The Programmer's Fulcrum: 01 May, 2026
Happy May Day! I hope you are enjoying your day off. It you have to work, go tell your boss to fuck off. Or give you a raise. ⛓️💥 And welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.
Happy May Day! I hope you are enjoying your day off. It you have to work, go tell your boss to fuck off. Or give you a raise. ⛓️💥
And welcome to this week's The Programmer's 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. 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.
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)
Qashim Rashid writes:
Corporate media is collapsing under the weight of its own corruption. Something new is rising in its place.
Something the billionaires did not anticipate and cannot fully control.
Independent media.
The Rise of Independent Media — And Why the Powerful Are Terrified of It
You can be a small part of this development by adding a site to the Open Media Network.
Here’s how:
Consider this Ethical Publishing Stack and Workflow for your Site, Blog, or Newsletter
I published this article this week.
Paths and Patches writes:
At the recent ATmosphere conference, Erin spoke powerfully of kelp and holdfasts as “sheltered spaces for community knowledge-making”.
Watching from afar, what was remarkable was that while Erin's point of reference was the ATmosphere, the holdfast stands as an equally strong metaphor for the servers of the Fediverse, when they reach their full potential.
In a deeply challenging world, Fediverse communities, and those on the ATmosphere like Blacksy, Eurosky and Gander, offer safe, calm, places outside Big Tech, which more and more people crave.
Moving sideways: paths to growth on the social web
Hamish Campbell strongly dissects this view:
My take is your daily dose of Taoism, let's not beat our heads against the rock of big tech. Let's be water and flow around it. If enough of us do so, we can submerge it one day. In any event we're eroding it and slowing its growth at a minimum.
Or to quote someone with more street cred than me: To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
At the same time, we can't let Big Tech dam the creek with thousands of rocks. You have to be able to flow forward. So, there is a requirement for pratical, political, and spiky action as well.
CMSs
Sebin Nyshkim notes:
The Algorithmic Web is Inherently Anti-Human
Yep.
Jame's Coffee Blog explores:
Make WordPress announces:
WordPress Core Dev Environment Toolkit: A Faster Path to Your First Core Contribution
The Counterforce shows us:
How To: Make a band website with Faircamp
Petrapixel Coding demonstrates adding:
Ghost
Ghost announces that:
Ghost is now a digital public good
It's a better one than Drupal or WordPress.
Synaps Media shares:
More Sites, Fewer Limits: Introducing Subdirectory Installs
Spectral Web Services says:
If you are on less than Ghost 6.19.1, it's way past time to upgrade
Build Awesome
Build Awesome announces:
There is also a free, open source, self-hostable version. It's what used to be 11ty.
Micro.blog
Manton Reece examines the:
WordPress short-form interface
He also shared this documentation resource:
This was desperately needed.
Back to top 👆🏼
Tools
Jason Cosper announces:
This one is in honor of May Day. I stopped in the middle of publishing this post to add this extension to my Firefox derivitives.
Joshua Blais advocates:
Using the internet like its 1999
RedBeanIceCream is:
Making the Case for Slow Technologies
This times (x) 2,012.
MikeyP shares:
I have an old Air I need to try this with.
Chat
Zulip announces:
Zulip 12.0: Organized chat for distributed teams
404 Media reports:
Apple Fixes Bug That Let FBI Extract Deleted Signal Messages After 404 Media Coverage
Signal has:
Signal responds to reports: no hack, but targeted phishing campaign
Signal Desktop without a mobile phone, standalone version in development
Browsers
Servo announces:
Waterfox announces:
Writing
The Document Foundation shares:
The Document Foundation Releases LibreOffice 26.2.3
Creative
9to5Linux reports:
Kdenlive 26.04 Video Editor Brings Monitor Mirroring, Animated Previews
Shotcut 26.4 Video Editor Adds Vulkan GPU Support to Speech to Text on Linux
Linux/Open Android
And:
Linus Torvalds Announces First Linux Kernel 7.1 Release Candidate
BleachBit 6.0 Introduces New Cookie Manager, Improves Browser Cleaning
Phoronix reports:
Ubuntu's "AI Kill Switch" Is Achieved By Removing Snaps, Initially Opt-In
e/OS announces:
e/OS extends the life of Fairphone 3 for 2 more years
Hosting / Serving
eBourgess looks at:
Self-Hosting Hugo: Automating Builds, Rsync Deployments, and Frontmatter
David Viramontes explores:
Self-Hosted Analytics with Plausible and exe.dev
This week's featured OMN tool
Bunny Fonts
Choose Privacy. Adopt Bunny Fonts.
Back to top 👆🏼
Programming
Skoop Dev examines:
A standup example.
Piccalilli looks at:
Three stoic principles for better web accessibility
Stoicism along with Taoism and Techno-Anarchism is one of the trinity of isms keeping me sane. ;)
Git
David Bushell says:
Great site design David.
The Netherlands announce:
Soft launch of open-source code platform for government
Bon, my neighbors to the north.
Jonas Hietala moves:
From GitHub to Codeberg/Forgejo
If this is reaching critical mass, it could not happen to a better set of c^nts.
And if you join this wholesome trend, be sure to donate to Forgejo or Codeberg.
HTML
Meyer Web explores:
HTMX
HashBangCode continues a series:
Drupal 11: Cascading Select Forms With HTMX
CSS
That HTML Blog shares:
Masonry Layout Solved! Hello CSS Grid Lanes
Nerdy Dev examines:
Picallili looks at:
Taking a shot at the double focus ring problem using modern CSS
Manuel Matuzović notes:
Your skip link targets may not need tabindex=-1 to work properly
Web Components
Raymond Camden demonstrates:
Animated video backgrounds via a Web Component and ColorThief
AI
Anil Dash says:
My thoughts on this being possible are shared in this post from several years ago.
404 Media reports:
Google DeepMind Paper Argues LLMs Will Never Be Conscious
Other
XWiki shares:
Release Notes for XWiki 18.3.0
This week's featured programming tool
Web Components
Web Components is a suite of different technologies allowing you to create reusable custom elements — with their functionality encapsulated away from the rest of your code.
Back to top 👆🏼
ActivityPub
We Distribute shares:
The Seven Deadly Fediverse UX Sins: A Redemption Report Card
Flatpress announces:
The Mastodon plugin as a Fediverse bridge
Reiver notes:
New things added to what Mastodon returns from WebFinger
Uriel Fanelli says:
A techno-libertarian take.
Here's Tom with the Weather demonstrates:
Follow button with Activity Intents
Fedify has:
Creating a federated image sharing service
FediLab announces:
HolosSocial will soon reach F-droid official builds
Piefed announces:
AI policy for contributions to PieFed
AKA Fuck AI.
This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool
ActivityPub Rocks
This site is maintained by the current steward of the ActivityPub stack of standards.
Back to top 👆🏼
Fediverse
Ben Werdmuller shares:
Building with love, and paying for it
Please donate to any instances you are on, apps you use, etc. If you are on a website platform, get the pro plan.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation shares:
Copyright and DMCA Best Practices for Fediverse Operators
Kristof Zerbe says:
PeerTube announces:
We've just released a significant update for our PeerTube mobile app!
BadgeFed announces:
BadgeFed 0.0.2 Release: Docker, Federation Standards, and FOSDEM 2026!
Mastodon announces:
Mastodon 5.0 (eta Fall 2026) will introduce major improvements to the core user experience
The OMG LOL Times announces:
social.lol is gonna go glitchy (in a good way!)
Bonfire
Bonfire shares:
Back to top 👆🏼
More
The Linux Professional Institute has:
Morrolinux: Matrix vs. Chat Control – Why Decentralization Matters
RSS
Joshua Blais demonstrates:
RizBit reviews:
FreshRSS: A Self-Hosted RSS Reader for Curated News
XMPP
Movim announces:
Slidge announces:
Other Federated Social Media
A New Social announces:
Bounce Update: PDS Provider Migrations
Fight With Tools says:
Let's write a client side ATProto tool for sharing Web Archives, if we can?
I just ran across this from Blacksky, and it's awesome.
It's a similar idea to what I am considering with Manade and Bonfire.
An Untitled Blog shares:
A Technical Comparison of Distributed Social Media Protocols v3
If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the Nostr, ActivityPub, and ATProto protocols.
eMail / Newsletters
Daniel Prindii shows us:
How to run an independent newsletter
CTAs
- That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
- Follow us on Flipboard or at @[email protected] on the Fediverse or at thefulcrum.eurosky.social for daily coverage.
- Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!
And please build something for a community!
Blasts from the past
Previous Symfony Station Posts