this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
1156 points (99.3% liked)

Technology

74754 readers
1656 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

In 2023, the then-Conservative government awarded Palantir with a £330m contract to “build a new NHS data platform”. The move proved controversial because Palantir is a US spy tech firm and its co-founder Peter Thiel is a prominent Trump donor with links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Now, a trove of leaked emails have shone further light on Thiel’s connections.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 hours ago

Even worse, Palantir is linked to Peter Thiel.

[–] Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago

It's 100% safe to assume anyone who even leans in the direction of supporting supply-side economics is a diddler.

[–] LoafedBurrito@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If only people didn't like Pedophiles and billionaires destroying our daily lives....

[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well people did worry about these, but they blamed the other administration and actuallly voted in the pedophiles. Deeply ironic.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

And, also orchestrated.

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm shocked the rich people setting up automated global fascism also fuck children.

[–] PlasmaTrout@lemmy.wtf 6 points 1 day ago

They fuck everybody, just in different ways :)

[–] cute_noker@feddit.dk 5 points 1 day ago

Flabbergasted even

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 93 points 2 days ago (14 children)

I assume y’all on the other side of the pond are just learning about Palantir for the first time and that’s why you’re looking for bombshell headlines. I can assure you as someone from Silicon Valley that there is literally no single headline that can possibly convey the pure evil that is Peter Thiel. He literally believes that it is morally and, from his perspective, objectively correct that a few pre-selected technocrat elites (his words) should rule city-states that “compete” with each other. He is currently miserably failing at building a libertarian “eutopia” (his words) out in the desert to the east of San Francisco. He promises it would be done by this year. It hasn’t even started.

He founded PayPal and got mad when he immediately learned that banks exist for a reason. He was such a piece of shit that Elon Musk couldn’t work with him.

[–] GorGor@startrek.website 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

the desert to the east of San Francisco.

Lol what the fuck? I assume you are taking about California Forever but desert is a weird word to describe the Sacramento River delta. It is one of the largest estuaries in north america.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 22 hours ago

You’re right I mixed up the different cults in my head.

[–] Tweak@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Dude, the US has been lagging behind the UK for the last decade. We voted for Brexit because of Cambridge Analytica, then you voted Trump for the first time because of Cambridge Analytica. We voted for Boris in 2019, you got Trump again in 2024. We're probably going to vote in Nigel Farage next and then the US will be like "Hold my beer!"

Palantir is just another symptom of this wider problem.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

Ok, but hear me out: what if we got Nigel Farage in a 10 gallon hat with Liz Truss in a 10 gallon hat for VP.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] zeezee@slrpnk.net 15 points 2 days ago

uhm idk who's not familiar with Thiel but the blueprint of his "utopia" - "The Sovereign Individual" was literally co-written by no other than William Rees-Mogg a conservative house of lords cross-bencher who's also the father of two other conservative MPs that have served in the UK Parliament.

the 2014 reprint of the book has a foreword by Thiel, where he says that it's "the most influential book he had read"

so as usual the theoretical frameworks have been drafted in the heart of empire and implemented in the "land of the free"

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Well, Elon wouldn't work with him because Elon had a shitty idea that Thiel said was shitty and wouldn't let Elon do it. Elon was forced to settle for becoming filthy rich.

That project is where the name "X" originally comes from.

[–] blurb@sh.itjust.works 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)
[–] end_stage_ligma@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

It is an ideal belief system for soi-disant libertarians who realize that, regardless of the principles of freedom being the ostensible foundation of their ideology, they are unwilling to tolerate others' enjoyment of freedom.

pretty much

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wikipedia classifies him as a "thinker". Does your wiki entry classify you as a thinker? Check and mate, lib.

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Being a "thinker" isn't exactly a high bar. A fish can do it (depending on the definition). I mean I suppose I can think, but I wouldn't brag about it.

if you have nothing worth bragging about, resorting to basic functions of sapient life for clout is the best you can do. I'm a thinker too. I'm also a breather, an eater and plenty moee things that aren't special.

I've got some actual achievements too, such as being a former piece of shit, so I've actually got a leg up on him!

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] Bucky@hardpass.lol 29 points 2 days ago

Will be adding this info to http://epsteinsfriends.info/ shortly

[–] ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 30 points 2 days ago

Why am I not fucking surprised?

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 30 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Its cofounder Peter Thiel is basically a doomsday culter who wants to be the one to herald doomsday for most of the population.

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Oof, can't wait till this asshole dies off just like every other doomsday wannabe fucktard.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] ALLGLORYTOHYPNOTOAD@lemmy.world 232 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Peter Thiel is pure evil. This tie is not surprising at all. The piece of shit is un-ironically giving a lecture on the antichrist in September.

[–] marlowe221@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Subtitle: An Autobiography

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Hopefully it leaks, and we can hear it in full.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 30 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

“I hope the voice of the antichrist is recorded and disseminated across the land.”

Really weird times.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca 163 points 2 days ago (9 children)

The fuck is the NHS doing even talking to Palantir? That's nuts.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The UK has been doing some seriously batshit things lately. Obviously we’re not ones to talk but - yeah. It’s sad.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 44 points 2 days ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (3 children)

It’s universally true that having more and better information can improve business and efficiency. (This of course has limits, yes.)

I’m sure they were offering data that would help the agency.

Now the ethics, and creepiness? I’m not commenting on that. Palantir is not ethical. They labor under twisted logic.

And every time we mention their name online, we probally get a demerit in their database.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm not surprised about the Thiel/Epstein thing, I'm more surprised that the NHS is considering any sort of private health data handling by PALANTIR of all companies.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 66 points 2 days ago

It’s somehow always the ones you suspect.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago

It's always the people you most expect huh

[–] AcidiclyBasicGlitch@sh.itjust.works 77 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Journalists have reported on Thiel’s links to Epstein for some time. In 2019, journalist Whitney Webb reported on the links between Epstein, Israeli tech company Carbyne, and the American intelligence apparatus. In the piece, she reported:

Not long after Epstein’s arrest, and his relationships and finances came under scrutiny, it was revealed that the Israeli company Carbyne911 had received substantial funding from Jeffrey Epstein as well as Epstein’s close associate and former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist and prominent Trump backer Peter Thiel.

Webb added:

Another funder of Carbyne, Peter Thiel, has his own company that, like Carbyne, is set to profit from the Trump administration’s proposed hi-tech solutions to mass shootings. Indeed, after the recent shooting in El Paso, Texas, President Trump — who received political donations from and has been advised by Thiel following his election — asked tech companies to “detect mass shooters before they strike,” a service already perfected by Thiel’s company Palantir, which has developed “pre-crime software” already in use throughout the country. Palantir is also a contractor for the U.S. intelligence community and also has a branch based in Israel.

The latest revelations around Thiel come from the leaked emails of the aforementioned Ehud Barak (former Israeli prime minister). Writing in Reason, Matthew Petti reported:

Epstein invited Barak to come to a meeting with Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and the surveillance contractor Palantir, in May 2014. Although Barak couldn’t make that meeting, Epstein insisted that Barak “spend real time with peter thiel [sic]” and offered to set up a dinner the following month.Epstein

Barak wrote to a different business associate a few days later, without mentioning Epstein’s role, that he and Thiel would have a “first date” and “probably spend it talking just geopolitics” with an unnamed third person. In that email, Barak added that he had met Thiel once before in Davos, Switzerland, but speculated that Thiel “probably doesn’t even recall it.”

Brace Belden of the TrueAnon podcast added that Barak suspected Thiel was “under some drug impact” when they met, according to the emails:

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 31 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Another funder of Carbyne, Peter Thiel, has his own company that, like Carbyne, is set to profit from the Trump administration’s proposed hi-tech solutions to mass shootings.

This willingness to let billionaires offer for-profit tech solutions to social problems is a sickness, and this is the clearest example yet.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

And he has the fucking audacity to five a four part lecture about the antichrist. The nerves

[–] tankplanker@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

Does he put forward his case that he is the anti christ? As he sure comes across as someone who would want that. He has always felt like the sort of motherfucker who would read the Stand and identify with Randall Flagg

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 46 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I find this very hard to believe, he's such a good boy and helps grannies cross the street.

I think it's time we send some F-16s to fire missiles at Chinese weather balloons, our real enemies.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago

Of course the UK wants to deal with palantir, they want a surveillance state. They have always wanted a surveillance state there

[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 35 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

as a rule I don't subscribe to theories related to the blood libel myth but if there was a dude to try injecting children's's blood into his blood to prolong his own life, it's probably this psycho. the dude needs a straight jacket and glands removed. not government contracts.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 27 points 2 days ago (5 children)

I mean…

In 2016, various media outlets reported that Mr Thiel had links to the radical life extension startup Ambrosia, with Gawker claiming he "spends $40,00 per quarter to get an infusion of blood from an 18-year-old based on research conducted at Stanford on extending the lives of mice."

These reports cited his investment portfolio, together with a 2009 essay that laid out his philosophical and political beliefs. In it, he wrote that he stood against "the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual."

However the blood transfusion claims were never verified and Gawker shut down shortly after following an unrelated lawsuit partly funded by Mr Thiel.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] cygnus@lemmy.ca 35 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Damn, I didn't know Jeff had boys too.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The most evil and corrupt person is linked to the most evil and disgusting person? Say it ain’t so I’m clutching my pearls over here.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] the_q@lemmy.zip 30 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Let's be real, most powerful people are attached to these types of monsters.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›