Originally published at The Fulcrum .

The Programmer's Fulcrum: 10 April, 2026

It's your weekly review of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Fediverse development communities with a focus on devastating big tech via Techno Anarchism. 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.

Websites/CMSs

Tools

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)

Cloudfare writes:

WordPress powers over 40% of the Internet. It is a massive success that has enabled anyone to be a publisher, and created a global community of WordPress developers.

But the WordPress open source project will be 24 years old this year. Hosting a website has changed dramatically during that time. When WordPress was born, AWS EC2 didn’t exist. In the intervening years, that task has gone from renting virtual private servers, to uploading a JavaScript bundle to a globally distributed network at virtually no cost.

It’s time to upgrade the most popular CMS on the Internet to take advantage of this change.

Introducing EmDash — the spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security

Joost de Valk says:

When Cloudflare launched EmDash CMS on April 1st, the reactions came fast — from Matt Mullenweg himself, from Hendrik Luehrsen at Kraut.press, and from Brian Coords.

Each piece approached EmDash differently, but together they crystallized something I’ve been thinking about for years: WordPress’s deepest technical problems aren’t at the surface. They’re architectural. And the WordPress project keeps treating them as cosmetic.

WordPress needs to refactor, not redecorate

Anything that simplifies WordPress would be welcome, especially if it's open-source. Which unfortunately, this really isn't. I tried to get it working locally and couldn’t. It’s effectively a Cloudflare only product for now. Plus while it’s built on top of Astro, it has the stink of AI code all over it.

Rich Tabor comments:

You’ve heard about EmDash, Cloudflare’s “spiritual successor to WordPress.” It’s an interesting demo with some good ideas. But a successor to WordPress? Not quite.

Just Another CMS

Sadly the ease of working with AI agents is what he is most impressed with.

Personally, I am sick of open-source projects shoving AI in where it’s not wanted (core code vs optional plugins/modules). So, I am going to put my time where mouth is and stop daily WordPress and Drupal coverage. An item might make it into a TPF post every now and again. They are evolving into overcomplicated clusterfucks anyway.

Having said that, Drupal has one of the best communities going. Its corporate-oriented foundation leadership is just enshittifying. And agencies have always been the tail wagging the Drupal dog. Its why DrupalCamp Grenoble, which I attended and sponsored this week will be my last one. And that’s frustrating. You government and nonprofit Drupalers need to push back real hard against this shit.

And we have the first exception to our new rule:

How to deactivate all AI features from Jetpack on Wordpress 😉

CybersecKyle says:

I Believe in Human Websites. I Still Care About Polish.

Same here.

Toni Notes notes:

Simple systems age better than impressive ones

That's why we preach KISS and another reason we're dropping WordPress and Drupal coverage. I am going to primarily concentrate on markdown-based, database-free, static site tech going forward. Plus Bonfire . 😉

RunTimeTerror posts:

Hello from Sveltia CMS!

Great blog name. 🧛🏼‍♀️

Astro

Astro announces:

Astro 6.1

PurpleSyringa opines:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Web

I think they mean Web 1.0.

I am not sure if Astro is simple enough for us to endorse and cover long-term, but at least you can use vanilla Javascript. Personally, it reminds me too much of my fullstack webdev bootcamp. 😱

Bear

A Barrel of Words goes:

From HackerNews to Bear

Backdrop CMS

Backdrop CMS shares:

Backdrop CMS Core Priorities: We Want Your Input

Tell them if they want to add a lot of disaffected Drupal users to stay the fuck away from AI in their core.

Ghost

Closing Tags explores:

Theme Development for Ghost

Great blog name.

Build Awesome

Web Awesome announces:

Web Awesome is now available on our public CDN

Write.as / WriteFreely

Musing Studio announces:

Since our Markdown preview has been working well on WriteAs, we'll also be bringing it to WriteFreely in v0.17

Back to top 👆🏼

TechPolicy shows us:

How the Internet Can Survive an Era of Rivalry and Fragmentation

Interoperability and standards are key to freedom. ⛓️‍💥

CNet reviews:

This Privacy Smartphone Blocks Audio and Video Snooping at the Flick of a Switch

NLNet announces:

57 Projects Receive NGI Zero Grants to Fix the Internet

Some of those relevant here include YunoHost, Matdrige Spaces, FunFedi, Open PGP, LinuxBoot, and Loops Live.

Browsers

Waterfox announces:

6.6.11 - Security fixes and feature preview

Writing

LibreOffice announces:

The New Writer Guide 26.2 Just Arrived

The Document Foundation says:

Let’s put an end to the speculation

The Register reports:

Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash

Creative

KdenLive announces:

La version 26.04 RC de Kdenlive est prête pour passer en test.

Linux/Open Android

9to5Linux reports:

KDE Plasma 6.7 Desktop Environment Is Coming on June 16th, Here’s What to Expect

OpenSSL 3.6.2 Is Now Available for Download with Important Security Fixes

Flatpak 1.16.4 Linux App Sandboxing Framework Brings Important Security Fixes

F-Droid has:

F-Droid Basic was updated to 2.0-alpha6

In the mirror universe

This week's featured OMN tool

Kagi

Kagi Search is a fast, private search engine. Orion Browser is a fast, zero-telemetry, browser.

Kagi

Back to top 👆🏼

Infrequently says:

The Web Is An Antitrust Wedge

So, use PWAs and get your government to force Google and Apple to stop suppressing them.

Speaking of, Atif Afzal asks:

Are web apps really slower than native?

Joel Chrono examines:

Verifying human authorship with human.json

Drupal founder, Dries Buyaertd is:

Introducing headers.dev

Git

Martin Lysk looks at:

SQLite on Git, Prologue: Why do we need random access in git

Crazy Milk says:

Ciao, GitHub!

Molto bene.

SO is:

Migrating issues from GitHub to Codeberg

Nice heading font, So.

HTML

Squarespace has:

Squarespace & Web Standards: How We Helped Bring HTML Video & Audio Lazy Loading to Today’s Browsers

Henry Catalini Smith looks at:

Inspecting HTML elements that disappear on blur

Oida, is des org! explores:

Enhance Dialogs with the closedby Attribute

HTMX

Alchemists examine:

HTMX Configuration

CSS

CSS Tricks has:

Looking at New CSS Multi-Column Layout Wrapping Features

Alternatives to the !important Keyword

A great one to bookmark.

Roland demonstrates:

Scroll Spy with Pure CSS using scroll-target-group

Web Components

Jay Sherby looks at:

Learning Lit with 7GUIs and TodoMVC

JavaScript

Polypane shares:

The Intl API: The best browser API you're not using

AI

Erik “kusma” Faye-Lund explores:

Open-source and AI

Matt Taggart writes:

I used AI. It worked. I hated it.

Fantastic article.

Han, not Solo examines:

The AI Great Leap Forward

This is worthy of a featured article. Read it.

Other

XWIKI shares an:

Webinar overview | XWiki vs. Confluence: open-source knowledge management and migration demo

This week's featured programming tool

HTMX

Access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and SSE directly in HTML.

HTMX

I only attended three sessions at DrupalCamp Grenoble, one on caching and two on HTMX. So, it gets the nod this week.

Back to top 👆🏼

FediLab announces:

HolosDiscover 1.3.0 has been released!

Internet Archive Blogs shows:

How DWeb Camp is Being Built in Berlin

This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool

ActivityPub Rocks

This site is maintained by the current steward of the ActivityPub stack of standards.

ActivityPub Rocks

Back to top 👆🏼

Hamish Campbell has:

What happened over the last ten years on our Fediverse path

Beyond Blocking: Building Trust Infrastructure for the Open Web

Fast Company reports:

The web can still be wonderful, and Flipboard’s Surf proves it

I agree and have used Flipboard for years as well as being one of the first Surf users.

Stefan Hayden announces:

Liveblog - a new mastodon client to quickly post durring live events

FediTips reports:

The free open source Fediverse photo platform Vernissage is now fully available in the iOS app store

Mastodon wants your input for:

Designing Collections

Connected Places has its:

FR158 – What is Mastodon for?

Bonfire

LAUTI announces:

LAUTI Updates 2026

It's being integrated into Bonfire!

Back to top 👆🏼

Lamb announces:

Lamb 0.8.0

Web Mentions

Max Glenister looks at:

Baking webmentions into the build

RSS

Ben Crowder announces:

Digest

NetNewswire announces:

NetNewsWire 7.0.4 for Mac — new iCloud features

XMPP

Thanos Apollo is:

Bringing jabber.el Back From the Dead

Other Slightly Federated Social Media

Kat Excellence shares:

Thoughts on ATmosphereConf as an ATProto Newbie

Connected Places has:

Reflections on AtmosphereConf

Bailey's Retrospective announces:

PDS MOOver: The mobile app?

Any thing that migrates people off Bluesky and elsewhere in the ATmosphere is a great tool.

Brittany Ellich explains:

Why I'm betting on ATProto (and why you should, too)

I would say hedge your bets. Just don’t join Bluesky. The same goes for mastodon.social BTW.

Jake Lazaroff explores:

Building More Resilient Local-First Software with atproto

Blacksky wants some input from the community:

Blacksky Algorithms’ Policy Towards Agentic Coding

Democracy Tech

Relational Tech Project looks interesting:

Remixable Tools

A good way to build something for your community.

Decidim has:

Nos infrastructures démocratiques ne peuvent pas être propriétaires : à propos de l'acquisition d'Open Source Politics

eMail / Newsletters

Ghost examines:

Saving your subscribers

Buttondown announces:

Recovery codes for two-factor authentication

CTAs

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