Palantir misused medical data for arrests.
Also, the company phone is now hardware-locked to prevent you from using a better calendar app.

The Inter-Departmental Health Audit That Went Off-Script

Palantir, the software company built like a spooky castle, appears to have mixed up the departmental spreadsheets again. A new report shows that the company's Vantage tool, used by ICE, is pulling data from state-level Medicaid systems. It is one of those situations where the new employee was told to organize all the files, and they just dumped the confidential personnel records into the general litigation folder. The system is designed to help with enforcement, but pulling in public health data, meant to assist low-income people, makes it look like the security guard is cross-referencing who took too many pain relievers from the first aid kit against the list of people who are late on their TPS reports.

Palantir likely views this as a feature, not a bug, since the stated goal is always "data integration," which sounds great until the company learns your grandmother’s health issues and uses that knowledge to find her. The sheer scale of the "oopsie" required multiple government agencies to cross the data streams. Someone needs to remind everyone involved that a public service is not just an elaborate database waiting to be weaponized for petty office politics.

The Management Whitepaper That Was Actually Just A Misplaced Comma

Management science, the field dedicated to explaining why your boss keeps having meetings, has been built on a surprisingly flimsy foundation. A paper with a critical conceptual flaw has been cited over six thousand times, meaning half a decade of doctoral students were asked to replicate a mistake that, in retrospect, was quite obvious. This is the academic equivalent of an entire global supply chain based on a typo in the original Bill of Lading; the resulting organizational structures are technically functional, but they are built on a conceptual error.

The issue is not that the original paper by Professor Anil King was flawed; the issue is that six thousand people read it, decided it was brilliant, and then used it to justify their entire corporate structure, without anyone checking the math. It just proves that the core of business is not innovation or strategy; it is simply the meticulous, dedicated replication of someone else’s mistake. The management consultants who used the resulting data are probably already booking follow-up meetings to discuss the "unexpected organizational debt" this error created.

Deutsche Telekom’s Network Budgeting Mishap

Deutsche Telekom, in a bold move that redefines customer service, is throttling the internet traffic of its customers. The company is framing this as "network capacity management," which is the corporate euphemism for "we did not buy enough hard drives and now we are worried about the quarterly budget." In practice, this means high-bandwidth things like streaming or gaming are going to slow down exactly when everyone gets home from the office, turning 4K video into the kind of pixelated mess we enjoyed back in the late 90s.

The German telecom is essentially making the experience of using the modern internet feel like being stuck in a poorly managed Zoom meeting where everyone is talking over each other. It is a predictable outcome when a company prioritizes short-term cost savings over long-term infrastructure. Someone needs to remind them that the goal of a utility is to provide the utility, not to make the experience feel like mandatory network maintenance at 7 PM.

Briefs

• Back to the 90s: Microsoft issued a second emergency out of band update for Windows 11 to fix the disastrous bugs created by the first update. The update cycle is now fully recursive and self-sustaining; the only goal is to fix the previous fix.
• Sit Up Straight: A new macOS app blurs your screen when you slouch, which is a perfect symbol for the tech industry's obsession with weaponizing guilt for minor productivity gains. Your computer is now your mother.
• OnePlus Security: The latest OnePlus phone update introduces hardware anti-rollback, ensuring that once you have the new buggy software, you are structurally forbidden from going back to the old, less-buggy software. This is called "planned retention."