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Comment by morkalork | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: she coined the word Ansible. I had no idea until reading one of her books recently and thinking "Ansible? Like the software?"

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I always thought it was Card who invented it for Ender's Game. (He borrowed it)

Thanks for the fun fact!

No he cribbed that from the Hainish Cycle and kept the mechanism. Just read that last summer and was whaaaaat.

Silicon Valley loves to mine the fantasy and science fiction genre for their company names. At least the ansible is a generally neutral device (with some crummy side effects, as discussed in Le Guin stories) whereas naming something "Palantir" is to miss the whole damn point.

"Far-seeing, but dangerously corrupted" fits either Palantir quite well.

Palantir is an excellent, AMAZING name for that company. It screams "we spy on people around the world: their pasts, their present, their very thoughts. We serve corrupt powers that pretend to be pure and good. We are a tool to enable the strong to dominate the weak. The data we produce will be misinterpreted to disastrous results."

I dont know if Thiel intended to convey that, but it's exactly the same name that I would've picked for that company.

One day soon we will lose our fucking minds and start attacking former friends and allies.

"Hans... are we the baddies?"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY

Palantir: peer into it hard enough, and the Dark Lord will look back at you.

Yeah, it fits.

not just the software, it caught on as a reasonably standard term for an instantaneous communication device, and a bunch of other SF works used it in tribute to le guin

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