2026-05-17T19:16:31Z https://billhunt.dev/ Bill Hunt hello@billhunt.email All content copyright © Bill Hunt. All rights reserved. 2025-11-12T13:46:51-05:00 2025-11-12T13:46:51-05:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2025/11/12/no-ai-ethical-license/ <p>Lately, I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the open source community, and I no longer believe that open source for open source’s sake is inherently good.</p> <p>In too many cases, critical libraries that <a href="https://xkcd.com/2347/">hold up the entire computing ecosystem</a> are thanklessly supported by unpaid volunteers, while megacorporations profit from this work without contributing anything back. (There’s not a lot that I can do about that.)</p> <p>On the other side of the coin, those corporations use these tools to cause direct harm - supporting war, genocide, hate speech, and other antisocial ends. Our open source code is used to train AI, contributing to mass layoffs while destroying the environment.</p> <p>Open source licenses provide near-unlimited flexiblity for the users of the source code. However, the problem with most licenses is the same Paradox of Tolerance as with free speech absolutism - by allowing any use, it does nothing to prohibit inherently harmful use. <strong>Our work becomes the tools of our own oppression.</strong></p> <p>To help resolve this I’ve created the <a href="https://codeberg.org/krusynth/no-ai-ethical-license">No AI Ethical License</a>, a license for the ethical use of source code. Rather than being purely open source, it prohibits the usage of a library or softare project for a variety of harmful ends:</p> <ul> <li>The software code cannot be used to train AI</li> <li>The software itself cannot be used to produce or advertise AI, crypto, or other similar tools</li> <li>The software cannot be used by companies that build weapons, destroy the environment, contribute to genocide, or otherwise harmful practices.</li> </ul> <p>Meanwhile, for individuals and organizations that do not work towards these ends, the usage is no more limited than any other open source license.</p> <p>This license contains elements from the <a href="https://firstdonoharm.dev/version/3/0/full.txt">Hippocratic License v3.0</a>, the <a href="https://github.com/raisely/NoHarm/blob/publish/LICENSE.md">Do No Harm License</a>, the <a href="https://attheroot.dev">At The Root Anti-Racist Ethical Source License</a>, and the <a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/non-ai-licenses/non-ai-licenses/main/NON-AI-MIT">MIT Non-AI License</a>. Also see the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/eng.pdf">United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> and the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/ccpr.pdf">International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights</a>.</p> <p class="banner">Note that I am publishing this license exclusively on <a href="https://codeberg.org">Codeberg</a>, due to GitHub becomming toxic AI shills (<a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/work/github-chief-faces-extensive-backlash-after-he-said-use-ai-or-/articleshow/123299080.cms">1</a>, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news/github-chief-faces-extensive-backlash-after-he-said-use-ai-or/ar-AA1KvaFI">2</a>). If you haven’t already migrated off of GitHub, now’s a good time to do so, and Codeberg is a great alternative.</p> <h2 id="purpose--practicalities">Purpose &amp; Practicalities</h2> <p>In reality, it is extremely difficult to enforce a software license, even standard open source ones. <a href="https://natlawreview.com/article/art-and-legality-imitation-navigating-murky-waters-fair-use-ai-training">Recent U.S. legal cases</a> have established that it may be difficult or imposible to prevent usage of publicly-published works to train AI models. It is also not realistic to assume that including a license such as this one will prevent all harm.</p> <p>Instead, this license serves two additional purposes:</p> <ul> <li>For organizations that bother to read the license, it may give pause to some of those who fall under its prohibitions.</li> <li>For individuals, using it acts as a visible sign that they want the world to be a better place. (For instance, us #hopepunks.)</li> </ul> <h2 id="disclaimer">Disclaimer</h2> <p>I am not a lawyer and this license is not legal advice. By using it you accept any and all associated risks. You should consult with your lawyer before using any license, including this one.</p> <p>This license is based on U.S. law and copyright. Although it may be suitable for other jurisdictions, other localities may have specific laws that supercede requirements in this license.</p> <hr /> <p>Go be weird!</p> 2025-07-29T13:55:06-04:00 2025-07-29T13:55:06-04:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2025/07/29/new-stickers-for-2025/ <p>I’ve just added two new designs to the stickers available in the shop: <strong>Build Small Build Local</strong> and <strong>I’m From The Government and I’m Here to Help</strong>! As always, you can get one for free with your charitable donation to a good cause!</p> <p><img src="https://static.billhunt.dev/assets/uploads/2025/07/stickers.jpg" alt="New Stickers" /></p> <p><a href="/stickers" class="btn">Check them out</a></p> 2025-07-01T00:00:00-04:00 2025-07-01T00:00:00-04:00 https://infrequently.org/2025/06/conferences-clarity-and-smokescreens/ <p>Alex Russell does a fantastic job of exposing the cult-like mentality of the JavaScript industry today, and how we’ve lost our way in this space.</p> <p><a href="https://infrequently.org/2025/06/conferences-clarity-and-smokescreens/">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-06-18T00:00:00-04:00 2025-06-18T00:00:00-04:00 https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/ <p>In case you missed it, I enjoyed this post from Ed Zitron about the rise of popular but mediocre leadership across industries.</p> <p><a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-06-04T00:00:00-04:00 2025-06-04T00:00:00-04:00 https://chrisgiven.com/2025/05/direct-file-on-github/ <p>Chris Given talks about his team’s work on IRS Direct File, which allowed the American people to file their taxes for free, no strings attached. This tool is now open source for anyone to use! It’s a shame this amazing and impactful project was cancelled by the federal government.</p> <p><a href="https://chrisgiven.com/2025/05/direct-file-on-github/">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-06-03T00:00:00-04:00 2025-06-03T00:00:00-04:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=mMIhkA8QEKc <p>If you’re building or even thinking about social networks, you really need to give this talk from <a href="https://mas.to/@kissane">Erin Kissane</a> an hour of your time! <br /><br /> “The liberty of our work is not actually an adolescent freedom from caring what we do to other people, but the freedom to actually care as much as we fucking want to about the effects of our work in the world” <br /><br /> Reminds me of my favorite Tolstoy quote (via Gorky) <br /><br /> “Christ was free and so was Buddha, and both took on themselves the sins of the world and voluntarily entered the prison of earthly life. Further than that nobody has gone, nobody. And you–we–well, what’s the good of talking–we are all looking for freedom from obligations towards our fellow men, whereas it is just that feeling of our obligations which has made us men, and, if those obligations were not there, we should live like the beasts.”</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=mMIhkA8QEKc">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-05-22T14:10:28-04:00 2025-05-22T14:10:28-04:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2025/05/22/series-four-shirts/ <p>I’ve just released my latest series of shirts, featuring three new designs:</p> <ul> <li>I’m From The Government And I’m Here To Help</li> <li>That’s A Problem for Next Fiscal Year</li> <li>Unfunded Mandate</li> </ul> <p><a href="/shop" class="btn">Check ‘Em Out!</a></p> <p><a href="/shop"><img src="https://static.billhunt.dev/assets/uploads/2025/05/HereToHelp.jpg" alt="I'm From The Government And I'm Here To Help" /></a></p> 2025-05-01T00:00:00-04:00 2025-05-01T00:00:00-04:00 https://mobygratis.com <p>When I say Go Be Weird, this right here is the stuff I’m talking about.</p> <p>The legendary Moby has provided a 100% free archive of hundreds of songs that you can use for your films, streams, videos, whatever. Absolutely incredible resource for all of us content creators!</p> <p><a href="https://mobygratis.com">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-04-30T00:00:00-04:00 2025-04-30T00:00:00-04:00 https://cfpbunion.shop <p>The CFPB Union has set up a shop to raise funds, and they have some amazing Govpunk shirts! Check them out!</p> <p><a href="https://cfpbunion.shop">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-04-10T14:44:38-04:00 2025-04-10T14:44:38-04:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2025/04/10/build-small/ <p>In my last post, I talked about how to save our world from a consumer standpoint. Today I’d like to talk about the other side - how we move forward as people who build and create things.</p> <hr /> <p>Between government layoffs and the tech sector ones, there are not enough IT jobs to absorb all of the firings over the last few years.</p> <p>Again: <strong><a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm">there are not enough IT jobs in the U.S. to absorb all of the layoffs.</a></strong></p> <p>Most government workers are primarily some sort of information technology worker. The current U.S. Government layoffs - forced or otherwise - are just the latest in a long series, the result of corporate giants attempting to reduce staff to squeeze every remaining dollar in the economy into their own coffers. These companies have grown like a cancer across the economy, absorbing all available resources and bloating to a disgusting size.</p> <p>The economy is falling into a recession as a result of this pestilence. Fewer jobs means less money to move back into the economy. All of the wealth is becoming captured and calcified at the top - in shareholder value and corporate profits. This capture has reduced the available choices of consumers - even small businesses are now beholden to companies like Meta and TikTok to spread the word of their products, and Etsy, Ebay, and Shopify for managing sales.</p> <p>Moving away from the “modern” way of doing business cannot happen overnight, but is critical to save individuals from going bankrupt. As I covered in my <a href="/blog/2025/03/02/five-actions-to-save-democracy/">Five Actions to Save Democracy</a>, it is also critical to save the country itself.</p> <hr /> <p>No one is coming to save us. So what do we <em>do</em>? How do we move forward? As we children of the 80s learned from Labyrinth -</p> <p class="pullquote">“Sometimes the way forward is the way back.”</p> <p>Socialism isn’t realistic, so the best we can do is start building small companies that we want to exist. And, this is the important bit - we have to <em>keep</em> them small and focused on building up our communities. Rather than following the modern path of chasing growth, we can instead choose to stop growing at a certain size and <em>be content</em>.</p> <p>At a certain size, all systems begin to fail - there are fundamental problems in scaling any organization or group. We’ve seen it in everything from coffee chains to social media to online shops. In the U.S. right now, we’re even <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/03/18/nx-s1-5330454/egg-shortages-record-prices-usda-canada">seeing it with eggs</a>! This is the primary reason that Mastodon might actually succeed - a million tiny local communities doing their own upkeep and moderation is infinitely more viable than a mega-site like Xitter. Growth and consolidation are fundamentally problematic for maintaining a stable and diverse ecosystem.</p> <p>An alternative to chasing growth is to instead choose a franchise model. Rather than trying to diversify markets and grow beyond a reasonable size, a company can choose to spread operations by handing over control to new organizations. Sharing the secret sauce, so a larger group of folks can share the wealth. You build a company making widgets in Springfield, and when more folks start showing up from Shelbyville, instead of growing the business there, you help locals setup a new franchise instead.</p> <p>We can build co-ops, we can build public benefit corporations. The only way you can truly stay customer-obsessed is by not becoming beholden to venture capital and shareholders in the first place. The benefit of the customer should always come before driving shareholder value - in the modern world, this is reversed, and worse for everyone. Don’t take the buy-out deal! Don’t chase rounds of private funding! Focus on the people. Focus on keeping money in your community. <a href="https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/">Tech unions are good</a>, but better yet is for the employees to maintain ownership of the company itself. If they love the customers, they’ll generally do the right thing.</p> <p>And any new tech companies will need to look closely at themselves to not make the problem worse. (<a href="https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-great-tech-heist-how-disruption-became-a-euphemism-for-theft/">1</a>,<a href="https://drewdevault.com/2025/03/17/2025-03-17-Stop-externalizing-your-costs-on-me.html">2</a>)</p> <hr /> <p>A flood of new tech companies won’t fix the real problem. We need to look to creating companies that actually build real things again - textiles, furniture, all variety of goods that people need. The recent tariff shenanigans have had a huge impact on global supply chains - and although <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/trump-tariffs-2671678361/">the actual data behind them was fabricated nonsense</a>, this does reveal a deep need for locally made and sourced quality goods.</p> <p>Only a few short decades ago, you’d find every thrift store <em>packed</em> with old, good-quality, solid wood furniture made here in the U.S. Today, it’s almost impossible to find good quality wood furniture, now that <a href="https://www.theassemblync.com/business/high-point-furniture/">we’ve outsourced almost all furniture manufacturing to China and lumber prices continue to skyrocket</a>. Last year, I spent six months trying to find a solid wood, non-platform bed. There was not a single local furniture store that could sell me one. The online vendors all looked shady. I drove halfway across the state to one of the largest furniture distributors and came up empty. Eventually, I ordered one from a so-called “Amish furniture company” but it’s pretty clear most of these are not actually Amish-made - this is just a brand now. Still, I paid a fair price for a decent bed that should last me a lifetime.</p> <p>These sorts of opportunities still exist for businesses to be built upon. It won’t be as easy as it was in the 70s and 80s, but it’s <em>possible</em>. We can bring back building furniture, we can bring back <em>furniture stores</em>. We can create a future where goods are built and sold locally.</p> <hr /> <p>Media will need to change as well.</p> <p>I’m a child of the 80s, but my formative years were the 90s. Back then, the absolute worst thing an artist could do was to “sell out.” The early days of MTV was a commercial enterprise, but it felt very subversive and counterculture at the time - playing music by weirdos for weirdos. Of course this was largely marketing, not reality - as Maynard would tell us,</p> <p class="pullquote">“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzrRoDd9CxM">I sold out long before you’d ever even heard my name / I sold my soul to make a record, dipshit / And then… you… bought… one</a>”</p> <p>In the years thereafter, <a href="https://culture.ghost.io/the-age-of-the-double-sell-out/">Disney would take its army of children and repackage them into pop stars</a>, and selling out returned to being an acceptable - and praiseworthy - paradigm. Nowadays, nearly every commercial is backed by a song that was considered “alternative” or “indie” or “subversive” when it came out, and nearly every website is covered in layers of shady ads selling us all sorts of garbage - again, mostly cheap items made in foreign countries that will inevitably return as our trash to other countries.</p> <p>As I’ve stated before, folks will need to get used to paying for their news and music and videos directly from the creators again, instead of through ad-supported platforms. There’s a big lack of independent platforms for small content creators. For creators with the know-how to setup their own website, some vendors provide a lower service fee for microtransactions - <a href="https://nham.co.uk/2025/03/musicians-how-to-receive-more-money-for-each-track-sold/">if you use Stripe or Paypal, you can request a lower fee be charged</a>.</p> <p>However, it remains best to pay cash for your media whenever possible! I’d love to see a return to mail-order, receiving oldschool checks in the mail and shipping out USB sticks to folks. I’ve effectively been running my <a href="/stickers/">sticker program</a> this way for years, mailing out thousands of stickers, and it’s been very easy!</p> <hr /> <p>A lot of what I’ve talked about here falls into the philosophy of <a href="https://degrowth.info/en/degrowth"><strong>degrowth</strong></a>. But it’s also about building up our small communities - both local and virtual. It’s about finding the other weirdos and making a network of folks who care about their world.</p> <p>There have been so many incredible political taglines in the last 20 years - Hope, Build Back Better, even the dreaded M-acronym. All of these target a simple concept that has resonated with a majority of people - that things need to change. For too long, change is something that has happened <em>to</em> us. It’s time for everyone to work together to <strong>make change</strong>.</p> 2025-03-25T19:58:06-04:00 2025-03-25T19:58:06-04:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2025/03/25/job-application-organizer/ <p>I know a lot of folks are out of work right now, so I spent some time to refresh my website to help keep track of what jobs you’ve applied for: <a href="https://job.hunt.works">Job.Hunt.Works</a>. It’s not a jobs board (like <a href="/jobs/">the one I already run</a>), but rather a tool to keep track of where you are in the process for all of the jobs you are applying for.</p> <p><img src="https://job.hunt.works/assets/images/screenshots/jobs.jpg" alt="Screenshot of the jobs list" /></p> <p>I had originally created it years ago, back when I was out of work the last time, as an opportunity to learn React. For the refresh, I tore out all of that old React frontend, and replaced it all with vanilla JavaScript. I redid the theme from scratch, featuring lovely pixel fonts from <a href="https://somepx.itch.io/">somepx</a>. The site now also features an inspirational message every day from the wonderful <a href="https://www.jacsfishburne.com/">Jacs Fishburne</a>!</p> <p>Try it out and let me know what you think!</p> 2025-03-12T00:00:00-04:00 2025-03-12T00:00:00-04:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYFe54B62iM <p>Something a little different this morning. Ido Agassi is an incredible bookbinder and craftsman, and in this video he shows the intricate process of making a multi-slot box for a book. It’s rare to get to see such an expert at work! Incredibly calming and peaceful content.</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYFe54B62iM">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-03-06T00:00:00-05:00 2025-03-06T00:00:00-05:00 https://thehustle.co/the-small-town-that-saved-its-only-grocery-store-by-buying-it <p>This article makes a compelling case for communities investing in themselves to provide services people need. Some might call it socialism, but I think it’s just being a good neighbor.</p> <p><a href="https://thehustle.co/the-small-town-that-saved-its-only-grocery-store-by-buying-it">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-03-06T00:00:00-05:00 2025-03-06T00:00:00-05:00 https://themaintainers.org/fixing-the-broken-care-economy/ <p>Another good article on community investment. This one from The Maintainers blog describes how a community in Italy provides resources for at-risk groups when the government won’t or can’t by founding social co-ops.</p> <p><a href="https://themaintainers.org/fixing-the-broken-care-economy/">Check it out!</a></p> 2025-03-02T12:03:34-05:00 2025-03-02T12:03:34-05:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2025/03/02/five-actions-to-save-democracy/ <p>There are a lot of articles right now telling folks to call their elected representatives or show up to protests or to do one-day boycotts, as ways of showing resistance to the current administration and the shocking things being done to the U.S. government and democracies all over the world. These actions are important, but they do nothing to address the <em>actual root causes of the problems we’re currently facing</em>.</p> <p>Congress is not going to save us. The courts are not going to save us. We can only save ourselves.</p> <p>Our governments have been captured by oligarchs, who have accumulated power in many forms. Money is chief among those, but there’s power in the control of information and goods and services - not to mention having elected officials in their pocket. These are <strong>systems</strong> of control, and we must take <strong>a systematic approach</strong> to tearing them down.</p> <p>Voting is not enough. Calling is not enough. Protesting is not enough. Until we cut off their base of power, <strong>nothing will change.</strong></p> <p>Instead we need to talk about the very real and useful tools that the people have at their disposal to fight authoritarianism and fascism. I will describe them in terms of the U.S., but most of these principles apply wherever you are.</p> <p>I will be clear upfront: the things that you must do to save democracy will be uncomfortable and inconvenient for most people. We have tied our own noose through the allure of comfort and convenience, and the only way out requires change and struggle.</p> <hr /> <p>First, let’s talk about how we got to this point. <a href="https://sfstandard.com/2025/01/20/silicon-valley-trump-inauguration/">Take a look at these pictures.</a> Those are silicon valley technocrat billionaires in the front row. How did they get there? Massive donations. How did they get the money for those donations? We gave it to them.</p> <p>Don’t make the mistake of thinking those men are there simply to kiss the ring - they have been working to undermine democracy and consolidate power for themselves.</p> <p>We, the people, have been funding the collapse of our own democracy for over 40 years now. We have removed government restrictions on monopolies and private wealth, and this has allowed for the consolidation of capital under a small few individuals. But it’s not just these individuals who are to blame. Looking at private donations to Congress, there are a vast array of private interest groups who now control our legislature on both sides of the aisle. Both the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee have been captured by big businesses and big lobbies. Oil, banking, guns, drugs, healthcare - these groups spend an astonishing amount of money to prevent the people from having basic rights.</p> <p>To fight back, to take the power back, we must retake control of capital, information, labor, and governance.</p> <h2 id="action-1-stop-buying-from-large-corporations">Action 1: Stop Buying From Large Corporations</h2> <p>We have given these billionaires their money, so we must first cut off their access to capital. To do this, everyone must stop buying things through these huge corporations. And this isn’t just a one-day blackout, this must be a persistent way of life from now on. A simple way to do this is to start buying locally for all items you possibly can, cutting out the chain of profits. Be wary, as many smaller shops online that appear to be independent often do fulfillment through Amazon or similar companies as well, even when it’s not immediately apparent!</p> <p>I know that it’s not feasible for most folks to stop buying anything online or from a huge corporation for a variety of reasons. At a minimum, folks should be actively boycotting <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/02/25/apple-shareholders-reject-ban-on-diversity-initiatives-here-are-all-the-companies-cutting-dei-programs/">these companies as much as possible</a>, including Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Walmart, Target, and Lowe’s. However, many major retailers not on this list contribute to a number of dark money funds that support anti-democratic policies, so it’s best to avoid spending at all national chains whenever possible. Again, the point here is to reduce the consolidation of wealth among a few global companies.</p> <p>One further action you can take is to start buying things with cash as much as possible, to stop giving cash to payment processors and credit card companies. I’ve seen that a lot of small local shops have stopped accepting cash, especially indie coffeeshops and restaurants, so start pushing them now to change their policies! The companies quietly skim funds directly to lobbyists.</p> <p>An additional action is to cancel your subscription to any newspaper or magazine that has been supporting anti-democracy efforts, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic. Many of these are owned and controlled by the terrible corporations above. You should also avoid getting news from folks on Substack, as that company skims off the top and gives that money to actual Nazis. Instead, consider getting your news from and supporting organizations like <a href="https://www.404media.co">404 Media</a>, <a href="https://19thnews.org">The 19th</a>, <a href="https://51st.news">The 51st</a>, <a href="https://www.mississippifreepress.org">Mississippi Free Press</a>, and <a href="https://www.wired.com">Wired</a>.</p> <h2 id="action-2-move-your-money-to-a-credit-union">Action 2: Move Your Money to a Credit Union</h2> <p>The financial crisis of 2008 was the direct result of shady banking and investments perpetuated by investment companies and banks. The government bailed out the banks instead of bailing out the people who lost their money because of them. So people lost their homes and executives made record profits. These profits continue to go to <a href="https://readsludge.com/2025/02/26/congress-newcomers-hold-millions-in-stocks-tied-to-their-committees/">lobbying on a variety of issues</a>. Many of these banks are now also cutting all DEI initiatives even though they have not been directed to, including Bank of America, CitiGroup (CitiBank), JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.</p> <p>Moving your money to <a href="https://creditunions.org">a small, local credit union</a> keeps it in the local economy and out of the hands of lobbyists. You almost certainly have a local one of some sort, and usually the only requirement is that you’re a member of the local community to bank with them. It’s worth noting that very few credit unions back their own mortgages, and rely on larger vendors, so there might not be a better option on that front.</p> <p>Ideally, you should also be moving as much of your retirement account funds away from individual stocks and mutual funds that support the companies listed above. Moving into government bonds will have a much lower yield rate, but that high interest rate is coming at the expense of our democracy, as this money goes right back into the same companies. At a bare minimum, divest from stocks in individual companies listed above, and divest from funds managed by terrible companies like <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/08/15/blackrock-is-a-modern-day-dutch-east-india-company-say-activists/">Blackrock who make their money on oil and slavery.</a> And do take the time to use your shareholder voting options whenever a vote comes up!</p> <p>Also try to keep a decent amount of cash on hand. Finding tangible investments not tied to a particular currency that you can easily sell if things get tough is very practical right now as well, particularly if you don’t trust the government - there’s always money in gold and guns, even if the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/strengthening-american-leadership-in-digital-financial-technology/">dollar collapses due to a Ponzi scheme</a>, or the FDIC is shuttered and banks become insolvent.</p> <p>Whatever you do, do <strong>not</strong> invest in crypto, as this is an unregulated market where scammers are not being prosecuted. Anyone can take your money and they likely will not be investigated. Dump your crypto investments immediately.</p> <p>The world is facing increasing economic uncertainty - which is a nice way of saying things are getting bad fast. Markets are falling and unemployment is surging. Be prepared for the worst, by putting aside a little extra money each month. Don’t splurge on vacations and trips right now. A little extra cash is also useful if your union strikes, or if there is a call of a <strong>general strike</strong> - these are the most powerful tools we have!</p> <p>You can find other great ways to be frugal, for instance…</p> <h2 id="action-3-host-spaghetti-dinners">Action 3: Host Spaghetti Dinners</h2> <p>Begin hosting regular - monthly or weekly - spaghetti dinners for your friends <strong>and</strong> neighbors. Compared to the other actions, this one is relatively easy. The main point of this is to build and reinforce real-world connections with people around you. These in-person networks will be critical for the work to come, particularly for direct support of others who may be in need.</p> <p>The second point here, is to practice frugality while still being able to socialize. Spaghetti is cheap and quick to make, which is why it’s a primary choice for small, local fundraiser dinners for churches and fire stations. You can get as simple or fancy as you want, pasta from a box and sauce from a jar is fine, and it’s easy to make for a variety of dietary restrictions including gluten-free and vegan.</p> <p>You can get folks to bring side dishes, salads, freshly baked bread, drinks, or desserts. This becomes a community event without having to go out to a pricey dinner. To feed a group of eight shouldn’t cost you more than $25, but you can certainly spend more if you’d like - keep it simple and cheap, so you can focus on building the connections.</p> <p>Do make sure it is a <em>regular</em> event. You might have a standing Friday night event as one evening to not go out and be home with friends instead. Repetition is key to maintaining connections.</p> <p>An additional action here is to try to mix it up and have different folks hosting and cooking, and invite new people as you go, to keep growing these networks. These in-person connections are critically important so that you can …</p> <h2 id="action-4-get-off-of-corporate-owned-social-media">Action 4: Get Off of Corporate-Owned Social Media</h2> <p>These platforms influence opinion, generate massive revenue through advertising dollars, and control the flow of information. Even <a href="https://johnoliverwantsyourraterotica.com">staying on these platforms</a> and not posting causes harm, because they receive advertising dollars both due to the number of views, as well as based on the number of subscribers.</p> <p>They have a lot of capture right now because folks feel compelled to stay, since their relatives are still on there, or work colleagues, or their local neighborhood group. However, This is a self-fulfilling prophecy - neighborhood groups and relatives will stop using them once more folks start to leave.</p> <p>Meta controls Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, Musk owns Twitter, TikTok is largely managed by the Chinese government - and there are very few alternatives. Many folks are moving to Bluesky, but that company is starting to flirt with venture capital funding, which means <em>inevitably</em> it will become as bad as the others. There is Mastodon, but that’s an overly-complicated mess for the average person. Better to just talk to folks directly.</p> <p>To that end, plain old text messages on your phone are amazingly insecure and easy for anyone to get access to, especially foreign and domestic government agents. WhatsApp is owned by Meta too, and they build backdoors into their systems. Telegram is owned by Russia. <a href="https://signal.org">Signal</a> should be your preferred messaging platform, as it is built for security and messages are encrypted</p> <h2 id="action-5-get-directly-involved">Action 5: Get Directly Involved</h2> <p>An huge action you can take to apply pressure is to <a href="https://runforsomething.net">run for something</a>! Many local government elected positions are uncontested, and even if you don’t win, at the very least having more opinions in the conversation leads to better outcomes and more diverse voices being heard. You don’t even have to spend a lot of money, just submitting the paperwork is easy.</p> <p>Outside of elected positions, your local government has many, many open boards that you can volunteer on without needing to be elected. These can be an easy entrance into government and understanding how things work. From these seats, folks can often have niche powers to support their communities.</p> <p>There’s also the critically-important work of <a href="https://www.eac.gov/help-america-vote">volunteering as a poll worker</a> or <a href="https://www.eac.gov/election-officials/poll-watchers">election observer</a> to help protect elections.</p> <hr /> <p>Don’t be afraid to come up with more ways to connect and build up your community. And share these tips and ideas with your friends and family! We need to get back to the basics if we’re to move ahead together.</p> 2025-01-30T00:00:00-05:00 2025-01-30T00:00:00-05:00 https://somepx.itch.io <p>Check out these amazing pixel fonts from somepx! I want all of them.</p> <p><a href="https://somepx.itch.io">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-12-17T14:48:22-05:00 2024-12-17T14:48:22-05:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2024/12/17/vivaldi-browser/ <p>In 1996, Netscape - who would later become Mozilla - launched a new suite of tools called Netscape Communicator. The core of this suite was Netscape Navigator, their flagship web browser, but also bundled was mail, newsgroups, and an html editor. The web has largely been going downhill since then.</p> <p>Navigator eventually became Firefox, the mail client later became <a href="https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/">Thunderbird</a>). Most recently, Mozilla has continued to invest heavily in <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-mozilla-ai-investing-in-trustworthy-ai/">boondoggle AI projects</a> and is now throwing everything it has at <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/">AI for Advertising</a>. Of course, no user of Firefox wants any of that garbage.</p> <p>I recently gave up on Firefox and migrated to <a href="https://vivaldi.com">Vivaldi</a> - a free browser that’s forked from Chromium, but with entirely new features and a different interface. Being built on Chromium means that all of your favorite Google Chrome extensions work out of the box, I haven’t seen any problems with compatibility so far.</p> <p>However, the browser is just a small part of the Vivaldi suite. There are integrated mail and calendar clients which are streamlined and work fine for my purposes. They integrate seamlessly with Gmail, but I have not quite gotten the Protonmail bridge to work with them yet. There’s also a very basic RSS reader, which has folders but lacks the refined details of a paid solution. All of these live within the browser itself, but the performance still feels much snappier than Firefox.</p> <p>Vivaldi is the closest we’ve been to Netscape Communicator for decades, and I hope this marks a turning point in the web moving away from the 2.0 and 3.0 nonsense and back towards simpler roots. If you’re tired of the tyranny of Google and Mozilla, I hope you’ll give it a try!</p> 2024-12-06T06:10:53-05:00 2024-12-06T06:10:53-05:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2024/12/06/login-gov-for-everyone-even-more/ <p>Back in August, <a href="https://www.gsa.gov/blog/2024/08/26/gsas-logingov-expands-services-into-states">GSA announced that any U.S. government agency - federal, state, local, or tribal - can now use Login.gov</a>!</p> <p>If you’re not already familiar, Login.gov is my favorite government shared service program. It allows government agencies to do identity verification for people once, and reuse that identity across a variety of services. So, for instance, you could use a single login to update your driver’s license, get your social security benefits, or renew your passport.</p> <p>Previously, GSA had ruled that non-federal agencies could only use Login if they were receiving federal grant money to do so, which severely restricted which agencies could use it. (I have to admit, this huge announcement slipped by without me noticing it, though this has been a policy change <a href="/blog/2021/02/18/login-gov-for-everyone/">I have been requesting for eight years</a> in various official and unofficial capacities!)</p> <p>Equally as exciting, <a href="https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/gsas-logingov-announces-certification-of-ial2-10092024">Login now supports full Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) compliance</a>! In short, this means that people’s identities can be confirmed by using a combination of facial recognition technology and in-person proofing - that is, having someone physically check that the person matches their ID. Typically, IAL2 is required for any sort of government interaction regarding personal information, benefits, or finances, so this is a huge win! It also comes after a <a href="https://www.gsaig.gov/content/gsa-misled-customers-logingovs-compliance-digital-identity-standards">rather brutal Inspector General audit</a> that had beaten up GSA on the topic.</p> <p>This means wider access to Login.gov, and the ability to use it for more interesting things. The U.S. will probably never have a single “Digital Front Door” for all government services, like they have in the <a href="https://gov.uk">United Kingdom</a>. But login.gov brings us one step closer, and removes one of the most painful parts of dealing with the government - establishing your identity so that you can receive benefits.</p> 2024-11-13T10:54:25-05:00 2024-11-13T10:54:25-05:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2024/11/13/the-work-doesnt-stop/ <p>Last week, voters in the U.S. overwhelmingly chose to re-elect 45. Personally, I am still reeling from the fact that so many folks chose to pick a candidate that calls for hate and violence and xenophobia. One that has promised to eliminate many of the liberties and benefits that folks hold dear.</p> <p>I was hired into the federal government in the waning hours of the Obama Administration. I chose to stay during the 45 Administration - working for the White House on technology policy, and then running IT for the Small Business Administration at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. I’ve continued to stay on through the Biden Administration. And I’m not planning on going anywhere, unless I’m forced to leave.</p> <p>In my early days in government, I saw many of my peers leaving in large numbers. A small number were political appointees or had term appointments that timed-out, but the larger number simply chose to not work for 45. I’m already starting to see the same thing happen again right now.</p> <p>The oath that we take joining civil service is to our country, not to any specific president. Regardless of who is in charge, there’s still work to be done for the American people. And they need us to work for them as desperately as ever. Even if the work becomes more difficult, even if there are more barriers, even if basic human needs are being politicized, the work we do can change lives, can save lives.</p> <p>The U.S. government is often criticized for being a large, lumbering bureaucracy. Things move slowly, with numerous checks and balances and double-checks. There are requirements for things to be approved and sent to committees and re-approved. The more cynical among us have criticized these requirements, comparing them to the <a href="https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf">CIA’s Sabotage Manual</a> to reduce the efficacy of organizations. However, a positive feature of these processes is they make change harder and act as a safeguard against the quick and sudden erosion of our basic liberties and protections.</p> <p>Fascism succeeds when folks give up. When they think they’re alone and powerless. When they only look out for themselves instead of their communities. When they cede ground and hand over victories without opposition to their oppressors. It’s said that for evil to win, good people simply must do nothing - or as we keep learning, good people just don’t show up.</p> <p>There remains the risk that 45, now as 47, will reinstate the <a href="https://protectdemocracy.org/work/trumps-schedule-f-plan-explained/">Schedule F</a> conversion of many government employees, which would allow them to be fired without cause. By doing this, the administration can pack the government with people that don’t question orders. But government is huge - these things will take time to implement, and many rank-and-file positions will be ignored entirely. In the meantime, folks shouldn’t rush out the door to make it easier for the government to steamroll over our rights.</p> <p>Right now, more than ever before, the government needs dedicated civil servants who believe in democracy, and can act as good stewards of government. Folks who know intimately the rules and laws and can protect our democracy and our fellow people. As I’ve said before, <a href="https://digitalpolicy.us"><strong>RTFM</strong> is a superpower in government</a>.</p> <p>This is my plea to my colleagues and folks currently working in, or <a href="/jobs/?hot=0">thinking about</a>, government service. I will never criticize folks who cannot work in government or feel the need to leave to protect themselves and their families. But as to the rest of you - do not be a “fair-weather friend” to our country. If you are able, stay and do your job. It will be hard, but the work to take care of each other doesn’t stop. Rather than choosing to not-work for 45, choose to work for the American people.</p> <p><img src="https://static.billhunt.dev/assets/uploads/2024/11/blue_lantern_corps.jpg" alt="The DC Comics Blue Lantern Ring: Hope" /></p> 2024-10-11T15:21:51-04:00 2024-10-11T15:21:51-04:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2024/10/11/webmentions-your-next-social-network/ <p>It’s been a while since I’ve blogged or worked on web-projects. Honestly, I’ve been wrapped up in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@EnderpriseArchitecture">my YouTube channel</a> (where I play building-related videogames and just hit 1100 subscribers!) so other projects have fallen by the wayside. Over there, I’ve found a very engaged community with lots of communication. Unfortunately, a lot of that communication is through a large number of separate Discord servers, which acts as a bit of a walled garden. I’m not a fan, yet I’ve started <a href="discord.gg/nufnDkvFG9">a Discord for YouTube channel</a> all the same, because that’s what the kids are doing these days.</p> <p>Discord very much feels like the old message board days, which is fine, but it doesn’t feel like I’m every in my own personal space the way that LiveJournal and Tumblr or even my own little website did. I want to feel more of a sense of ownership over my own space, while still being able to communicate with colleagues and friends. To that end, I’ve started down the <a href="https://indieweb.org/Webmention">Webmentions</a> rabbithole. Webmentions is an open web standard used by <a href="https://indieweb.org/">IndieWeb</a> sites that allows compatible sites to send “mentions” to other sites. Basically, you can enabling a federated system of commenting across blogs, sort of like what Wordpress offers but IndieWeb-friendly, even for those of us who run static sites only.</p> <p>If you remember <a href="https://wordpress.com/support/comments/pingbacks/">Pingbacks</a> from the old days of Wordpress, it’s a pretty similar operating model. I can write an article that mentions another site, and when I run a notification script it will send a web request to that site to let them know I mentioned them. The script checks the receiving site for a line of html metadata in the head that tells it where to send the notification. It looks like this:</p> <div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>&lt;link rel="webmention" href="https://webmention.io/billhunt.dev/webmention" /&gt; </code></pre></div></div> <p>You do need a listener on the other end to store the requests in a database somewhere. If you use Wordpress (assuming you don’t work for WPEngine I guess), there’s already <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/webmention/">a plugin</a> that will do most of the work for you. I’m using Jekyll which is a static site generator, so I outsource the collecting of responses to <a href="https://webmention.io/">Webmention.io</a>, a free service that just handles webmentions for you. Then during my static build process, I pull all of the webmentions down and show them on my site using the <a href="https://aarongustafson.github.io/jekyll-webmention_io/">Webmentions Jekyll plugin</a>.</p> <p>I actually enabled this feature a few months back and have been sending infrequent mentions, but only just <em>received</em> <a href="/blog/2022/11/28/weaving-the-web/#mentions">my first webmention</a> a few weeks back! I’ve now incorporarted those comments into my page layout, so hopefully I’ll be receiving lots more friendly comments in the future.</p> <p>Of course, this is still dependent on a third party service to handle webmentions - but there’s no reason you couldn’t build your own and use it. (Careful readers will note that you’ll want to avoid any infinite loops of showing webmentions from folks who have mentioned you, who then get notifications you’ve mentioned them in your list of mentions, and then they show another mention on their side, etc. So far, I haven’t seen this happen yet, but just a heads-up for folks who are hacking together their own code.) I’m happy to outsource this work to Webmention.io for the time being, however.</p> <hr /> <p>Thanks to the way the Webmentions spec is designed, you could easily use this to create a collaborative microblogging system. I’ve been noodling on the idea of having a custom post category, “micro”, which would be used as a replacement for my Mastodon account. As folks reply with their own “micro” posts on their blogs, webmentions would network these together, creating a rich mesh of conversation.</p> <p>The big missing feature here for purely static systems remains a decent moderation interface. Abuse will always exist. Building yet another network system without taking this into account would be reckless and negligent.</p> <p>Creating inherent blocklists that can <em>easily be shared and subscribed to</em> would be a simple solution - one that, I will note, Mastodon still lacks. Another tool could be allowlists based on your own list of connections, assuming you’ve built a friends list of some sort, like what <a href="https://billhunt.dev/blog/2022/11/28/weaving-the-web/">I’ve done with my links page using FOAF, etc.</a> This would provide the basis for a “friends-only replies” feature for what shows up in your mentions (another feature Mastodon still lacks, after years of requests for it). It certainly wouldn’t stop folks from blogging about you abusively, but at least they would not show up in your mentions.</p> <hr /> <p>The problem of discoverability that I’ve talked about before (see previous link in the paragraph above) remains. If anything, this problem is now far worse since <a href="https://www.vincentschmalbach.com/google-now-defaults-to-not-indexing-your-content/">Google and other search engines have stopped scraping websites</a> and are now filled with garbage. Indie federated search remains one of my dream projects, for another day.</p> <p>In the meantime, the only way for us to start taking back the web is to talk about each other and the awesome work everyone else is doing, rather than just talking about ourselves all the time. This is a paradigm shift back to when the web was young, when we would lift each other up - rather than the navel-gazing content-creation capitalist app-based hellscape we’re currently trapped in. We must actively water each other’s gardens so that we can share fruit in the future.</p> <hr /> <p>I’ve very much been enjoying the ability to have a completely static site with dynamic features, including comments and search - but I fear that I’m reaching the boundaries of what can be done without actually having a dynamic site again. With Wordpress making lots of questionable decisions for a long while now, I feel like there is a big gap where someone could create a new PHP-based drag-and-drop blogging solution that adopts modern standards. Something with native RSS support for <em>reading</em>, webmentions, search, ease of use and installation for non-nerds, all of the good things - without all of the bloat that WP brings to the table.</p> <p>I’ve been dancing around my own small projects: RSS readers with mentions, microblog systems, federated search - but I simply haven’t had the attention span to write code at that level of depth for a long time. Perhaps in the cold winter months to come, through caffeine and electronica I will find the inspiration.</p> <p>Basic tooling is also a frustration for me. PHP sadly remains the best option for building drag-and-drop installation apps that run on cheap hosting providers; this is the main reason Wordpress retains its foothold in the market, even with other options available. I started looking at other PHP so-called microframeworks, but I have yet to find one that isn’t massive and bloated. I’ve been slowly tinkering with resurrecting <a href="https://github.com/krusynth/valvalis/">my ancient PHP framework, Valvalis</a>, to make a modern microframework to build just such a project - but the journey from PHP 4 to PHP 8 is a long one, and I don’t agree with all of the decisions the PHP community has made along the way. Perhaps a little heresy is called for.</p> <hr /> <p>If any of these sorts of things sound like your sort of interest, drop me a note. Or better yet, blog about it and drop me a webmention about this article!</p> <p>Looking forward to hearing from you, cyberpunks.</p> 2024-10-10T00:00:00-04:00 2024-10-10T00:00:00-04:00 https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest <p>XOXO has started posting some amazing talks from this year’s festival. Definitely make the time to watch the ones from <a href="https://erinkissane.com/">Erin Kissane</a>, <a href="https://www.mollywhite.net/">Molly White</a>, and <a href="https://tinysubversions.com/">Darius Kazemi</a> at the very least!</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-07-03T00:00:00-04:00 2024-07-03T00:00:00-04:00 https://slashpages.net/ <p>I love this proposal for standardizing links that appear at the top level of a domain. Many of us have been doing /contact or /about for a long time, but I’m very tempted to add a bunch of these as hidden pages in my site!</p> <p><a href="https://slashpages.net/">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-06-06T00:00:00-04:00 2024-06-06T00:00:00-04:00 https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/ <p>Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon discuss the need to decentralize the internet monoculture we’ve beccome locked into.</p> <p><a href="https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-05-08T10:33:20-04:00 2024-05-08T10:33:20-04:00 https://billhunt.dev/blog/2024/05/08/series-three-shirts/ <p>I’ve just released <strong>SIX NEW SHIRT DESIGNS</strong> for my series three run, celebrating a variety of hot topics including Login.gov, the DATA Act of 2014, Artificial Intelligence, and Agile software development. <a href="/shop/">Check them out!</a></p> 2024-05-03T00:00:00-04:00 2024-05-03T00:00:00-04:00 https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/ <p>Molly White talks about how we can reclain the web, and rebuild what we’ve lost.</p> <p><a href="https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-04-16T00:00:00-04:00 2024-04-16T00:00:00-04:00 https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-great-looting-of-the-internet/ <p>This is a must-read piece from Ed Zitron describing how the major internet corporations have become actively hostile to users.<br /><br />“It’s the hallmark of a tech industry dedicated to creating problems that it charges you to solve, a sickly beast borne of venture capital and a lack of innovation. When you’re rich and powerful, you no longer face real problems, and as a result fail to consider the solutions that would measurably improve a person’s life.”</p> <p><a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-great-looting-of-the-internet/">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-04-09T00:00:00-04:00 2024-04-09T00:00:00-04:00 https://another.rodeo/values/ <p>Carter Baxter talks about how as a culture we’ve traded ethical values for shareholder value.</p> <p><a href="https://another.rodeo/values/">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-04-09T00:00:00-04:00 2024-04-09T00:00:00-04:00 https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/ <p>Baldur Bjarnason lays out how the current AI-obsession is backed by chicanery usually employed by psychics.</p> <p><a href="https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-03-27T00:00:00-04:00 2024-03-27T00:00:00-04:00 https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/go-ahead-and-block-ai-web-crawlers/ <p>Cory Dransfeldt provides this excellent list of AI scraping bots to put in your disallow list for robots.txt.</p> <p><a href="https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/go-ahead-and-block-ai-web-crawlers/">Check it out!</a></p> 2024-03-27T00:00:00-04:00 2024-03-27T00:00:00-04:00 https://ar.al/notes/how-web-2-0-killed-the-internet/ <p>This old post from Aral Balkan about the failed promise of open APIs still rings true a decade later.</p> <p><a href="https://ar.al/notes/how-web-2-0-killed-the-internet/">Check it out!</a></p>