The Programmer's Fulcrum: 22 May, 2026

This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

It's your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse 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)

Bonfire writes:

Since the 1.0 release of Bonfire Social, we've been heads-down listening to our our pilot communities, beta testers, and co-design partners.

Version 1.0.3 is the result: a release focused on stability and polish, which fixes a wide range of bugs and brings meaningful usability improvements, especially around feeds, boundaries, and more advanced features.

It also ships a set of new capabilities born from our ongoing collaboration with Jacobin DE.

Bonfire 1.0.3: Stability, Clarity, and Federated Publishing

Awesome. The "calm empowerment" for boundaries and posts sounds great. And the same philosophy will be integrated into groups. Loading the dashboard immediately is another good choice. I am especially psyched about the community publishing with Ghost integration. This is the same thinking behind their LAUTI integration for events.

Hamish Campbell writes:

The KISS secret about the noise in “digital sovereignty” is very simple – ignore most of this branding and build commons tech instead. That’s the path, not another layer of management, another funding bureaucracy, or a glossy strategy document. Not another NGO conference circuit explaining why nothing can happen without another round of funding. Just build working commons.

This matters because much of the EU “digital sovereignty” conversation is simply more churn inside the same neoliberal, mainstreaming logic that created the problem in the first place.

Compost “digital sovereignty”, build working commons

This is one of the major reasons we're building Manade on top of Bonfire.

Speaking of, the co-op handling the setup and hosting for us says:

Wow @Bonfire is so cool!

I'm glad they're enthusiastic. And I am happy to be their initial test subject. ;) And I'm also fortunate I can afford the higher costs of early adopters. Consider it a service to the community or penance for my bad karma.

And finally, we published another Bonfire article this week, so check out the Bonfire section at the bottom of this post.

CMSs

Simon Repp announces:

Random Faircamp 2.0 development updates

Dries Buyaert explains:

Why Drupal CMS matters

It does make Drupal easier, but still not easy. No KISS promotion here.

Ghost

Ghost announces:

Working on supporting account aliases in Ghost

This is now live

Fan-fucking-tastic!

Working on adding support in Ghost for custom web domain for your handle

Hopefully, all of these aren't just for the pro plan.

Spectral Web Services explores:

Sitewide socials, theme editing, switching platforms again, and more

Back to top 👆🏼

Tools

This one is a little philosophical and slightly trippy, but The Lazurus Corporation shares:

Against the tyranny of the Apollonian

We're definitely Dionysian. 🍸 🏴‍☠️

Smashing Frames ruminates:

[On Google declaring war on the Web](

https://tante.cc/2026/05/20/on-google-declaring-war-on-the-web/)

Fuck Google and obviously don't use their shit.

The Register reports:

LocalSend puts your sneakernet out of business

Chat

Zulip shares:

Announcing the Zulip Foundation

Browsers

9to5Linux reports:

Firefox 151 Is Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New

Cybernews reports:

Brussels’ DMA regulation handed Firefox millions of new users

Great. Let’s hope the trend continues and they then move on to Firefox forks. See just below.

Tuta examines the:

Best Private Browsers 2026 | Zero Trackers

Hopefully, you're using one of these right now.

Cloud

Taylor and Francis has:

Cloud drift: how hyperscaler cloud computing shapes internet governance

Writing

LibreOffice has:

There is no digital sovereignty without ODF

How your donations help the LibreOffice project and community

Free Knowledge Institute looks at:

Cooperative Clouds: How LaSuite.coop Is Building a New Model for Digital Sovereignty

Creative

GIMP announces:

GIMP on MS Store now requires Windows Build 20348

Linux/Open Android

OSTechnix reports:

Linux Kernel 7.1 RC4 Released: Torvalds Slams “Pointless” AI Bug Reports

There is an easy fix for this problem (no AI). FYI, this is a typically poorly designed news site.

Larvitz Blog

mdo on FreeBSD 15: Base-System Privilege Delegation with mac_do

Gridranger shows us:

How to select a mobile OS

Solid article. And interesting site design.

PostmarketOS has:

losetup upgrade results in boot failure

My Linux peeps, we have to all get on the same page (at least for mobile OS) if we're going to have a chance to deep six Apple and Google. KISS as possible, please.

This week's featured OMN tool

Framatoolbox

The free and ethical toolkit.

Framatoolbox

Back to top 👆🏼

Programming

Javier Tia looks at:

Two FOSDEM talks on the CRA, from opposite sides of the table

Terence Eden notes:

GDS weighs in on the NHS's decision to retreat from Open Source

Cyber Security News reports:

Google reCAPTCHA Update Blocks Privacy-Focused Android Users From Sites

Mon amis, please don't use anything from Google on your sites. Explore hCaptcha, ALTCHA, or Friendly Captcha.

Nick Stambaugh on:

Selling an HTML file for a few grand

KISS = cash. ;)

Git

Bleeping Computer reports:

GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension

Why would you sue anything from Microslop? At least check out VS Codium, Forgejo, and Codeberg.

Alex Hyett asks:

GitHub is dead, What's next?

Jorijn Schrijvershof explains:

Why I'm leaving GitHub for Forgejo

Michael Thomas demonstrates:

Auto-Deploying a static site from Forgejo to CloudFlare Pages

If your site is open source or personal, please use Codeberg not Cloudflare.

Markdown

Files MD is:

A free, quiet space for thinking. Private, no data is sent to server.

HTML

My favorite blog to view (eyes wise), Evil Martians

600+ million people write right-to-left: 2 fixes your app needs

Twig

Symfony announces:

Twig 3.25.0 released

CSS

Julia Evans is leaving Failwind:

Moving away from Tailwind, and learning to structure my CSS

Fantastic.

JavaScript

A Bi Disaster explores:

The tyranny of single page apps

AI

Where's your Ed at? marvels:

What If...We're In An AI Bubble? (Part 1)

Get it? And by the way, we fucking are.

Dhruv Ahuja says:

I owe my career to open-source communities. I'm not sure newcomers can say the same

Same here and owed in my case.

This week's featured programming tool

Zeroform

Zeroform is a static and dynamic online form generator.

Zeroform

A nice example of someone building something for the community.

Back to top 👆🏼

ActivityPub

Huey Lee explores:

Configuring SSO on Mastodon

Evan Prodromou explains:

For the #ActivityPubAPI, we need a profile of OAuth to use for accessing the actor's data

Hollo announces:

Hollo 0.9.0 is out

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

Fediverse Developer Matrix Network

A place for people developing software for the Fediverse, using protocols such as ActivityPub and ActivityStreams, HTTP signatures and Webfinger.

Fediverse Developer Network

Back to top 👆🏼

Fediverse

&nbsp

Fedivariety reviews:

FediVariety’s unconference: Nodes On A Web

Sefan Bohacek shows us how to:

Make your website or blog Fediverse-ready

FediLab Apps is:

Exploring a desktop version of Holos, and early tests are promising

Edmond recommends:

Blocking the "meta-externalagent" user agent from your web server

Technically Good continues a series:

Alternatives Pt. II - Social Networking

A good one to share with a newbie or a friend you want to free from Techno Feudalism.

PeerTube announces:

We've just published #PeerTube 8.1.6

Friendica announces:

Friendica 2026.05 released

Bonfire

We published:

Bonfire: A Social Platform Apart

And did you see our featured articles?

Back to top 👆🏼

More

Connected Places has:

FR 163 – Decrypting Matrix

It's good to see they will start covering Matrix more.

Fabio Manganiello announces:

chat-translate is a new project

RSS

Rob Hoeijmakers says:

RSS is not dead. It just changed audience.

But, we can still use it as intended.

Entropic Thoughts looks at:

Article previews in RSS

Half An Hour explores:

Adding DID to RSS and Atom Feeds

DanQ is:

Reducing Phantom Obligation in FreshRSS

And Terry Godier examines:

Phantom Obligation

Other Federated Social Media

The Atmosphere Community shares:

ATStore, the Atmosphere Directory, and Community Involvement

The development apps would be relevant here. Marque and Syntax Club seem useful. And Tangled of course.

Second Brain updates:

AT Protocol Resources and Tools

Boltless shares:

Tangled: Knot-stored COB proposal

ActivityPub for WordPress announces:

ATmosphere 1.0.0 — Liftoff

Yes, it's in the correct section. ;)

Frank Hecker moves from:

From Bluesky to Blacksky

Great.

Democracy Tech

Unredacted shares its mission:

Keeping the doors open

Commons Network reviews the:

New European partnership against dependence on Big Tech

CTAs

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