Palantir CEO Alex Karp gives $180k to ousted hermit River Dave

You even used quotes to make it look like you were quoting someone when you weren't, which is a trope of degraded discussion in its own right.

Thoughtful critique is welcome on HN. That requires substantive engagement with something somebody actually said. It also requires some meaningful relationship to the topic. I didn't see that here, nor any actual information.

By 'fulminating' I suppose I mean the high-indignation-low-information style of internet commenting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

One thing you might find helpful for understanding what's good vs. bad to post to HN—at least I have found it helpful—is the distinction between reflexive and reflective posts: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... Your GP comment struck me as reflexive. It basically seems to hop along a chain of reflexes like this: rich person -> rage -> other rich person -> rage.

Another point I orient by is that HN threads get less interesting and valuable as they get more generic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), and especially as they get more generic+indignant. To me your GP comment seemed like a sharp move in those directions, which is always a move towards threads getting worse and more predictable. Keep in mind that the issue is not just the value of a comment individually but the expected value of the subthread it is likely to lead to: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....

I hope that helps explain things a bit and isn't too much of a downer. I appreciate the question and your intention to understand. I also agree that there are reasonable critiques to be made about "billionaire donates to soup kitchen" stories (if that's what this was). But not by fulminating, and especially not on classic flamewar topics.

> “That was not an official contract between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica, but there were Palantir staff that would come into the office and work on that data,” Wylie told lawmakers. He added that Palantir staff “helped build the models we were working on.”

Right.

Social norms change and then older people are sometimes treated like their assumptions are crazy talk rather than totally normal assumptions from their childhood when what they are doing now wasn't some freakish, weirdo, "you must be an abusive criminal type" back then.

I think it's worth remembering that the US mores about property as enshrined the Constitution were a) meant to protect against landed aristocrats' forcible expansions of their estate, and b) codified at a time when the first Americans had colonized one relatively small corner of a continent that seemed vast beyond the imagination, and the acme of mechanization/industrial production was the water wheel.

> Further, the claimant must possess the land adversely to the actual owner. This means that the adverse possessor cannot be occupying the land with the permission of the owner.

Dave claims that he was given permission to occupy the land by a previous owner, which can complicate matters here. If the current owner took possession more than 20 years ago and insists that permission was not granted, then Dave wins. If they took possession less than 20 years ago, then Dave hasn't been there without permission for long enough, unless there's some duty to inform. Given that the legal dispute started in 2016 the window probably isn't even 27 years: more like 21. And without documentation to establish that he was actually there 27 years ago, it's not looking good for Dave here

And ironically, for someone like Karp, giving anonymously might engender worse speculation if found out.