@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-04-26 21:40:42
Palantir Slack logs and staff interviews reveal internal debates over the company's ICE and DOD contracts during Trump's second term, its manifesto, and more (Makena Kelly/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20
@dennisfaucher@infosec.exchange2026-04-21 07:01:57
Palantir is evil and supports evil. Why am I not surprised that these talking points are echoed by the current US administration?
Palantir manifesto described as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’ amid UK contract fears | Palantir | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/tech…
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-06-06 13:53:55
I had an interesting chat with a friend who mentioned a book called "The Living Company." Apparently Shell was one of the few companies that saw the 1970's oil crisis coming and was able to adapt. They did it by talking to a bunch of people randomly about the future, identifying patterns, and coming up with possible future scenarios. They then formed clear plans for these future scenarios, where those plans would cover as many related scenarios as possible.
This was actually really familiar to me, though I hadn't read the book, because that's very close to what the Seattle GDC disaster prep committee did. We identified possible disaster scenarios, then identified preparedness steps that served multiple purposes. We got boxes of n95 masks in 2018 and 2019 for wildfire smoke and did a bit of work building box-fan air purifiers. Over the years we handed out these masks to houseless folks who were most exposed to the smoke. When the pandemic hit, we were able to take some of those boxes to first responders just as manufacturing in China dropped because of their lockdowns and as others started PPE hoarding. We focused on N95 because that was one of the overlap points between the unexpected but catastrophic "flu pandemic" that we knew was possible, and the regular "wildfire smoke" problem we were just getting used to.
The book sounds like it's at least partially influenced by cybernetics. There's this Dutch cybernetics connection that I haven't quite figured out. Anyway, this guy talked about how a company needs to be sustainable and all that. My dude, you worked for an oil company. That is categorically not sustainable. All this aside, I think there are a lot of things we can and should take from capitalists (or take back, in some cases). This practice is one of them.
So maybe get together with friends and talk about what you think might happen. We live in a world of crisis, so I'll always recommend disaster preparedness. But there's more than that.
What do you think will happen in the next 5 years?
Assuming that happens, what actions would you take to push that towards the most positive outcome?
I'm listening to Revolutions and reminded of how much effort monarchies put in to preventing revolutions. Corporations can be even more advanced in their planning and preemption. What would it look like if we planned like that?
@fennek@cyberplace.social2026-06-08 05:53:34
Wie man das Matriarchat gekonnt in's Spiel bringt:
https://mefi.social/@MissConstrue/116678823326970690
@cdarwin@c.im2026-04-25 21:28:28
A year into Trump’s second term,
as Palantir deepens its relationship with an administration that many workers fear is wreaking havoc at home,
employees are finally raising concerns internally,
as the US’s war on immigrants,
war in Iran,
and even company-released manifestos has forced them to rethink the role they play in it all.
"I think there’s a bit of an identity crisis and a bit of a challenge.
We were supposed to be the ones who were preve…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-05-25 10:10:58
In the ~43,000-word text, the Pope urged governments to slow down the development of AI systems and decried "new forms of slavery" of people tending AI systems (Joshua McElwee/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-tel