Hacker News Reader

Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

> Human Rights Foundation ... “AI for Individual Rights” program

That sounds quite dodgy. Ladybird doesn't have AI, why would such a program support its development?

But even before that: "Human Rights Foundation" sounds like "The Human League" which George makes up in Seinfeld as a fake charity. And promoting AI as a "human right" is quite suspicious. If I had to, I might be that this is something backed by one of the corporations burning through Billions of dollars and Gigawatt-hours on LLMs.

Looking at their annual report summaries and their huge staff, my guess slants a bit towards either bodies like the CIA or some ideologically-motivated billionaires (e.g. talk about the "dictator Maduro", focus on Iran etc.)

View on HN

> "The Human League" which George makes up in Seinfeld as a fake charity

It was actually The Human Fund. The Human League is an English pop band, most successful in the 1980s with their hit single "Don't You Want Me".

If you're interested in the program, you can find more details here: https://hrf.org/program/ai-for-individual-rights/ai-for-indi...

They offer grants for "Using AI tools and platforms to more efficiently build movements and resist oppression" in addition to many other things.

From the FAQ in the ladybird front page.

>All sponsorships are in the form of unrestricted donations. Board seats and other forms of influence are not for sale.

i.e. donations explicitly do not buy any say in the project.

There's quite a big difference between "AI for individual rights" and "AI as a human right".

Ladybird has a close relationship with FUTO which is a pretty oddly behaved private for-profit company ran by a bored multi-millionaire.

https://drewdevault.com/blog/Whats-up-with-FUTO/

Didn't realize FUTO was connected to Eron Wolf, which connects to Curtis Yarvin, which connects to Palantir.

Great...

What, do you sincerely believe Palantir is pulling the strings behind Ladybird? What is the accusation here? Everybody can be "connected" in some way or another, but it's meaningless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

4 steps is not so bad

I think it's more a concern about the company one keeps; Ladybird's Andreas Kling has certainly ruffled feathers over the past couple of years by doubling down on anti-inclusionary language takes ("I'm not against gender neutral language, I'm just not going to allow it in my project") and supporting DHH's most douchebaggiest takes.

I understand that not everybody cares about this sort of thing, believing that politics of developers should be irrelevant; I'm personally not going to go around ringing the shame bell at people who use Ladybird (or Rails. But Kling loudly shouting "I support the free speech rights of fascists but get away from me with that DEI shit" doesn't give me warm fuzzies about using Ladybird, either. It's a lot easier to let politics of developers be irrelevant if the developers aren't out there energetically sharing them.

I don't think Palantir is behind Ladybird, I just wish FUTO wasn't connected to Eron Wolf.

They even did a video with Curtis Yarvin on their official channel...

I thought it was more related to Louis Rossmann that's where I learnend from

Louis Rossmann Is directly related to FUTO and has passionately advocated for them.

Ladybird has taken sponsorship money from FUTO and claims publicly that sponsorship provides no influence.

Yeah but in the comments they're naming other people I never heard of

By “close relationship”, I assume you mean that FUTO is a financial sponsor.

Ladybird has been pretty clear that they will accept money from pretty much anybody but that funding will not provide influence.

I mean, they mostly make sure sponsors websites look good in Ladybird but even that seems like a low priority if you watch them.

It's very naive to believe the "no influence" part. I will never give to Ladybird given their closeness with fascists. Is that the kind of influence they expect?

I guess you'll have no influence over Ladybird, then.

Andreas is involved with FUTO's conferences, and given a keynote presentation at one. It's more than just financial.

And Drew Devault, your source, has brazenly deceived HN before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41838124

To be clear, that source is happy to lie about their own identity and run away from basic questions. I'd treat this as another ill-baked cancel campaign unless someone actually credible speaks up

I've never understood that stance because surely the mere threat (even implied) of a sponsor removing thousands in funding would be enough to exert influence on the project.

The sponsor money is used to pay developers to work on Ladybird so a major sponsor pulling out could mean laying off core developers, which the project would obviously be motivated to prevent.

Ha I immediately thought of the Human Fund from Seinfeld. Their fake slogan “money for humans”

>But even before that: "Human Rights Foundation" sounds like

a household name (the HRF), to me

Here’s the CIA billionaire running it (I kid!) but ya HRF’s president: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Halvorssen_(human_rights_...

Unlikely to be USA govt if they’ve defocused soft power activities eh?

It is. Ex-FIRE guy's idea. Avoiding Ladybird like the plague, personally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com