The Programmer's Fulcrum 24 July, 2026

This post originally appeared on The 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), 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 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.

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)

Patrick Leavy writes:

Both Big Tech and government security services operate large scale surveillance. How do they relate to one another? In the West we say "Aren't we lucky we don't live in a surveillance state like China!" but haven't we just privatised the surveillance?

The back door surveillance state

Ludic Mataroa writes:

I've had a front-row view to our collective institutions across both the private and public sector undergoing breath-taking mass psychosis.

This essay is an attempt to describe the bizarre dynamics that are currently at play and to reassure the people trying to survive amidst all of this that they are not crazy.

The reality is thus: the people in charge either have no plan, or see no path forwards other than keeping their heads down. Not at banks, not at hospitals, not in our government institutions.

The world’s organisations have been captured by people in the throes of frothing excitement, and saner people who now live in a state of constant commingled fear and frustration.

AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

What's Happening on my Feed? writes:

Social media apps have become a vehicle for community building, world news, and political campaigns.

As app owners have enmeshed themselves more with the state, the carceral logics that haunt marginalized communities offline, became a part of their digital realities online.

Traditional Social Media as a Prison

CMSs

TechPolicy Press shares:

The Web Needs a Context Layer Built on a Shared Protocol

This is all well and good but we need less talk and more walk from NGO fucks.

Adam Newbold explores:

Hardcore IndieWeb: Run your own website 100% independently for only $0.01/day

Great stuff.

I also ran across the options OnionPress , Skypress , and Pagecord this week.

WP Mayor compares:

WP-CLI vs REST API vs Abilities API: Choosing the Right WordPress Interface for the Job

pckt opines:

Blogging: It's more social than ever !

So, similar to Ghost's capabilities but in the Atmosphere.

Write.as / WriteFreely

Write Freely announces:

WriteFreely v0.17 is out now

Back to top 👆🏼

Tools

TechCrunch reports:

Nonprofit Current AI is racing to build the World Wide Web of AI, free for all

Wallabag has:

Et si l'été servait à lire enfin les articles mis de côté ?

Le CAPTCHA optionnel arrive dans wallabag grâce au financement de wallabag.it

How-to Geek shares:

I turned my old Kindle into a self-hosted Pocket replacement

Chat / Team Chat

Signal announces:

Signal allows iPhones to be linked as secondary devices (beta)

Browsers

9to5Linux reports:

Mozilla Firefox 153 ESR Is Now Available for Download, Here’s What’s New

Firefox also announced they are back on Shitter.

Remember to use non-AI Firefox forks like Zen, Waterfox, or LibreWolf. Fuck Firefox and Mozilla's Vichy asses.

Waterfox announces:

6.6.17- Security and regional search follow-up

Cloud

Nextcloud compares:

Freedom of choice in Nextcloud Office: powered by Euro-Office, Collabora, and Thinkfree Office

I would avoid any MicroSlop taint, so don't use Euro-Office.

Writing

LibreOffice explains:

How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

And announces:

LibreOffice 26.2.5 is available for download

Explorers show us:

How to Design with Hyperlinks

A look at how to lay out eBooks. Useful and I think my 2027 project will be to write a book.

Creative

GIMP has its:

Google Summer of Code Midpoint Progress

Linux / Open Android

F-Droid has:

This Week in F-Droid

Hosting / Serving

Coryd says:

Self hosting a PDS isn't hard (so far)

This week's featured OMN tool

Skypress

A calm place to write long-form, and publish it to the open social web.

Skypress

Just click and write.

Back to top 👆🏼

Programming

Random Thoughts on Leadership and Technology shares:

The Open-Soruce Big Bang

Very interesting. Can AI coded opensource products kill off corporate tech horseshit before corporate tech kills the planet?

A related question, will open, Chinese communist AI kill off fascist Silicon Valley AI?

Git

Forgejo announces:

Forgejo 16.0.1 was just released!

BleepingComputer reports:

FakeGit campaign uses 7,600 GitHub repos to push SmartLoader malware

If you use ShitHub or AI you deserve what you fucking git. ;)

Markdown

Newsonaut opines:

Markdown makes learning HTML less scary

HTML

Geoff Graham

Handling Alt Text in a Linked Image

CSS

Masters.dev has:

Masonry (with Animation) in CSS

Slick but rarely needed effect.

Using animation-composition in CSS to Avoid Redeclaring Other Values

Ditto.

JavaScript

Infrequently Noted laments:

The Absolute State of Management

Reason 1,212,368 that React sucks. Fuck MicroSlop.

AI

Codeberg is:

Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

Dusty Cloud

Faulty Towers, vibe sickness, and the vibe bobsled

Are humans actually the dumbest monkeys?

TechCrunch reports:

Patreon stops asking AI bots not to scrape — and starts blocking them

Proycon has:

Formulating an AI policy for my free software projects

Erlend Sogge Heggen notes:

Open models are decelerationist

Other

XWiki announces:

XWiki SAS Q2 2026 updates: new features, improvements, and what’s next

OpenProject has:

Planning work is only half the job: Resource management comes to OpenProject 17.7

OpenProject Roadmap 2026: The strategic topics shaping our development

This week's featured programming tool

Forgejo

Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge. Easy to install and low maintenance, it just Using animation-composition in CSS to Avoid Redeclaring Other Valuesdoes the job.

Forgejo

Back to top 👆🏼

ActivityPub

Ata Kuyumcu acknowledges:

The Fediverse was right

Fantastic article.

Waffle's yttrx blog shows us how to:

Run your own welcome-bot: a step-by-step guide for other instances

Tom79 announces:

The Holos relay hits 1.0.0

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

DrFed

DrFed is a web-based platform for developing and debugging ActivityPub implementations.

DrFed

Back to top 👆🏼

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.

Also, you can avoid surveillance on the Fediverse with some effort (and choosing the correct tools) but not on the Atmosphere (permissioned spaces not withstanding).

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

André Menrath reports:

There now is a poll plugin for WordPress that has full Fediverse support

Mastodon has its:

Trunk & Tidbits, June 2026

Which is cool but remember, friends don't let friends join Mastodon.Social.

Elena Rossini starts a new series:

A newbie's guide to self-hosting: GoToSocial part 1 (installation and set-up)

FediLap notes:

HolosSocial is different from any other software

The iOS app is now fairly usable though it won't generate Identity Recovery. The Linux app won't import backups. The same goes for F-Droid plus it has a weak UI. So, not ready for primetime yet regarding cross-platform syncing.

But, I still like and use it. It has potential.

FediTips has:

PeerTube enthusiast polykit has built a new independent search engine for PeerTube videos called PeerSeek

Mastodon updates built-in system to prevent you seeing the same post boosted again and again

Artist Alley has:

Artist-Alley implements ArchivePub, an open federation protocol built on the ActivityPub data model

Back to top 👆🏼

More

Zsolt opines:

The Feed is the Product: Why We Stay in Walled "Gardens", and Why We Might Finally Leave for the Open Social Web

Roomy papa, Erlend Sogge Heggen says:

I wanna make $1million for a thousand indies

Now that's an admirable business plan.

Other Federated Social Media

Daniel's Leaflets continues a series:

Permissioned Data Diary 7: Off the Record

Nick's Blog also continues a series:

Permissioned Data Shapes: Private Events

Permissioned Data Shapes: Community-Moderated Content

Permissioned Data Shapes: Forums

Permissioned Data Shapes: Polls

On a related note, Luke Kanies shares some doubts:

Building on ATProto

Boltless reports:

Tangled is considering changing the data host of some records from PDS to Knot

Aral Balkin asks:

Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social? No? Me neither, but here we are…

And Hamish Campbell chimes in with:

Europe’s digital sovereignty needs challenges

Meanwhile, Mu.Social is:

[Introducing Newsrooms v1 in

mu.social](https://mu.social/profile/eurosky.social/post/3mr5vhiahms2n)

The Walrus has:

A Canadian Social Network? Don’t Roll Your Eyes Yet

eMail / Newsletters

Magic Pages compares:

Substack vs. Ghost for a paid newsletter

Plus as I'm sure you know, Suckstack is a Nazi bar. So, don't publish on it, read anything from it, or sharing any of its Vichy content.

CTAs

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