The Programmer's Fulcrum: 15 May, 2026

This article 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)

Matt Duggan writes:

I am, mostly, grateful for the bounty the internet has provided. But there is something wrong, deeply wrong, with what we built. The wrongness was there at the start. It was baked into the foundation by people who told themselves a story about freedom, and that story was a lie, and we are all, every one of us, paying their tab.

The Intolerable Hypocrisy of Cyber-libertarianism

If you want to understand why 60 and up slightly anarchic punks like me feel, think, and act the way we do, read this.

Eirene Evripidou writes:

A poem on your own site can sit quietly for years and still feel alive. The same poem posted to a social platform is usually swallowed in hours, buried under trends, adverts, and the anxious theatre of relevance.

That is the real tension in open web vs social media. It is not only about where we publish. It is about who sets the conditions for attention, memory, authorship, and voice.

For artists, writers, and independent thinkers, this distinction matters more than the usual platform debates admit.

Open Web vs Social Media

We also published an article this week. It’s in the Fediverse section under Bonfire.

CMSs

Josh Brody says:

We made this hard: over-engineering the web

A beautiful explanation of KISS. And as a 62 year old, I can relate.

Silex announces:

Silex is now officially an ow2 project

This may be worth checking out.

Pure Blog is:

Upgrading to v3.0.0 and Moving to Codeberg

Bon.

Grizzly Gazette shows us:

How to make your blog more accessible, and why you should care

pckt is:

Settling in, and looking ahead

Pica announces:

Password-protected Posts and Pages

Musa Al-hassy explores:

Blogging with Emacs & Org-mode

Simon Reep announces:

I wrapped up the initial, biggest part of the docs overhaul for Faircamp 2.0

Terence Eden shows us how to:

Find WordPress blog posts with missing featured images - and missing alt text - without a plugin

Useful.

Bear

Leaflet

ClassicPress

Backdrop CMS

Ghost

Ghost announces:

Easy theme editing

Great but unfortunately, this may only be for Pro plans.

Magic Pages announces:

AI Crawler Controls on Magic Pages

Same here.

Grav CMS

Micro.blog

Micro.blog announces:

Micro.blog 3.9 for Mac is out

Retiring Micro.one

Back to top 👆🏼

Tools

Ben Werdmuller states:

AI may be the new gatekeepers, but human connection is more needed than ever

Yep. But, don't get discouraged. We have more tools to fight back with than ever.

Wladimir Wofty examines:

Non-paper by the Netherlands: an integrated approach for the EU tech sovereignty package

LibreOffice announces:

Projects selected for LibreOffice in the Google Summer of Code 2026

Chat

Signal announces:

Signal adds extra confirmations and education to help prevent phishing

Browsers

LibreWolf announces:

LibreWolf v150.0.2-1 is now available

Search

TugaTech announces:

xPrivo 4.0 lança índice de pesquisa europeu totalmente independente

Kagi shares:

Tips to get precise, more relevant results for academic work

Internet Exchange looks at:

Search After Google

Cloud

It's FOSS shares:

I Moved My Photos from OneDrive to Ente Photos, and I'm Not Going Back

Nextcloud reports:

Swiss independence on American terms? Nextcloud Enterprise Day in Bern shows how the Swiss explore sovereignty

Writing

Joplin shares:

What's new in Joplin 3.6

The improved markdown editor significantly improves the writing experience.

Creative

Kdenlive announces:

Kdenlive 26.04.1 is out

Linux/Open Android

9to5Linux reports:

TUXEDO BM 15 Is an Upgradable Business Linux Laptop with Smartcard and 4G LTE

KDE Receives Over €1M from Sovereign Tech Fund for Software Development

This may have driven it to some degree:

EU OS proposes to equip public sector computers with KDE and distribute software also via Flatpak.

PostmarketOS has:

postmarketOS in 2026-04: new boot splash

New financed postmarketOS project: q6voice(d)

DTMF tones are broken on the PinePhone with latest ModemManager

Larvitz Blog explores:

FreeBSD Resource Monitoring, Accounting, and Troubleshooting

Juhani Lehtimäki notes:

The upcoming F-Droid 2.0 (in alpha release) UI is modern and easy-to-use

F-Droid shares:

This Week in F-Droid

Please check out Snowflake Volunteer.

Heise reports:

Google's new reCAPTCHA: Potential hurdle for Google-free Android variants

Golem has more:

Neue Recaptcha-Abfrage für Google-freie Smartphones problematisch

Just more of Google's c^ntness in destroying the internet.

Hosting / Serving

MakefileFeld says:

My Mail Hosting Has Come Full Circle

Probably Odyssey shows us how to:

Secure Home Server Access with Caddy, Tailscale, and Cloudflare

Local First

Prototype Fund examines:

The Road to a Local-First App Ecosystem

This week's featured OMN tool

Bludit

Bludit lets you create your own website in seconds. It's a simple, fast, secure, flat-file CMS.

Bludit

Back to top 👆🏼

Programming

LibreOffice looks at:

Why a digital document is a piece of software, and what that means for your freedom

Great article.

Anna Filina says:

You heard of enshittification. I propose its spiritual successor: ensloppification.

And Mat Marquis says:

No web standard should require you to agree to an advertising company’s “terms of use.”

See my Google comment above.

Lucas Cantor has an Eleventy ( now Build Awesome) case study:

Rebuilding lucascantor.com

Great stuff, Lucas.

Kevin Boone shares:

In praise of HTTP

Git

Tao Bojlén explores:

The forge we deserve

Forgejo announces:

Forgejo 15.0.2 and 11.0.14 were just released

Not to be outdone by GitHub's fiasco, GitLab announces:

GitLab Act 2

GitLab is officially becoming ShitLab.

Markdown

Rob Hoeijmakers examines:

Markdown, the WD-40 of Digital Information

An apt metaphor.

HTML

Frank Taylor says:

You don’t know HTML Lists

One to bookmark.

Olivier Forget announces:

Hello BackflipHTML

Interesting side project. But, I think a Hotwire derivative is what he's looking for.

Jim Nielsen says:

Out With the JS, In With the HTML

Let's all out with the JS as much as possible.

CSS

Speaking of, LLBBL looks at:

Three CSS Features That Finally Let Us Delete the JavaScript

vtbag explores:

View Transition Names and Generated Pseudo-Elements

CSS Wizardry examines:

Better Browser Caching with No-Vary-Search

Ahmad Shadeed looks at:

Media Queries Range Syntax

Frontend Masters demonstrates:

Repeating Square Dots Backgrounds in CSS

It's overkill, but still an interesting effect.

Web Components

Xoron continues a series:

Dim: Async State Management

AI

Where's your Ed at? explores:

Premium: AI's Circular Psychosis

By the gods, this horseshit can’t collapse soon enough. Thunor my Lord, strike them dead! 🌩️💀

The Register reports:

Anthropic’s bug-hunting Mythos was greatest marketing stunt ever, says cURL creator

This week's featured programming tool

Zeroform

Zeroform is a static and dynamic online form generator.

Zeroform

Back to top 👆🏼

ActivityPub

Rasterweb explores:

Auto-Bookmark Posting

Fedify announces:

Fedify security updates: 1.9.10, 1.10.9, 2.0.16, 2.1.12, and 2.2.1

BotKit security updates: 0.3.2 and 0.4.1

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

Emissary

Emissary is a Fedi server built for end users, developers, and admins.

Emissary

Back to top 👆🏼

Fediverse

Connected Places has:

FR 162 – EU Regulation Won’t Save Open Social Networks

Well fuck. :(

Jaz-Michael King continues a series:

There Are a Million Fediverses. Some of Them Are Louder than Others.

There are some good points here.

Forge CMS announces:

Forge-social: scheduling social posts from your Forge CMS

FediForum announces:

The Fediverse now has its own link-in-bio, with new project FediProfile

Elefeed announces:

Elefeed was created to experiment with new ways to manage and view content on Mastodon

Fedilab Apps has:

Fedilab 3.40.0 is available

CastLab supports FCast because it is an open source casting protocol

Holos announces:

Holos 1.5.6 is available

MMMX has recommendations:

Instead of Instagram

Vernissage announces:

We released #Vernissage 1.36.0

Steve Mookie Kong shares:

After three months and 1.6k posts later on snac ...

Engadget reports:

Threads users are pissed they can't block Meta's new AI chatbot

Inevitable enshittification for people shitty enough to use or federate with it.

Stefan Bohacek shows us:

How to make a website in 5 minutes: (Almost) No code version

For the few non-developers reading this.

Bonfire

We published:

It's Time to Savor the Flavours of Bonfire

Back to top 👆🏼

More

Arstechnica has:

RIP social media. What comes next is messy.

Prosocial Design promotes:

Quality Scores: Increase engagement with high quality content

Great idea, if you could actually implement it.

A New Social (the BridyFed, Bounce peeps) has:

Bridging on a budget

Webrings

scientiac::syntropy shares a generic:

Indieweb Webring Button

Merci!

RSS

Rob Fahrni explores:

Making RSS and Blogs Better

Mijndert Stuij examines:

Fixing headline-only RSS feeds with rss-fulltext

WaspDev advises:

Avoid using < ![CDATA[ ... ]] > in RSS

FreshRSS announces:

FreshRSS 1.29.0

And Terry Godier announces:

Current v1.0.14 is rolling out now

XMPP

Movim shares:

Our latest updates

Other Federated Social Media

Hamish Campbell shares:

A fluff view of current tech we need to compost

More on the bullshit that is W Social.

The Internet Review says it's:

Time for Another Bluesky Vibe Check (and Happy 10th Birthday, Mastodon!)

Stefan Bohacek shares:

Latinsky and Medsky, brought to you by Blacksky's Acorn system, coming VERY soon

Daniel's Leaflets asks:

Permissioned Data Diary 5: What’s in a Name?

Charlotte Som has:

Plox: lazy-trust verifiable, on-PDS bulk did:plc operation archival

Democracy Tech

The Waving Cat announces:

New publication: The Little Book of Public Interest Technology

Bert Hubert reviews:

The First Democratic Tech Alliance Assembly

eMail / Newsletters

The Verge reports:

Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

Note it's not the Nazi bar aspect, it's the fees. 😱 Fuck Substack. And its users.

Applied Cartography looks at:

LLMs and Buttondown

CTAs

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