just READ THIS.

"So how does a sophisticated data intelligence company respond to well-sourced investigative journalism based on official government documents?

By suing the journalists, of course.

But here’s the thing that makes this even more absurd: Palantir isn’t even claiming the articles are false. The company isn’t suing for defamation. It isn’t seeking damages. Instead, it’s invoking a Swiss “right of reply” statute, alleging that Republik didn’t give the company a sufficient opportunity to respond. Palantir wants the court to force the magazine to publish lengthy counter-statements to each article.

(....)

Now, thanks to the lawsuit, the story has gone international. The Financial Times is covering it. The European Federation of Journalists is covering it. A UK member of parliament has already cited the Republik investigation during a debate on British defense contracts with Palantir, using the story to suggest that the British government “pivot away” from Palantir.

The Republik investigation itself is genuinely worth reading, and not just because Palantir desperately doesn’t want you to.

It paints a picture of a company that spent seven years working every angle to get Swiss federal agencies to buy its products—approaching the Federal Chancellery during COVID, pitching the Federal Office of Public Health on contact tracing, presenting anti-money laundering software to financial regulators, making repeated runs at the military—and getting turned away at every door. Sometimes embarrassingly, such as the Federal Statistical Office director apparently just ignoring Palantir’s outreach entirely.

For a company that brags about its ability to “optimize the kill chain” and whose CEO once told investors that “Palantir is here to disrupt… and, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and occasionally kill them,” getting politely rejected by the Swiss statistical office has to sting a little.

But suing the journalists who reported on it? When the entire basis of your lawsuit is “we want you to publish our talking points” rather than “anything you published was wrong,” it makes pretty clear you don’t actually have a substantive response to the reporting. If Palantir thinks the picture is false, the remedy is to demonstrate that the documents are wrong—not to drag a small magazine through expensive litigation until it capitulates or goes broke."

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/27/palantir-sues-swiss-magazine-for-accurately-reporting-that-the-swiss-government-didnt-want-palantir/

Hey Unix history nerds:

Do we know who wrote tar(1)? Like, the original tar.c included in V7 Research Unix (which is the earliest one I can find). The list of potential culprits is pretty short, but there's no attribution I can find.

(If you have an answer, please clarify where you got it from, and reference any contemporaneous/primary sources if you've got them.)

Magnificent.

https://alignmentalignment.ai/

After seven years of bhyve developer come Production User Calls, I am giving Patreon a try to help cover costs:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/celebrating-of-138645307

Thank you everyone who has requested this!

the saga of moving the #univac 418 continues...

#retrocomputing #mainframemonday #retrocomputer #mainframes #forklift #museum #computers #computing #technology #tech

The European Commission has issued a survey on the Governance and Sustainability of Critical Open Source Software.

The survey hopes to identify "pathways for collective efforts" and make "actionable recommendations for public administrations".

It's a relatively short survey, takes max 15 minutes & provides lots of opportunities to rate FOSS as 'very important' 😛

https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/FOSSEPS_Governance_and_Sustainability_Survey

#FOSS #governance #NGI #NGI0