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 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.
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Featured Item(s)
404 Media writes:
Sam Altman wasn’t running for office Tuesday. But this worldview—that the masses must shut up and suffer while oligarchs centralize power, self-deal, spend wildly to capture the political process, and automate away human endeavors so they can amass yet more wealth—was wholly repudiated in Tuesday’s election as people in Red States, Blue States, and Purple States rejected the cruelty, corruption, and depravity economy we’ve seen over the last few years. They are tired of kleptocracy.
Up and down the ballot, in all states, voters were generally given the choice between largely normal people trying to fight for the working class and sycophantic cartoon supervillains, nepo picks, fumbling buffoons, and Twitter trolls seeking to enable the regime and Big Tech’s vision of the future, where AI CEOs become trillionaires and everyone else loses their job to a robot and breathes methane gas from the data centers in their backyards. It turns out that from Michigan to Mississippi (yes, Mississippi), people are done accepting “bad things happening” for the benefits of the richest people in the world.
And, in nearly every conceivable way, voters aggressively rejected Trump and Silicon Valley’s vision for America. It turns out people do not want to accept “some bad things happening” to pad the valuations and pocketbooks of billionaires and trillionaires when the “bad things” include worsening wealth inequality, a housing and cost of living crisis, mass automation and unemployment, mass surveillance, cuts to government services, foreign wars, loud, polluting data centers that employ a few construction workers while they’re being built and no one after that are being used to increase profits for out-of-state corporations, and a culture war that infringes on the civil rights of immigrants and trans people.
‘There Is One Fight’: American Voters Reject Tech Oligarchy
American Voters Overwhelmingly Reject AI Data Centers
Tech Policy Press reports:
Voters Handed Congress a Mandate to Confront Corporate Power and Technofascism
Pull the Plug on Technofascism Before It Reboots
This was a great victory over techno feudalism and corporate surveillance, but we have a lot of work left to kill off techno fascism.
Still, let's celebrate this!!! We worked hard for it.
Afterwards we can focus on cauterizing the wounds and stopping the rot. Then reversing the damage these techcunts have done.
And TechDirt makes an important point about how to do it:
The Tech Bros Who Bet On Fascism Lost. Don’t Let The Internet Pay For It.
CMSs
Ben Werdmuller reviews an article we shared last week:
To protect the web, we need to renegotiate its value
Hamish Campbell says:
Breaking the open web won’t stop the bad bots
Same headline but different article from the one featured last week.
On a related note, Tech Policy Press explores:
What the New AI Training Opt-Out Really Means
Stratechery ruminates on:
Fairly solid analysis. It could turn out worse than this. But, hopefully not.
Cauenapier shares:
An Internet We’re Afraid to Explore
Sebastián opines:
More tech isn't the answer, letting go is
Yes on this, but. You should want what you share to be seen. If it helps even one person, it's worth all the effort. That's not egotistical.
Similarly, Thoughts on Widdershins replies to Stratechery:
A Smaller Internet Can Still Be an Open One
Publii shares:
Publii 0.48.x: Multiple windows, a rebuilt WordPress importer and a local preview server
Great stuff that we look forward to using with our retirement blog.
Silex announces:
Coming to Silex website builder
Madblog has:
Madblog: A Markdown Folder That Federates Everywhere
Federated Replies and Reactions in Madblog
Bear is in the lead to be our web platform next year. WordPress and Ghost are too bloated for individuals at this point. But, I will still explore Silex and try to install Madblog locally to check it out.
Adam Brett has:
Where Should I Blog? A Field Guide from Corporate Platforms to the IndieWeb
I wasn't familiar with smol.web and weblog.lol, but they both look like interesting alternatives to Bear.
WordPress
And:
Getting Started with WordPress on Knowledge Commons for Your Academic Site
Good stuff. This would be better than the Ghost route. But not better than pure WordPress if you are a non-academic.
IndieWeb
Unutterable examines:
Platforms nor protocols: recognising the indieweb’s libertarian roots
Bear
We published the second post in our "How to Create for Bear Blog" series:
CSS - Creating Simple Site designs for your Bear Blogs
Tools
The Future is Now says:
If you love a website, back it up
Nextcloud shows us:
Open Future looks at:
The Cloud and AI Development Act Proposal
Something Wonderful details:
Jailbreaking my Kindle and using RSS
VPN
9to5Linux reports:
OpenVPN 2.7.9 Released with Linux and GUI Improvements, Bug Fixes
Chat / Team Chat
LiberaChat announces:
Browsers
Webkit is:
Introducing Adaptive Dark Mode
Interesting.
Vivaldi announces:
Vivaldi 8.3 for Desktop: make bad ads sad
Servo shares a monthly update:
September in Servo: < progress >, rounded rectangles, and more!
Mullvad announces:
FYI, it's a Firefox fork.
Speaking of, Waterfox announces:
1.2.11 — Optional screen protection and Gecko 160
Search
The Guardian reports:
Google says there’s no way to use Search without using artificial intelligence
Fuck Google and I beg to differ. Don’t use Google period. ⬇️
Kagi announces:
You can now try Kagi Search out of the box → no account needed
Cloud
Nextcloud shares:
From pioneers to a movement: digital sovereignty in Spain at Nextcloud Enterprise Day Madrid 2026
Writing
The Document Foundation has:
LibreOffice 26.2.7 is available for download
LibreOffice project and community recap: October 2026
The past, present and future of office suites
They make some good points at the end of the article.
Joplin looks at:
A full security review of Joplin Server and Joplin Cloud
9to5Linux has:
Calibre 9.18 Open-Source E-Book Manager Adds New Tool to Make Books Accessible
Sigil 2.8.5 Open-Source EPUB Editor Released with Modern CSS Parsing
Creative
9to5Linux reports:
OpenShot 4.1 Video Editor Is Out with Native ARM64 Linux Builds and Text Editing
Audacity 4.0.2 Audio Editor Restores Automatic Saving During Recording
GIMP announces:
Linux / Open Android
FuriLabs has:
An important development as camera functionality is the weak link of Linux phones.
F-Droid has:
Good news if you like playing mobile games.
Fairphone shares:
Fairphone 1: Still going strong after 13 years
This week's featured OMN tool
Kagi Search
Kagi Search is a fast, private search engine. Orion Browser is a fast, zero-telemetry, browser.
Programming
Who even knows says:
Git
And David Bushell says:
Tangled, hire a front-end accessibility expert
Web Components
Dave Rupert demonstrates:
Pseudo-pseudo-classes for maximum interactive demos!
HTML
Master.dev previews:
Overriding Heading Levels With the headingoffset HTML Attribute
William Turrell shares some frustrations with Drupal:
Annoying anti-HTML developments
CSS
CSS Tricks has:
Taming Typography: Building a Modern CSS Reset
Great stuff.
Roma Komarov has:
Groundbreaking Upgrade to SVG Is Approaching: Linked Parameters Are Almost Here
Ahmad Alfy says:
A select should tell you something
Ky Decker shares:
Chris Kirk-Knielsen shares:
And Alistair Shepherd shares his:
BTW, fantastic yet simple site design Alistair.
I enjoy reading these browser interoperability wishlists.
A Beautiful Site says:
Revisiting Buttons and Cursors
More
OpenProject shares:
Passion Project: Prioritize meeting agenda items with voting
OpenProject 18.0: Making project management more accessible
Good stuff.
XWiki announces:
XWiki 18.4.8 has been released!
Deciphering Glyph explains:
Why You Should Care About The Political Project of Twisted
This week's featured programming tool
Pears
Empower Devs, Disrupt the Norm! Unleash the Power of P2P.
ActivityPub
Steve Bate has:
Testing the ActivityPub Client API
The Fediverse Is Not ActivityPub
This is a very informative piece. Most Fediverse apps run on the tighter Fediverse Protocol which is only influenced by ActivityPub. AP is loose and open to interpretation. For better or worse, most apps have built off Mastodon's interpretation.
Jaz-Michael King looks at:
The Event Federation announces:
WordPress: Event Bridge For ActivityPub 2.0.0 released
Spectral Web Services says:
We built a pipeline for moving between Ghost ActivityPub instances. Here's Part 1.
This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool
ForgeFed
ForgeFed is a federation protocol for software forges and code collaboration tools for software development.
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
Brasiliana Museus has:
Great stuff.
The Social Web Foundation applauds the:
Launch of the European Social Association
Terence Eden celebrates:
For Better celebrates 1:
Building Opportunities: One Year Since The First App
For you music lovers and musicians, Mirlo has:
Mirlo Features Update: October 2026
Jiří Eischmann says:
One good thing about Mangrove Reviews is that they support ActivityPub
Wallabag announces:
Improvements to saving by email and RSS feeds
Unfortunately, Holos Social and Fedihood are probably being sunset.
I'm giving up Holos Social and Fedihood
Hopefully, their unique tech regarding relays and locality can be absorbed into other Fediverse projects.
If you have been following our family’s retirement adventures on holos.social or fedihood.social, please follow us at @walkersinfrance@social.manade.org now. It's time for the self-hosting route.
More
Public Spaces announces:
Launch of European.Social: the movement for the European open social web
Everton Zanella Alvarenga has:
Political communication as public infrastructure: notes from the European.Social launch
The Modal Foundation is promoting:
Freedom of movement in digital Europe
As in freedom of data movement.
They also provide this supporting note:
AT Protocol: a proven open standard for Europe's social internet
WAFRN says:
I have a new WAFRN feature to announce
Thoughts of Widdershins opines:
Discoverability Is Only Solved If You Can Be Discovered
Speaking of, it looks like SocialSpec has a “social browser” now:
ATProto
Jola.dev announces:
The Atmosphere Community has:
Another update to the spaces alpha
Combined URI Syntax Proposal (at:public and at:space)
Drafting a (ATProto) Threads lexicon
Volker Mische has a:
Review of ATProto data model change
Atmosphere
Cosmik has:
Webrings
Dead Parrot BBS explains:
Webmentions
Florian Ziegler explains:
How webmentions are supposed to work
Manton Reece considers:
Webmention for long or short posts
RSS
Two Waves and a Dot is:
Introducing Downread - or: why does the world need another RSS reader?
Cedric Bonhomme is:
Keeping My XSLT-Styled Feed Alive After Chrome Drops It
Or just use CSS as Eclectic Dreams demonstrates:
And fuck Google BTW.
XMPP
Gajim announces:
And Movim announces:
Movim 0.35.5, more fixes and improvements
Matrix
Matrix has:
This Week in Matrix 2026-11-06
The Slack to Matrix bridge looks interesting as does the Sable client. And you should definitely leave Slack.
Ivan shares a presentation:
Speedrun a client at the Matrix Conference
Admin has:
Running Your Own Matrix Server with Synapse
Democracy Tech
The Citizens and Technology Lab asks:
How Can Wikipedians Overcome Leadership Succession Crises? Lessons from the Invasion of Ukraine
The Democratic Tech Fund says:
If you want to be on Bonfire, I believe you can join their instance if you join DTF.
CTAs
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