It's funny, because every time someone posts a news article about Palantir, this is the top comment. And every time, the replies to that comment do a pretty good job describing what it is they do:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10715856

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9942606

It was helpful to read their own description:

https://www.palantir.com/2007/12/what-do-we-do/

But, for me, it was even more helpful to look at their patents:

http://patents.justia.com/assignee/palantir-technologies

A patent for a long left-click to show a context menu when the right mouse button for some reason isn't available? Sheesh. Some of these are enough to turn anyone into an anti-software-patent crusader.

Maybe I'm not remembering it right, but when macs had one button only and no fancy trackpads, you could hold it to do a right click (you could also just ctrl+click)