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.
If you want some recommended tools see our LESS stack.
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.
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Or in the Atmosphere
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Featured Item(s)
Dead Simple Tech writes:
The moment that we in the tech industry are going through bears similarity, in a bunch of very important ways, to what people went through during the First World War.
Looking at it like that, it's not so hard to see the parallels with our situation. Our industry's always had that optimistic attitude that's willfully ignorant of any sign that it could ever be harmful, or that anything other than continuous forward progress could ever happen. (We are incapable of seeing evil for what it is.)
We find ourselves at the precipice before the break. There's enough (techcunt induced) instability to see how things are going: things are breaking, vital things are ceasing to work, the bulk of the population hates what the industry is doing to them. The best are exhausted and isolated, while the worst are creating yet another vibe-coded pile of crap.
In such circumstances, at the very least, we have to acknowledge that fracture, obscenity and the shattering of the way we see the world is what we're facing: it does no good for us to pretend that it is anything other than something that we simply can't put into words or symbols.
We have no words for what LLMs are doing to our profession, nor for why we find them so viscerally unacceptable, but we know that they are, only to find that the words we have for that are inadequate to our experience.
We don't know what would make sense of everything that's happening to us now or if there's even some sense to be had. But we need to remain open to the possibility that there could be, that with the right knowledge or the right perspective, we will be able to make some sense of this, and we can, one way or the other, move on with our lives. (That there may be a revelation coming.)
Developing a keen sense of patience is... an important discipline. A revelation may well come, and we can watch in hope for one. But it may tarry... Being able to wait without frustration and keep doing things while we're waiting is important to stay sane...
Finally, in times like these, one of the best things we can do is witness and record it.
Personally, I find that strong doses of Taoism, Stoicism, and doing things for people you don't know keep me sane and moving forward (albeit in a crooked line).
Hamish Campbell writes:
Ten years ago, I wrote about a problem that was already undermining the open web, that nobody was linking to anybody, and that the incentives were all moving in the wrong direction. Mainstreaming platforms had little reason to send people towards alternative sources, while grassroots projects were left struggling to build connections with each other. Even when people wanted to cooperate, there were plenty of reasons to avoid linking, sharing audiences or giving another project visibility.
The result was an increasingly fragmented web. Lots of websites, lots of content, lots of people doing useful work, but fewer if any meaningful connections between them. Ten years later, the technology has changed, the underlying problem has not gone away.
[The open web is a network of links, not islands]
So, please boost meaningful posts you come across on open social and link to important information on other sites within your open web site's content.
CMSs
The Torment Nexus asks:
Is the internet as we know it dying or is it already dead?
What we promote here every week is somewhat radical and subversive. Unfortunately, it will soon be absolutely radical and subversive. It should be commonplace.
Tech Policy Press explores:
Creating a New Internet Bargain to Preserve Fair Use and Protect the Commons
Gavin Anderegg says:
Yep.
Ian Monroe says:
I've integrated the Sveltia CMS to this site to make it easier to publish more often
S3N Net has a:
Publii Quickt!pp: Verlinken für Faulpelze
Hana + Nils examine:
Speaking of design, Micro.blog announces:
A new API for editing themes and templates
IndieWeb
Roy Lindauer explains:
How I am participating in the IndieWeb
Ghost
Magic Pages announces:
Bear
Bear's founder, Herman shares:
Tools
The Guardian reports:
A leaderless revolution has swept Serbia. The world should be watching.
There are some great anarchic lessons here, Foremost of which is doing the good small things everyday eventually allows you to do a great thing.
Digital Commons EDIC announces:
The Digital Commons EDIC adopts joint strategy to scale open-source alternatives
The Worldwide Web Consortium demands:
Installing Websites Must Be Easy
The Association for Progressive Communications shares:
Chat / Team Chat
About Signal reports:
Signal Desktop without a smartphone one step closer
Browsers
Tor announces:
The Freedom of the Press Foundation reports:
Privacy Badger now supports Safari
Search
Marginalia looks at:
Marginalia Search, Money, C++, Rust, AI, stuff
Unless you want to self-host, use it via the website.
Writing
Collabra announces:
Google Apps Script add-ons in Collabora Online
And LibreOffice announces:
LibreOffice 26.8.2 improves stability, multimedia and compatibility
Creative
9to5Linux reports:
Scribus 1.6.7 Open-Source Desktop Publishing App Released with Improvements
Linux / Open Android
The Privacy Dad asks:
Why Is It So Difficult To Build an Alternative Operating System for a Smartphone?
FuriLabs announces:
It's FOSS explores:
Community Strikes Back: 12 Open Source Projects Born from Resistance
Igor Wawrzyniak examines:
F-Droid: 10 apps worth installing
Leo Gaggl says:
Convenience Is the Bait: Why the Hard Way Is Worth It
100%.
This week's featured OMN tool
OmniTools
Boost your productivity with the toolkit for getting things done quickly.
Programming
Picallili says:
Keep sharing your knowledge peeps.
Project Libres shares an interesting podcast:
77 – [Conférences] Le Capitole du Libre : parler du libre à Toulouse depuis 2011
I am looking forward to attending this 25th anniversary edition here in my current home.
Prateek Surana looks at:
Evolution Of HTTP: An Interactive Guide
A good explainer of something you rarely if ever need to touch.
Markdown
We published an article this week:
The Bear necessities of writing Markdown for your Bear Blog
Stuart Ellis shares:
CSS
Mat celebrates:
Fan-fucking-tastic!
CSS Tricks has the official announcement:
And:
Master.dev examines:
Web Components
Dem Odell says:
Design Systems Should Be Fast by Default
AI
Phorion shares:
Official Claude Code Extension Compromise: Security Advisory
FYI, if you're a clueless fuck who uses Andropit or Microslop.
NOYB reports:
AI: EU Member States approve “digital expropriation” for AI companies
Tech Policy Press opines:
Breaking the Open Web Won’t Stop the Bad Bots
404 Media reports:
If You're In the UK or EU, Here's How to Object to Meta's AI Training
Or you can 100% block it by not using the techcunt company's techshit.
IEEE Spectrum looks at:
How Wikipedia’s Editors Keep the Online Encyclopedia Human-Written
Other
XWiki shares:
Release Notes for XWiki 18.9.0
OpenProject announces:
OpenProject integration app for Nextcloud released in version 3.3.0
Cool.
This week's featured programming tool
HTMX
Access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and SSE directly in HTML.
ActivityPub
Todd Sundsted announces the:
Pachli announces:
And ActivityPub for WordPress announces:
Event Federation has an:
Update on our specification work
This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool
Fedify
Fedify is a Typescript framework that lets you build for the Fediverse but skip the boilerplate.
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 techcunts.
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
Axel Valdez says:
I'm in Love with the Fediverse
Labjor asks:
Betula announces:
More
A New Social explains:
The risks of bridging private data
Waag Futurelab announces:
Waag Futurelab launches oso.social, a social media platform where society sets its own rules
Two Waves and a Dot explores:
SocialSpec, and why we need it
Ricky Moorhouse is:
Weisser Zwerg examines:
Nostr from First Principles: Protocol, Relays, and Application Galaxies
Like Nostr itself, this has a whiff of AI about it.
David Meissner continues a series:
ATProto
ATProto shares:
Open Social Groups — the Vision
Contrails has:
Pizza Thoughts asks:
Atmosphere
Aaron Ross Powell says:
We Should be Optimistic About the Internet Again
As you can see from one one the links above, there is a wide variety of opinions on this. Fortunately, we have the tools to make the "internet" be what we want it to be. Although, it may be smaller.
Louis Escher opines:
You don't have a "Bluesky account"
Skyreader shares a:
Skyreader update - Bring your own RSS app and Semble connections everywhere
On a related note, Melanie Kat asks:
Do At-Proto Users Know This Is Public?
FYI, if you use any atmosphere app, everything is public.
RSS
FreshRSS announces:
Potentially breaking change approaching
And Cédric Bonhomme announces:
Alternatives numériques has a review:
Test et découverte de Flus, un service de veille complet basé sur les flux RSS
XMPP
Michele (Cuche) shares:
Una presentazione su XMPP al Linux Day 2026
LinuxFR has its:
Lettre d'information XMPP de septembre 2026
Matrix
The Matrix Conference has:
The Matrix Conference 2026: Our biggest edition yet
Computer World reports:
Matrix gains ground in Europe’s public sector — but replacing Teams is another matter
Matt Vestengen-Cox says:
It is not just for larger organizations.
CTAs
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