U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-palantir-tech-discrimination-lawsuit-idUSKCN11W2DA <comment><USER2> Palantir gets some of my sympathy. My organization has a large internship program and I've been first contact for many applicants. I found that a similar number of applicants had to be dropped either due to communication skills or an overall technical skills gap and they tended to be asian/southeast asian.

Interestingly most of them fit the same profile of a bachelor's from India, 1 or 2 years at a consulting firm in India doing something that could be argued is software development and now doing a master's at a large state university. To be honest I'm not sure how they got in or are able to graduate.

<comment><USER3> I worked at Palantir in the covered period and did a ton of interviews, 5-10 a week. I experienced exactly this dynamic - very large numbers of applicants who had a bachelor's degree from a South or East Asian university, a year or two of work experience, and a Masters from a mid-tier US University. The large majority washed out on the FizzBuzz-level technical questions on phone screens (or asked in person at job fairs).

<comment><USER4> I've seen American university CS grads wash out on FizzBuzz level questions at alarming levels as well so this is not exclusively a phenomenon with these backgrounds.

How in the world are people making it through schools (with a MS!) without actually.... uhh.... you know.... _knowing_ the subject _at all_?

<comment><USER5> > How in the world are people making it through schools (with a MS!) without > actually.... uhh.... you know.... knowing the subject at all?

Recent undergraduate grad here. A lot of the algorithms I've seen on technical interviews were only covered once or twice in the curriculum. Basically, one such algorithm would come up in either the data structures or algorithms class, we would then work on it for the given assignment/exam, and finally we would move on from it. Subsequent course work would barely reference it.

These things are best learned through repetition. Unfortunately, with all of the other CS coursework topics that I was being educated on, it seemed like there was little room for the repetition to take place. (At least, not in the stereotypical four year timespan assuming that the given student enters a CS program with no prior programming knowledge.)

<comment><USER6> If you know even some basic programming and logic, you should be able to come up with a reasonable fizz buzz solution. You don't need to have studies the fizz buzz algorithm in college, or have practiced a solution.

<comment><USER7> I spent weeks on that algorithm. It is only through daily katas that I still remember its rigors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the actual government complaint, the allegations are listed in sections 10 and 11, [https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...](https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20160926_0.pdf)

My concerns,

1) why is the qualified candidate pool, whatever that is, so overwhelmingly Asian, 73-85%? Isn't the candidate selection process biased towards Asians?

2) The complaint is concerned about the use of employee referrals. Studies have shown that building teams from referrals can be a big productivity boost because it enhances team cohesion. While employee referrals can lead to a monoculture it doesn't seem that the federal government should prohibit it.

<comment><USER9> I would guess for the second part that the government prohibits it because it could result in unequal opportunities for job seekers based on race. While referrals are more acceptable in non-government-sponsored companies, government-sponsored companies are held to higher standards because that is where taxpayer dollars are directly headed.

If the applicant pool was overwhelming black and Palantir hired more white people because of referrals, there would be more uproar.

Ultimately, the implications would be that if that logic were applied to government positions, (ie, if government positions took into account referrals more than merit) you could end up with a government that is overwhelmingly white and/or arbitrarily discriminates against people applying to positions.

<comment><USER10> The general form of this question is: do we care more about government departments in their role as equal-opportunity jobs projects, or do we care more about the government being "effective", doing the most it can with each tax dollar?

In this case, I can see how "increased cohesion"—although decreasing the "jobs project" value—would be extremely helpful for increasing tax-dollar ROI.

<comment><USER11> tax dollar ROI is less important to politicians than an equivalent of voter ROI. It cost them nothing to turn out an inferior program, project, expenditure, or whatever, provided the political points are accounted for.

seen companies at local airport bidding contracts who have minorities who are merely paid to be on the board so they qualify for the contract.

want to know one reason the government is so large, intrusive, and inefficient, look no further to rules that enforce everything but efficiency.

<comment><USER12> How do you know why those minority employees were hired?

<comment><USER13> my guess is it's...

simple math

YYYEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think many of the comments are missing a few important points:

1\. Yes, 20% Asian hiring rate is pretty decent when you compare to the general Asian population at large. _However_ , the lawsuit specifically alleges that, in one example case, the qualified application pool was 73% Asian. In that case, it's extremely abnormal to hire 17 non-Asians and only 4 Asians.

2\. Palantir is involved in government contracting, so there are also very specific regulations for compliance [https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/aboutof.html](https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/aboutof.html)

3\. The lawsuit is being brought on by the Department of Labor. IMO, generally government agencies are usually reluctant to initiate lawsuits that they are afraid of losing.

4\. It might be malicious, it might not be. But Palantir was given multiple chances to correct their compliance issue: "The Labor Department sent Palantir a notice in October 2015 about its findings, according to the lawsuit. Both before and after that notice, labor regulators attempted to secure Palantir's voluntary compliance, the lawsuit said, but they did not succeed."

<comment><USER15> Has any other major tech company released numbers on what their hiring demographics look like compared to their qualified application pool? I've seen the demographics for employees in diversity reports, but not qualified- applicant pool numbers.

Because, sure, perhaps many of the Asian applicants are poor enough at English that it outweighs whatever got them into the qualified-pool. But I would guess that would be a problem for every SV tech company. So how does Palantir's stats compare to theirs such that it warrants the DoL to file a lawsuit?

<comment><USER16> While I can't comment on the DOL's methodology because I don't know what it is, I've seen many SV tech companies essentially define the qualified- applicant pool in a way to explain systemic biases. The most obvious one, is "Unless you attended school X, you're unqualified," which quite frankly, is utter bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a symptom of quota system that many schools and companies use to achieve diversity. Unfortunately, as Asian American, I have experienced it firsthand. Asian Americans are some of highest achieving minority, but due to their smaller number there is not enough quotas allocated to them.

Many of my friends could not get into their first choice colleges or didn't get scholarships even with perfect grades, extracurricular activities, etc but some of my friends from other larger minority groups got full scholarships even with average GPAs. They laughed at us for working so hard, called us geeks, and then got scholarships because of only ethnicity.

I know this is controversial topic, hence, throwaway account. But this is open secret in Asian communities. Hopefully, this lawsuit will change this ridiculous discriminatory quota system.

<comment><USER18> > then got scholarships because of only ethnicity.

Are you absolutely certain of that? How did you know?

<comment><USER19> One can't be 100% certain of anything. However, between 2/3 and 5/6 of black students at top colleges probably would have been rejected under a meritocratic admission system.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904256)

Similarly, it's established that Asians tend to meet a much higher SAT cutoff than blacks and whites.

[http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity- health/asian-...](http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian- american/article-admission.aspx)

It's pretty safe to say that most blacks at Harvard don't deserve to be there and it probably should be an Asian in their place. You just can't say _which specific_ blacks and Asians it should be.

<comment><USER20> I don't think you can jump straight from "some people benefit from affirmative action" to "they don't deserve to be there". Obviously supporters of affirmative action do think they deserve to be there, despite their lower test scores, and it's worth at least considering that point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm extremely disappointed by the vitriol and generalisations against Asians in this thread. Marginalising individual candidates because there are trends in the community is the textbook definition of racial profiling.

I'm a dev from India. I work hard and always try my best to stay as honest as I possibly can, and I think I'm fairly competent. For the last job offer I received, I had to take around 7 interviews (phone + in-person) along with take home problems. Recently I'd been wondering if it would be a good idea to do a Masters in US, maybe specialisation in Machine Learning/Deep Learning. But it seems most people here would dismiss candidates like me because "Asians people cheat" or "Asians aren't competent enough".

I expect better from my fellow HN-ers.

<comment><USER22> Please don't take these comments personally.

I've seen lots of very incompetent Indian applicants. That doesn't mean I won't happily interview another Indian developer because I _also_ know that there are lots of very competent Indian developers. Some of the best coworkers I've ever had were Indian.

Anyone who lazily dismisses you because "Asian people cheat" are themselves incompetent interviewers. In my experience, it's actually incredibly cheap/easy to suss out the competent people with a quick 15-minute phone screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

If their employee racial ratios matched the US population, then they will get bashed like this.

If their employee racial ratios match the 'qualified candidate pool', then they'll get bashed for not hiring enough women and black people.

We haven't as a society agreed on the right way to deal with race, but there's certainly plenty of loud and angry people supporting their own points of view...

<comment><USER24> You didn't read the article. They're being sued due to their final hiring being grossly out of step vs the qualified candidate pool.

You also appear to be assuming that there's no way the qualified candidate pool could have as many women and black americans as the broader US population. That assumption is, and continues to be, the problem.

<comment><USER23> I did read the article.

Here is one specific context where they are facing potential penalties because employee racial distribution != candidate pool racial distribution.

On the other hand, in a different context, tech companies as a whole are taking a lot of flak because employee racial distribution != population racial distribution.

> You also appear to be assuming that there's no way the qualified candidate > pool could have as many women and black americans as the broader US > population

How is this even up for debate? Women and blacks are both underrepresented in majors like computer science compared to the population average. That flows directly into the candidate pool that tech companies need to hire from.

And this article cites _one_ specific example where the 'qualified candidate pool' looks nothing at all like the American population average.

You're saying if that candidate pool only had 15% women, we'd want Palantir to hire just 15% women?

<comment> vertex-four We (lefty types) generally want companies, Governments and people to put in effort to expand the "qualified candidate pool" to a point where it generally matches the population, and then put effort into ensuring they're non- discriminatory in hiring.

Governments then create indexes which companies and politicians game because it's cheaper to "positively discriminate" in hiring than to put effort into attracting qualified candidates or fix the broader social issues, and then the population as a whole judges everybody by the index the Government created.

<comment><USER25> What a distressing view of the world, where people are forced to live their lives according to your conception of what the "proper" proportion of things are. The applicant-pool should reflect the people who want the job, period. If the people that want a particular job are 90% women, or 80% men, or 50% black, or whatever, then that's totally fine. We are a nation of individual people deciding what to do with our own lives.

<comment> vertex-four In practice, people have pressures put on them from an early age to do whatever their elders think is best for them, and, frankly, their elders are often sexist, and the community they're born into might push them one way or another. This goes all the way up to the first year of university for many people.

There really isn't another good reason for a lot of what we see in terms of what people wind up doing (and some of how they behave while doing it!) when they're older, and we're well aware that socialisation during childhood is a powerful thing. As an example, there's relatively few people who are brought up without religion but find religion later - but there's a heck of a lot of people who were brought up with religion and never leave it.

Attempting to remove some of those pressures and counter-balance others seems perfectly reasonable, and unless there actually is something innate which causes boys to enjoy computers and girls to enjoy nursing, the result of that should be that we see a number of job markets level out to look like a reasonable cross-section of the population. Anybody who thinks that independent thinking is a good thing should likely support these efforts, or at least the well-implemented ones.

<comment><USER25> Culture is a legitimate source of differences between people and groups of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It would be really nice if some of these reporters at least clarified if among those rejected were US Citizens. In the kind of work Palantir is involved in it is quite possible that they are trying to staff a US Citizen only shop to meet government requirements. Just look at the ITAR regs for example and the 'nonpermanent resident' gets waved about quite a lot.

<comment><USER27> I thought the same thing, having worked in defense. If these engineers need TS/SCI clearance that's gonna trump a lot of technical considerations.

They'll deny someone for all kinds of reasons, and you really don't want to find this out after a hire. In DC being pre-cleared basically guarantees employment.

<comment><USER28> Surely, if the position requires the ability to get a clearance, and a person incapable of getting that clearance applies, they are not a 'qualified applicant'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The part that doesn't make sense to me is... what does Palantir have to gain by discriminating?

The other way this happens is by cultural biases causing discrimination, but not intentionally with some specific goal in mind.

I'm operating only on anecdotes, but in the tech industry, discriminating against Asians at the intern/ground level seems to be a non-issue. Maybe different story when you get to management, and maybe different story when you bring gender into the mix, but I didn't think Asians as a whole had issues with employment discrimination at the ground level. I could just be wrong on the aggregate statistics though.

<comment><USER30> I have no idea, but just a random guess:

If you try to sell a lot of secret spying services to the government (which I think Palantir does?), they probably think it helps if your employees don't look/sound Chinese, seeing as the government might be afraid of China's espionage efforts.

I also don't know how much trouble they have getting clearance for someone that grew up in China compared to other countries.

(again: I have no idea, that's just a random guess)

<comment><USER31> I would speculate that the majority of 'asians' who applied to Palantir were not from China, but rather from the region sometimes called South Asia.

<comment><USER30> To save the lazy people a google search:

"The current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hang on... so ~20% of the hires ended up being asian. Doesn't the same thing happen at other firms aiming for ~diversity~ where the % accepted deviates from the % applied?

<comment> angry-hacker I'm reading it and I'm also surprised.

As far as I understood the whole discrimination and quotas fiasco for minorities always talk about the general population to be compared with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I remember interviewing at Palantir in 2012 at the VA office, i did not see a single non-white person in the office. Everyone i met except for the HR person was most likely below the age of 25 and they all had similar personalities in a weired way. I still don't know why I didn't make past my final interview because i did not get any feedback. It never crossed my mind that it may have to do with the fact that I am not white. I thought it had to do with showing my concern over their unlimited vacation policy and the work life balance and they probably wanted someone that lives in the office. Hope it's the latter.

</comment><comment><USER34> The cited example was interns.

Who doesn't favor employee referrals for interns? You can be encrusted in diamonds and you're going to get put in the back of the line behind the known quantities and get-in-so-and-so's-good-graces hires for an intern position. There's also the fact that people start to favor/discriminate schools based on history. Had a great intern from Stanford? Hire another Stanford kid. Had a terrible intern from Texas Tech? Scratch all the TT kids who apply for a few years.

We'll see how this pans out, but like most of the other people in this thread, I'm inclined to give Palantir the benefit of the doubt at the moment.

<comment><USER35> It's common practice, but that doesn't make it ok. In fact, afaik, those network-based hiring practices are a major obstacle to social mobility and to ending racial and gender inequality.

Think of it this way: In the U.S. in 1950, white men[0] controlled access to resources like education and jobs, and shared them only with other white men, intentionally discriminating against non-white and non-male applicants. In the past 66 years, network-based hiring practices have extended that systematic discrimination well past its expiration date. White men still dominate those resources, in large part because they network with and therefore hire each other. Who has good schools in their neighborhood? Who got into the good college? Who are their college buddies? Who do their professors and other mentors know? etc.

Isn't time we broke that cycle? Only 33% of Americans are white males, yet look at photos of SV leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, the US Senate, etc.: If we step back from our expectations, conditioned over our lifetimes, those photos are absurd - and represent an enormous waste of talent, self-determination, and achievement.

\----

[0] Really it was Protestant, heterosexual white men, and maybe some other parameters applied too, but let's keep this simple.

<comment><USER36> > Only 33% of Americans are white males, yet look at photos of SV leaders, > Fortune 500 CEOs, the US Senate, etc.

But they're not just white men. Not even just protestant heterosexual white men. They're white men with rich parents and Ivy League degrees and so on. And when you realize that, you realize that the percentage of CEOs who have rich parents and Ivy League degrees is higher than the percentage of CEOs who are white men. A century ago the graduates of Harvard may have been 100% white men, but the graduates of Harvard are less than 1% of 1% _of_ white men.

The thing you're training your sights on is the scenario where 67% of the candidates are white but >85% of the employees are white. Here's how we got there: The company hired 100 people. First they hired 65 white people who the owners know ("the privileged"). Then they hired 35 more people who all got there on the merits, 67% of whom are white. Company is now 88.45% white.

But let's separate the <1% of people (arguendo all of them white) who get the job no matter what and fill the first 65 slots, from the 67% of people who are white but still have to compete for the job like everybody else. What happens to those people? They suffer the same fate as minorities -- competing for 35 slots instead of 100 because 65 were lost to the Old Boys Network. So that 67% of people fills 23.45% of the slots when it should have been 67%. That's how it is now, before you change anything.

Now suppose you require the company to balance on race. All the people the owners know are still in. They only made up 65% of the employees, up to 67% can be white, they all get to stay. But now only 2% of the slots are available to 67% of the population, because they were classified as the privileged elite when they weren't.

It isn't a race problem, it's a class and social mobility problem.

<comment><USER35> > They're white men with rich parents and Ivy League degrees and so on.

I think that's a very good point.

However, that doesn't mean that racism doesn't also exist and is not very prevalent. Endless research supports that it exists in many areas of society, it seems very unlikely that after centuries of overt, legalized racism it would disappear so quickly, and IMO it's unlikely to be coincidence that the excluded groups today are exactly those that that suffered overt, legalized discrimination until the civil rights era.

Sadly, my anecdotal experience is far too many white people expressing racist views in private, often grouping all blacks together and saying 'they' do X or Y. One, who holds a PhD, told me that Kenyan runners were faster because the harsh life of slaves caused natural selection to favor strength!

I would be interested in research on the relative social mobility of various excluded groupings (people who are black, Latino, Muslim, or women) and also of poor white people. Lots of people try to claim there is no difference, as a sort of political blow against people seeking to address race issues, but I've never seen data supporting it.

<comment><USER36> > However, that doesn't mean that racism doesn't also exist and is not very > prevalent. Endless research supports that it exists in many areas of > society, it seems very unlikely that after centuries of overt, legalized > racism it would disappear so quickly, and IMO it's unlikely to be > coincidence that the excluded groups today are exactly those that that > suffered overt, legalized discrimination until the civil rights era.

It's clearly not a coincidence, the problem is that part of the cause is present day racism and part of it is the economic fallout of historical racism, and they're separate because only the first is actually a race problem. The second is just a slice from the general problem of poverty and mobility and has to be solved in the same way.

But that means the statistics don't mean anything unless you can identify what caused it, because it changes what we have to do about it. If black people are underrepresented because of real live racists then we need to hunt down the racists, but if they're underrepresented because they're poor or raised by single parents or other such things where everyone like that is underrepresented, then we need to fight poverty and promote premarital contraception and so on.

And in practice it's going to be both, but that doesn't save you any work. You still need to find each root cause to destroy it. The problem isn't that there aren't enough black Senators, the problem is that a promising black entrepreneur who would otherwise have become a Senator had no choice other than to go to a racist loan officer who denied the loan. The lack of black Senators is the _consequence_.

> Sadly, my anecdotal experience is far too many white people expressing > racist views in private, often grouping all blacks together and saying > 'they' do X or Y. One, who holds a PhD, told me that Kenyan runners were > faster because the harsh life of slaves caused natural selection to favor > strength!

A hundred psychology experiments have shown that if you put people on a team and put some other people on another team, they'll instantly become adversaries. To actually eliminate racism you have to destroy the idea of it. It was never a real thing -- the human race is the only race. To make it go away we have to stop having "African Americans" as a category. They need to be just Americans.

I mean your PhD friend is clearly wrong. Weren't the people still in Kenya the ones _not_ captured as slaves? Otherwise they would be in Alabama. But the stupidity of the argument doesn't phase because it isn't meant to convince. It's meant to rationalize a win by The Other Team when Our Team is supposed to be better at everything.

But we can't convincingly argue that race isn't important and people shouldn't identify with it, while at the same time making a big deal about racial disparities and rehashing the differences between races.

> I would be interested in research on the relative social mobility of various > excluded groupings (people who are black, Latino, Muslim, or women) and also > of poor white people. Lots of people try to claim there is no difference, as > a sort of political blow against people seeking to address race issues, but > I've never seen data supporting it.

The reason there is never any good data one way or the other is that people keep trying to measure the empty space. You can't just go to companies and do a survey that says "how many black people didn't you hire because you're a dirty racist?" So what people do instead is to say that there is X amount of disparity, and if you account for income then this much goes away, and if you account for education level then this much etc., and then whatever is left at the end is labeled the contribution of racism.

But there are arbitrarily many confounders. If you account for enough of them then the _whole_ amount might be "explained," but it isn't really because you e.g. accounted for credit history but that includes the racist creditors who maliciously ruined the credit of minorities. It turns into a political fight over what factors should be considered and there is no answer. And even if there was, it would only tell you how much racism there is, not _where_ it is.

But there is a simple solution, which is to realize that the exact number is irrelevant. It isn't zero. Nobody seriously claims that there is _no racism at all_. It doesn't matter if it's 50% or 0.0001%. You do the same thing in each case -- fight every instance of racism you find.

But actual racism, not statistics and aggregates. Your friend with the PhD is Wrong. It is now your responsibility to fix it by convincing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges.

What in the world does that alleged statistic mean?

<comment><USER38> It's an elementary statistics calculation (which I'm not saying was done right; but that's the direction it was most likely coming from).

Left unstated was what

        P(portion of Asian applications being >= 74%)

should be given that, if I'm not mistaken, the percentage of Asian undergraduates (even at upper-tier schools) seems to top out at around 45% (a very rough figure based on quick eyeballing; but I doubt it pushes 60%).

<comment><USER37> I understand that, thanks. The problem of course is that it bears no relation to actual reality. It may be the case that, for a pipefitter, every human body with Pipefitter Certification 409B can do the job identically to his fellow 409Ber. But there are very few jobs like that–trending to zero.

Result of this case: lawyers make a few million bucks. Government gets a few million bucks. Palantir has a few million bucks fewer with which to grow and produce new value. Fewer people get hired. No one wins. Administrative overreach: it's a thing.[1]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Administrative-Law-Unlawful-Philip- Ha...](https://www.amazon.com/Administrative-Law-Unlawful-Philip- Hamburger/dp/022611659X)

<comment><USER39> Not sure about pipe fitting, but for welding, say, or framing? There are _definitely_ 10X welders. So your "trending to zero" point resonates with me (being a shitty welder).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _In one example cited by the Labor Department, Palantir reviewed a pool of more than 130 qualified applicants for an engineering intern position, about 73 percent of whom were Asian. The lawsuit, which covers Palantir 's conduct between January 2010 and the present, said the company hired 17 non-Asian applicants and four Asians._

 _" The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges._

You'd kind of expect them to,† given the near certainty that they're being actively snooped upon by various foreign governments. Still one wonders what Labor's definition of "qualified" was in this case, and whether the need for visa sponsorship played a role in the selection process.

† Which should please not be construed to mean that I condone such discrimination (if it's happening to the degree alleged), or that I think it's inevitable. Only, one would suspect, not unexpected behavior for companies working in the so-called "intelligence community", or overlapping it to a significant degree.

<comment><USER40> This is 100% a political move. The number of people hired matches the national average, which is what is usually used to determine "diversity".

Honestly, there is no reason this lawsuit should be pressed. As you pointed out I'm sure there were visa's required for some applicants, and 20% Asian is still good by percentage.

<comment><USER41> Do we know that the non-Asians also didn't require visas?

Also, I find it interesting how national average always seems to justify discrimination against Asians when it comes to jobs/college acceptance but then if someone brings up how Asians can be under-represented in things like media representation or politics, some people will say it's because there aren't many Asians who go into acting/modeling/politics.

<comment><USER42> agree, it is total discrimination. the narrative is that it is normal there is no Asian at all, as long as there is more than one Asian, Asians are overrepresented. so no matter what, screwing asians is the safe bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What about top universities discriminating against Asian applicants? In many states, affirmative action is legally denying opportunities for Asian Americans.

</comment><comment><USER44> Some of the comments here are laughable - "I also had to deal with clueless south asians once so I understand how it is".

Seriously?

<comment><USER45> Uh...me too.

I don't know what you think is weird....some have a similar hiring experience to what Palantir did (depending on the truthfulness of allegations, of course).

<comment><USER44> _some have a similar hiring experience to what Palantir did_

... which is completely irrelevant to whether Palantir is on the right side of this issue.

If a police department was reported as displaying bias against blacks or muslims, would it be reasonable to respond with "I've had issues with blacks and muslims in law enforcement too"?

Now consider the fact that Palantir does a lot of work for intelligence agencies...

<comment><USER46> > If a police department was reported as displaying bias against blacks or > muslims, would it be reasonable to respond with "I've had issues with blacks > and muslims in law enforcement too"?

But this has no context. What kind of bias, what kind of issues. The example wrt asians has this context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm asian, and I honestly believe the DOL has bigger, more real fights to fight than Palantair - which most likely isn't discriminating at all.

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't think the regulators have a case. The applicants failed the phone screens. Apparently U.S. regulators don't think Asians can fail to be qualified or that they are qualified simply for being Asian. They don't define what 'asian' even means, and they are trying to make this a "white" vs "asian" thing. Sounds like a lot of bullshit, maybe they just want to stop doing business with Palantir and need an excuse.

</comment><comment><USER49> Since much of their work consists of analyzing classified data, they may also be screening out those they decide aren't likely to obtain those clearances. Many defense contractors hire you provisionally (and might put you on a non- classified project) but don't expect to keep that job if you wash out of the background check process. There are plenty of interview questions you could ask to avoid candidates that you know won't make it.

</comment><comment><USER50> When was the last time U.S. regulators reviewed the percentage of 'asians' in companies like Infosys and WiPro? And who exactly qualifies as an 'Asian' applicant? Does a person born, say, in Israel qualifies as one?

<comment><USER51> > When was the last time U.S. regulators reviewed the percentage of 'asians' > in companies like Infosys and WiPro?

Are Infosys or WiPro government contractors covered by EO 11246? The audit process doesn't apply to most employers, only government contractors.

NOTE: An earlier version of this comment incorrectly referenced EO 12466, because of a transposition in reading from the scanned-but-not-OCRd copy of the lawsuit text.

<comment><USER50> So only the projects being done under the govt. contract are being evaluated, or the whole company if at least one such project exists?

Also EO 12466 is an executive order on Reimbursement of Federal employee relocation expenses. I fail to see how is it related to the topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> How does the Department of Labor determine the applicants' qualifications?

<comment><USER53> Palantir is a government contractor. In this case there's a whole Compliance department that can be involved in audits of hiring practices.

[https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/aboutof.html](https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/aboutof.html)

In this case I'd assume based on resumes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Really surprised that they would see an 85% rate for Asian applicants. Is that normal in SV?

<comment><USER54> That seems very skewed, based on hiring I've done. My suspicion is it's related to recruiters or other pipelines they were working from to provide them applicants / candidate resumes. There are definitely recruiters who have client populations that are very disproportionate (largely based on where those recruiters get their clients from in the first place).

It wouldn't surprise me if the end lesson that comes out of all this is "be very, very careful who you work with to do your recruiting and the effect it has on your applicant pool". If someone (be it a recruiter or just employees hoping for referral bonuses) pumps your hiring pipeline full of low-grade resumes but who nonetheless represent a particular ethnic group, and you end up turning them all down or turning them down at a higher-than-normal rate, you could really be increasing your EEO exposure without realizing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> But yet, it is ok when various US state government entities (e.g., universities, yes, I'm talking about you, California) adopt policies and procedures which are specifically intended to admit Asian students in lower numbers than the qualified applicant pool. Hmm, interesting.

<comment><USER56> Proposition 209 banned consideration of race and ethnicity for admissions to public universities in the State of California in _1996_. Either you've been in a coma for the last twenty years or you are in fact not talking about California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm wondering, how do they define equally qualified? Suppose for instance that a company has an anonymous interviewing procedure (e.g. maths puzzles, supposing it is relevant for the job) that somehow discriminates against a minority, would that be an issue?

<comment><USER58> How would you have a process that is both anonymous and discriminatory?

<comment><USER57> Discriminatory in the sense that the distribution of "winner" in terms of minorities doesn't match the distribution of candidates. I assume it can be the case that minority X is much better at solving maths puzzles than minority Y.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Wow this is flimsy;

      In one example cited by the Labor Department, Palantir reviewed a pool of
      more than 130 qualified applicants for the role of engineering intern.
      About 73 percent of applicants were Asian. The lawsuit, which covers
      Palantir's conduct between January 2010 and the present, said the company
      hired 17 non-Asian applicants and four Asians.

      "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is
       approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed
       with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges.

I'm sorry, assuming what distribution? And hiring is not chance anyway. That statistic is mind-numbing. Perhaps it is true that... the likelihood that this result occurred according to chance, _assuming applicants were selected randomly_ , is approximately one in a billion. But the applicants are far from randomly selected from a uniform distribution... The odds of choosing 4 Asians out of 21 interns baring racial discrimination do not sound that long to me considering actual educational dynamics and the population that is applying to US software intern jobs.

</comment><comment><USER60> Some great points here about citizenship/security clearance being part of the issue.

But I'd also ask the government regulators to define "asians". Including East Indians? I'm not sure how the government breaks down their racial statistics but certainly East Indians are Asians. They might not be East Asians but they're Asians.

Not only that but Native Americans and most Latin Americans are to some degree of Asiatic origin as well. So they'd have to define recent, or historical Asian origin?

Further, we'd need clarification on whites vs Europeans. Europeans presently live in Eurasia, which technically is the same landmass as Asia. Beyond that, all Europeans and their white descendants alive today share the same ancestors as the Native Americans[0], which are of clear Asiatic origins. That also begs the question about my Saudi friends from college: they were adamant that they were Asians as they were indeed from the same continent.

So, which "asians" are we talking about here? I think this whole type of thing is a mess and so anti-scientific that it's entirely political. The government and their racial censuses are awfully convoluted. Which should be abolished, as Mexico has been our leader here and already abolished racial censuses long ago- if the US government is truly against racism. Change should always start at the top, leading by good example!

In sum, there's only 5 heavily-populated major landmasses in the world and 4 of those 5 are occupied by a majority with folks of wholly Asian or at minimum, mixed-Asian descent. With Africa being the only real exception. So our government need to get its act together and if they're going to use racial terminology and policy, to do it in a little bit more scientific manner.

[0][http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-29213892](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29213892)

<comment><USER61> [http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html](http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Do they mean Asians from Asia or Americans of Asian descent?

The article is unclear, but if the former, given Palantir'a security work with various US government agencies, it might be a factor as others have pointed out.

<comment><USER51> I'm pretty sure the government auditors whose _only job is to do compliance audits of government contractors_ are more than aware of the relevance of citizenship status to qualification for certain jobs related to certain government contracts.

And, even if they weren't, I'm pretty sure that Palantir could easily have pointed that out in the two rounds of attempted to pre-lawsuit conciliation initiated by the Department of Labor to resolve the identified issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> 1,160 qualified people? How do the Labor Department define qualified? Did Palantir interview all of them? reply

<comment><USER64> >the individual's expression of interest indicated that the individual possesses the basic qualification for the position [1]

The issue for this case will be proving whether or not the applicants actually met the basic qualifications. Interestingly, the language implies that someone must simply _indicate_ that they possess the basic qualifications. It doesn't go into detail on _verifying_ the actual possession of those qualifications.

I'd like to see what exactly is done to verify the applicants actually met the basic qualifications.

[1] [https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/faqs/iappfaqs.htm#...](https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/faqs/iappfaqs.htm#Q2GI)

[2] [https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...](https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20160926_0.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I hope plantair wins this sort of lawsuit could really hurt women and diversity efforts to get into tech jobs if companies are forced to hire based on qualified candidate pools.

</comment><comment><USER66> What is the definition of Asian, here? One has to remember that Middle Eastern countries and Pakistan are in Asia.

Given the nature of what Palantir does, it is easy to guess why it would discriminate against a certain category of people who have ties to foreign countries in general, and sensitive countries in particular.

It is the same problem intelligence agencies faced when they wanted Arabic/Urdu speakers. Those who spoke these languages would never be vetted.

<comment><USER67> There are well established processes to vet someone who might be handling sensitive information. There are security clearances that can be obtained. The fact that someone is from a foreign country should not be the basis of discriminating against them.

Secondly if Palantir works on highly sensitive data it probably requires applicants to be US citizens. So essentially it is probably discriminating against Asian Americans and not citizens of other countries.

<comment><USER66> > _Secondly if Palantir works on highly sensitive data it probably requires > applicants to be US citizens. So essentially it is probably discriminating > against Asian Americans and not citizens of other countries._

My remark was about Arabic and Urdu speakers who are US Citizens (the possibility that they'd be foreigners didn't even cross my mind). After the Iraq invasion, there were many people who applied to work with Intelligence agencies. US citizens. They just happened to have _ties_ to said countries (you know, your father or grandfather came to the US and you were born here, but your uncle still is in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan).

There was a severe shortage of fluent speakers _despite_ a lot of eager applicants. A "We want native Iraqi dialect speakers, but those who speak it just happen to be of Iraqi descent. We can't hire those" situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Indian here (I hope that still makes me Asian). I did interview on-site at Palantir in 2014. I did not feel like any kind of discrimination was in play at any point. In fact, 3/6 of the people I interacted with during the course of my interviews seemed to be from a Asian / east-Asian ethnicity. I did feel like the people working there were a little overly confident in nature, but discriminating? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER69> Is this just like the complaints about elite universities discriminating against Asians/Indians to maintain the diversity? Perhaps people who know about Palantir's diversity ratio can comment.

I have seen some companies preferring certain race of applicants to maintain diversity in teams even though there are plenty of qualified applicants.

</comment><comment><USER70> You have to stop discrimination from first principles downwards: Identify the discriminating policy or behaviour and stop it. You cannot assess discrimination from the other side, by looking at percentages and then conclude a systemic bias. That is not only unsound statistics, it is fascism.

</comment><comment><USER51> The key question, it seems to me, is what the evidence is that this allegation is true: "The lawsuit alleges Palantir routinely eliminated Asian applicants in the resume screening and telephone interview phases, even when they were as qualified as white applicants".

</comment><comment><USER71> I guess this is the other side of the coin when it comes to government contracting.

Government contracts are great if you can make them work -- these organizations have big budgets, and many individual layers of the bureaucracy have a "we must spend our allowance or we won't get one next year" mentality. Find a good use case for your tech, hire a couple of people who are good at making gov't relationships and who know how to do the paperwork right, and you're in business.

The flip side of this is that government contracting rules are really, really strict. And the impact of being barred or even partially restricted from government contracting work would be really, really bad for Palantir.

</comment><comment><USER72> The interesting question to me is how does discriminating against asians help palantir's bottom line ?

Has this something to do with culture, or the fact that Palantir think that even american asians are leaking information to countries like china, india, etc.

<comment><USER51> > The interesting question to me is how does discriminating against asians > help palantir's bottom line ?

It quite possibly doesn't; discrimination is often done (even when it is done _deliberately and overtly_ ) because it serves non-financial interests of the people choosing to do it, not because it is an efficient means of maximizing profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Does anyone know how affected applicants are supposed to participate in this lawsuit? That is, the remedies include remuneration for these applicants, but it doesn't look like there's a clear way for people to indicate that they think they were affected by this bias.

(Note that this is a government lawsuit, so it's not like a class-action where additional parties "join" the suit or are included in a class. It's just the government versus the company, with remedies (apparently) to be paid to other individuals.)

<comment><USER51> > Does anyone know how affected applicants are supposed to participate in this > lawsuit?

They aren't.

> That is, the remedies include remuneration for these applicants, but it > doesn't look like there's a clear way for people to indicate that they think > they were affected by this bias.

Hiring, not remuneration, of some from the "affected class list", is one of the remedies sought. Since the government has through the compliance audits which identified these issues all the hiring records for the positions at issue, including the information on the unsuccessful applicants, they don't really need people to reach out to them to identify that they think they were affected. If there is an remedy issued that would require identifying affected individuals, they already know who is involved.

<comment><USER73> From the last line of the article: "The lawsuit seeks relief for impacted individuals, including lost wages." This sounds like remuneration to me.

I don't know how the government can identify race of all applicants, since this cannot reliably be done by surname or by any other indirect method. And since applicants cannot be required to provide this information in an application, there is no direct method either (other than seeking applicants to identify themselves after the fact).

I am curious about this partly because I am an Asian American who interviewed at Palantir and was turned down for not having enough X skills, when I was never asked any questions pertaining to X.

<comment><USER51> > From the last line of the article: "The lawsuit seeks relief for impacted > individuals, including lost wages." This sounds like remuneration to me.

I missed that in reviewing the actual lawsuit (and thought it was an error in the article), but see it on review. In any case, the point that the government knows who the applicants are remains.

> I don't know how the government can identify race of all applicants

The government can identify all the applicants. If it reaches the stage at which more information from them becomes relevant, the government can reach out to the applicants for additional information. It doesn't need to rely on the applicants initiating the contact.

Though if, as you indicate, you are _personally_ interested and what to proactively contact the government to make sure you don't miss out on any opportunities, contact information for the office responsible for the lawsuit is in the press release [0] announcing it.

[0] [https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20160926](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20160926)

<comment><USER73> Thanks for the link. I'm a little surprised that there isn't any info in the press release indicating how individuals can share their experiences with the DOL. Perhaps they figure they have 90% of the info already, and that's good enough?

<comment><USER51> > Thanks for the link. I'm a little surprised that there isn't any info in the > press release indicating how individuals can share their experiences with > the DOL. Perhaps they figure they have 90% of the info already, and that's > good enough?

The processes under the contracting rules at issue are fairly well established, and I suspect if additional information from applicants was relevant they would have actively reached out before filing the lawsuit. I think that this action is about the _overall_ nature of the hiring processes at issue where the key evidence is the internal documentation of the hiring process and decisions made with in it, and not the experiences of individual applicants.

I imagine it must feel weirdly impersonal as someone within the affected class, though, since its both about your experience in a general sense, but not all that concerned with it in a specific sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Doesn't this result just tell us that Palantir's recruitment funnel is broken. If your funnel is attracting 73% Asians then fix the funnel at the top, not the bottom.

<comment><USER75> It tells us something _might_ be broken. Could be their applicant pool, and/or could be the way implicit biases creep in.

The way you word it, however, says the problem is that they are "attracting 73% of Asians".

If you want to work in the 21st century, get used to working with people who don't have your same exact background.

<comment><USER74> The problem is they are not attracting enough non-Asians at the top of the funnel - something about their criteria is either driving away others, or is too attractive to Asians.

Unless you believe that talent is disproportionally concentrated in Asian candidates (which they obviously don't given who they actually hire), then it is telling you that the funnel is broken. The funny thing is if they did hire 73% Asians they would rightly be criticised for discriminating against non- Asians.

<comment><USER75> > which they obviously don't given who they actually hire

It's not obvious to everyone, that's why there is discussion/lawsuit.

> if they did hire 73% Asians they would rightly be criticised for > discriminating against non-Asians.

Why would they _rightly_ "be criticised for discriminating against non- Asians."?

Anyway, what you are suggesting _does_ happen when listing jobs (eg how startup jobs are marketed towards younger people). Doesn't mean that it's right or wrong in private companies. But to say it _isn 't_ wrong when you are taking government money is disingenuous.

<comment><USER74> >It's not obvious to everyone, that's why there is discussion/lawsuit.

It is obvious to Palantir. They are rightly recognising that talent is much more evenly spread despite attracting a disproportional number of Asian candidates at the top of the funnel. They are trying to fix a broken funnel by discriminating at the end of the process.

I don't think anyone would think the appropriate solution is to just hire 73% people of Asian decent because that is what the funnel provided.

<comment><USER75> Feels like we are talking past each other :)

 _Of course_ it's obvious to Palantir: they are the ones doing it. Of course it's _not obvious_ to DOL: they are the ones with the lawsuit.

Of course it obvious to anyone that demographics at various level of any funnel wont/cant be translated to the bottom.

What's _not_ obvious are the _causes_ in this specific case.

<comment><USER74> I will agree that we seem to be talking past each other :)

I don't know the cause of the broken funnel, but that does not stop me from being to identify that there is something broken with how Palantir are filling their funnel.

I do think the DOL are looking at the wrong end. What Palantir needs to fix is how they are filling their pipeline so that they capture a much more representative cross section of the talent pool. I am pretty sure Palantir have not deliberately set out to do this, but there is something about their selection criteria, advertising, or outreach that is going wrong to end up with such a skewed funnel.

<comment><USER51> > I do think the DOL are looking at the wrong end.

Its illegal for Palantir to discriminate in the end DOL is looking at irrespective of whether or not they should be doing something at the other end.

<comment><USER74> I am not sure it is illegal what Palantir is doing (the court case will determine this), but on the face of if 20% of the people you hire are of Asian decent this does not look unreasonable. If their funnel had 20% Asian candidates and they hired 20% I don't think the DOL would have intervened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> " _In 2015, Asians represented 27.2 percent of the professional workforce at Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo but were 13.9 percent of the companies ' executive workforces, according to a study by pan-Asian professionals organization Ascend._"

Asians are culturally inclined towards collective work and are therefore disinclined to the competitive environment of management.

 _Tongue in cheek comment of the day._

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm not sure how the stuff about executive positions is relevant for internships.

> In 2015, Asians represented 27.2 percent of the professional workforce at > Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo but were 13.9 percent of > the companies' executive workforces, according to a study by pan-Asian > professionals organization Ascend.

</comment><comment><USER78> I wonder to what extent by "Asian" they really mean Indian.

</comment><comment><USER79> Who does Palantir think they are ?? The ivy league?? Geesh we all know only tier 1 colleges can discriminate against asians using the "diversity" card..

</comment><comment> a-no-n I bet it's more subtle than overt (not an excuse if it's happening, of course, merely a possible explanation)... probably managers hiring unaware they're hiring people whom look like them, rather than hiring the most skilled and capable people whom fit with the company culture. I've seen this at a number of universities and enterprise shops when there's not a conscious effort to minimize useless bias.

<comment><USER51> > I bet it's more subtle than overt (not an excuse if it's happening, of > course, merely a possible explanation)... probably managers hiring unaware > they're hiring people whom look like them

Actually, from the government filing, it sounds like they are saying a big part of it is very active, through the heavy reliance on an employee referral program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Haha Silicon Valley is notoriously racist. It was started by the US military. Hell, even Stage Jobs went public talking about nuking Koreans like it was pearl harbour and everyone thought that was a swell thing to say.

There's gotta be some other motive here.

</comment><comment><USER81> I'm not totally comfortable with the fact that the knee-jerk reaction here is that an allegation of racial discrimination in hiring is wrong on its face. Although Asians certainly aren't a significantly underrepresented minority in tech on the whole, eliminating bias from hiring processes is a hard problem and it definitely seems plausible to me that Palantir could have, for whatever reason, fallen into an anti-pattern that effectively (if not consciously) discriminated against the Asian applicant pool.

Some of the comments here seem to suggest people might be instinctively identifying with Palantir when they talk about their own difficulties in trying to find qualified job applicants. It's without a doubt incredibly hard to find qualified job candidates, and there's a huge number of factors that can go into making any hire/no-hire decision, but for those very reasons these types of lawsuits from the DOL are both hard for them to win and pretty rare, which suggests to me that there's a fair amount of objectively quantifiable evidence pointing towards discrimination. I think, unfortunately, that it's much more common for widespread discrimination to never be addressed in certain companies than for the federal government to overzealously sue corporations on marginal evidence.

I don't think there's any question that Palantir is going to be ultimately ok as a company, however the law suit turns out. Even if the ruling was to wrongly come down against them, they'd pay $___ million, change their hiring processes so they're at least less likely to be sued again, and then move on with their lives as a hugely valuable multi-billion dollar corporation. Discriminatory hiring processes, on the other hand, I think need to be routed out wherever they may occur because systemic injustices ultimately hurt our society as a whole.

This allegation is very serious and I think needs to be taken seriously. When our instinctive reaction to an accusation of discrimination is that it's more than likely overblown or outright false, we're implicitly endorsing the idea that discrimination is both rare and always obvious, neither of which I think are true. I'm not ready to make any judgements about Palantir as a company or its hiring process, but it seems very likely that they (like any company) have blind spots in the way they're hiring that disadvantage some groups, especially if the DOL thinks there's enough evidence to win a court case over it. The great news for Palantir is that even if that's true, it's not an issue that really affects any core component of them as a company and it's 100% fixable with some extra HR spending.

I think the more constructive take-away from a news article like this is to think about what we ourselves do to eliminate bias from our hiring and potentially talk about what works and what doesn't. No one wants or needs us to hire unqualified candidates, but it's undesirable for us to unfairly exclude groups of qualified candidates because of race or any other discriminatory factor, both because of the societal implications and because we end up missing good candidates in a time where good engineers are in incredibly high demand. Like I said, establishing fair hiring practices is a hard problem; it goes a lot further than just trying to "do the right thing" and reaches into a lot of core parts of how we perceive the world. As engineers we constantly try to study and adjust for our imperfect brains' natural tendencies so that we can build more useful products and get more done. Why can't we try to fight bias in the same way?

</comment><comment><USER82> I interviewed for Palantir in 2010 for a QA position. They flew me in from East Coast, and took good care of me. I didn't accepted the offer as I went on to accept a SW position in a different company. I didn't felt like I was biased against.

I'm not sure about Palantir's bias against Asians, but the tone of comments here are surely negative and partially racist. Let me think, if I really meant "racist". May be it is the fear of competition, usually shown by below par individuals, or may be just signs of arrogance.

Either ways, I am N.E.V.E.R. going to apply to companies like Palantir, Theranos, Snap, Reddit, Path, etc. Damage is done. Congrats.

p.s. Throwaway account.

<comment><USER83> You mention a bunch of random companies .. what is the common thread?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Who cares? If the Asians are equally qualified as whites then they are only hurting themselves by excluding them. And they aren't really excluding them. They still hire vastly more Asians than expected by the proportion of general population.

<comment><USER51> > Who cares?

The government, because its a violation of an executive order that applies to all government contracting, and Palantir is a government contractor. (Hence why one of the proposed remedies is cancelling all of Palantir's government contracts and subcontracts, and banning them from future contracting.)

> If the Asians are equally qualified as whites then they are only hurting > themselves by excluding them.

If they are only _equally_ (and not _more_ ) qualified, and they have to narrow the pool anyway to get a manageable pool for later stages of the hiring process, then they actually _aren 't_ hurting themselves, before considering the consequences of enforcement actions like this one.

<comment><USER84> Well obviously the government cares, I'm suggesting that they shouldn't.

And yes technically you are correct. But that assumes they are _exactly_ equal. If you exclude a bunch of people for arbitrary reasons then you necessarily get worse results. Some of the best candidates may be excluded.

<comment><USER51> > Well obviously the government cares, I'm suggesting that they shouldn't.

There may be an argument that the government shouldn't require non- discrimination by government contractors, but I don't think that there is a particularly good argument, that, given the existence of the requirement as a term of every government contract, that the government should not care that a government contractor is just casually disregarding the terms of its contract with the government and expecting to continue to be paid.

> If you exclude a bunch of people for arbitrary reasons then you necessarily > get worse results. Some of the best candidates may be excluded.

Since Palantir is a government contractor, the argument that they would be hurting the quality of work they do (which is valid, just not supported by mere equality of qualifications) is _another_ reason the government _should_ be concerned. Remember, this isn't an enforcement action under general anti- discrimination law, its an enforcement action under the specific rules that apply to government contractors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Very interesting line in the complaint that other companies should take note of:

> "In addition, the majority of Palantir's hires into these positions came > from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians."

Also, the complaint says they tried _twice_ to get Palantir in compliance (starting in late '15) and are only now filing this complaint.

</comment><comment><USER86> This doesn't surprise me, Palantir was funded by the CIA (yay libertarianism eh Thiel?), and as such, is probably suspicious of asian minorities. Remember Wen Ho Lee?

<comment><USER87> Wait, you think libertarians are pro-CIA?

<comment><USER61> I would have guessed not but Theil is certainly classed as libertarian whenever I've heard it discussed, and he is Palantirs major shareholder, and Palantir is a CIA shop. Connection seems pretty clear in this context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Compliance would be a lot fairer and lower-overhead if the government would simply inform businesses of the racial composition they wanted to see, rather than randomly cracking down on firms because particular groups were "only" 4x overrepresented rather than 10x.

<comment><USER51> They aren't cracking down because of the ratio, they cracking down because of allegations of systematic elimination of qualified Asian applications from consideration at various stages in the hiring process. The applicant:hired ratios are among the pieces of evidence supporting the conclusion that discrimination was happening, but aren't the subjects of targets.

<comment><USER88> Right. I am saying that auditing the process is significantly more onerous on all parties than auditing the result, especially when it looks like the jurisprudence around the former is a complete clusterfuck that only exists so the feds can non-transparently and non-equitably mandate the latter anyway.

<comment><USER51> > only exists so the feds can non-transparently and non-equitably mandate the > latter anyway.

This premise is unsupported and, I would argue, completely unsupportable. Though I suppose if you start with the premise that the government is trying to mandate particular outcomes, the enforcement actions they take probably look like the target is capriciously moving, but that's just because the premise is incorrect.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sci-Hub 'Pirate Bay for Science' Security Certs Revoked by Comodo - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-pirate-bay-for-science-security-certs-revoked-by-comodo-ca-180503/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't this move seem like it breaches some kind of ethical and moral guidelines?

It's putting the safety of users at risk just because of a litigation.

I find it akin to denying health checks to a patient that could have a highly contagious disease which puts everyone coming in contact at risk.

<comment><USER3> >"In response to a court order against Sci-Hub, Comodo CA has revoked four certificates for the site"

I think they have more pressing concerns than ethics and morals. I'm not saying I agree btw. I think it's precisely moves like this that will undermine the concept of security certificates entirely, to the point where no one will concern themselves with a site having a legit CA certificate or not. Similar to how cryptocurrency is undermining our precepts of fiat currency. People will start to feel at some point that it matters more that there _is_ a secure channel to the site they're using than the certificate authority who tells you whether that site is legit.

<comment><USER4> But without a CA, the current SSL system (which I agree sucks) does not actually offer much security: your "secure channel" can be trivially man-in- the-middle'd.

<comment><USER3> I thought we were all using TLS..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The ultimate strike is still in the making - if you work on university on a paper and cite another paper- and that university has not subscription to the original publication- then its only some crooked steps towards implicating unreachable sources as pirated.

<comment><USER6> Most universities have interlibrary loan departments to obtain items outside of the university's holdings. This route would be slower, but it is legal and I suspect a publisher would have a hard time proving in court that someone downloaded an article on Sci-Hub rather than used their interlibrary loan service. Maybe they could get the interlibrary loan request records and check that, but I do not suspect libraries would hand those records out without good reason. And I think that is far more effort than your average publisher would be willing to put in.

Plus, as the other commenter said, citing a paper unfortunately does not mean that someone has a copy of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> DANE in DNSSEC would solve that. Unfortunately no major browser supports it.</comment>


Y Combinator's New Head - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/03/18/y-combinators-new-head-startup-whisperer-sam-altman-is-quite-a-talker/ <comment><USER2> No disrespect to Sam in any way -- he truly seems like a brilliant guy with a chorus of influential people behind him -- but I've been on a successful- person wikipedia binge as of late, and it's become very, very clear that a person's upbringing almost determines whether or not they're going to be successfull, which saddens me. I grew up to some very close-minded parents who severely limited my growth, forced me to fulfill their every wish, I couldn't get into a top school, and yet I've always held onto a bit of hope that maybe one day I'll be as great or as brilliant or intelligent as Sam et al. But that hope is quickly vanishing the more and more I read about these individuals' backgrounds. Successful parents (who were likely encouraging, supportive, and open-minded), great schools, achievements at early ages, etc, all seem to be a common thread, and trying to kickstart things again past your formative years seems futile. I don't mean to rant or derail the topic, and apologies if I do.

<comment><USER3> From this week's "Corner Office" in the NYT, about hiring:

 _What I'm mainly listening for is: Does this person believe things are happening for them, for a positive reason, regardless of what actually happened? Or do they believe that things are happening to them and against them? Do they hold a grudge against events, or do they believe they were a gift?

I'll listen for whether they say things like, "I'm so glad that actually happened, because I learned this and this." Or do they believe that there's sort of a conspiracy out to harm them? Because if you work for me, you're either going to think I'm here to help you, regardless of what I do, or you're going to think I'm here to get you. I really don't want the latter._

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/shawn-jenkins- of-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/shawn-jenkins-of- benefitfocus-a-ceo-is-like-a-flight-instructor.html)

<comment><USER4> Good advice. Treat an interview like a advertisement for yourself, not a counseling session

Interviewer: "Why are you looking to leave company X?"

"I'm so glad I was hired by X, because its a great company and I know what to look for now in other great companies out there"

or

"It's a toxic work environment, and my manager knows nothing"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given all this over-the-top fawning from Graham, Thiel, etc, one thing comes to mind: "Where's the beef?"

AFAIK, he only has one failed startup to his name, and yet he is hailed as a shrewd thinker and top startup strategist.

For those who know and respect Sam, how would you reconcile his amazing status/respect-from-top-people with his lack of concrete achievements?

<comment><USER6> I respect Sam a lot. I had the good fortune of meeting with him a few times and he invested in my company. I found him to be very smart, honest, and real. If I had to capture one of his strengths, I'd say he understands how systems operate (technology, people, and cultural systems).

I'd have to disagree with you on lack of concrete achievements. He has a lot of concrete achievements that you can point to. Starting and selling a company that was before its time. Also, helping many startups succeed. Either one of these alone would count, in my book, as being significant. I think the fact that other people perceive him so positively is a good indication that perhaps he is considerably more talented than even his current concrete achievements suggest. Think about it. Thiel, Graham, etc. These guys evaluate the best of the best on a regular basis. Having been through YC and seeing the deliberate and enormous amount of analysis that they put into each founder, I can't even begin to think through all the thought that they have put into asking Sam to be President of YC.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure he's a remarkable person, but not so sure about the examples you give as concrete achievements. First, I would not consider Loopt a success. Second, can you give examples of startups he helped succeed?

There is a saying to the effect of "If your financial advisor is so great, where is his yacht?"

Similarly, how can a person be a great startup advisor without significant successes under his belt? If he is that good at strategy and finding product/market fit, why doesn't he apply these skills to his own ideas?

The basic lesson out of this may be that, even if you are a remarkable person, and have great insights and great strategic skills, finding success in the startup world has such a big element of luck and "being in the right place at the right time" that a lot of remarkable people never find success with any startups they start.

<comment><USER7> I think your conclusion is probably right on. You can do everything right and still fail in the startup world, because there's a large element of luck. In Sam/Loopt's case, I'm almost certain they were early - FourSquare/Latitude/Facebook-Check-Ins did okay just 4 years later. But then, didn't someone once say "Early is wrong as far as startups go." Perhaps that means you shouldn't listen to sama's advice on market-timing, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to his advice on the other aspects of startups.

The more heartening way of looking at your conclusion is that if you do everything right - don't screw anyone over, take calculated prudent risks, seek out information, make sane decisions, and work hard - and if you make that visible to people, you can usually soft-land even if your startup fails. That was my experience with my own failed startup - once I folded it up and wrote a postmortem, I had a large number of job offers, and took one at Google. People judge you based on what _you_ do, not for things out of your control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "It's remarkable when somebody is both extroverted and smart,"

> "Picture a smart person," said Graham. "You don't imagine somebody who is > really good at talking to people, you picture someone really awkward."

This statement seems really weird to me. Looking at all the people I've known in my life the smartest people, at least in in terms of academic and financial achievements, are the extroverts.

Extroverted and smart seems to be a very common trait. Hell I'd say that its much easier to be smart if you are extroverted as learning from other peoples experiences is a great way to learn more.

Who is Paul hanging around with that smart is paired with awkward more than outgoing?

I'd have to go to Hollywood movies to find the stereotypical nerd profile.

<comment><USER9> Oh I don't know where we even get that stereotype from. Oh wait, I do, because Albert Einstein was an introvert and preferred to be alone. More recent examples: Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak.

<comment><USER10> I think there are just as many examples of world-class smart people on the other end of the outgoing/charismatic curve: Von Neumann, Feynman, Bohr, Russell, Hilbert off the top of my head.

<comment><USER11> Or is it possible that we _know_ about those world-class smart people _because_ they're outgoing/charismatic? ie. perhaps listing off names of smart people we can think of who are/aren't outgoing/charismatic is maybe not the best way of determining any statistical inference whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"You know how when you hit a tennis ball, it bounces back up and then simultaneously you swing the racket? YC is just getting to this point," he added. "If you think [my role] is an influential position now, just wait a couple years and see what Sam does."_

No, i don't know. Actually I have no idea what this analogy was supposed to mean, but I am very optimistic about how YC can innovate itself with Sam as president.

I really liked the university concept, with YC as a place that creates knowledge and innovation for the society. I imagine YC being less about a tough funnel that leads to big hits on monetary valuations and more of a innovation powerhouse on different fields (not just different markets).

Best of luck to Sam.

<comment><USER13> I think, this is just a guess, he's referring to when a person lobs the ball over the net to you and it hits the ground first before coming back up; you have to time your stroke perfectly to hit it back or risk missing the ball on the come-up. [1] So it's my belief that he's saying YC has been rising all this time, and with the right swing of the racket, they will hit it out of the park (tennis court?). Needless to say it's a confusing analogy. :)

Anywho congratulations to Sam, I can't wait to see what he does!

[1] [http://youtu.be/MaN98ZkGXSs?t=4s](http://youtu.be/MaN98ZkGXSs?t=4s) : The first few seconds of this video might help visualize it.

<comment><USER14> Yep, it's called a half volley, you need to hit when you are too close to the ball. So., you need to swing the racquet forward even while it's bouncing, as opposed to a later swing in case of a regular length ball.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Picture a smart person," said Graham. "You don't imagine somebody who is really good at talking to people, you picture someone really awkward."

I don't at all, in fact I find that kind of thinking highly insulting. Being a smart person in my experience is often _highly correlated_ with being able to effectively communicate and discuss with others.

<comment><USER16> I don't think there is a correlation between them. Rather, I think that if there are two people who have the same level of intelligence, the one who is a better communicator (and this is more often a trait found in extroverts) comes across as smarter because they can transmit their ideas better.

<comment><USER17> Contrary view, based on research:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/10/us-usa- investment-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/10/us-usa-investment- study-idUSBREA291PP20140310)

[http://phys.org/news/2014-03-investors-good-looking-male- ent...](http://phys.org/news/2014-03-investors-good-looking-male- entrepreneurial-ventures.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "I learned this great lesson of my life," he said. "The way to get things > done is to just be really f __ __*g persistent. … I had this philosophy of > going to every door and every window."

Nothing more true than that.

Really excited to see where Sam takes things; he's super smart and very inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER19> I had no idea Sam was gay. That was the most interesting part of the story, and also that I never knew before.

<comment><USER20> I also didn't know, but I am curious why you find his sexuality more interesting than anything else in this story?

<comment><USER21> Being gay, I also found it particularly interesting. Akin to the Female Founders Conference, it's energizing to see successful LGBT founders.

<comment><USER22> I'm exactly the same, but don't particularly like it... I do pay lots of attention to who's gay, from celebrities to people I come across personally, and the logical side of my brain tells me it's irrelevant, while the emotional side can't stop caring. (Also gay.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not really of any importance to the article, but:

> _It's not crazy for Sam Altman's phone bill to rack up 6,000 talking minutes > in a month. He talks a lot, to a lot of people._

Maybe 6000 is above average, but is it even close to 'crazy' for anyone? That's only 3.3 hours a day, I probably hit that on week days for work alone (sure plenty of people will have jobs where less phone calls are needed), and with family and friends (several who I'll have regular long chats with, rather than just 30 second calls) I think I definitely go above 6000 a month, and I don't consider myself a massively heavy phone user.

<comment><USER23> Do you work in sales? What do you spend so much time on the phone for? I spend ~1 hr a week on the phone and it's all to my family.

<comment><USER22> I don't work in sales, but in marketing - probably 70% of my work calls would be to colleagues/clients, the rest to external people (e.g. Companies we spend marketing $ with).

For example, off the top of my head I have 8 hours of normally-scheduled conference calls (before anything ad-hoc) with my main client each week - they're a big company, the people I work with there are based in offices in England, Ireland (2 locations), Holland, France (2)... and then less frequent contact with other offices in the US (mainly) and random regional offices occasionally such as Sweden and Greece in the last couple of weeks. Phone calls are really pretty important in terms of what we do with each other. (I also travel around Europe a fair bit, but that doesn't make up for day to day communications).

But I also spend a fair bit of time talking to friends and family too, I guess that's partly due to needs (I don't have long calls with people who live down the road from me) and partly just a personal preference thing (also use Skype, SMS and email, which and how much of which depends on the person).

<comment><USER24> I may have spent an hour on phone/facetime/skype/whatever calls in the past two months. Half of that to my credit card company assuring them that yes, I really am the one using my credit card in Taiwan, and the other half with family.

That's an abnormally large amount of time for me. Usually I can go days or weeks between phone calls, and when they arrive, they're nobody I want to talk to. They're almost never work related unless something has gone horribly, horribly wrong in production, and even then I try hard to get whoever I'm talking to off the damn phone quickly so I can focus on the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sam's Cool!

I had the privilege of listening to him , when he was on the east cost in school once to promote YC. A lot of people who have been a part of successful startups (founders , VC's , angels) have this obnoxious vibe that they give out , esp if they're from the valley.

(Which understandably is important and helps them with whatever they have going on , however it was refreshing to see humility in the Now YC president.)

I remember distinctly , he gave his talk where he introduced YC and then talked about what they look for in the founding team etc and then gave the stage to YC alums who accompanied him. One of these guys exhibited the "vibe" I mentioned earlier . My friends and I thought he must be really successful and were contemplating talking to him later to get advice.

He unfortunately didn't know how to work his way around a projector. everyone (students , prof , and of course our YC guests were waiting for him to start). A prof normally would use that as example and tell us that that the projectors , need to be more usable.

Sam got up to help the guy up from a slightly embarrassing situation. but what happened next was odd ,(The YC alum) didn't even acknowledge it or say thanks . He rudely just went to the middle and started talking , rather bragging about how awesome his company was. (which is fine ) but it came across as a silly TV commercial. We decided we didn't want advice from an obnoxious person.

This probably doesn't sound like a logical reason to be affinitve of the new YC president but that day I thought he demonstrates qualities of a good leader .

Good luck to him and YC

</comment><comment><USER26> Most interesting thing for me was that Sam is going to go out and meet biotech people... gives me hope that YC understands the convergence that is happening between web technologies and biotechnologies... guess it's time for www.glowingplant.com to apply to YC!

</comment><comment><USER27> I wasn't there for the WWDC 2008 presentation, but in the article's linked snippet Altman's collars are definitely not popped. Google images has plenty of reference images for properly popped collars, reassuringly framed as motivational posters.

</comment><comment><USER23> There are hundreds of people he talks to on a daily basis? How?

</comment><comment><USER28> great story: _"I think I went to sleep at four, I slept till six, I got on a flight at seven to Orange County where Boost was. And I just got to that office and sat there, and the guy was like, 'Weird, you're in my office.' I said, 'Just meet me for 10 minutes, and let me know what you think.' He said no a few times, but I showed it to him, and I could tell he was really impressed."_

</comment><comment><USER29> He bares a striking resemblance to PG.</comment>


How to watch the 2012 London Olympics online in the US: have an offline option - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/27/3193253/how-to-watch-2012-london-olympics-US <comment><USER2> Requiring cable subscriptions to watch has only resulted in my not watching any of the last three or four Olympics.</comment>


Why Palm's WebOS 'Media Sync' iTunes Integration Can't Be Legit - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2009/06/webos_itunes_integration

<comment><USER3> I remember when Real was advertising their iPod Compatible DRM. About 4 months later, Apple upgraded the iPod firmware and that was the end of that - <USER2> Real offered no upgrade path to make your music iPod compatible other than ripping to CD and back.

This will be a mistake that will make their product look unreliable. It's one thing to hook into a system where the company is doing nothing to help you, but also isn't actively trying to hinder you. Apple will hinder them.

There's even one easy way. The way that Palm is doing this is by having the Pre tell iTunes that it's an iPod that doesn't udnerstand FairPlay DRM and, therefore, iTunes should sync all of the non-DRM'd music with the Pre. However, there is no iPod or iPhone that doesn't understand FairPlay. So, Apple can simply update iTunes to eliminate that backdoor. Yeah, then Palm can just throw away the tracks it can't play. And then Apple can fool them some more.

I'm not saying it's righteous. Apple likes you to be 100% in their ecosystem and not play so nicely with others. However, it's hard to reverse-engineer a protocol that can be changed at any time. Sure, you can break DVDs, but that's because you can't replace every DVD player in the world that's already been sold. Apple can break compatibility with software updates.

Palm has created what looks like the best iPhone competitor to date. Clean, polished, and very Apple-like. And this just isn't a smart plan. It's a hack and won't be a reliable one and that will make the device look second-rate in a way that it doesn't have to.

<comment><USER4> _It's a hack and won't be a reliable one and that will make the device look second-rate in a way that it doesn't have to._

If Apple wants to break this, they will also have to break all of their own (unpatched) iPods. I doubt they will do that, so this "hack" will probably end up working pretty well.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's only true if (a) Palm did a perfect job of making their device indistinguishable from an iPod _in the configuration presented to iTunes_ AND (b) Apple never saw this coming and didn't landmine the iPod/iTunes link.

It's definitely a tightrope walk. This exact arms race has occurred many times in the past, and I can't think of a single instance where the adversary didn't make at least one mistake.

<comment><USER5> This is an arms race that Palm can win, though. If Apple finds a way to detect it, Palm can release an update to make it work again. At some point, Palm will end up with an implementation indistinguishable in every way from an existing iPod. If they've already done that, then the game is already over. If they haven't, it might take only one more iteration.

<comment><USER6> Pushing out iTunes updates may be faster and more efficient than pushing out Pre updates (esp since those may be affecting the firmware itself).

Still, if Palm is advertising this as a feature of the Pre, then they must be fairly confident that it won't break.

<comment><USER7> Updating the Pre may actually be easier. The thing's a cell phone, so it's always connected. If they planned for it, they could have isolated the iPod facade code and made it easily updatable over the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am confused as to how masquerading as an iPod is not legit. It's effective, and legal under US law:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galoob_v._Nintendo>

(This might not be the case I am looking for. I am thinking of one where the use of the trademarked word "Nintendo" was required to interoperate with some Nintendo system. The court ruled, IIRC, that this was legal even though Nintendo was Nintendo's trademark. I think identifying as an iPod is the same sort of situation. It would be illegal to sell the Pre labeled as an iPod, but it _is_ legal to lie to iTunes in order to interoperate with it.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good point. Totally forgot about Galoob.

<http://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It can totally be legit.

1) Is pretending to be a different device ID copyright infringement? Probably not? Patent infringement? Probably not? Violation of the DMCA? Since it's not even touching encrypted tracks.... Probably not?

2) iPod syncing has been fairly well documented and reversed engineered on Linux clients. It's entirely possible Palm used this code to protect their former Apple engineers.

Legally if Apple wants to fight this they are begging for anti-trust litigation IMO. If not in the US, definitely in the EU. They should be smart and just accept they got out played by Palm on this.

<comment><AUTHOR> He's using the word "legit" where maybe the word "sanctioned" is closer to his intent.

Also, even if Apple is destined to lose the suit, there's enough grey area here that they could surely get it into court. There's a legal backstory here with ex-iPod developers on the Pre team, and so there's a ton of discovery Apple could throw Palm's way. And if Palm took any shortcuts at all, that could be the end of Palm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm in agreement with the article, but I think it's more of a way to leverage a bit more publicity for the Pre. It can go both ways:

1) Apple does nothing and Pre makes it a selling point, or

2) Apple sues them and Palm makes themselves the victim, crying for equal rights for all media devices under iTunes. Palm gets publicity as the underdog, and Apple is the big bad Death Star.

At best, Palm capitalizes on the anti-Apple sentiment out there. At worst...the Pre loses syncing?

<comment><USER10> 3) Apple changes iTunes so it does not work.

<comment><USER9> Right, and just like in #2 all the existing Pre users cry all over the internet claiming Apple took away their right to enjoy their music using iTunes.

I'm also wondering if enough complaining could grab the attention of the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of the discussion seems to surround the way the Pre interfaces with iTunes, mainly in regard to how Apple could and might update their software to close the hole, under the assumption that Apple actively wants to block the Pre.

However, it's possible that Apple doesn't mind that the Pre interfaces with iTunes. After all, the iTunes music store has been facing recent pressure from Amazon and other companies trying to tap into the online music/video market, and customers are more likely to choose or stay with iTunes if they don't feel as though they're locked into the Apple ecosystem.

Also, there's the non-insignificant legal matter of leveraging their music store business in an attempt to dominate the personal player market, which can be considered anti-competitive. If Apple does decide to go down the path of blocking devices access to customers iTunes libraries, they will definitely have to tread carefully.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how many pre owners will rely on that feature. I am buying one this weekend (I hope) and I don't have iTunes on my pc. The iTunes experience on windows is extremely annoying to me and will probably just use explorer to move tracks I buy.

I think I would overall use Pandora and streaming more with that phone than as a straight mp3 player.

</comment><comment><USER13> either that or its legit. It is not impossible that Apple sees value in allowing other devices to seamlessly sync content they sell. I guess in another week we'll know either way.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you read the article, you observe that Pre's show up in iTunes as iPods. Whatever Apple may think of being the center of the media sync ecosystem, they're certainly not playing loose with their brand.

<comment><USER14> Though to be fair I'm sure Palm would love for a Pre logo to come up, but Apple doesn't make that possible. The only way it can work is by looking like an iPod.</comment></comment></comment>


Star Citizen's client will be a 100 GB download - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/12/8198615/star-citizens-client-will-be-a-100gb-download

<comment><USER2> That would be a ~70 hour download through my rural UK broadband connection! It would be quicker for me to fly to the USA, visit the devs in person and ask them to copy it to an external drive.

I understand why games are getting bigger, but there are going to be accessibility issues for a lot of people. I am often reluctant to tie up my family broadband connection for hours on end to download a big game. I find myself choosing small indie titles instead simply because they are more convenient to download.

<comment><USER3> It would be quicker still to go to their Manchester office and get a copy from there! (Plus I believe they plan to have boxed copies when it comes out.) CIG now have offices in Manchester (aka Foundry 42); Germany (made up of many former Crytek employees); Austin, TX; Santa Monica, CA. They also use third- party studios in Montréal (Turbulent) and Denver, CO (Illfonic, formerly known to the community as [REDACTED]), as well as Moon Collider, who write the AI middleware Kythera. Plus various 3D artists who do contract work for the project. I think they're past 300 people working on it, including people who aren't directly employed by CIG.

This is quite possibly the most ambitious game project in history. It's got a team to match. And a total filesize!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not going to be surprised if it's over that - compression included.

What does surprise me is that people find the natural progression of data required for a game surprising.... We've recently had the push by manufacturers to get consumers interested in 4K and 8K displays. Sure, GPUs will need to catch up, but it is expected that game designers will be supporting 4K, 8K and 16K textures IMHO.

Edit: I'm looking forward to the game! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I just saw the gameplay of it and I am impressed! That's really justified the size - the details are just amazing!

Check out the gameplay here: [https://youtu.be/u9ishNVyV4k](https://youtu.be/u9ishNVyV4k)</comment>