The Programmer's Fulcrum: 16 January, 2026
Welcome to this week's The Programmer's Fulcrum.
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.
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)
These do not fit into a category so I am sharing them here.
TechCrunch reports:
The team is small, inventory isn’t being manufactured before it’s sold, and there’s no outside funding.
Pebble founder says his new company is ‘not a startup’
If you are going to build a hardware for opensource company, this is a good way to do it.
CSID shows us:
How to Build an Organic Community… Inorganically
Open Media Network Site CMSs
WordPress
WordPress has:
What’s new for developers? (January 2026)
Good work on responsive grids.
Dropping support for PHP 7.2 and 7.3.
WordPress Playground Brings Speed, Stability, and Momentum
The Blueprints Gallery is a great resource.
The Repository reports:
WordPress 7.0 Planning Continues With Call for Release Squad Volunteers
Misunderstandings Over AI Use Fuel Confusion Around WordPress.org Plugin Reviews
Rich Tabor explains:
A legitimate use for AI at least.
Ghost
Progressier shows us how to:
Turn your Ghost Website into a PWA
Interesting if you have a large site.
FreeCodeCamp has this course:
How to Build a Custom Ghost CMS Theme
Synaps Media demonstrates:
How to create tables in Ghost?
Useful.
Drupal CMS
While these don't relate directly to DrupalCMS, this is a big week for Drupal.
Founder Dries Buyaert shares:
25 years of Drupal: what I've learned
See lessons 2, 11, 14, and 21.
Drupal has:
My Drupal buddy, Carlos Ospina shares:
I Wanted to Celebrate Drupal's 25th. So I Built Something for Our Moms.
Building local and very targeted niche sites can be a legitimate use for AI. I guess Claude is one of the best of a shitty bunch of assistants. The Drupal community seems to like it.
Micro.blog
Jarrod Blundy notes:
Micro.blog offers an indie alternative to YouTube with its ‘Studio’ video hosting plan
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
Hamish Campbell has:
Software licenses and the geekproblem
Anil Dash looks at:
Wikipedia at 25: What the web can be
Chat
Philipe Baez shows us:
How to deploy a Chatmail server
Browsers
This is a fantastic little service!
Cloud
I'm going a little further back in time for this one:
A brave year for digital sovereignty: Nextcloud 2025 Wrap-Up
Writing
Joplin announces:
Scribus announces:
Creative
How to Geek reports:
Latest KDE release includes great updates for Kdenlive and KDE Connect
Kdenlive has all the details:
Linux
Linux Journal reports:
Linux Kernel 6.19-rc4 Released as Development Marches On
Linux Mint announces:
Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena” released!
Graphene OS announces:
Sailfish OS shares:
Sailfish Community News, 8th January 2026 - New Year
Hosting / Serving
cPanel announces:
Elena Rossini continues a superb series:
A newbie's guide to self-hosting with YunoHost. Part 3: Let’s install NextCloud
Cloudflare asks:
What came first: the CNAME or the A record?
This week's featured OMN tool
My final paid project was a large video series, so I am featuring Trelby.
It's a free, multiplatform, feature-rich screenwriting program!
OMN Programming
Infoworld explores:
6 incredibly hyped (AKA horseshit) software trends that failed to deliver.
Let’s drive these failures all the way out of existence.
Julia Evans examines:
A data model for Git (and other docs updates)
Markdown
Anil Dash explains:
How Markdown took over the world
An inspiring example of building a tool for a community and the tool then taking over a world.
HTML
Terence Eden looks at:
Maximally Semantic Structure for a Blog Post
Thomas Steiner shares:
A polyfill for the HTML switch element
Cool.
HTMHell advises:
Swallow this advice hook, line, and sinker.
HTMX
Mahdi M. explains:
Why You Should Give HTMX a Shot
He also linked out to this resource.
CSS
Dave Rupert explores:
Focus rings with nested contrast-color()?
CSS Tricks examines:
Playing With CodePen slideVars
W3 Tutorials aks:
What's the Difference Between Putting CSS Files in <head> vs. <body>? Key Impacts Explained
WebKit announces:
New Safari developer tools provide insight into CSS Grid Lanes
Manuel Matuzović shares:
Great tip.
Web Components
ZeroHeight lists:
5 accessibility checks to run on every component
Florian Geierstanger has:
The Missing Link for Web Components
JavaScript
Navanath Jadhav has:
I Converted My React App to Vanilla JavaScript — Here’s What Happened
A fantastic K.I.S.S. example.
AI
The Register reports:
Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows
Nice and a great example of Techno Anarchism.
AI industry insiders launch site to poison the data that feeds them
This is awesome and I added it to my sites.
Most devs don't trust AI-generated code, but fail to check it anyway
Please don’t be that person.
If you have to use it be this one. The New Stack reports:
The Key to Agentic Success? BASH Is All You Need
Other
XWiki announces:
XWiki and Cryptpad communities meetup at FOSDEM 2026
Forgejo announces:
And OpenProject announces:
This week's featured programming tool
Speaking of OpenProject, it is open source project management software.
ActivityPub
The Social Web Foundation announces:
New Social Web Working Group at W3C
Connected Places looks at the consequences:
Fediverse Report – #149 – On Protocol Governance
Smarter Articles explores:
Interoperability or Isolation: The Standards Battle Shaping Social Media
Interesting, though long.
ActivityPub for WordPress has:
WordPress Federation: Recap of 2025
On a related note, Alex Masters examines:
Larvitz provides:
Mastodon on FreeBSD: Production-Grade Service Scripts
This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool
Social Docs is the comprehensive developer resource for ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the Fediverse.
Fediverse
Maho Pacheco looks at:
The Forkiverse Experiment and Why Instance Choice Matters
TootWales announces:
Less Clutter, More Cwtch: Introducing the Tŵt App
Renaissance Design opines on it:
Vendor lock-in is hostile to the Fediverse
Social Media Alternatives shares:
Teaching Mastodon: Ethics, Moderation, and the Work of Participation
Jaz-Micael King has:
There Is One Fediverse. There Are A Thousand Ways To Join It.
Another fantastic example of an open social/open media network/community project.
If you could do this with a Bonfire instance it would be incredible.
Bonfire
Bonfire has a case study:
Gifting with Integrity: Federated Digital Spaces for Mutual Aid Networks
This week's featured Fediverse Platform/Tool/Resource
Mobilizon helps online platforms to create, share and find events.
More
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
A Cloud Nihilist explores:
A Model for addressing privacy on ATproto
Just FYI, whatever Blacksky and Northsky are doing is 10,000 times more important than whatever the fuck Bluesky is doing.
ATProto Community has:
Rashid Aziz: Extending ATproto for private data
Marc Faddoul: Developing the AT infra ecosystem and governance
Devin Ivy: The Shape of Apps to Come
eMail Newsletters
Ghost examines:
Buttondown announces:
Announcement bars for your archives
CTAs
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Blasts from the past
Previous Symfony Station Posts