Daily Tech Snippet: Saturday, May 7

• Palantir Struggles to Retain Clients and Staff, BuzzFeed Reports: Palantir Technologies Inc., one of Silicon Valley’s most highly valued private companies, has struggled to retain employees and prominent customers, according to areport by BuzzFeed. In 2015, Palantir generated $420 million in revenue, BuzzFeed reported, citing interviews with former and current employees, as well as more than 1,000 internal e-mails and documents. The secretive big data company spent more than $500 million last year, the report said. A spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Palantir’s bookings, which refer to the value of contracts that typically span many years, exceeded $1 billion in 2014 and continued growing in 2015, a person with knowledge of the matter said last year. BuzzFeed reported Palantir bookings of $1.7 billion in 2015. American Express Co., Coca-Cola Co. and Nasdaq Inc. were among the companies that walked away from contracts with Palantir over the last year or so, BuzzFeed reported. Hershey Co. is reevaluating its relationship with Palantir, and Kimberly-Clark Corp. considered becoming a customer before deciding that Palantir’s high prices were unjustified, the report said. Palantir also counts Axa SA, Bridgewater Associates LP, Credit Suisse Group AG and First Data Corp. among its clients. Its biggest customer is BP Plc, which signed an agreement with Palantir in November 2014 worth $1.2 billion over 10 years, plus bonus payments as determined by executives from both companies, according to BuzzFeed. Employee defections accelerated early this year, and at the current pace, the attrition rate this year would be 20 percent, BuzzFeed reported. The departure rate in 2015 was 14 percent and 12 percent in 2014, the report said.

• Reliance on China health sector raises searching questions for Baidu: The death of a student following experimental cancer treatment he found through China's biggest search engine, Baidu Inc, has exposed the faultlines in the company's business model, which relies heavily on income from the country's lightly regulated health sector. Before his death, student Wei Zexi, 21, criticized the military-run hospital that provided the failed treatment for misleading claims about its effectiveness and accused Baidu, which controls 80 percent of the Chinese search market, of promoting false medical information. Baidu has come in for fierce online criticism for how it handles adverts within its search results, especially from an industry as sensitive as healthcare, which analysts at Nomura and Daiwa say provides 20 to 30 percent of its search revenues. In 2015 search revenues were 55.7 billion yuan ($8.6 billion), or 84 percent of Baidu's total sales. "Whatever page you're looking at on Baidu is a mess of adverts," said username FreedLiu on China's Weibo microblog, discussing Wei. "They're profiting from loads of people who don't know Baidu auctions (its search results)." Baidu said it applied particular vigilance to healthcare customers, with screening for misleading adverts and a verification program with additional scrutiny for medical advertisers. Criticism in several state media outlets this week suggests a hardening attitude in government. "Pursuing profits is not wrong, but putting profits over helpless patients' lives is against any ethical standards," said a column in the official People's Daily on Monday. Any decision by authorities to restrict healthcare advertising could have a material impact on Baidu's earnings, a concern that has contributed to a sharp fall in its shares in the last three sessions. Daiwa said 10-15 percent of Baidu's search revenue could evaporate under a worst-case scenario.Like most search engines, Baidu places paid-for ads in its search results, but in a series of Reuters search tests it included at least twice as many ads as Alphabet Inc's Google, which is blocked in China, and placed them higher in its list. Though Baidu marks such items as promotions, Google also highlights the word "Ad" in a yellow box.

• Apple's Tim Cook to visit China for government meetings - source: Tim Cook plans to visit Beijing later this month to meet high-level government officials, at a time when it is facing some setbacks in its most important overseas market, a source familiar with the matter said. Cook has frequently traveled to China since taking the helm of Apple five years ago, but his latest visit comes during a critical period. From weakening smartphone sales to the loss of an iPhone trademark dispute and the suspension of some of its online entertainment services, the U.S. technology giant has been facing a flurry of problems in recent weeks in its second-largest market after the United States. That has raised concerns over Apple's growth momentum, as the company reported last week its first quarterly revenue drop in 13 years. Last week, billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said in an interview with cable television network CNBC that he had sold his entire stake in Apple, citing China's economic slowdown and worries about whether the government could make it very difficult for Apple to conduct business.During his China visit, Cook plans to meet senior government and Communist Party leaders - including officials in charge of propaganda, said the source, who declined to be named as the plan is not public yet.

• GoPro delays its highly anticipated drone until winter: GoPro announced its first-quarter earnings today, and the details were fairly bleak. It saw its revenue drop by 49.5 percent from the same period in 2015, and it swung from a $22 million profit to a $121 million loss. The company also announced that its new drone, the Karma, will be delayed until the winter holiday. It was originally slated to be released in the first half of this year. The news comes after a disappointing year for GoPro. While the company shipped more cameras than ever before in 2015 (6.6 million), GoPro had a rough fourth quarter, bringing in about $200 million less than it did in the fourth quarter of 2014.

• What 25 hours in virtual reality feels like: A Los Angeles writer set a world record after spending 25 hours playing a single game in virtual reality. Derek Westerman, 32, took on the challenge after trying virtual reality for the first time earlier this year. Westerman was left wondering how long anyone could last in an experience that he considered intense and overwhelming. When Westerman found out there was no world record for time spent in a virtual reality headset, Westerman pitched the stunt to Super Deluxe, a maker of comedic YouTube videos. For the challenge Westerman spent the 25 hours making three-dimensional artwork in a game called Tilt Brush. Each hour Westerman would start a new painting, and shift between standing, sitting down or lying on the floor. Westerman, who ultimately said it was a great experience, hasn’t worn a virtual reality headset since setting the world record a month ago. For 24 hours after the experience Westerman said that everything looked uncanny. Spending a day in virtual reality changed how his brain registered space. Objects in the distance looked odd, as if they weren’t real. Human senses are capable of adapting well to new and different circumstances, according to University of Maryland professor Amitabh Varshney, who leads its virtual reality research efforts. Varshney recalled an experiment in which an Australian professor outfitted his assistant with glasses that inverted his vision, turning the world upside down. While initially confused, before long he was able to perform everyday tasks such as ride a bicycle.