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  • Hacker News
  • Many years ago I had a job offer in UK and a friend who was already living there who was very keen on me moving there.

    Honestly every single time there is news about UK, I am glad I didn't take the offer.

    Then again, me being already not very enthusiastic about the place had a role in my decision.

    by LtWorf
  • I mean, it's all a matter of perspective and where you are coming from. Like, I could easily say that literally any piece of news coming from the US makes me not want to move there no matter how much money you pay me. But at the end of the day, it's just news. It's like that whole panic about London being the most surveiled city in the world with the most cameras per capita in the world - and of course neglecting to mention that most of these cameras are in private hands and police don't have access to them. Get your car or bike stolen in London and discover that no, the police cannot just track them street by street like in James Bond.

    I literally had someone ask me the other day if it's safe to go to London. Like, to visit as a tourist. We've reached some level of absurdity that is almost comedic, but that's what news does to people.

    by gambiting
  • Because Palantir have government contracts? Seriously?

    You claim to be in Sweden, then you should surely know that Palantir are very much in bed with the government there including police monitoring.

    by happymellon
  • This is insanely fucked up, but also unsurprising.
    by jascination
  • "Whoops sorrgy! Your honor, I plead silly :3c"
    by hollow-moe
  • Palantir: The Japanese Knot Weed of technology.
    by penguin_booze
  • Now the deed is done, one cannot undo it.
    by bananaflag
  • Oh well, at least they apologised.
    by qmmmur
  • Wow this was moved fast off the frontpage! Now on page 3 after 50min. Just FYI.
    by alexisread
  • And this comment is being downvoted as well to hide the fact.
    by alexisread
  • Yeah, I caught it on the refresh! Makes one wonder what the impetus was for the change...
    by graysnow86
  • TBF, if an evil SPECTRE-level corporation with global tentacles and Tolkien-inspired omniscience can't manage to quash some bad PR on Hacker News, none of its prospective customers would take it seriously.
    by CamperBob2
  • I was wondering. Usually if something drops a couple of pages suddenly it’s because of the flamewar trigger: the number of comments exceeding the number of upvotes is a proxy measure for something not designed to elucidate meaningful discussion. Here, it dropped when it got to ~90 upvotes to 15 comments, so it wasn’t that trigger. Maybe as it’s a UK-specific story the concentrated geographical voting pattern triggered a voting-ring trigger?
    by robin_reala
  • Is Palantir obsessed with medical records? If so why?

    This is worrying as there recently was a change in the Japanese PII law, relatively unceremoniously passed and enacted, that reclassify mass PII collection including medical data collection as anonymous and consent-free with the condition that anonymization is performed after collection, which, IMO, IANAL, completely nullify the PII law. I can easily "see" Palantir behind it with my tinfoil hat on, but I'm not sure why do anyone want it in the first place. I don't think they need medical data specifically to take people to the back and dispose of the body.

    by numpad0
  • I'm guessing because insurance companies would love to put their hands on that data, so it can be repackaged and sold off. Or Palantir can offer a model trained on it, so it's not technically selling the data itself.
    by gambiting
  • > Is Palantir obsessed with medical records? If so why?

    Daddy Thiel needs a bloodbank. The last one mysteriously died under the guise of a 'suicide'.

    https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.h...

    by kotaKat
  • LRB had a great article about Palantir and the NHS in their latest issue. [1] What I mostly enjoyed reading is the insight that their actual software is quite "rubbish", something I have seen people mention in discussions here, especially in the early years of Palantir before it became more notorious and well-known. I do believe the "evil company" is part of their marketing to cover up that they are your usual proprietary software with a shitty UI and expensive contract that is being sold to clueless upper management.

    [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n13/peter-geoghegan-and-...

    by clydethefrog
  • So, what is going to happen now? Someone in the UK government goes "ooops, sorry" and Palantir gets to keep access to this data? Or are we just going to have another 10 year long enquiry of how exactly this happened that leads to no consequences for anyone while US company siphons up our personal info, again?
    by gambiting
  • Nothing happens, is what happens.
    by Eddy_Viscosity2
  • >“We recognise that the DPIA contained an error in how it described supplier access to data so we are correcting that error, and we apologise for any confusion this has caused,” the NHS said.

    They're not sorry that Palantir has the data, they're sorry you found out Palantir has the data. Don't worry though, 'unequivical guidance' has been issued by a committee.

    by bothers
  • >In all cases they do not have permission to use the data for their own purposes

    Oh, they don't have permission? probably fine then.

    by jpfromlondon
  • They are sharing it with several other customers of theirs but in a smart way, pretending is done via discovery of their ontology tool and for other countries also... You heard it here first.

    I realized this by talking to several recently hired graduates at several startups. I was shocked at the amount of startups spending money on Palantir. It seems right now, every dumb founder with no idea or market fit, and a lot of dumb money is buying their tools.

    There is a spending AI bubble, and then there is a parallel mini Palantir buy bubble...

    by tcp_handshaker
  • Insert "this is fine" meme
    by Oras
  • While I agree, permission still means something.

    If they're found to have held onto it, processed it or shared it, they'll be told off very sternly and asked politely to not do it again.

    by oliwarner
  • Definitely fine.

    All the Palantir employees have read that clause of course.

    In Australia when the biggest health insurer had ALL patient records stolen, the Board of Directors immediately granted themselves very large cash bonuses (true).

    by andrewstuart