The Programmer’s Fulcrum 4 September, 2026
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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 scroll down to your favorite section.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And may involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck´em.
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:
Mark W.Rites says:
Alt Text is the Ocean You Thought Was a Pond
Faircamp announces:
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:
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:
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:
Threat Model shows us:
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:
Fuck Google!
Writing
Joplin shares:
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:
Bon. AI should almost never be used, but if it is (translation), it should be as an optional extension.
Creative
Kdenlive announces:
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.
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:
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.
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:
Interesting.
Mobilizon needs you:
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.
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
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.
More
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:
Atmosphere
Structural Integrity explains:
W Social is a textbook case for everything wrong with digital sovereignty
Roomy looks at:
P2P
Worm-Blossum shares its:
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
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
Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence
