IBM, Palantir Forge Partnership In Low-Code AI Data Processing Space

IBM and Palantir have announced a partnership to merge hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), data processing, and operational technology in a new enterprise offering. ZDNet reports: On Monday, the companies said the new solution, Palantir for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, will “simplify how businesses build and deploy AI-infused applications with IBM Watson and help users access, analyze, and take action…

Coinbase Settles On Direct Listing To Go Public

In a blog post today, Coinbase announced that its public debut will be a direct listing instead of a traditional IPO. From the announcement: Coinbase Global, Inc. today announced its intent to become a publicly-traded company pursuant to a proposed direct listing of its Class A common stock. Such proposed listing is expected to be pursuant to a registration statement on…

More Companies Are Joining ‘Tech Exodus’ From California

This week Digital Reality data center services announced it was also relocating its headquarters from the San Francisco Bay Area to Texas, citing factors like a low cost of living and “supportive business climate”. (Though it will still maintain a “significant” presence in the Bay Area.) And Align Technology (makers of the Invisalign orthodontic dental aligners) also announced it had relocated…

‘Companies Are Fleeing California. Blame Bad Government.’

Bloomberg Editorial Board: Amid raging wildfires, rolling blackouts and a worsening coronavirus outbreak, it has not been a great year for California. Unfortunately, the state is also reeling from a manmade disaster: an exodus of thriving companies to other states. In just the past few months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it was leaving for Houston. Oracle said it would decamp for…

Controversial Data Firm Palantir Fetches Market Value of Nearly $22 Billion In Its Debut On the NYSE

US tech firm Palantir, known for supplying controversial data-sifting software to government agencies, has fetched a market value of nearly $22 billion in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The BBC reports: The firm, which launched in 2003 with backing from right-wing libertarian tech investor Peter Thiel and America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), builds programs that integrate massive data…

Palantir, Tech’s Next Big IPO, Lost $580 Million In 2019

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Palantir, a Silicon Valley company with strong links to the defense and intelligence communities, is poised to be the latest in a string of tech companies to offer shares on Wall Street well before turning a profit. The company sent financial documents to its investors on Thursday night, ahead of…

US Government Now Working With Peter Thiel’s Palantir On Covid-19 Tracking Tool

With a little help from Peter Thiel’s controversial company Palintir, America’s Department of Health and Human Services is building a powerful new tool to track the spread of the coronavirus. The Verge reports:
The tool, which is reportedly called HHS Protect Now, is already up and running as of April 10th and it helps officials compile reports on the coronavirus’ spread through…

Mozilla Wants Young People To Consider ‘Ethical Issues’ Before Taking Jobs In Tech

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit arm of the company known for its privacy-friendly web browser Firefox, released a guide today for helping students navigate ethical issues in the tech industry, in particular, during the recruitment process. The guide advises students not to work for companies that build technology that harms vulnerable communities, and…

Slate Announces List of The 30 Most Evil Tech Companies

An anonymous reader quotes Slate: Separating out the meaningful threats from the noise is hard. Is Facebook really the danger to democracy it looks like? Is Uber really worse than the system it replaced? Isn’t Amazon’s same-day delivery worth it? Which harms are real and which are hypothetical? Has the techlash gotten it right? And which of these companies is really…

The Most Copied StackOverflow Java Code Snippet Contains a Bug

The admission comes from the author of the snippet itself, Andreas Lundblad, a Java developer at Palantir, and one of the highest-ranked contributors to StackOverflow, a Q&A website for programming-related topics. From a report: An academic paper [PDF] published in 2018 identified a code snippet Lundblad posted on the site as the most copied Java code taken from StackOverflow and then…