A challenging decade for utilities

Over the last ten years, changes in the power sector have challenged the stability and safety of the electrical grid. A few major changes include:

• The shifting mix of production technologies. A fall in the cost of renewables, pressure to meet the climate crisis, and political and investor decisions about coal and nuclear are all impacting grid stability and the cost of management.
• Changing patterns of demand. Trends including electric vehicle ownership, distributed generation, and smart meter enabled services (e.g., time-of-day pricing) are introducing new patterns of demand.
• An unpredictable climate. Volatile events like floods and hurricanes damage infrastructure, while…

Containerized infrastructure has become an industry-wide trend as engineering teams lean on the likes of Docker or Kubernetes to manage, deploy, and scale their environments; here, Palantir is no exception. We built Rubix, Palantir’s Kubernetes infrastructure, with two primary goals in mind: streamlining and scaling the deployment of our software platforms and strengthening our security posture.

In this blog post, Palantir’s Information Security (InfoSec) team will share our recent experience using Cilium: an open-source project by Isovalent dedicated to securing container-based infrastructure, enabling visibility & controls preferable to those of a traditional firewall. Using Cilium as a basis for network…

Hier antworten wir auf einige Mythen und Missverständnisse rund um unser Unternehmen.

Oft wird Palantir als geheimnisvolles Unternehmen beschrieben. Ganz falsch ist das nicht. Tatsächlich haben wir viele Jahre vor allem für Organisationen im Bereich der Sicherheitsdienste und der Landes- und Bündnisverteidigung gearbeitet. Auf diesem Gebiet ist Vertraulichkeit entscheidend. Wir konnten uns also oft nicht öffentlich zu unserer Arbeit äußern, sogar wenn missverständlich oder gar falsch über uns berichtet wurde.

Mittlerweile sind wir jedoch an der Börse notiert und arbeiten für Kunden aus einem wesentlich breiteren Spektrum. Das gibt uns die Möglichkeit, unsere Tätigkeit offener und transparenter darzustellen. Die nun…

Editor’s note: This is the third post in a series by a Palantir Software Engineer on optimizing git’s merge and rename detection machinery. Click to read the first and second posts.

This is the third in a series of blog posts on scaling git’s merge and rename detection machinery. In particular, the first also included some background information on how the merge machinery works, how we use git at Palantir, and why I have worked on optimizing and rewriting it. The background information from the first post in this series will be critical to understanding this post. So, if you’re…

Editor’s Note: As we embark on a second summer of remote work, we’re publishing posts about remote life at Palantir. Click to read Julio’s story for a deep-dive into one intern’s experience and lessons learned.

When COVID-19 forced the world into quarantine during March 2020, the Palantir intern team was in the midst of planning our annual internship program. As the pandemic grew worse and working from home progressed from two weeks to four weeks, we knew we had to pivot our program — quickly. …

Editor’s Note: As we embark on a second summer of remote work, we’re publishing posts about remote life at Palantir. Click to explore tips on the remote experience from 2020 interns and new grads.

In fall 2019, it was early in my second year at Stanford, and I didn’t really know what a software job would look like. I was eager to find a software-related internship to learn more. …

In 2020, organizations in every sector set or strengthened net zero targets. Manufacturers plan to minimize non-renewable materials along complex supply chains; financial services firms aim to align their portfolios with sustainable investment practices; and governments have put budgets towards a green recovery from the pandemic.

Multi-decade net zero goals are laudable, but they need to be backed up with credible decarbonization pathways. In 2021, the challenge is to align long term goals with day-to-day operations. Decarbonization requires fundamental changes. …

A browser extension to enforce password hygiene

In an effort to bolster Palantir’s password hygiene, our Information Security team, with deep collaboration from our friends at SpecterOps, sought to create a solution for detecting password reuse even when endpoints aren’t in-scope for detection via network telemetry. This became doubly urgent with COVID-19 and the shift to remote work for the vast majority of our employees. For example, many Palantirians simply don’t have the necessary network or bandwidth to use a full-tunnel VPN. …