Palantir Technologies: Now Beer Pong and Human Augmented Intelligence?
June 23, 2016
I went months, nay years, without reading very much about Palantir Technologies. Now the unicorn seems to be prancing through my newsfeeds frequently. I read “Palantir’s Party Culture: Beer Pong, Office Pranks, and a Bad Case of the Hives.” The focus is less on how Gotham works and the nifty data management system the firm has engineered and more upon revelations about life inside a stealthy vendor of search and content processing systems.
The write up uses what appears to be company emails and letters from attorneys as sources of information. I thought that emails were the type of information not widely available. Lawyer letters? Hmm. Guess not. A former Hobbit (allegedly the Palantirians’ names for themselves in the Shire) has revealed information about a matter involving a terminated employee.
The Sillycon Valley company allegedly has or had employees who horsed around. I find this difficult to believe. Fun at work? Wow. The aggrieved individual alleges he was injured by a “drunk coworker” who was playing beer pong. And the individual with a beef allegedly had “snacks” taken from his work space. (I thought Palantir-type outfits provided food for the Hobbit-like individuals.)
The write up contains this statement:
The letter [from a legal eagle?] also makes the surprising allegation that Palantir engaged in improper business practices by using both Bloomberg data feeds and software from an IT firm called ANB without the appropriate licenses. Neither Palantir, Bloomberg, nor ANB responded to requests for comment. In the July 2010 letter, Cohen’s attorney states that his client was retaliated against for speaking out about these practices. From the letter:
Mr Cohen was retaliated against for…complaining about issues such as Palantir’s illegal use of third party copyrighted and trademarked icons and Bloomberg data feeds without adequate licenses. In addition, Mr. Cohen was retaliated against for complaining about the illegal use of open source code without crediting authors, and the illegal use of ANB software development kit without ANB’s authorization.
Yikes. From beer pong and missing snacks to the allegation of “improper business practices.” Who knew this was possible?
Please, note that the statements in the write up about “ANB” probably refer to IBM i2’s proprietary file structures for the Analyst’s Notebook product. (I dug in that outfit’s garden for a while.) What other errors lurk within these write ups about disenchanted Hobbits?
Several questions occurred to me:
- Is Palantir’s email system insecure? Have there been other caches of company email let loose from the Shire?
- Are these emails publicly available? Will those with access to the emails gather them and post them on a pastesite?
- What is the relationship between the IBM i2 proprietary file format and the Gotham system? (Wasn’t there a legal dust up with regard to i2’s proprietary technology?)
- How do commercial database content feeds find their way into systems not licensed for such access?
I find it interesting how a company which purports to maintain a low profile captures the attention of “real” journalists who have access to emails and legal letters.
I noted a couple of factoids too:
Key factoid one: Beer pong can be dangerous.
Key factoid two: People working in high tech outfits may want to check out their internal governance methods. Emails don’t walk; emails get sent or copied before, during, or after beer pong.
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2016
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
