[georgeg23]

The main source that sells a continuous cross-platform civilian tracking dragnet (probably to the NSA) is Peter Thiel's company Palantir.

Thiel is at the center of so much other sci-fi military industrial complex stuff, it's scary.

[georgeg23]

Update, actually NSA is a confirmed customer.

https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveal...

The company's name is derived from The Lord of the Rings where the magical palantíri were "seeing-stones," described as indestructible balls of crystal used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world

[goblinux]

The INSANE thing to me about naming your company Palantir after the artifact from Middle Earth is the story behind the seeing stones.

By the Third Age - when the events of the Lord of the Rings take place - several of the Palantiri (plural) are lost. The danger of using the stones was twofold: 1) not all the stones were accounted for, you couldn’t know who was listening in and 2) Sauron had one of the stones.

A dark lord who wanted to rule the world in fire and ash and darkness had this surveillance tool and used it to corrupt the other known users of the seeing stones, Denethor and Sauroman. That was the plot structure of these stones. Aragon and Merry/Pippin were able to use them against Sauron, who thought the hobbits with Aragorn might be Frodo. But again, to me this shows the danger of making decisions based on spying technology. Sauron committed his forces against Gondor because his intel told him and it led to his eye being distracted from Frodo/Sam/Gollum sneaking over the mountains and into Mt. Doom.

Why you would name your surveillance company after that is beyond me. To me it would be like getting aboard a plane run by Icarus airlines or naming the next big boat/plane/rocketship Titanic.

[MSFT_Edging]

> Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

> Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

https://twitter.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?...

[marcosdumay]

Ok, I read your post and though "no way, there has to be an Icarus Airlines out there"... And well, I could find 2:

https://airlinehistory.co.uk/airline/icarus-airlines/

> Icarus Airlines, known as Greece’s first airline, was formed in 1930 but went bankrupt within months

That history seems fitting. And this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icaro_Air

> Icaro Air was an airline based in Quito, Ecuador. Its main base was Mariscal Sucre International Airport, Quito.

That one operated for 4 decades.

If large space transporters ever become popular, there's no way there won't be a few named Titanic. People like those names, and the context doesn't hit as quickly as the awe.

[gordian-mind]

This is just a nerdy reference to the activity of gathering intelligence.

> But again, to me this shows the danger of making decisions based on spying technology.

Having more information is rarely a bad thing for making decisions. So that was probably not the point.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> Having more information is rarely a bad thing for making decisions.

It’s a bad thing commonly enough that it has a name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

The caution in the tale is that attention paid to what is known might distract from what is unknown.

[notpushkin]

> Having more information is rarely a bad thing for making decisions

In some cases it leads to pretty bad things though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdiagnosis

And more generally, the more information you gather, the more extraordinary processing you have to put in place to get anything useful out of it.

[marcosdumay]

If your enemy (and the US seems to place absolutely everyone on this category nowadays) has the power to insert information at will into your spying device, it will always be much, much worse than useless.

[skummetmaelk]

Thiel is the closest we have to a comic book villain honestly. I find it incredible that he mostly manages to stay under the radar. Maybe it's just because all Musk's antics are easier to cover.

[wazer5]

Also under-covered are that both Musk and Thiel are deeply involved in the Republican's plans for a new Strategic Defense Initiative.