proper British English. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/per https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/per Though yes, $<value>/yr. is more frequently seen especially in American English.
    - gaur 10y ago
      > borrowed especially in British English as Great Britain was occupied by Latin speakers for nearly 400 years -- 43 CE through 410 CE. Can you explain how Latin loanwords were loaned into English during this period? In your explanation, please make use of the facts that (1) there were no English speakers in Great Britain before 410 CE, and moreover (2) there was, by definition, no such language as English until Anglo-Saxon migrations into Great Britain (around 450 CE) established a distinct West Germanic linguistic community on the island.
      - bazqux2 10y ago
        You are being worse than Palantir.
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        You're more than welcome to explore this yourself. You are, otherwise, being what the modern English derivative of the Sumerian ansu describes.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

They apparently say it right here about the ontology approach: https://www.palantir.com/palantir-gotham/technologies/ https://www.palantir.com/palantir-gotham/technologies/ That's especially hilarious given that approach's failures are what led to investment in machine learning in the first place. Such approaches tend to assume precise information, variables, and rules about the world. Most problems Palantir wants to address... the hard ones... are imprecise with hidden variables/relationships. The machine learning techniques did very well on those kind of mess problems. So, research shifted. If Palantir is using ontologies for that stuff, then that would certainly be a sign for buyers to run. I still encourage academics to look into such approaches with probabilistic, simple methods in case any advances come up. Fuzzy logic was main one in my day. Just stumbled on a claim today a drone AI did human-level performance using that. Some corroboration for R&D in underdog solutions but not production apps. Haha.

bazqux2 10y ago
Huh, so they are open about it now. They definitely were not when I talked to them. I guess enough time has passed that people have forgotten the hard won lessons of the past. I worked on scaling and generalizing ontologies at university and had already switched to working with Big Data / ML at a big company when Palantir tried to recruit me. I talked to some of their senior engineers about their tech and made the point that their tech sounded just like ontologies. I tried to get them to admit what it was so I could be sure I was having an honest conversation with them. They flatly denied it and made it out like the whole thing was their great new idea. I was unimpressed. I was still interested in working for them. Access to hard interesting problems can be hard to come by. In the end I couldn't take their legendary arrogance and insecurities - to me these are bright red flags of a toxic corporate culture. And they low balled me. I would have temporarily put up with the toxic culture for large piles of money.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  "I was still interested in working for them. Access to hard interesting problems can be hard to come by. In the end I couldn't take their legendary arrogance and insecurities - to me these are bright red flags of a toxic corporate culture. And they low balled me. I would have temporarily put up with the toxic culture for large piles of money." Smart decision. Far as ontologies, the Cyc project to create common sense in machines was my favorite at the time. Used ontological, knowledge base if my broken memory is accurate. I was and still am firmly convinced that finding an architecture suitable to solve that problem is a pre-requisite for the AI's we really want. Deep-learning is approximating it but closer to how brain does vision than common sense. Minsky noted at one point he could count number of researchers doing common sense on a single hand or so. That's a hard problem if you want one. Also unbelievably hard to get funded. (sighs)