Posted by cdrnsf 16 hours ago
I visited the US again last year and got the USA Today in my hotel. I thought I was being pranked. The writing, tone, complexity had all plummeted to the level of a child. That paper is basically for people who can’t figure out how to get their news from Yahoo. The Same people who get value from TV Guide.
Let me guess what Palantir will tell them: your audience is dying and/or illiterate. Add cartoons. You’re welcome.
It's not dying. Or, at least, it's doing better than anyone else.
They're dying, it's just a slow bleed-out.
Also the Oregonian (big Portland paper) and the Seattle Times (big Seattle paper) are not locally owned anymore.
And USA Today will be billed $50M for the privilege.
For their website: slightly younger elderly people on their ipada eating breakfast at home.
USA Today, feel free to contact me for payment details
I would argue, that helped journalism because journalists probably assumed that their readers would hold them to the same standards they hold the writers of the other papers too.
USA Today as a "my country Today" edition - but they don't have local reporters who understand my community and uncover the important stories. 3/4s of the "local" paper is fluff pieces that go into every local paper". If something nationally important to me happens I'll find out about it, but nobody is telling me what my town council is doing (the published minutes are "debated a proposal for X and voted on it, it passed" - I have an opinion on this and want to inform my next vote based on this issue, but I don't know who did what (importantly there might be a consideration I'm not aware of that would make me change my mind - which is why I don't want to lookup their vote even if I could)
edit: prepare for a lot of interesting op-eds from the nation's first newspaper printed in full color and targeted exclusively at morons. The most well-printed comics section in the industry.
Also, I remember staying at a hotel once where they delivered one to every guest room.
My, how times have changed.
My observation from the peanut gallery, is that Palantir has been successful because they created a tech-culture incentive system for engineers, whereas legacy contractors (Booz, Deloitte, Accenture, CACI, Boeing, etc.) treated engineers as cost center plus. I think it was literally as simple as: pay engineers Big Tech competitive salary, allow them to collaborate directly with clients to develop solutions, and actively remove Product Managers/Contract Managers from interfering -> megabucks.
To your point, I don't think this is an intrinsic or structural moat. To the extent someone can do these things better or faster than Palantir, I could easily see them beating Palantir in the future.
Since they've been able to do the above, I think they've developed a pretty good skillset at merging disparate data and surfacing it for analytics. Combine that with the fact that their government business is a money-printing machine, you basically end up with an analytics shop that has significant experience at scale and is extremely well capitalized. For a relatively non-tech savvy or uninformed customer, Palantir could look like a pretty attractive option.
I personally find the panic over Palantir, Data Centers, etc to be largely mass hysteria vs anything else. It has become an omni-cause like Israel (I mean part of the backlash against Palantir is that the CEO is Jewish, just read any internet comment thread on the topic.)
Dont be disingenuous, you know damn well the backlash isn't because he is jewish. Its because of the business relationship with the Israeli government and how Palintirs tech has been used as a tool in Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people.
>just read any internet comment thread on the topic
You're the first comment in this thread or any ive seen, mentioning the CEOs religion.
>I have heard nothing but great things about them from service member friends/family
Really? And what is it that these friends and family members are saying great things about Palintir?
This reads like some grade A marketing bot bullshit
Besides that they're basically the most expensive, white-glove, enterprise-y version of what they do
Yeah it’s a complete disaster. They are trying to usurp all data; even employee personal data off devices via MDM that has no relevance to the project. They also asked for api keys to everything (in a regulated environment). And if you thought their forward deployed team knew anything about GRC, think again