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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
CSS Grid is now enabled by default in Servo
Tres bon.
Search
Tuta shares:
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:
This week's featured OMN tool
Bunny Fonts
Choose Privacy. Fuck Google and adopt 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:
AI
Terry Godier (admirably) says:
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:
And Stefan Koopmanschap has:
This week's featured programming tool
Web Components
Add interactivity to your projects.
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.
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:
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.
More
Surf announces:
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:
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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