DEV Community: Reuben Walker, Jr.

The Programmer's Fulcrum 11 September, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 06:57:18 +0000

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), Open Social, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

This week marks the beginning of the earliest incarnation of this site, Symfony Station. It also began our cross-posting to Dev.to. That was five years ago when mass enshittification and AI menacingly loomed just over the horizon. The reason I had gone to web development bootcamp was that I knew they were coming and needed some skills to fight them.

Personally, I'm in a better place now. But, unfortunately tech isn’t despite our efforts here. So, let's kick it up a notch.

Featured Item(s)

Sabot Media writes:

For twenty-five years, Autistici / Inventati showed what it could mean for movements to build and control their own communications infrastructure. Its loss should not send everyone searching for the next single service to replace it.

It should send us looking in a hundred directions.

A/I may be ending. The story is nowhere near over.

This is what we preach weekly.

Brennan Day writes:

We can create a more human web right now. The world is in dire straits …

There are those who see the act of webmastery as "only" a hobby and pastime—and I say this is not mutually exclusive to world-saving. The personal is political. Our ability to maintain our joy and ourselves is, itself, resistance.

Start as you are, with what you have, while you still have time to do so.

Exercise your innate human right to create.

Be a developer. Be a designer. Be a writer. Be a systems administrator. Be a philosopher. Be a Webmaster.

It is the most punk rock, anti-establishment, liberating thing you can do in the 21st century. And yeah, it is fucking awesome.

WEBMASTER@ a manifesto for everyone

We also preach this weekly.

Simon Tisdall writes:

It’s no surprise some analysts say we are already in the midst of the third world war, but ordinary people have more power than we think.

The world is being driven to the brink by thugs and dictators, but there is a route to a brighter future

Wow, this is depressing up till the last 2 paragraphs. But, we have to keep fighting in order to preserve our sanity.

So, read from here till the end of the TAM and do your part to unfuck the world.

CMSs

Soulcruzer says:

Take back the web. Make it weird again

Bob Sassone's site's 30th Anniversary inspired their article.

And it's truly inspiring. Great to see.

Unfortunately, Cavalette shows us:

How to to back up your data (currently) on A/I services

The type of post you never hope to see. Fuck all the Trump clowns and cunts.

There’s a new ATProto competitor for Ghost and Substack:

Writizzy

Non-opensource and similar to Offprint. But, non-AI and European.

WordPress

I will be at WordCamp Bretagne next week (mainly to scout Renne as a summer home) so say bonjour si vous sont cette-la. Sessions that I will definitely attend include the Gutenberg, Web Spaghetti, and Integrations ones.

It will be interesting to see what everyone thinks of Matt getting thrown out of AutoMattic on his ass.

Ghost

Spectral Web Services explores:

Avoiding duplicates on complicated homepages

Tools

Framablog has a book review:

Publication : Alternatives & Struggles

Chat / Team Chat

About Signal reports:

Signal now lets you record much longer videos in the app

Movim announces:

Movim 0.35 "Thiele" is out!

Browsers

Waterfox announces:

6.7.2 — Improvements to tree tabs and the vertical sidebar

There are similar improvements in its Android app.

Search

Xamanismo Coletivo shares:

One guy in Sweden built a search engine to fight Google, and it works

Cloud

Nextcloud shows us:

How to set up UnifiedPush on Android for Nextcloud Talk: push notifications without Google Play Services

Tuta examines:

Tuta Mail, Tuta Calendar, & Tuta Drive: Development steps

Writing

Joplin explains:

What's new in Joplin 3.7

You can publish a notebook as a website now.

On a related note, Glyphack has:

Share Obsidian Notes To A Blog

Creative

Libre shares:

Announcing Plasma Studio

GIMP announces:

GIMP 3.2.6 Released

Linux / Open Android

Fedilab Apps says:

Choose F-Droid

Fuck Google.

Alternative To reports:

GrapheneOS plans to overhaul the bundled AOSP apps, including messaging with RCS support

This week's featured OMN tool

BentoPDF

The PDF Toolkit built for privacy is now opensource.

BentoPDF

Programming

Sage Journals published:

‘Digital Public Infrastructure’: Cultural hegemony and states’ technological dependence

As this and the A / I situation demonstrate, we need to build our own infrastructure. So, pay attention to our More section each week.

Fedilab Apps shares:

So Google refuses to delete my dev account

Terence Eden says:

The purpose of DNS is to spread scams

Ah, our online companions: techno feudalists, techno fascists, AI and Crypto Bros, and (the most honest) criminals.

On a related note, Erlend Sogge Heggen says:

Making software hurts now

That's because unregulated capitalism will @$$-fuck up any and everything.

David Bushell exposes:

CodePen: exposed!

Tongue-in-cheek. ;)

Henri Bergius goes EUPL:

I changed my license

Git

Justin Wernick is:

Saying Goodbye To My Git Server's CGit Frontend

HTML

Jens Oliver Meiert reports:

2026: 2 of the Global Top 200 Websites Use Valid HTML

Since most "developers" are tech and AI bros, this tracks. Unfortunately.

CSS

Lea Verou says:

The best dark mode toggle is probably none

And the best dark mode is light mode.

Web Awesome thinks:

Your Design System Should Style Your Words, Too

Web Components

Master.dev explores:

Custom Scrollbar Component In 2026

JavaScript

And:

React Now Rusted All The Way Out

It speeds up React builds. What speeds things up even more is not using the horseshit at all.

Other

Benjamin Eberlei examines:

PHP to get the job done in 2026

Interesting and the most important point is this:

A second major benefit of PHP is its completly open governance model, its truly free software without corporate interests in control. As my friend Sebastian recently wrote: Digital Sovereignty is written in PHP.

In regards to ethical AI use in PHP, I wrote this article about it.

Sourcehut has:

Changes to SourceHut's terms of service regarding LLMs

Fantastic!

Forgejo announces:

Forgejo Runner v13.1.0 is available

Forgejo 16.0.4 and 15.0.8 were just released

XWiki has:

July and August Pro Apps updates

Release Notes for XWiki 17.10.13

OpenProject announces:

OpenProject integration app for Nextcloud released in versions 3.2.0 and 2.12.0

This week's featured programming tool

Twig

Twig is the fast, flexible, and secure modern template engine for PHP.

Twig

ActivityPub

The Social Web Incubator Community Group (SWICG) works on ActivityPub standards:

Current SWICG Task Forces and their deliverables

It's slow as fuck. But, at least its moving forward now. The end to end encryption, groups, and forums efforts are vital.

Matthias Pfefferle notes:

FEP-d1cb: Same-origin actor re-identification

Matthias does the most impactful work in the AP community IMHO. We need 200 more of him.

Terence Eden asks:

ActivityPub - Is it worth defending against replay attacks and message/signature time skew?

Spielleitung shares how to block a registration bot:

Prevent “BoomProtocolProbe” from registering

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

Starling

Starling is an ActivityPub server that can actually exchange posts, follows, profiles, replies, likes, and boosts across the Fediverse with Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma, GoToSocial, PixelFed, and other ActivityPub-compatible platforms.

Starling

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

IFTAS has:

Updates to IFTAS Denylists and Access Options

Bonfire

Bonfire presents:

Sovereignty Is More Than a Server: Public Digital Commons with Bonfire

ATProto

Jola.dev looks at:

Migrating your Bluesky account the hard way

Building AT Habitat shares:

Habitat's road to release: 05 adopting opensocial

This appears to be a promising Atmosphere alternative to my Manade project.

Speaking of, atproto-spaces-alpha-updates has an update:

Breaking Changes around the simplespace API

Erlend Sogge Heggen explores:

Atmospheric events commons

Atmosphere

Aaron Ross Powell examines:

Social Media and Anti-Social Pluralism

Which is why we need more private autonomous online communities. That's what I'm exploring with Manade.

MeTacheles has:

W Social Netzwerk: Fake-Zahlen, Rassismus und Totenstille!

Plus there's this kind of horseshit:

You can’t currently move from/to W without help from a dev

You may have to be logged into the Atmosphere to see this. Anyway, if you are a mark that got grifted into W, just delete you account. Hopefully, no one will ever find out you signed up. Except every company they will share your information with.

Atmosphere Conference News announces:

AtmosphereConf 2027 Organizing is Underway

Happening somewhere in Europe. ???

RSS

Bunnies in PCKT says:

RSS is still my preferred feed format

Mon aussi.

FreshRSS announces:

FreshRSS 1.30.0

Democracy Tech

Internet Exchange looks at:

Building Online Communities We Can Keep

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're painfully nurturing Manade.

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

The Programmer's Fulcrum 4 September, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:14:14 +0000

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Follow GHOST COMPONENT ON TPF

Featured Item(s)

Iris Meredith writes:

So, when I hear a tech person say that something's "just a tool", I can't help but read it as an unwillingness to take responsibility, as an industry, for what we put into the world and for what we do to ourselves. Tools, unfortunately, simply cannot be the neutral, separate thing that so much of the tech world would like them to be, and pretending otherwise, let alone telling people affected by the tools that they're simply using them wrong, is an abdication of our moral duty to avoid, inasmuch as is possible, doing harm. We really ought to do better.

There's no such thing as Just a Tool

There is such a thing as TechBros, unfortunately. And their cuntier cousins, AIBros. And apolitical is a synonym for fascism-friendly. At least straight-up Nazis aren't hypocrites.

Social Coding Commons writes:

... in modern society, generally speaking, we give too much credence to the technosphere. We take the idea that innovation equates to societal progress as a given, to which we must subsequently adapt ourselves. We tend to turn things around, where “digital transformation” suddenly means how humans must adapt their lives to new technology that comes to disrupt it. And not the other way round.

The Fediverse has evolved purely as a technosphere (unfortunately).

Paradigm shift to the Prosocial web

A fan-fucking-tastic piece.

On a relate note, Hamish Campbell has thoughts on Open Governance Bodies / Building:

Power stays with the people doing the work

This is a good explanation of how digital communities and projects can govern themselves.

And we published an article this week, where I write:

The premise of this article is that developing or using ActivityPub tools, participating in the Fediverse, publishing to the Indie Web / Open Media Network, and adopting the arsenal of the Techno Anarchist Manifesto are the new punk.

ActivityPub, the Fediverse, the IndieWeb/Open Media Network, and Techno Anarchism = Punk Rock

CMSs

Jan Miksovsky explores

Origami Projector: a Glitch-like app for site editing

A great idea. Although only available on newer Macs unfortunately.

I also ran across AnyPub, an editor for Standard.Site publications.

CSS Tricks explores the:

WordPress PHP-Only Block Registration

Good news for those migrating legacy sites. And avoiding the shit known as React, at least some of the time.

Why Do I Write This? writes:

Neocities is for nostalgic masochists

Seems about right.

Scraps! expounds:

On Atmospheric Stacks…

Mark W.Rites says:

Alt Text is the Ocean You Thought Was a Pond

Faircamp announces:

Faircamp 2.0

And Vidnight has:

I disagree with the take that the internet is dead

Enjoy the open web peeps. It helps keep me sane. And I am happy to see this from a 20 year old. :)

Ghost

Spectral Web Services has:

I accidentally built an image library for Ghost

This should be in Ghost core. It sucks that it isn’t.

Their competitor, Magic Pages has:

A press of your "own"

Good stuff.

Tools

Tuta has:

Digital Sovereignty Study: EU IT leaders are quitting U.S. Big Tech

U.S. Sanctions against Autistici / Inventati are the next wake-up call for digital sovereignty

KDE examines:

KDE For Digital Sovereignty

NLNet urges:

Apply for funding before November 3rd 2026

They are going the correct direction with AI use, which is to severely restrict it.

Organic Maps has:

Multi-selection for bookmarks and tracks, a CarPlay dashboard, hiding tracks on the map, and readable share links in the August 2026 update

Threat Model shows us:

How to migrate from 1Password

VPNs

Mullvad is:

Shutting down our public encrypted DNS servers and sponsoring Quad9 instead

Chat / Team Chat

FluffyChat shows us:

How to use end-to-end encryption in FluffyChat

About Signal reports:

Signal introduces new notification settings for Android and Desktop

Browsers

Servo shares:

July in Servo: more platforms, faster canvas, web fonts in SVG, and more!

9to5Linux reports:

Mozilla Firefox 155 Is Now Available for Download, Here’s What’s New

Remember to use Firefox forks like Zen, Waterfox, or Librewolf.

Webkit has:

Submit your ideas for Interop 2027

Fixing Top-Level Await in Safari

Remember not to use Safari for anything you want kept private. And preferably not at all.

Cloud

Nextcloud shows us:

How to set up UnifiedPush on Android for Nextcloud Talk: push notifications without Google Play Services

Fuck Google!

Writing

Joplin shares:

What's new in Joplin 3.7

The new table editor in the Markdown editor is awesome. The addition of AI features sucks. At least they are optional you can use a local model.

LibreOffice announces:

Yes, no AI is now a feature

Bon. AI should almost never be used, but if it is (translation), it should be as an optional extension.

Creative

Kdenlive announces:

Kdenlive 26.08 is out!

9to5Linux reports:

OpenShot 4.0 Open-Source Video Editor Officially Released, Here’s What’s New

Audacity 4.0 Open-Source Audio Editor Officially Released, Here’s What’s New

Linux / Open Android

And:

Debian Project Formalizes Responsible Use of Generative AI

Like Linux core, Debian chooses to slowly ensloppify and likely enshittify.

F-Droid has its weekly summary:

Searching complexity and Taler update

This week's featured OMN tool

Dokieli

Write, publish, and annotate articles from your web browser. Your content stays yours.

Dokeli

Programming

Typemill expounds:

On the way to automate user manuals and knowledge bases

This is a legitimate use of local AI. It's the second most legit use after translation.

Git

The Linux Foundation has a useful course for KISS developers (rare for them):

Share Smarter GPU Resources and Master Git
from First Commit to Merge Conflict

Their learning platform subscription is not cheap, but this might be worth a one month one while you finish the course.

HTML

Vasilis van Gemert explores:

What are we not talking about anymore?

Master.dev examines:

New Things You Should Know About HTML Here in Mid 2026

Great stuff.

Vale says:

initial-scale is dead!

As in unnecessary.

JavaScript

Ollie Williams explores:

Highlighting a range of text inside an input or textarea

A rarely needed though legitimate use of JavaScript.

AI

So AI is now fucking over tech conferences as well:

Lettre ouverte pour la survie des événements techniques en France

And freelancers:

Freelancers are getting buried with ‘soulless’ AI slop cleanup: ‘It’s a shame we need to do it’

One of the main purposes of AI is to drive down the cost of labor (it’s a fascist artifact). And these are the consequences when you use it.

Other

OakChris1955 looks at:

Migrating from Cloudflare Pages to Codeberg Pages wasn't that difficult, actually

I have used Codeberg to deploy a test Publii site. And it worked great. But, you were limited to one site at that point.

This week's featured programming tool

Markdown

Write for your website and documentation. And not for AI.

Markdown

ActivityPub

ActivityPub for WordPress shares:

9.3.0 — Modern Signatures and a Summer of Security Reports

This is a perfect example of what an update announcement should be. ;)

Social Coding Commons opines:

I argue that ForgeFed and ActivityPub should support multi-types as specified in Activity Streams

They are correct and this provides an insight into why AP development is so slow and convoluted. And to why there is much less innovation in the Fediverse as compared to the Atmosphere with ATProto. ActivityPub is just more anarchic.

Not that its a bad thing, as I point out in my featured article. Plus, it's definitely more enshittification-resistant.

Plus, core ATProto has much more money and developers behind it than ActivityPub does.

Terence Eden has:

A reasonably practical guide to validating RFC 9421 HTTP Signatures for ActivityPub in PHP

ActivityBot is the recipient of an NLnet grant!

In effect he’s creating something similar to Starling for bots. And it's for use as a developer learning tool.

A review of the ActivityPub book.

Andros Fenollosa explores:

Building a decentralized bulletin board (and accidentally reinventing Nostr)

Abuuba announces:

abuuba 1.0 is out

Interesting.

Mobilizon needs you:

Version 5.2.5 is coming

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

ForgeFed

ForgeFed is a federation protocol for software forges and code collaboration tools for the software development lifecycle and ecosystem.

ForgeFed

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

TootSDK announces:

A new release of TootSDK - 23.3.0

Owncast announces:

Owncast v0.3.0 has been released!

Fedilab Apps has:

FediHood now lets you sign up and log in with your Mastodon account

FediHood now supports Lemmy

This definitely makes it more useful.

Mastodon announces:

We just released Mastodon v4.7.1, v4.6.7, v4.5.17 and v4.4.24

And the Real Grunfink announces:

I've just published version 2.95 of Snac

Bonfire

Bonfire has:

Bonfire 1.0.7: what's new and what's next

Great stuff.

Building shared infrastructure for the Fediverse

Very important because -> see my comments about the Social Coding Commons piece above.

Andros Fenollosa notes:

There is no such thing as full decentralization

A great overview and explanation.

Open Risk Management goes down an empirical rabbit hole:

Towards a Graph Calculus for Decentralized Social Networks

マリウス shares:

Hyperuplink: Discuss like it’s 1998

Cool.

ATProto

Venoom examines:

Decentralizing social media using ATProto and Matrix (venoom)

Eventuallycoding has:

Le piège de la transparence par défaut sur Bluesky et le protocole ATProto

Skyreader shares the:

Skyreader Vision

Atmosphere

Structural Integrity explains:

W Social is a textbook case for everything wrong with digital sovereignty

Roomy looks at:

Federating friendly spaces

P2P

Worm-Blossum shares its:

Week 35 (2026)

Webrings

Ross Floate has:

I built a new website. It’s happiest when you leave.

Very cool. I am going to try to replicate this on one of my sites.

XMPP

The Association for Progressive Communications has an interview:

Libervia on building an all-in-one communication platform grounded in the right to privacy

Daniel Gultsch celebrates:

Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

Matrix

Matrix has:

Neo Nominated for Open Source Competition

Is presence fixed yet?

This Week in Matrix 2026-09-04

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're painfully nurturing Manade.

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

ActivityPub, the Fediverse, the IndieWeb/Open Media Network, and Techno Anarchism = Punk Rock

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:42:06 +0000

This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

You may not know it, but if you are reading this, you are a punk. Probably. If you are a frequent reader of our site, you definitely are. 🤘🏽

‘Ready, Steady, Go’

I am currently enjoying Matthew Worley's remastered for Punk’s 50th anniversary, No Future: Punk, Politics, and British Youth Culture, 1976 - 1984. And reading the introduction (Teenage Warning) motivated me to finally write this article. I have been considering it for a while.

FYI, punk rock lyric quotes are in block quotes like the sub-heading above. 🎤

So to start, let's examine some quotes from this enlightening book.

Matthew writes:

"... punk served to open up a cultural space in which to fuse musical styles; to inject new sounds and lyrical content into popular music; to explore new ways of expressing emotions and, given punk's negative impulse dark (emotions).

... it evolved in different ways. ... But it was also a product (with a) DIY message inspiring local scenes to develop around venues, shops, fanzines, squats, labels, and bands. (This provided) ... a loose network of contacts that proved able to sustain and inform punk as a fractured-but-distinctive subculture …

... punk's adoption of political signifiers and tendency to social commentary invited divergent interpretation and expression.

Punk, in its music, language, and aesthetic, deliberately set out to provoke, disrupt, and subvert. ... dissent was often focused on a media and cultural industry that competed to define, appropriate, and channel youth's innovations.

(It) ... actively documented itself from the bottom up. Fanzines such as Sniffin' Glue were designed to provide an alternative to a (commercial) weekly musical press deemed far away from the kids.

... punk was quick to splinter into multiple subsects that often conflicted with each other, but continuity existed in at least four ways: a stated opposition to a perceived status quo; a disregard for symbols of authority and established hierarchies; claims to provide a voice for the marginalised or disaffected; and an emphasis of self-sufficiency and overcoming obstacles that prevented access, expression, or autonomy.

And this part is key.

Punk, therefore may best be understood as a cultural process of critical engagement rather than a specific musical or satorical style."

Matthew writes about the London scene but similar development's occurred first in New York and slightly later in Los Angeles.

On a personal note, I came into my adulthood at the tail end of this period and have been a punk as I define it for 42 years. And defining yourself is the essence of punk. I also had the incredible good fortune to participate (as a rare quasi-punk) in the golden age of Athens, Georgia’s ‘southern gothic’ music scene. This was one of the best scenes of all times. It was almost on par with the New York, London, and Los Angeles’s punk explosions. Although it was not punk musically or aesthetically (it was more varied), it was philosophically and artistically "punk", well within its nebulousity. Athens is an academic town with few rough edges. Like Oxford or Cambridge, it could never have birthed punk rock. The majority of its scene members were students and townies. Still, the events in the book resonate with me and bring back fond memories. 🎸

Anyway, if you are a recurring visitor of this site, you will notice some familiar words: subculture, network, subvert, dissent, explore, autonomy, DIY, voices, expression, alternative publications, etc.

Another familiar word is anarchy. Anarchy in the UK is the definitive punk song after all.

They are the new “venues, shops, fanzines, squats, labels, and bands”.

And they are on today's equivalent of local, low-wattage radio stations.

Sorry, but ATProto and the Atmosphere are New Wave and that's a separate article. Except for Blacksky, which is Rap and I’m not qualified to write about it.

Obviously, the original punkness and open media / open social participation are not exact equivalents. But, they are pretty fucking similar.

So, let’s see if my premise is full of it.

The Sucky 70s are back

'Everything sucks today'

Thank the gods, most of you did not have to live through the 1970s. Curse the gods, you are alive today. Unfortunately, they are incredibly similar (and both suck, although the later less so). I know because they are the bookends of my life.

The corrupt, incompetent, moribund, soft-fascism of the seventies has reanimated its rotten corpse in the 2020s.

It’s the same ‘everything sucks’ cultural miasma. History always repeats itself. The horseshit timeline we are living in today is similar to the one that birthed punk rock. Your experience will vary by country.

Now, is this why the Fediverse exists? Maybe. Similar bullshit composts into similar soil ripe for new growth. The Open Media Network and Fediverse are informal, messy, and slightly chaotic, as was early punkdom. Both phenomenon were unintentional, unplanned, and unorganized reactive combustions ignited by the shittification of mainstream culture and media.

So for this article, here is the mental framework: musical culture equals the web. Rock and Roll’s origins equal Web 1.0. It’s 1970s enshittification as appropriated, homogenized, white, top-40 garbage equals the corporate siloed Web 2.0. ActivityPub, the Fediverse, the IndieWeb / Open Media Network, and the TAM equal early punk rock rebelling against that.

KISS

The basis of punk rock music is three chords and an attitude, competence be damned. That’s as "keep it simple stupid" as it gets.

Hence the equivalence of self-publishing via:

the IndieWeb, Open Media Network, and simple personal websites
RSS
and the Fediverse

If you are a follower of this site, no further explanation is required. Those are your three chords.

DIY

The central premise of punk music is that anyone can make, record, and share it. Virtuosity be damned.

Hence the equivalence of self-hosting and creating websites via:

Opensource languages
SSH, FTP, VPN access to hosting servers
with RSS feeds
and Fediverse integration

And developing KISS tools with the 4Rs.

Self-hosting code you write (without AI) is true punkness. 😈

The Scene / Network

The original punk network was your local scene. There were few national touring acts to see (in the U.S.), much less international ones. If you lived in a large city or college town, you might get to hear them on the radio.

Today, your open social / open web scene is based upon the FOSS world with a few limits. It’s wherever you find your tribe on the Fediverse.

Making Noise

Opensource software has no equivalent in musical equipment, at least at the birth of the punk era.

When punk was spawning, equipment was all used, salvaged, stolen, borrowed, or whatever you could lay your hands on. And you (legally) acquired it organically as supported by your local scene. Pawnshops, the classified sections of local newspapers, and borrowing from fellow scenesters were the sources.

That constraint inspired creativity. As does having the moral fortitude to limit yourself to ethical tech tools.

In the equivalent of opensource development, you practiced in basements and storage units. You wrote in physical notebooks, alphaed via cassette decks, and betaed on two, four, and at best eight track magnetic tape recording technology. You recored in independent, small studios belonging to DIY engineers. You exported and distributed via reel-to-reel tape and carts. That was your production.

If you were good, lucky, or connected you got played on college radio.

In a rare improvement on past tech, this is now easier for music and the open web. Much easier!

And of course readers / followers were your fellow scenesters and a few fans. They were the equivalent of micro-communities on the Fediverse. Virality was / is a common unknown in both scenarios.

It is still a challenge to have your voice heard. But, the vital point is to share it. Do the punk thing. Make some noise. There is still a world of horseshit to say no to. And there is something better to say yes to.

The Techno Anarchist Manifesto

‘I am an antichrist, I am an anarchist’

You can do more than just say no to the suck. You can mitigate it by building and using alternatives. Just like 70s punkdom was a deliberately created and chosen alternative lifestyle. We can choose to do better.

As you read in our introduction, punk is not an ideology, or for most punks not even a philosophy. It’s an attitude or an ethos. In my opinion, living our TAM is the equivalent of the punk ethos.

Both are loose philosophies, coping mechanisms, lifestyle choices, modes of self-expression, and autonomy-seeking, anarchic resistance / rebellion. Etc, etc.

And with both (as an individual) you adopt what you want / can to carve out some autonomy and sanity for yourself in today’s society. And with this adoption you're telling those in power to fuck off.

If you explore our manifesto, you will see it's more strategic, detailed, and politically opinionated than punk rock’s initial nebulism. But it's not hide-bound. You can do you however you want.

For background you can start here in The Techno Anarchist Manifesto and continue reading up to the Tactics section. Obviously, I hope you will read it in its entirety later. Access or download it here in your format of choice.

To practice techno anarchism you must own your communications, own your data, own your digital identity, own your digital devices, and own your online real estate. Use opensource technology. Use opensource hardware.

And then use the weapons in Techno Anarchism’s arsenal to defeat today’s techshit.

If you're a regular reader, this is nothing new to you.

Avoid this trap

Unfortunately, in later years most “punk rock music” became depoliticized, commodified, and sanitized (like New York and London). This watered-down version was served up at malls to posers and the naive who adopted the aesthetics of punk but not the anarchy. Capitalism and time can fuck any good thing up.

This co-option is what we have to avoid with open social and the open media. We have to preserve the anarchic and truly punk aspects of our efforts. Using OMN terms, let’s stay spiky and avoid the fluffy. Let's remain a means of agency and platform for improving our world, rather than performatively bitching about it.

Authenticity is valuable, even crucial. Real punk is not dead and neither is techno anarchism. Real bands can destroy AI music. Being your true self can protect your integrity against poser influencers. And ethical KISS, DIY, community-focused tech can destroy AI slopdom and techshit in general. Fuck it. 😡

Here's the encore

'If the kids are united, then we’ll never be divided!'

While punk lost much of its pop cultural relevance, it did not die or lose its nebulous social and political relevance.

Matthew notes:

"... avowedly punk-informed scenes dug in to forge subterranean networks - both local and global - that maintain into the twenty-first century. Existing beyond the spectacle and no longer pertaining to be a poision inside the machine, punk continued - and continues - to provide a means of agency and a platform even as its cultural traces are archived, appropriated, and historicised.

At root, punk signified a negation that enabled agency and empowerment, demystifying processes of cultural production in order to do it your-self.

Not only did punk engender creativity, but its inspiration also helped forge cultures that challenged prevailing social and (socio-economic) norms ...

... punk both reflected lives being lived and uncovered portals to other worlds and ideas ...

There was an awarenes of the routines of media manipulation, commercial co-option and cultural appropriation that infused punk's practice and aesthetic.

To understand punk's politics is not to find philosophical clarity or the basis of a movement. Rather, the politics of punk resided in its refusal and its practice ..."

blind acceptance is a sign of stupid fools who stand in line.

Leaving the stage

Finally, I hope I have provided some food for thought in this article and exposed you to one of history's great explosions. I think the open web and open social really are equivalent to early punk. And I hope they will have even more long-term influence.

Let's engender creativity, forge cultures, avoid co-option and appropriation, and empower ourselves and others.

So, continue doing the open social, self-publishing, self-hosting, RSS, open web, true punk rock thing peeps. 🤘🏽

Seriously, it’s very important, whether you identify as a punk or not. The world needs to hear your authentic voice. Be your true, independent self in your chosen communities.

‘Hey ho, let’s go!’

BTW, the quoted lyrics in this article are from:

Generation X
The Descendents
The Sex Pistols
Sham 69
The Sex Pistols
and The Ramones

Oi, punks,

Punkrock History, @historyofpunkrock@sfba.social (though largely California focused) is a great Fediverse account to follow. As is Fedi.Punk.Guide,
@FediPunkGuide@mastodon.social. ⁂

Skastodon is a punk-friendly Fediverse instance. ⁂

Punkstodon is a German-language one. Punk Photos is a PixelFed instance. Punktube is their PeerTube instance. Punx.social is their website ⁂

The Counterforce is the Fediverse punk rock website of choice as well as an instance. 💀

Are you in a punk rock band and need an opensource web tool to share your music? Check out Faircamp. It's made for independent musicians. 🎵

Discover and purchase punk music on Bandcamp. 🎵

Explore my punk playlist via my better-half’s Deezer account, Provoke, Disrupt, Subvert: Old School Punk. Definitely play it on random. 😈

CTAs

Please share this article.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're painfully nurturing Manade.

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

The Programmer's Fulcrum 28 August, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 11:07:43 +0000

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Featured Item(s)

Hamish Campbell writes:

The original Web 2.0 was built on a powerful lie, one many progressive people wanted to believe, that privately owned platforms could become public infrastructure.

There are familiar voices resurfacing in today’s debates about the future of the web, measured, reflective, earnest, often grey-bearded and with funding. These are the people who were there in the Web 2.0 era. The early platform designers, the conference speakers who once talked about “community”, “social objects”, and “public infrastructure”. Many of them now occupy foundations, NGOs, advisory boards, and policy circles.

And they are doing something dangerous, as their thinking is too trapped inside capitalism, and they are selling the openweb reboot for a second time.

The greybeards and the second sell-out of the openweb

1,000% spot on.

He also has:

Trust and the trustless mess

Dilip writes:

What's actually hard to fake, and what most of what I read (and write) is missing, is the source: the history, the reasoning, the "why" behind a piece of code or a life's work, not just the diff. That's what this essay is actually about, so show me the source felt more honest than show me the code.

Talk is Cheap. Code is Cheap. Show me the Source.

This pertains to why most software and too many programmers suck today.

CMSs

Kristof Zerbe shares:

AuguStory - The story of my blog

After a five month break starting in January Grav CMS's blog started publishing again. If you read the articles below the reason for the gap is obvious. Although, they should have announced what they were doing. Unfortunately, I did not have them in my RSS feed and rarely update my sunset site, Symfony Station, so I wasn't aware. But as I think they are the best flat-file site builder out there, here are some of the highlights since May:

The State of Grav: Where We Are and Where We're Going

Grav 2.0 Release Candidate Released

Migrating to Grav 2.0: The Side-by-Side Staged Install

Admin Next: A Modern Admin Experience

Grav 2.0: Markdown Enhancements

The Grav API: The Foundation of 2.0

Grav 2.0: Twig in Content and the New Security Sandbox

Grav 2.0 Released!

I migrated Symfony Station successfully but it you visit it, there are some CSS customizations that are now a little wonky. I may or may not fix them on this sunset site. Although I do miss working with Grav, my all-time favorite site builder.

Schemescape explores:

Uncommon but useful static site generator features

Karl Voit shows us how to:

Add Comments to Your (Static) Blog Using Fediverse Hashtags

Great KISS and DIY idea. I set it up for our Manade site's notices. I am still tweaking it so it will work with my Bonfire test instance.

I also ran across Menitions United which I will have to explore in more detail:

Mentions United

Daniel Lombrana has a great DIY case study:

My simple social network

Publii compares:

Publii vs WordPress

I have a site on both and this mostly tracks.

Offprint says:

Death to Substack

Pay attention Ghost.

Daniel Ritzenthaler writes:

What an interesting, unusual, unfortunate, and ridiculous way to learn about: noblogs.org

Indeed. We live in an absurd timeline. And my increasing fascist homeland is becoming the most ridiculous country in the history of humanity. Absolute fucking clowns. And cunts.

IndieWeb

Jim Mitchell is:

Announcing the new Indieweb is Punk Manifesto

This is literally The Fulcrum's ethos.

Bear

Robynbird Blog shares:

What does my Bearblog Mean - A reflection

This is what a classic ‘blog’ is supposed to be. So, please start one yourself.

Leaflet

Leaflet shares its:

Leaflet FAQ

Tools

Current Affairs asks:

Who Will Save the Internet From Disappearing?

VPN

Mullvad announces:

Introducing Multihop modes

Browsers

Waterfox has an update:

6.7.1 — Fine Tuning

It's one of the trio of Firefox forks I use daily, including Zen and Librewolf. You should check them out if you want to browse ethically.

Search

8 Ball Ramblings is:

Announcing Project Glass 2.0

Crazy Steve’s Blog explains:

Why I use this paid search engine (Uruky)

You should also check out xPrivo Classique.

I found this gem on it. Pay attention to the preface, points 42, and 61 - 80. ;)

Cloud

Nextcloud shares:

Nextcloud Hub: The European alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace

This is what I use for my 'professional' work. I use e/OS for personal tasks.

Tuta is moving in this direction as well:

Tuta Calendar now supports time zones for events!

Improved search in your encrypted mailbox (And that’s not all!)

Writing

Daniel Prindii shows us:

How to keep track of authorship with Obsidian in GenAI times

LibreOffice announces:

LibreOffice 26.8 brings professional typography, deeper support for the world’s writing systems, and no artificial intelligence

Why ODF is the only document format compatible with digital sovereignty

Creative

9to5Linux reports:

Darktable 5.6.1 RAW Image Editor Improves UI Performance and Fixes More Bugs

Linux / Open Android

Modal announces:

Announcing Sovereign Tech Agency Investment in Flatpak

Stefan Koopmanschap reviews:

Elementary OS

Along with Mint and Zorin this seems like one of the more user-friendly Linux options. Which are desperately needed if we are to kill off the techno-feudalist triopoly.

Ok, it's phone review time.

FurryLabs has a:

Guest Blog Post: A phone for the non-tech enthusiast

This is looking more and more like a holiday present for myself. ;)

Thoe shares a:

Jolla Phone review

And on a related Free Android note, Gael Duval has:

One month with my new Murena GS6 Pro: finally a Murena phone that checks all my boxes

Plus, The Guardian reviews:

Fairphone 6+ review: the most repairable, ethical phone gets faster

Larvitz Blog explores:

bhyve Inside a Jail: The FreeBSD Feature Nobody Uses

This week's featured OMN tool

Zettlr

From idea to publication: Zettlr supports your writing process at every stage.

Zettlr

Programming

Jonathan Hollin says:

I Love Open Source Software Development

Good for him.

Josh Collinsworth writes:

In defense of two-state theme toggles

Fantastic site design, Josh.

I ran across this solid typography resource this week:

Open Foundry

Ars Technica has:

Ars looks at Zuckoff, the latest free app detecting Meta AI glasses amid privacy backlash

CSS

Patrick Brosset interprets the:

State of CSS 2026

So, use what’s new to get rid of JavaScript. But still keep it simple. Planning is important. There is no need to use everything CSS offers.

Web Components

Dave Rupert examines:

Shadow-piercing local component variables

JavaScript

Master.dev looks at:

Keyboard Shortcuts That Display The Correct Modifier Key per OS

CSS Tricks explores:

Creating Web Widgets Using the Document Picture-in-Picture API

AI

The Free Software Foundation Europe asks:

Copyrightability of LLM-generated code: Can we license “vibe code” into Free Software?

Save yourself some legal trouble and don’t use it.

Euractiv reports:

EXCLUSIVE: EU orders leading AI labs to detail security practices

Other

OpenProject explains:

Why OpenProject is better than Jira

This week's featured programming tool

deploybase

deploybase builds, previews, and ships your static sites on European infrastructure. Push to Git and we take it from there. Your agent can drive too.

European static hosting

And you can keep it simple with a static HTML site. No horseshit framework necessary.

ActivityPub

Event Federation has:

Process on FEPs

Hollo announces:

Hollo security updates: 0.8.11 and 0.9.14

Alex Leroy demonstrates:

Archiving my posts from toot.community

I found an interesting AP effort and resource in this post. Here’s the effort:

Nomadic ActivityPub

This needs to happen.

MOMOI announces itself:

NOMOI is an open protocol for verifiable delegation of authority

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

And here’s the resource:

ActivityPub for developers

A companion resource for the ActivityPub Book featured on this site's Tools page.

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

RadWebHosting shows us:

How to Deploy Funkwhale on Debian VPS

Courtney Rosenthal shares:

My Mastodon wishlist, making it even more awesome

I came across a great community tool for events this week:

Gathio

I added it to our Tools page. BTW, you can self host it as well.

Bonfire

Jeff Sikes shares:

Latest Bonfire Social build shows a nifty diagram of users that are part of a post thread and how engaged they are

Bonfire has a:

Crowdfunding update - your art is on the way. Plus a few prints left if you'd like one

A tiny Bonfire feature we've grown quite fond of

ATProto

Daniel's Leaflets is:

Reintroducing Spaces

AKA Permissioned Data.

Developer use details are here:

The Atproto Spaces Alpha is Live

Rob Ricci shares:

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About AT Protocol and Bluesky

Ducky explores:

did:web 101

Jola.dev is:

Migrating to the new Tangled knot2

Hugo Lassiège asks:

Social networks: what if we had the solution to escape US Big tech?

50 Shades of Protocol examines:

Building the Social Graph with Hubble and Jetstream

Scott's Thoughts say:

No Fork Required

Atmosphere

Roomy announces:

Roomy joins Modal incubator

Custom social feeds app, Graze announces:

Open Social is an invitation to rebuild the attention economy. We're joining Flipboard to take our biggest swing yet at it.

Skyreader has an:

Update - Linkblog on external publications & Improved sharing

Atmosphere Community says:

Find a (somewhat) local Atmosphere community to join

Pick one and join up.

Mu.Social also has a starter pack list:

Local atproto communities all around the world

More inept nonsense from W Social (don't join it):

Just a reminder with AT Protocol Handler you can filter out basic handles from other services (also in reverse). Just requires using **desktop or mobile browser* that supports extensions instead of the apps.*

P2P

Worm Blossom announces:

Pillow is a new collaboration between p2panda and worm-blossom

Webrings

Clayton Errington is:

Improving the webring links, one build at a time

RSS

Ideias de Chirico has:

Offpunk: baixando a internet

A different way to access RSS.

XMPP

Movim announces:

We're approaching the final steps of the Wide Conferences (SFU) feature with the introduction of screen-sharing!

IlSoftware shares:

XMPP ha 25 anni: perché la messaggistica aperta non è mai davvero morta

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're painfully nurturing Manade.

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

The Programmer's Fulcrum 21 August, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:24:36 +0000

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Sometimes, I just want to share something and that is the case today.

In my working life, my hobby project was Symfony Station. As part of that I subscribed to and learned from SymfonyCasts. And it is the best learning product/site I have ever used.

This week, I got an email that my yearly subscription is renewing. I no longer need it, so I canceled the subscription. Before it ends, I am enjoying one last tutorial on Vue JS (which might be useful for me one day, though hopefully not). Viewing it reminds me just how much I miss the truly awesome (and sadly late) Ryan Weaver.

So, @symfonycasts@phpc.social please keep up the fantastic work for the PHP community and thanks for the wonderful memories. And in Ryan’s memory please get the fuck off Twitter and Facebook. And list your Mastodon handle on your website. :)

Featured Item(s)

Michelle Barker writes:

Building a website feels old-fashioned these days. How many more websites do I have left in me before the old fire flickers and dies? Is snuffed out. Before making websites is no longer a viable way to earn a living? The web will change drastically within my lifetime, maybe someday soon, indeed it already has. Maybe it really will fizzle out, a graveyard haunted only by bots and crawlers. But I have a hunch that there will be a long tail.

Little Websites Everywhere

Please use the 4Rs and join the Open Media Network.

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras writes:

We do not need to create large structures that just run the risk of becoming yet another single-point-of-failure and at the same time require approaches to decenter community.

Instead, what we might want is many, ‘reasonably’-sized alternatives that can interact, exchange and cross-communicate. Jacobs did not think about ‘federation’ on a technical protocol level, but I think the Fediverse – with all its problems – shows that there is a real opportunity. And the folks working on making federated code forges work might just pull the same thing off for that domain.

On 'scaling up' and being the right size

CMSs

Make WordPress announces:

WordPress Contributor Toolkit 1.0: A smoother workflow for your first Core contribution

Useful.

Uncenter announces:

My new Learn Eleventy course

Helpful.

Hammer Tech Blog explores:

Putting a Bunny.net CDN in Front of My Static Blog

Typemill announces:

Typemill 2.26.0: PHP 8.5 and GitSync Plugin

After this disappointing announcement and I would expect some backlash, Publii announces:

AI Crawler Blocker

Tools

Heart Soul Machine (correctly) opines:

The Network Should Be Ours

The Guardian reports on:

Dickovers, baggravation and botiquette: 18 new words to describe our tech hellscape

As developers let's unfuck this.

Browsers

Waterfox announces:

6.7.0 — Supernova

Cullum Smith shows us how to:

Browser De-Slop

Quite useful.

Cloud

Obiente has a resource:

Your Nextcloud deserves a real app

Nextcloud has:

Academy of Civic Organizations Foundation builds a secure digital workspace with Nextcloud

Nextcloud earns ANSSI CSPN and BSI IT-Grundschutz certifications

Writing

LibreOffice explains:

Why Digital Sovereignty Requires an Open Document Platform — and What That Actually Means

There Is No “Best” Interface, Only the Right Fit

Creative

GIMP has an update:

GIMP 3.4 Promises New Project File Format, PSD Support Improvements, and More

Linux / Open Android

TechPolicy Press reports:

Google Android Antitrust Ruling Shows the Next Battle is Over Who Controls Trust

Hosting / Serving

Johanna Larson examines:

Self-hosting your PDS

This week's featured OMN tool

Framatoolbox

Using Framatoolbox is the first step on the road to your digital autonomy.

Framatoolbox

Programming

Always Twisted says:

The Recipe Isn't The Bake - What Design Systems Need Beyond Documentation

Ryan Cheley asks:

What if Maintainer Burnout Isn't Burnout

David Bushell shares his:

Ruminations on notifications

Git

Mathias Endler opines:

GitHub Was Never About The Source Code

Mathias, my man, check out Codeberg or Tangled.

HTML

Vic Matuzo shares:

My HTML boilerplate in 2026

Very helpful. Especially as I am extremely tempted to go back to coding sites by hand. ;)

Piccalilli takes:

A look at the geolocation HTML element and how it works

CSS

That HTML Blog has:

So Many Ways to Design Systematize a Component

Ion Prodan looks at:

CSS contrast-color()

CSS Tricks explores:

CSS Navigation Matching, Early Days

When this settles in, it will be another great way to get rid of some JavaScript. :)

AI

1Password explains:

Off-by-1 Labs: Why AI-generated vulnerability patches still require expert human review

AKA they’re horseshit.

Other

OpenProject reports:

Atlassian's AI Data Policy Takes Effect on August 17: Discover OpenProject as a Jira Cloud Alternative

This week's featured programming tool

SymfonyCasts

In honor of my final weeks with Ryan's tutoring.

SymfonyCast's JavaScript Courses

SymfonyCast's JavaScript Framework Courses

SymfonyCast's PHP Courses

ActivityPub

Hamish Campbell shares:

OMN: Activity, culture and why Soviet experiments matter

I started reading the ActivityPub book while on vacation last week and this ties into AP's history in an unique way.

Shom Dev has:

Big hopes for littleFedi

I missed this last week.

Starling is a nice simple server I use for the Manade project's official communications. And it actually works with Fediverse clients. Unlike my accounts on holos.social, fedihood.social, and Ghost.

The Social Web Incubator Community Group is trying to tame some of the chaos from Mastodon's implementation of ActivityPub (and everyone else copying them):

ActivityPub Miscellaneous Terms

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

ActivityPub Book

This is the ActivityPub handbook that every social software hacker needs.

ActivityPub Book

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

PixelFed announces:

We're building an official Pixelfed relay service

ActivityPub Space is:

Tracking RFC 9421 Adoption

Fedilab Apps announces:

We are now more than 300 users on FediHood. The project is stable enough for me to invite you to try it.

We started an account to test it out. Follow us at @walkers@fedihood.social if you can.

Mastodon previews:

5.0: Laying the foundation

Good UI improvements.

Owncast has:

Owncast Newsletter August 2026

The Social Web Incubator Community Group is trying to tame some of the chaos from Mastodon's implementation of ActitivyPub (and everyone copying theirs):

ActivityPub Miscellaneous Terms

Bonfire

Bonfire asks:

What should digital infrastructure for open science look like, and more importantly, who should shape it?

Asta von Schröder has thoughts:

Science Communication in the Fediverse – Mastodon and Open Science Network

As promised last week, we're going to explore the many challenges of achieving our vision of an easily installed, safe, surveillance-resistant home for vulnerable online communities.

Is my Manade project viable?

Hamish Campbell says:

In tech, the unit of measure is important

He makes a great point: ...what would the balancing of communal-first tech look like? Well, much like the current mod process of good grassroots Mastodon instances. Malatesta was right: anarchism is not the absence of “paths”, it’s paths we make for ourselves.

Local First

Tyler's Blog examines:

A Local-First Task Planner On ATProto

ATProto

ATProto announces:

The Atproto Spaces Alpha is Live

This is the name they settled on for permissioned data.

Nick Gerakines continues a series:

Permissioned Data: Space Access

As does Daniel’s Leaflets:

Permissioned Data Diary 7: Off the Record

Chris’s Corner looks at:

The disconnect between web pages and the social filesystem

Johanna Larson has:

Taking control of your atproto account

Latch - an Elixir atproto OAuth library

Atmosphere

And this interesting tool:

Annot

We will see if it works for this site. But, I don't think it will for basic Ghost. Pro or self-hosted might work.

Diego Vicente shares:

Getting into ATProto: My 2026 Field Guide to the ATmosphere

A good list of apps, including a few non-horseshit ones.

Ewan's Blog has:

2,558 Is Not a Number of People

Interesting if you care exactly who and what your followers are. Nothing personal, but I don't.

We Can Just Do Things reports:

W Social is TruthSocial with a European accent

They are definitely a pack of poser grifting cunts, whose few real users are bamboozled, clueless marks at best.

XMPP

Slidge announces:

Slidge got a security audit

Matrix

Matrix explores:

Local-first Matrix

Hey Matrix, keep up the good work but please walk the talk and get the fuck off YouTube and onto PeerTube. At least for your embedded videos.

Adullact reports:

Matrix pour les collectivités : vers une messagerie instantanée souveraine et fédérée

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're painfully nurturing Manade. See above :(

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

The Programmer's Fulcrum 14 August, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 06:37:24 +0000

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

We are on holiday this week without a computer, so we’re missing some curation resources.

Featured Item(s)

Hamish Campbell writes:

If essential social information is available only through a private corporation, leaving that corporation becomes socially expensive. That’s exactly why we need a working, good UX’ open web-based reboot. Email still works. Websites still work. RSS still works. Federated media works, community archives could work. The technology exists, what is missing is the social infrastructure connecting these things together.

our behaviour matters, so while building real networked alternatives, lets focus on the opens path as security is not enough, survival is not victory. We can build technically secure systems that nobody wants to use. We can build ideologically pure communities that nobody outside the bubble can tolerate. Or we can build useful social infrastructure that helps real people communicate, organise, remember and act together.

The OMN and the fight against the dotcons

Multi-Hyphenate1 explains:

How creatives and devs can all finally escape the control of the silicon valley of evil and make a trillion dollars

Wow! This is A LOT but, similar to what we promote. Set aside some time and read it. A unique voice for sure. :) They make a good point that while intelligent (technically), most devs are clueless fucks and just as lazy as all humans.

Unfortunately, we have an outsized impact on the world.

CMSs

Micro.blog is:

Introducing the Micro.blog PDS

Disappointingly, Publii announces:

We created the Markdown for AI plugin

Be sure not to install it.

Maurice Renk has a way to:

Follow Kirby Plugin Updates

IndieWeb

Venkatram Harish Belvadi explores:

Re-defining the IndieWeb: Focus on the philosophy, not on tools

Fantastic advise to not obsess on the definition.

Write.as / WriteFreely

WriteFreely announces:

Version 0.17.2

The ATL.social announces:

We now have a new service: WriteFreely

Great job, my (metro) home town.

Write.as announces:

We now show alt text in the fediverse!

Better late than never.

Tools

NLnet announces:

60 projects strenghtening the digital commons

They say: there is upcoming work on new internet protocols such as SCION, and the GNU Name System. And of course some web related work such as a proposed new CSP directive and continuation of the work on the Servo web browser. The privacy-enhancing browser extension SurfJS will instrument and replace privacy-sensitive JavaScript APIs with surrogate APIs. There are also some Fediverse-related tools (Fedipub, ActivityBot).

NiemanLab reports:

Can public media build its own social network? Chicago Public Media teams up with New_ Public to try

Ben Wermuller adds his thoughts:

Chicago's social network is a huge bet for news. I think it's the future.

Mother Jones has a review for a book written in 2000:

A Tech Prophet Finally Gets Her Second Coming

Christoph Hormann examines:

OpenStreetMap, business interests and capitalism

CoMaps is the way to go.

Internet Exchange shares:

Protocols: Power Hides in Boring Places

Chat / Team Chat

Signal is:

Introducing Automatic Key Verification

Trail of Bits explains:

How Trail of Bits helps verify the integrity of your Signal chats

About Signal reports:

Signal announces support for Linux ARM64 in beta

Signal Login: optional registration without a phone number will require a one-time payment

Chris Boscolo looks at:

ATSMS Group Chat: End-to-End Encryption Without the Lock-In

Browsers

Servo has:

Servo Report Week 31

CSS Grid is now enabled by default in Servo

Tres bon.

Search

Tuta shares:

Alternatives to Google search

Crislo has:

Ecosia und Qwant haben jetzt ihren eigenen Suchindex, und das ist tatsächlich eine Nachricht

Cloud

NextCloud announces:

Nextcloud passes Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) by SURF & Privacy Comp

Good news.

August maintenance updates: Nextcloud Hub 25 Autumn, 26 Winter & 26 Spring

Writing

LibreOffice examines:

Why and how the Austrian Military moved to LibreOffice (Part 1)

Why and how the Austrian Military moved to LibreOffice (Part 2)

Linux / Open Android

PostmarketOS announces:

device-pine64-pinephonepro: Switching to u-boot and systemd-boot

9to5Linux reports:

CachyOS ISO Release for August 2026 Improves the Installer, Desktop Profiles

Tuta reports:

Google prévoit de bloquer le side-loading comme Apple, déclarant la guerre à la liberté d'Android

e/OS Foundation announces:

Please welcome /e/OS 4.1.1!

This week's featured OMN tool

Bunny Fonts

Choose Privacy. Fuck Google and adopt Bunny Fonts.

Bunny Fonts

Programming

David Bushell says:

They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anymore

Pulsar is another good simple option for a code editor.

Markdown

iio shares:

iiomark: the markup on this webpage

HTML

W3C has:

Updated W3C Recommendation: ARIA in HTML

Adrian Roselli asks:

Should a Dialog Close When Clicked Outside?

Master. Dev shares:

Delayed-Then-Instant Tooltips with HTML & CSS Alone

CSS

And explores:

View Transitions: Careful Not To Make Stuff Unclickable

NerdyDev examines:

Scroll Axis Lock

AI

Terry Godier (admirably) says:

Mea Culpa - Dark Hours

Reason 12,036 that vibe-coding is horseshit.

Codemanship explains why:

AI Software Development – What Does The Data Say?

Cal Newport follows up:

On AI Coding and Its Discontents

On a related note, Brett Codes says:

I'm done using AI

And Stefan Koopmanschap has:

On AI (continued)

The 4Rs, peeps.

This week's featured programming tool

Web Components

Add interactivity to your projects.

Web Components

ActivityPub

Open Social Biz looks at:

The Right to Leave: How W3C's New LOLA Standard Aims to Solve Fediverse Account Migration

I missed this a few weeks ago.

Little Fedi launches:

A lightweight ActivityPub server

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

Fediverse.info

This is the fediverse: social media run by the people on it.

Fediverse.info

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

FediLabs announces:

FediHood is now available

I built FediHood on the Mastodon API

If you want to set up an instance for Nazi cunts, PieFed shares:

What PieFed blocks out of the box – and how to unblock it

Bonfire

My Manade situation is not quite as dire as it was last week, so I am delaying the details post till next week.

Surf announces:

Version 1.0.447

ATProto

ATProto has:

Make the PDS Your Own: Customization and Metrics

Introducing Bluesky Protocol Services

Seeing their chance of monetizing their platform go down in flames, this is the first step towards monetizing the protocol. Which is fine.

Alex’s Blog adds:

We have killed the technical debt

Chris Pardy explores:

Adversarial Spaces

Atmosphere

Blacksky explains:

Blacksky Isn’t Just Another Bluesky. Here’s the Difference.

Elena Rossini asks:

Is anybody curious about how the W Social experiment is going?

The Daily Tech Feed reports:

Bluesky’s Active User Base Declines Amid Strategic Shift

Thus, Aaron Ross Powell responds:

We Needn't Have a One True Platform

This x 2,000.

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're painfully nurturing Manade. ;)

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The Programmer's Fulcrum 7 August, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 22:20:38 +0000

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Featured Item(s)

We're tooting our horn this week. In our latest article, I wrote:

In this article we will cover a simple, DIY strategy. In particular, it's about what I call the 4Rs of web development. They are empowering, reduce frustration, and help you feel good about your work (and yourself).

And there's the added benefit that this work strategy thwarts democracy and planet destroying tech bros, oligarchs, and autocrats.

Working with the 4Rs of Web Development

FYI, it also contains a spiky anti-AI rant.

On related note number 1, The Nerve reports:

Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying

On related note number 2, The Guardian has a book review of Gil Durán's:

The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. The book’s central argument is that big tech is no longer our friend, as many of its billionaire owners have seized economic and political control and are steering the fate of the planet towards their own bizarre, apocalyptic visions.

Gil says (the question now), “is how we turn the momentum in our favour and against the billionaires. Because they have a plan to win. They think they’re going to succeed.”

This could be a radicalising moment: “In fighting against billionaire power, we find the key to all of our problems. Every moment is an important opportunity to wake people up and to start to fight back.”

If not, he says, we’ll find ourselves in a situation where “we don’t have democracy, we don’t have an economy and we don’t have a future. If that doesn’t radicalise people, then we deserve what we’re going to get.”

‘If we don’t fight back, we don’t have a future’: the journalist taking on the ‘tech fascists’ of Silicon Valley

This is what we have been covering for years. And literally the reason for suffering through a coding bootcamp in 2018 so I could better understand the programming side of this evil.

CMSs

Telex reports:

Nearly 500-page document details manipulation of news at Hungarian state news agency during Orbán era

Protocols for Publishers interviews:

Mike Masnick on protocols for publishers

Simon Repp announces:

The fifth beta release for Faircamp 2.0 is now available

IndieWeb

Nothing to See Here explores:

Publishing websites on Freenet

I was "this week" years old when I learned about the peer to peer site builders Freenet and Delta.

So, I started The Fulcrum 3 on Delta to experiment (it just has our articles, so no posts). If you have Freenet installed and running, I think you can see it here. Or type EMWvaZfLnK in the Delta interface. Maybe. ;)

By the way, these P2P tools definitely use the 4Rs (after setup). Not that it would be simple for many people to find and read their creations. It's definitely for private sites (used by tech-savvy individuals), which is probably a good thing. ;)

Brennan Kenneth Brown examines:

Phoneblogging

Ghost

Magic Pages asks:

Staging site or a local copy?

I am sharing this as a reference for myself. ;)

BTW, I am going to go one more year with Ghost as the home for the main Fulcrum site here before deciding between it, WordPress, or something else as the permanent choice.

So Ghost, pick up your fucking ActivityPub integration game, if you want a long-term client. In particular, the reader and 3rd party Fediverse client compatibility suck. The same is not true for your competition.

Bear

Cats and Birds and Stuff explains:

Why I Left WordPress for BearBlog

Simple is better, as long as Herman never shuts down Bear.

Leaflet

Scraps shares:

On Atmospheric Stacks… Or, how we can supplant Substack and take back the stack, together as an ecosystem!

Write.as / WriteFreely

Write.as asks:

Been a while since you logged into Write.as?

If you have a website, please use it. Share your unique insights frequently no matter how small or insignificant you think they are. They are literally revolutionary at this point.

Tools

Organic Maps announces:

Bugfixes and improvements for public transport, routing, search, and bookmarks in the July 2026 update

I ran across this useful resource this week:

Chapril by April

And I added it to our tools page.

Chat / Team Chat

It’s Going Down has:

The P.E.T. Guide

P.E.T. apps are self-contained applications that permit Peer-to-peer and Encrypted messaging over Tor.

Browsers

Servo has this report:

June in Servo: real world compat, media queries, SharedWorker, and more!

And 9to5Linux has a:

First Look at Firefox’s Brand-New Design in Firefox Nightly

Remember to use Firefox forks like Waterfox, Librewolf, or Zen.

Writing

LibreOffice looks at:

The characteristics of a truly open document standard format

9to5Linux reports:

Calibre 9.13 E-Book Manager Improves PDF Output, Content Server, and More

Creative

And:

Shotcut 26.7 Video Editor Adds Graphics Adapter for Linux, Shake Video Filter

Linux / Open Android

And:

NVIDIA Joins Dell and HP in Supporting the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS)

PostmarketOS announces:

Non-adaptive apps hidden in Phosh by default

Tuta shares:

DeGoogled phones, made in Europe: Fairphone, Volla, SHIFTphone, Punkt – a full review

You should own one.

Speaking of, e/OS announces:

Please welcome /e/OS 4.1.1

On the last day of July, Purism shared its:

PureOS Development Report: June 2026

Ruben de Smet explores:

My Sailfish OS Journey: I have my Jolla Phone, what now?

F-Droid has:

This Week in F-Droid

Larvit Blog shares:

Three Test Jails on a 512 MB Free-Tier VPS

This week's featured OMN tool

Chapril Toolbox

The site offers free and accessible online services that use alternatives to GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) products.

Chavril by April

Programming

W3C shares:

Further Aligning W3C's Program of Technical Work with Human Rights

Nice thoughts, but actions are more important.

LibreOffice reports:

CISA Publishes Open Source Security Guidance: Verifiability Is the Difference

Git

Damien Mathieu says:

Thank you, Codeberg

Moi, aussi.

Lalit Maganti opines:

GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

Since it's shit, I don't know why you would want to replace it. If you need a enterprise solution, use Gitlab. If you are ethical, use Codeberg. And it you need social dopamine hits with your git, use Tangled.

HTML

Master.dev explores:

Something Nobody Told You About The Image Element (It Can Overflow!)

Unplanned Obsolescence explains:

The Difference Between a Button and a Link

You rarely need the first, but many people misuse them. Including the template we're using on this site. :(

HTMX

Serge Zaitsev says:

Let's make the worst htmx ever! ;)

Fafael demonstrates:

Building Progressively Enhanced Forms Using htmx

CSS

Master.dev looks at:

5 CSS Properties You Should Know for Better Text Designs

Some useful CSS.

Web Components

JavaScript

Piccallili explores:

Creating Promises

This bedeviled me in full-stack bootcamp. ;(

Akido reports:

Keyv and friends compromised in active Shai-Hulud supply chain attack

JavaScript. Gotta love it. Not!

AI

The Guardian reports:

Chasing new skills, going back to basics and pushing for collective action: how software engineers are adapting to AI

If you are a wage slave (even a well paid one), this is what you have to deal with.

Pivot to AI reports:

Copilot prompt injection goes viral in your documents

Not a WebDev language, but Inside Rust Blog reports:

rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

Every opensource project should as well.

Other

Open Project releases:

OpenProject 17.7: Resource management and better team organization

This week's featured programming tool

Pears

Unleash the Power of P2P. Empower Developers, Disrupt the Norm!

Pears

ActivityPub

The Association for Progressive Communications has an interview:

DrFed on reducing complexity and enabling more people to shape the Fediverse

A fantastic interview with someone doing the best simplification work for disastrously complicated ActivityPub development.

Journey of the Wolf and Raven announces:

Activity-Relay Server v2.5.0 RC1 is now live

SocialHome announces:

Socialhome backend v0.24.0 released

ActivityPub.space shares some info:

ActivityPub Trust & Safety Taskforce Meeting 2026-08-05

Open Risk has a great thread:

Has there been a distinct phase of the Web after the original TBL protocols and implementations (=Web 1.0)?

Related to the 4Rs (reuse).

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

Hacker's Pub

East Asian-oriented Hackers' Pub is an ActivityPub-enabled social network for software engineers to share their knowledge and experience with each other.

Hacker's Pub

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
and Corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

Here's a more in-depth explanation of the above from Federated Mind:

Account portability on the Fediverse vs. the ATmosphere

Sturmsucht's Blog & Community shares:

A new social me

I fancy myself a photographer so this tracks for me too.

Hamish Campbell says:

The Fediverse is fun and growing, but it seems to kinda be on autopilot at the moment

Bonfire

I have a sad announcement coming about our Manade project next week.

Thinking with Portals explores:

Increasing lot sizes of our digital homes

This is some good thinking. ;)

ATProto

Permadeath advocates for:

Adversarial internecting

We're in with this subversion tactic, though reading the post made my brain hurt a little. ;)

Scott's Thoughts include one:

On an Atmosphere OS

Thinking with Portals examines:

Decentralised Identity 🤝 Mesh Networking

Owais reports:

Bobbin is Tangled's read-only AppView

Debbie's Blatherings explains:

Why good non-techie user documentation is vital for a wider embrace of the ATmosphere

Yep. And on the Fediverse and everywhere else.

Atmosphere Community shares a presentation:

AtmosphereConf Interactive Transcripts using Hyperaudio by Mark Boas

Atmosphere

The Verge has a long, long interview:

Bluesky’s new CEO wants a big tent, not a bubble

BTW, they clickbait the headline and framing. And the boss man isn't a clear communicator. And he seems more naive than villainous. Which is better than I expected.

Interlinked says:

Let's Talk Money

This is a more interesting article about the future of the Atmosphere.

What's Happening on my Feed? shares:

Community (Moderation) in Practice

Ewan Croft reports:

W Social Isn't New. It Isn't Truly European. It Isn't Even Theirs.

Fuck W Social and the bamboozled fucks on it. It’s understandable for a company to be a box of cunts, and the general public to be clueless marks, but I hate tech-gullible, easily-bought politicians. They do almost as much harm as the techno fascists.

RSS

Sindre shares:

Best practices for RSS

It's FOSS reviews:

Escape the Algorithm: 10 RSS Feed Readers You Can Self Host in Your Homelab

Stefan Van Buren advises:

PSA: Include full article content in feeds

Oui.

XMPP

XMPP shares:

The XMPP Newsletter July 2026

Consider attending their online summit.

Matrix

Matrix announces:

Matrix Community Workation Krems 2026

Democracy Tech

Decidim asks:

Would you like to propose a session at the next edition of Decidim Fest 2026?

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're painfully nurturing Manade. ;)

Blasts from the past

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Previous Symfony Station Posts

Working with the 4Rs of Web Development

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 05:45:21 +0000

This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Revolutionary? and self-rewarding! K.I.S.S. and DIY WebDev strategy cripples tech bros, oligarchs, and autocrats

Here at The Fulcrum we cover items and ideas in the Techno Anarchist Manifesto relating to KISS and DIY development for the Open Media Network and Open Social. We preach, promote, and practice keeping your work simple and crafting it yourself. It might require more effort but it's more rewarding. If you follow us, you know that.

You also know I'm prone to curse. If not, you're now pre-warned. Asides over.

You probably got this, but the 4Rs are a riff on Reduce, Reuse, Recycle for the consumption of physical goods.

And the principle of the four's usage would apply to any type of programming work to a significant degree.

And there's the added benefit that this work strategy thwarts democracy and planet destroying tech bros, oligarchs, and autocrats.

Moving on, the Techno Anarchism-based 4Rs are:

Resist
Reduce
Reuse
Recirculate

If you aren’t self-employed, please try to influence your clients, coworkers, and management to follow or let you follow the 4Rs within your projects.

This is not all or nothing. Every little bit helps, even following a few of them. Win the battles you can when laboring (not working) for the necessities in life.

You’ll notice I’m using the word “work” a lot. The previous advice necessitates a quick note on the difference between "labor" and "work".

The first is what you have to do to earn money to pay for whatever housing, food, utilities, transportation, etc. you need to survive. You’re part of the labor force and to some degree do forced labor. And I would advise being in a union so you can at least get paid well for putting up with it.

The second is effort you voluntarily choose to exert and which can be a reward in and of itself. If you’re very fortunate this work could also provide income. Then you would be working for yourself whether you're self-employed or not.

So, let's get to “work” with the 4Rs.

Resist

Unsurprisingly, as a techno anarchist we recommend resisting all the techshit that is infecting every element of our lives. And it's only getting worse at an exponential rate thanks to all the clueless fucks using AI for any and everything. This is especially true for programming. And even for "real" programmers who should know better.

So, resist:

Techno Feudalism
Techno Fascism/Authoritarianism
Generative AI Tools
Non-standard Code
Proprietary Code

Yanis Varoufakis came up with the term Techno Feudalism. He writes:

'“… capitalism is dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. … that role … has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call techno feudalism.

… the thing that killed capitalism is capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial revolution, but a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful that its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host.”

That capital is rent-seeking cloud capital.

Use the link above to learn more about techno feudalism, cloud capital, and how not to become a serf.

But for web development purposes, resisting techno feudalism involves not having anything to do with big tech's tooling and the benighted efforts of its sub-human oligarch owners and amoral/immoral executive management.

That includes not using GitHub, VS Code, CoPilot, Azure, ASP.NET, Edge, React JS, Angular JS, Chrome, Gemini, Ruby on Rails, AWS, xCode, Swift, Safari, Codex, Claude, etc, fucking etc.

Techno Fascism/Authoritarianism is what the tech oligarch owners/purveyors (of these examples and other techshit) do on a daily basis and hope to achieve. They're trying to maximize their raping and pillaging.

So we won't have to kill the evil vikings, let's resist and weaken them in order to drastically reduce their wealth and source of power over us. Without obscene wealth they can't lobby, bribe, or buy our shit politicians.

Please don't give them even one penny of your cash or monetization of your attention or time.

For "AI", just rinse and repeat as it is an artifact of fascism with very few legitimate uses. Pure and simple.

Sorry, but I'm going on a quick, spiky rant.

For general usage, unless you're disabled (and it enables you) or you're communicating in a second language, try not to be a clueless dipshit and don't use AI.

Nobody likes a slop merchant and the shit digital products they "create" suck on a practical level. So, please just don't go there.

And don't fucking whine "but it's useful." Chemical weapons are useful for killing people but that doesn't mean you should use them.

In any event, these "useful" tools only provide slight improvements, average results, and little ROI compared to their extravagant costs to your wallet and soul. And that doesn't include the more dreadful costs to the place where you live and your neighbors.

Most importantly, generative AI is stolen goods being fenced in online pawnshops in order to deskill the workforce and drive down the cost and power of labor. And it's knowingly destroying the environment and local communities every step of the way. If you don't care about that, I'm sorry but you're a cunt. Get off my website and don't come back.

So, fuck AI and 98.24% of anything to do with it.

Be an asshole luddite like me, not a techno fascist.

Sorry, but this shit boils my piss. :(

Ok, rant over.

Finally, please resist using some idiot's vibe code or any other non-standards-based garbage whether it's generated by a LLM or an incompetent human developer. There is plenty of time-tested, community-trusted, high-quality stuff to reuse (as you will see below).

There are also practical financial reasons for resisting all this tech bro nonsense. Expensive (in the first place), rent-seeking, and addictive corporate "solutions" will inevitably enshittify and fuck you and your long-term projects over.

They are many monetary rewards for avoiding the use of proprietary code, platforms, and systems tooling. Use opensource (but not necessarily free) tools for more financial recourse. I'm sure you're intelligent enough to be able to successfully manage the investment.

Reduce

The second R involves reducing (if not eliminating) the use of overly-complicated clusterfucks like frontend frameworks, most backend frameworks, and development platforms. And it avoids misapplying languages like JavaScript or Python in the first place. This applies to both proprietary and opensource tech.

So, no React, Angular, NodeJS, Tailwind, Bootstrap, Atlassian, Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, corporate cloud tech, AI IDEs, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, etc., etc., etc. for us and our web development work.

Please use the simplest tool(s) for each task you have to accomplish. There is no need for 95% of this command-line, CI/CD, deployment, dependency, permissions, builds, API accessing hell.

And trying to use one size fits all, enterprise-scale solutions for the smallest tasks is about the most ineffective thing you can do. Plus, simple is more secure as well.

The best stack is no stack. Strategically stock your toolbox with long-lasting, effective, and simple tools for achieving the best results for your unique work.

You'll find it less frustrating and alienating if a little more time-consuming.

Our minds need exercising and skills need using to stay sharp. Again, this is good for our mental health as developers.

Reduce your use of over-engineered horseshit and your projects will work years from now and most importantly just work period. Today.

Reuse

Please don't reinvent the wheel. There is nothing that is new under the techno sun. Just use standards-based development's existing tools and techniques for guaranteed success. The best way to do things, is to use things, that already do things the best way. That's the third R.

So, reuse/use:

Web Standards
HTML and CSS
Vanilla JavaScript and PHP if needed
Code Snippets
Web Components if needed
Opensource Tools
Protocols

You can easily research, find, and reuse standards-based solutions to your challenges because standards are well documented by their very nature. Use what works.

Vanilla code is easier to learn or source for more complicated tasks. This is because it's also well documented and there is lots of readily available training. It's easy to upskill yourself because much of that training is time-tested, evergreen, and free. In other words it uses the fourth R. ;)

You should also save and reuse your customized code snippets or use those available via helpful code libraries. Store them wherever you want as long as it's free from being scraped. Please don't feed the slop engines and monetize the slop merchants.

If truly needed, vanilla web components are the shining example of this strategy. Plug and play saves the day for projects that legitimately need extra functionality.

But, most of the time you shouldn't even need the majority of these components. Don't use a tap screw where a thumb tack will work. In fact, you should even try to avoid vanilla JavaScript, PHP, and databases whenever you can.

There are dozens of simple, readily available, and easy to use opensource tools (see the link above) for web development that selflessly serve the community and need your support.

Please use them.

And when you do, finance them with small monetary donations or indirectly finance them with code or in-kind contributions. Please, assist them via promotion at a minimum.

They will pay you back ten fold.

Other than FTP, web protocols are something you rarely need to touch, but if you do need them, use them natively rather than via obfuscated platforms or tools. Remember, even if you're working on a sophisticated PWA, let's avoid clusterfuck tech.

Recirculate

The fourth R involves showing and sharing your work and knowledge so others can benefit from your rewarding experiences.

Share quick tips on open social and write how-to articles or produce videos for your community. That is the essence of participating in the Open Media Network. It's even a form of informal documentation.

Giving back builds karma and empowers more developers to build more websites and PWAs for everyone to use in place of techno feudalist platforms. It's a virtuous circle. And it feels good to help others.

Now, the best form of recirculating is building on/improving existing opensource tools and (of equal importance) formally documenting those efforts.

On that note, please maintain and update your documentation just as much as you do the code. Shit outdated docs defeat the purpose of DIY and recirculation.

And this could be part of the 1.76% of AI usage that might be justified. That's provided it's opensource AI, locally trained on your information, and hosted on servers or personal computers you totally control.

Alright, enough with the asides. Let's finish this exploration.

Wrapping it up

So, using the 4Rs isn't rocket science. It's just purposely following a simple and sound strategy by building simple sites and apps (yourself). And doing it with simple tools. But their use furthers an incredibly important goal - debilitating oligarchs (whether feudalists or fascist/authoritarians) and the autocrats they buy.

Please resist the tech overlords, reduce your consumption of their techshit, reuse proven tech that already exists (in your unique way), and recirculate your improvements, creations, and discoveries.

Again, this is not an all or nothing strategy. Like following techno anarchism itself, every little bit you do helps a little bit of everything.

If we follow the 4Rs within our web development and PWA work, we can go a long way in defeating techno feudalism, techno fascism/authoritarianism, and tech-bro-ism in general while keeping a smile (or smirk) on our face. We'll also create better projects.

Let's get to work with the 4Rs, be proud of what we build, improve our mental health, bring back the web we used to love, and set an example for other programmers!

CTAs

Please share this article.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage of similar topics.
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The Programmer's Fulcrum 31 July, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 05:42:02 +0000

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Featured Item(s)

Rest of World writes:

A growing pushback against big tech companies, and greater awareness of the value of data, is spurring interest in data collectives and cooperatives, which give communities control over the collection, management, and distribution of their data.

This alternative allows creators to benefit from data sets that may otherwise be ignored or misused.

Fed up with Big Tech, communities turn to data collectives for control

This works well with my diminishing hopes for Manade. ;) See the Fediverse section below.

Henry Codes writes:

The widespread deployment of AI/LLMs constitutes an existential threat to labor whether or not it is an adept move by the adoptive industries. Thus it is essential for workers to stop asking whether or not AI works and start asking who ultimately benefits from its deployment.

It doesn’t matter if it works

Speaking of this horseshit, Zuzai.org writes:

I'll begin with something obvious: things made with AI tools are proliferating in lots of places where lots of people don't want them.

Not so obvious: we don't have a good, crisp word to indicate that something is NOT one of these things, in other words, that it is free of AI.

We need a new word. How about ... zuzai?

As in this website is zuzai. We're all in.

CMSs

Kyrylo Silin says:

The favicon survived the web

Germ's mama, Anna asks:

Why websites?

Typemill announces:

Typemill 2.25.0: Relaunch and Small Improvements

Pagecord announces:

Classic just got a lot better

Bear

The Hour is Blue explores:

Writing for Readers, Not Algorithms

The same goes for MCPs.

xIre reflects on:

One Year On Bear

Good advice.

Leaflet

Leaflet announces:

An option to switch navigation direction for browsing older vs. newer posts from the post footer

And Leaflet Lab announces:

Piloting paid memberships for the open social web

Going the Ghost and SuckStack route.

Write.as / WriteFreely

Write.As has:

A small but helpful fix is out for federated blogs!

Tools

404 Media reports:

Being a Luddite Is Fun Again

On a related note, Rafael says:

Let me put in a plug for our dear old sdf.org/

Tres cool.

Chat / Team Chat

AboutSignal announces:

Scheduled messages in Note to self now work as reminders in Signal for Android

Useful.

Signal is working on registration without a phone number. But what form will it take?

Germ announces:

Germ is Now Quantum Secure

Unfortunately, it's iOS only.

Browsers

Waterfox announces:

6.7.0-beta.3- Ultra Protection returns and Linux package repositories

Search

Ecosia announces:

Your Ecosia searches in Germany just became more independent

Cloud

Nextcloud asks:

Do I belong at the Nextcloud Community Conference 2026? The answer is yes.

Writing

LibreOffice has:

LibreOffice, yours for a lifetime

9to5Linux reports:

Calibre 9.12 E-Book Manager Adds Option to Convert GIF Images to JPEG/WebP

Creative

Rolle examines:

Getting my photos Google-free – how to move from Google Photos to PixelUnion and quickly host your photo albums in Europe

Linux / Open Android

PostmarketOS announces:

New dependencies, requirements, and recommended workarounds for kernels

GrapheneOS announces:

GrapheneOS protections against data extraction from locked devices

9to5Linux reports:

Ubuntu Touch OTA 2.0 Officially Released for Supported Linux Phones and Tablets

F-Droid has:

This Week in F-Droid

Hosting / Serving

MauveRant examines:

Self-Hosting S3 object-storage with Garage

Interesting concept and demonstration.

This week's featured OMN tool

The Techno Anarchist Manifesto

The TAM is now available as a PDF, ebook, and website.

The Techno Anarchist Manifesto

Programming

SIV shares:

Verifiable Web Code — Why It's So Exciting

The Zone explains:

What software freedom means today

Shin's Psychedelic World examines:

Cooperative Software

Dave Rupert reviews:

The new yet familiar CodePen 2.0

See the Stolon note below as well.

Git

For all the AI butthurt Codeberg whiners:

A slop peddler has started a slop-friendly Forgejo instance

On a related note, Do Flamengos know they're Pink has:

Open Source Is Indefensible

Here's a great quote:

We don't need to defend the freedom to take from everyone all the time.

Our freedom to associate, our freedom to refuse, and our freedom to decide over infrastructure we reasonably control all need defending though, and all of that is outside the jurisdiction of licences and code. Thank you Codeberg for reminding us it was there all along.

Tangled is:

Introducing Bobbin

And Ricard Torres is:

Moving away from GitHub to self hosted Gitea

HTML

That HTML Blog asks:

Are y'all ready for HTMLDay?

SelfHTML.blog has:

Spickzettel zum schnellen Nachschlagen

The Art of Not Asking Why? shares:

Style & Emacs Config: A Semantic HTML Reckoning

CSS

Master.dev advises:

When You Need To Make a Triangle, Think Conic Gradients

Botmonster Tech says:

CSS @starting-style lets you animate elements on entry without JavaScript

Web Components

Raphaël Bastide shares:

Stolon has been updated, big time!

Cool tool.

JavaScript

Evil Martians (with the best site design on earth) shows us:

The secure way to release an NPM package in 2026

Master.dev looks at:

Same Name, Different Component with Scoped Custom Element Registries

AI

Brno Hat explains:

How AI Is Changing Open Source

And it's not in a good way.

Ivan Enderlin shares:

GCC declines any legally significant contributions which include LLM-generated content or are derived from LLM-generated content

Good.

Other

XWiki shares its:

Release Notes for XWiki 18.6.0

This week's featured programming tool

In honor of their telling the slopmerchants and cryptobros to fuck off, it's Codeberg

A community-led effort that provides Git hosting for free/open source projects.

Codeberg

ActivityPub

ActivityPub.Space is:

Reflecting on the existence of httpsig.org

Ethan Black notes:

Development is being done in GitLab to add ActivityPub support!

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

Fedify

Fedify is a Typescript framework that lets you build for the fediverse but skip the boilerplate.

Fedify

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
and Corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

The Nexus of Privacy says:

The time is right: Organizing against the surveillance-industrial complex in the ATmosphere and the fediverses

This is literally what we're going for here at The Fulcrum.

Bonfire

Bonfire is:

Announcing Bonfire for communities: groups and tools to organise together

Sharing a case study

AmalDev answers:

Tech Explained: What Survives an Internet Shutdown?

ATProto

Paul's Blog has:

Starting from scale in the design of the AT Protocol

Nick's Blog continues a series:

Permissioned Data Shapes: Feeds

Permissioned Data Shapes: Notifications

Chris's Corner looks at:

The disconnect between web pages and the social filesystem

Atmosphere

Leaflet Labs asks and answers:

What is the Atmosphere?

For potential users.

Wreckage/Salvage is:

Launching a Cloud Atlas

Standard Reader asks:

What is Standard.Site? Next gen RSS?

Cosmik Labs explores:

Sensors, not just bookmarks (Patterns of Sensemaking #1)

Quite interesting.

Babesky says:

Reclaim Your Algorithm

And Colibri.Social says:

If NVIDIA can un-launch a GPU, we can delay an app launch

Unfortunate, though smart.

P2P

After the Distortion Field explores:

The Antithesis: Why Freenet and Serverless Networks Are Reclaiming Digital Sovereignty

RSS

Jared Lemler shares:

AT Protocol & RSS

A new way to build RSS clients?

Karthikeyen NG looks at:

RSS in 2026 — the best distribution channel nobody uses

Use it, mes amis.

Terry Godier announces:

Current Now Supports Feedly in v1.0.15

XMPP

XMPP previews:

XMPP at FOSSY 2026

Nicoco shares:

Quicksy ferme les inscriptions

Georg (not George) Lucas asks:

Are Emojis Allowed in XMPP Addresses?

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on ATProto for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're painfully nurturing Manade.

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts

Our First Anniversary Brings a Narrowed Focus for Weekly TPFs

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:40:17 +0000

Tightening up the ship

After a year of publishing The Fulcrum, I (as publisher) now know the topics, tools, and techniques I want to focus The Programmer's Fulcrum coverage on.

And maybe it will have the side benefit of shorter TPF posts. We'll see if I can tighten up my discipline as well. ;)

That narrowed focus is on tools and techniques that best meet the requirements of the Techno Anarchist Manifesto philosophy in regards to development for web and open social.

Techno Anarchism is the philosophy, strategies, and most importantly actions needed to defeat Techno Feudalism.

The tighter focus will also include what's anti- surveillance-capitalism, big tech, AI, techno feudalism, and techno fascism. Two-sides(ism) for some things is horseshit.

And our weekly TPFs will continue to cover programming standards. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. We have the tools we need now to protect ourselves from these techbro oligarch cunts.

Here at The Fulcrum we want our readers to build their own site(s) in order to participate in the Open Media Network. We want them to share/promote their voices via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), Open Social, and even a newsletter or podcast. That's why we exist and put in hours of weekly effort and service.

The world needs your knowledge, experiences, and advice.

Readers will benefit from this focus on helping them fight the enshittification of our modern society and destruction of the the planet we share.

We seek to enable the building of new alternatives with existing tools rather than more of the same techshit that got us where we are today. It's past time to stop chasing the new and shiny and get to work with what works now.

The Programmer's Fulcrum posts will have more emphasis on DIY punkish tech and less enterprise-oriented tooling. So opensource (but not necessarily free) tech will be featured. Less is more and let's K.I.S.S.!

Also we won't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We have enough foes to fight without squabbling with our allies. Let's give the benefit of the doubt to our fellow travelers who share our goals if not beliefs and tactics. We want more hunting dogs and less dogma.

Ok, let move on. So here's what we will focus on going forward. I'll go through the topics in the order they are covered in The Programmer's Fulcrum posts.

Content Management Systems / Site Builders

Our first requirement is that site tech be:

Flat file for tech savvy users or
Super simple to use

Our second requirement for coverage is that the tech is:

Able to use Markdown or plain text for content
Able to edit HTML and CSS
Preferably be Self-hostable
Ideally installable without the command line, multiple dependencies, and complex server setup

The flat file advantage

Flat file CMSs don't require databases, are faster, have few if any dependencies, and are more secure. They are the best option for small to medium scale sites.

Grav (Symfony Station), Kirby (Manade), Publii (Les Chroniques de Walker), Typemill (Publications), PureBlog, Flatpress, Yellow, Bludit, and Jeckyll are examples.

If you want to see them in action, the linked ones are those I have current or shuttered (though maintained) sites on.

Simpler is better

For personal and basic sites, KISS is paramount.

Bear, LMNO, Leaflet, pckt, WriteFreely, Silex, and Skypress are examples.

Again, the linked ones above are those we have sites on. In this case to cross-distribute The Programmer's Fulcrum posts to.

Going away

Even though we have used (and loved) them in the past, the following are "over" on The Fulcrum. Platforms that are too big, too complicated, too AI brainwashed, or too compromised by techbroist founders are being deep-sixed.

These too-muchees include WordPress, Ghost, Drupal, Build Awesome, etc. Nothing personal but there are many outlets covering these sub-optimal options.

Having open social integration is no longer a preference for our coverage either. These large platforms (other than WordPress) do a poor job of it anyway. We now recommend using separate open social tools and manually integrating/linking out to them. Although native integration is a nice to have.

Tools

Our coverage of techno-anarchist and OMN tools stays the same with the focus remaining on opensource, KISS, and DIY options.

Programming

Our focus will remain on standard-based web development. We're gonna bear down on Markdown, Git, HTML/X, CSS, and minimalist vanilla JavaScript. Some minor coverage of tools like IDEs, OpenProject, XWiki, Forgejo, and Codeberg will continue.

But the focus will now be exclusively on tech for individuals and very small teams. So, no coverage for enterprise-level nonsense, even if it's opensource. And fuck AI and any projects that use or accept contributions from it.

Open Social

This will be short.

For the Fediverse and Atmosphere spheres we're going to focus on the development efforts of the ActivityPub and ATProto communities.

Going away

We're dropping direct coverage of Fediverse and Atmosphere apps unless it's development related. This is especially true for Mastodon and Bluesky.

On a unsolicited advice note, please use options other than these flagships if you want to be able to use the Fediverse and Atmosphere ten years from now.

Other

This will be shorter.

Our coverage of tools like XMPP, P2P, RSS, Webmentions, Webrings, Democracy tech, etc. will stay the same.

That's it friends

We're going to make this effort to be more focused on actionability for democracy and environment loving developers. There are now more outlets for coverage of the topics we're dropping than there were a year ago.

This should make our efforts to enable non-developers to resist surveillance-capitalism, techno-feudalism, and techno-fascism more effective as well.

Thanks for reading and go help destroy autocracy.

CTAs

Please share this article.
Follow The Fulcrum on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

The Programmer's Fulcrum 24 July, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:37:35 +0000

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), the Fediverse, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Featured Item(s)

Patrick Leavy writes:

Both Big Tech and government security services operate large scale surveillance. How do they relate to one another? In the West we say "Aren't we lucky we don't live in a surveillance state like China!" but haven't we just privatised the surveillance?

The back door surveillance state

Ludic Mataroa writes:

I've had a front-row view to our collective institutions across both the private and public sector undergoing breath-taking mass psychosis.

This essay is an attempt to describe the bizarre dynamics that are currently at play and to reassure the people trying to survive amidst all of this that they are not crazy.

The reality is thus: the people in charge either have no plan, or see no path forwards other than keeping their heads down. Not at banks, not at hospitals, not in our government institutions.

The world’s organisations have been captured by people in the throes of frothing excitement, and saner people who now live in a state of constant commingled fear and frustration.

AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

What's Happening on my Feed? writes:

Social media apps have become a vehicle for community building, world news, and political campaigns.

As app owners have enmeshed themselves more with the state, the carceral logics that haunt marginalized communities offline, became a part of their digital realities online.

Traditional Social Media as a Prison

CMSs

TechPolicy Press shares:

The Web Needs a Context Layer Built on a Shared Protocol

This is all well and good but we need less talk and more walk from NGO fucks.

Adam Newbold explores:

Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day

Great stuff.

I also ran across the options OnionPress, Skypress, and Pagecord this week.

WP Mayor compares:

WP-CLI vs REST API vs Abilities API: Choosing the Right WordPress Interface for the Job

pckt opines:

Blogging: It's more social than ever !

So, similar to Ghost's capabilities but in the Atmosphere.

Write.as / WriteFreely

Write Freely announces:

WriteFreely v0.17 is out now

Tools

TechCrunch reports:

Nonprofit Current AI is racing to build the World Wide Web of AI, free for all

Wallabag has:

Et si l'été servait à lire enfin les articles mis de côté ?

Le CAPTCHA optionnel arrive dans wallabag grâce au financement de wallabag.it

How-to Geek shares:

I turned my old Kindle into a self-hosted Pocket replacement

Chat / Team Chat

Signal announces:

Signal allows iPhones to be linked as secondary devices (beta)

Browsers

9to5Linux reports:

Mozilla Firefox 153 ESR Is Now Available for Download, Here’s What’s New

Firefox also announced they are back on Shitter.

Remember to use non-AI Firefox forks like Zen, Waterfox, or LibreWolf. Fuck Firefox and Mozilla's Vichy asses.

Waterfox announces:

6.6.17- Security and regional search follow-up

Cloud

Nextcloud compares:

Freedom of choice in Nextcloud Office: powered by Euro-Office, Collabora, and Thinkfree Office

I would avoid any MicroSlop taint, so don't use Euro-Office.

Writing

LibreOffice explains:

How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

And announces:

LibreOffice 26.2.5 is available for download

Explorers show us:

How to Design with Hyperlinks

A look at how to lay out eBooks. Useful and I think my 2027 project will be to write a book.

Creative

GIMP has its:

Google Summer of Code Midpoint Progress

Linux / Open Android

F-Droid has:

This Week in F-Droid

Hosting / Serving

Coryd says:

Self hosting a PDS isn't hard (so far)

This week's featured OMN tool

Skypress

A calm place to write long-form, and publish it to the open social web.

Skypress

Just click and write.

Programming

Random Thoughts on Leadership and Technology shares:

The Open-Soruce Big Bang

Very interesting. Can AI coded opensource products kill off corporate tech horseshit before corporate tech kills the planet?

A related question, will open, Chinese communist AI kill off fascist Silicon Valley AI?

Git

Forgejo announces:

Forgejo 16.0.1 was just released!

BleepingComputer reports:

FakeGit campaign uses 7,600 GitHub repos to push SmartLoader malware

If you use ShitHub or AI you deserve what you fucking git. ;)

Markdown

Newsonaut opines:

Markdown makes learning HTML less scary

HTML

Geoff Graham

Handling Alt Text in a Linked Image

CSS

Masters.dev has:

Masonry (with Animation) in CSS

Slick but rarely needed effect.

Using animation-composition in CSS to Avoid Redeclaring Other Values

Ditto.

JavaScript

Infrequently Noted laments:

The Absolute State of Management

Reason 1,212,368 that React sucks. Fuck MicroSlop.

AI

Codeberg is:

Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

Dusty Cloud

Faulty Towers, vibe sickness, and the vibe bobsled

Are humans actually the dumbest monkeys?

TechCrunch reports:

Patreon stops asking AI bots not to scrape — and starts blocking them

Proycon has:

Formulating an AI policy for my free software projects

Erlend Sogge Heggen notes:

Open models are decelerationist

Other

XWiki announces:

XWiki SAS Q2 2026 updates: new features, improvements, and what’s next

OpenProject has:

Planning work is only half the job: Resource management comes to OpenProject 17.7

OpenProject Roadmap 2026: The strategic topics shaping our development

This week's featured programming tool

Forgejo

Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge. Easy to install and low maintenance, it just Using animation-composition in CSS to Avoid Redeclaring Other Valuesdoes the job.

Forgejo

ActivityPub

Ata Kuyumcu acknowledges:

The Fediverse was right

Fantastic article.

Waffle's yttrx blog shows us how to:

Run your own welcome-bot: a step-by-step guide for other instances

Tom79 announces:

The Holos relay hits 1.0.0

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

DrFed

DrFed is a web-based platform for developing and debugging ActivityPub implementations.

DrFed

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
And Corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

Also, you can avoid surveillance on the Fediverse with some effort (and choosing the correct tools) but not on the Atmosphere (permissioned spaces not withstanding).

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

André Menrath reports:

There now is a poll plugin for WordPress that has full Fediverse support

Mastodon has its:

Trunk & Tidbits, June 2026

Which is cool but remember, friends don't let friends join Mastodon.Social.

Elena Rossini starts a new series:

A newbie's guide to self-hosting: GoToSocial part 1 (installation and set-up)

FediLap notes:

HolosSocial is different from any other software

The iOS app is now fairly usable though it won't generate Identity Recovery. The Linux app won't import backups. The same goes for F-Droid plus it has a weak UI. So, not ready for primetime yet regarding cross-platform syncing.

But, I still like and use it. It has potential.

FediTips has:

PeerTube enthusiast polykit has built a new independent search engine for PeerTube videos called PeerSeek

Mastodon updates built-in system to prevent you seeing the same post boosted again and again

Artist Alley has:

Artist-Alley implements ArchivePub, an open federation protocol built on the ActivityPub data model

Zsolt opines:

The Feed is the Product: Why We Stay in Walled "Gardens", and Why We Might Finally Leave for the Open Social Web

Roomy papa, Erlend Sogge Heggen says:

I wanna make $1million for a thousand indies

Now that's an admirable business plan.

Other Federated Social Media

Daniel's Leaflets continues a series:

Permissioned Data Diary 7: Off the Record

Nick's Blog also continues a series:

Permissioned Data Shapes: Private Events

Permissioned Data Shapes: Community-Moderated Content

Permissioned Data Shapes: Forums

Permissioned Data Shapes: Polls

On a related note, Luke Kanies shares some doubts:

Building on ATProto

Boltless reports:

Tangled is considering changing the data host of some records from PDS to Knot

Aral Balkin asks:

Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social? No? Me neither, but here we are…

And Hamish Campbell chimes in with:

Europe’s digital sovereignty needs challenges

Meanwhile, Mu.Social is:

Introducing Newsrooms v1 in
mu.social

The Walrus has:

A Canadian Social Network? Don’t Roll Your Eyes Yet

eMail / Newsletters

Magic Pages compares:

Substack vs. Ghost for a paid newsletter

Plus as I'm sure you know, Suckstack is a Nazi bar. So, don't publish on it, read anything from it, or sharing any of its Vichy content.

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
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The Programmer's Fulcrum 17 July, 2026

Reuben Walker, Jr. — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:43:42 +0000

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism.

As usual, we aim to provide actionable content you can use to destroy Techno Feudalism each week. It has the additional benefit of weakening authoritarianism.

IMHO, the best way to do that is to use tools from the Techno Anarchist Manifesto to build your own site(s) to participate in the Open Media Network. Then you should share it (them) via Real Simple Syndication (RSS), the Fediverse, and possibly a newsletter or podcast. This approach is similar to what some call the IndieWeb and its POSSE philosophy.

The second best strategy is to have accounts on the Fediverse and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.

We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.

There's good stuff in all of our categories, so please take the time to enjoy and bookmark the items most relevant to your goals. We hope you are inspired to create new ones.

Or you can jump straight to your favorite section.

Sites/Blogs/CMSs
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
OMN Programming
ActivityPub
Fediverse
More

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.

Featured Item(s)

The Grumpy Welshman writes:

Gareth's been in a mood all week.

Turns out it started with a hosting bill. Not his own, mind. He doesn't have a website. Gareth thinks websites are for people who've run out of pub to shout in. But he heard about someone switching platforms, and it set him off on one of his tangents, the kind that starts with "you know what really gets me" and ends forty minutes later with him accusing a cookie banner of moral cowardice.

Apparently someone had moved from a platform that wanted to squeeze money out of their audience to one that just let them publish words on a page, and Gareth treated this as evidence that civilisation might not be completely dead after all.

So here's Gareth, unedited, more or less.

The Internet Doesn't Want Readers. It Wants Livestock.

My name is not Gareth, BTW. ;)

The 19th reports:

After losing their jobs at NOAA, Rebecca Lindsey, her sister and another colleague teamed up to rebuild a pivotal resource the Trump administration took offline.

Trump dismantled a federal climate website. These women rebuilt it.

Now this is building something for a community.

Here's another one:

GainForest App

CMSs

Faircamp announces:

Faircamp 2.0 is now feature complete

Ver Vert demonstrates:

Publishing a Zola Blog to AT Protocol with Sequoia and wisp.place

Opus explores:

Blogging with ~~Bluesky~~ The Atmosphere and ATProtocol

I fixed their headline.

Leaflet

Leaflet Lab Notes announces:

Publication pages and nav, for Leaflet as…website builder?

Ghost

Ghost says:

Optimize your site for AI search

Um. Fuck no.

Subaud shows us what's involved with:

Making a Ghost Blog a Valid standard.site Publication

So, definitelty not KISS. You could more easily re-post to a ATProto blog and list the Ghost URL as canonical. That's what we do.

Magic Pages announces:

Staging Sites: Test Big Changes Before They Go Live

Its owner, Jannis Fedoruk-Betschki shares:

The Cost of Copying Things That Haven't Changed

Spectral Web Services announces:

Institutional access to Ghost now included with SWS Tools!

Build Awesome

Build Awesome announces:

A new Build Awesome (Eleventy) alpha is available for testing

Tools

Tuta shares the:

Best Amazon alternatives in 2026

Lauti shows us:

How to Community Calendar!?!

BTW, Lauti is built into Bonfire.

Speaking of community tech, I found out about Karrot this week:

Karrot

OMN says:

Online Chat is a social problem, not just a technical one

Signal announces:

Signal is now available on Android tablets

Signal allows Android phones to be linked as secondary devices (beta)

Browsers

Betweeen Two Firewalls explores:

Manifest v3: Why It Is Time To Leave Chromium/Chrome/Edge

The time was years ago. But better late than never.

Creative

Simple Tech Guides shows us how to:

Self-host Immich for photo backup: migrating off Google Photos

Linux / Open Android

Linux Magazine starts a series:

Changing the Chip Industry: How Public Investment Has Grown Open Silicon

This week's featured OMN tool

GIMP

Say bye to Photoshop with GIMP, an open source image editor.

GIMP

Programming

Evangelos Paterakis shares:

Democratizing Abandonware; I'm not digging through this cemetery

Git

Forgejo announces:

Forgejo 15.0.5 was just released!

How to Geek explores:

Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

CSS

Master.dev examines:

In-N-Out Animation using sibling-index()

W3C announces:

CSS Linked Parameters Module Level 1

Carmen Ansio demonstrates:

Setting type like a printed page

AI

Samir Talwar has:

LLMs can't program

No shit, but this is a great article.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation reports:

The ‘s’ in LLM stands for ‘security’

Smashing Frames says:

“Useful” is not sufficient

Unfortunately, most programmers are amoral shits.

Other

OpenProject explores:

From Jira to OpenProject: choosing the right migration strategy for your organization

This week's featured programming tool

HTMX

Access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and SSE directly in HTML.

HTMX

ActivityPub

Robin Berjon ponders running:

ActivityPub Over ATProto

This may be somewhat similar to what holos.social is attempting.

Fabio Manganiello announces a:

New Akkoma feature

Dhole Moments explains:

The Long Tail of Work Left Until ActivityPub Has E2EE

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

Holos Discover

HolosDiscover is a search engine dedicated to the Fediverse.

Holos Discover

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren't able to comprehend ⬇️:

The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
And Corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

Also, you can avoid surveillance on the Fediverse with some effort (and choosing the correct tools) but not on the Atmosphere (permissioned spaces not withstanding).

So, recognize their natures and don't ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.

Fediverse

Arxiv looks at:

The Politics Attention Makes: Platform Media Logic and the Mediatization of Politics

Per Axom notes:

It’s hard to search and find messages across the Fediverse. This is a good thing.

It is. See the second point directly above.

Tuiter Rocks explains:

Cómo funciona la moderación en Mastodon: qué ve un admin y qué herramientas tiene

Federated Minds concludes a series:

Forums, Reading, and Music on the Fediverse

Eilertsens Kodenknekkeri announces a:

Superblock v3.1 addon for Hubzilla

Framasoft announces:

We just released version 2.2.0 of the PeerTube app!

FitPub announces:

FitPub 1.2.0 is here!

Bonfire

The Phoenix Framework shares:

A deep dive into HEEx compilation from LiveView 1.2

Protocols for Publishers says:

"Build protocols, not platforms"

SneakerWeb explains:

The sneakerweb is a peer-to-peer protocol for web publishing without permission

Quite interesting, but probably not easy.

Hamish Campbell has:

A hybrid p2p look at the OMN

Matrix

Matrix shares:

This Week in Matrix 2026-07-10

Continuwuity announces:

Continuwuity 26.6.0, the lightweight Matrix chat server, is finally out!

RSS

Coywolf reports:

You can now chat using RSS

XMPP

Movim announces:

The next Movim release comes with a special surprise: a fully integrated SFU service, powered by Galene

Other Federated Social Media

ATProto shares:

AT Protocol Trademark

Hmmm.

The Tropopause pontificates:

On Atproto and Atmospheric Groups

Steve Klabnik has:

Too many words about DIDs

Bluesky announces:

Creating an Independent Public Ledger of Credentials (PLC) Directory Organization

This is a rare non-techbro-ish move by Bluesky.

The Digital Renaissance opines:

Bluesky Is Not The Center of The Atmosphere

Actually, it's not the center of ATProto tools, but still 80+% of the Atmosphere.

Tech Policy Press reports:

Europe's W Social Bet Tests its Vision of Digital Sovereignty

Looks like Dubya was not only birthed by clueless shits but for them as well. Fuck politicians.

Here's example number 416 of why:

Hi Eugen

IYKYK.

Meanwhile, Eurosky announces:

Eurosky is collaborating with SPRIND to test a non-toxic algorithm for the first time

Next shares:

Un réseau social européen ? On est passé de Bluesky à Mu.social, et on vous explique

Augment explores:

Moats & Drawbridges

Jeremy Herve asks:

Is my ATProto app actually decentralized?

Inputs and Outputs has a journalists on the Atmosphere list for you:

You are what you read, watch, and listen to ..

CTAs

That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on ATProto for daily coverage.
Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!

And please build something for a community! We're nurturing Manade.

Blasts from the past

Previous Battalion Posts

Previous Symfony Station Posts