The Programmer's Fulcrum: 20 March, 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. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.
We publish TPF on Fridays so you can enjoy it over your weekend.
Our move to France was completed last week so we are back from our one week break. Thus this week's newsletter is a double edition.
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 ÂŽem.
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Featured Item(s)
Hamish Campbell writes:
Forty years ago, if you wanted to express a political opinion publicly you needed a newspaper, radio station, a public meeting or to stand in a square shouting. Now you can reach thousands of people instantly. But there is a downside that dotcons smoke and mirror online engagement replaces the slow work of institution-building. Posting, sharing, and reacting can feel like participation, but it has very little role in building the durable structures needed for any long-term change.
The goal is not to create another platform, it is to expand federated / p2p infrastructure for collective media and collective politics. The original openweb worked because it supported networks of communities, independent publishers and grassroots movements. The corporate dotcons replaced this with extractive platforms designed for profit and control.
KISS rebuilding of the commons means rebuilding the social infrastructure of media, not just tools, but institutions and practices that persist to allow collective voices to organise and persist.
OMN: Broken Institutions, and the Need to Rebuild the Commons
Joan Westenberg writes:
The Rule of Saint Benedict, written around 530 AD, organized monastic life around a principle that sounds almost radical in the context of modern productivity culture: ora et labora, pray and work. The monks built things.
Work was understood as a form of devotion, valuable in itself rather than as a means to accumulate wealth or status. The monks built in private, for people they could see and know, finding meaning in the craft itself.
The Noble Path as I see it is to build a small, imperfect, deeply useful thing and give it away to the people who need it. Skip the landing page and the waitlist. A thing that works, offered freely, in the oldest and most human tradition of making things for each other.
The monks would understand.
Again our constant message is build things for communities.
The Guardian reports:
A video, released recently by the Norwegian Consumer Council, is an absurdist take on a serious issue; it is part of a wider, global campaign aimed at fighting back against the âenshittificationâ, or gradual deterioration, of digital products and services.
âWe wanted to show that you wouldnât accept this in the analogue world,â said Finn LĂŒtzow-Holm Myrstad, the councilâs director of digital policy. âBut this is happening every day in our digital products and services, and we really think it doesnât need to be that way.â
âAnother internet is possibleâ: Norway rails against âenshittificationâ
Open Media Network Site CMSs
Fabio Manganniello has:
Madblog: A Markdown Folder That Federates Everywhere
Federated Replies and Reactions in Madblog
Very cool.
WordPress
Matt Mullenweg envisions:
Your product is getting too complicated for that Matty.
WordPress.org has:
Your Browser Becomes Your WordPress
The Repository has:
WordPress Launches Playground-Powered Personal Workspace, but Reception Is Mixed
Also cool. Typo3 and Laravel even run in it.
Weâre Building Google Docs Inside WordPress While the AI Opportunity Slips Away
Opinion piece.
Roots Launches WP Composer as Open Source Alternative to WPackagist
WordPress 7.0âs Real-Time Collaboration Heads Into RC1 With Key Questions Still Open
Make WordPress has:
WordPress 7.0 Release Candidate 1 delayed
I guess the questions are still open.
Whatâs new in Gutenberg 22.7?
Block Visibility in WordPress 7.0
Pattern Editing in WordPress 7.0
Interesting.
Pseudo-element support for blocks and their variations in theme.json
Developer WordPress shares:
Whatâs new for developers? (March 2026)
Asia WordPress explores:
5 Reasons Designers Should Not Miss WCAsia 2026
WordPress.com announces:
WordPress Studio: New Debugging Tools for Local Development
Eve:
Built a thing: Crosspost to Inkwell â submitted to WordPress.org today
Projects like this are exactly what we are encouraging here on The Fulcrum.
Drupal CMS
Drupal Odyssey shares:
SVG Is Just Markup: Building a Dynamic Badge Graphic Entirely in Drupal's Theme Layer
Nice.
Matt Glaman announces:
Understanding Drupal: A Complete Guide to Caching Layers is now published!
His books are useful.
Build Awesome
11tyCMS announces:
11tyCMS Beta 2: New logo, major bug fixes, improved UX/UI and more!
This looks promising.
Juha-Matti Santala shares:
Markdown content split to sections in Eleventy and Nunjucks
Micro.blog
MicroBlog announces:
Back to top đđŒ
Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
Fabio Manganiello examines:
This is a fantastic idea that fits perfectly within the Techno Anarchism and Open Media Network projects.
Framablog has:
La Suite numĂ©rique de lâĂtat : critique des critiques
NumĂ©rique : lâalternative ne viendra pas dâun champion europĂ©en, mais des communs
Tuta asks:
What is digital sovereignty â and how Microsoft sparked the trend.
Nextcloud looks at:
The problems with Big Tech AI data collection: privacy concerns and how to protect your data
Kagi explains:
Why OSINT professionals recommend Kagi
Chat
Signal has:
Signal is working on an archive feature for Stories
Browsers
It's FOSS
Not a Firefox Fork! Kagi's Orion Browser Arrives on Linux as a Public Beta
Waterfox releases:
Writing
9to5 Linux reports:
Sigil 2.7.5 Open-Source EPUB Ebook Editor Is Out with New Features and Bug Fixes
Joplin shares:
LibreOffice reports:
Germanyâs Sovereign Digital Stack Mandates ODF: a Landmark Validation of Open Document Standards
Creative
GIMP announces:
Linux
It's FOSS reports:
GNOME 50 is Here, and X11 is Finally Gone
Postmarket OS has:
Financial update: 2025 financial report and new budget
New postmarketOS installations for the PinePhone use the wrong UCM configs
pmaports and pmbootstrap default branch changed
F-Droid explores:
This week's featured OMN tool
Sigil
As noted above Sigil is an Epub E-book editor.
Back to top đđŒ
OMN Programming
Hamish Campbell explores:
The Tech âEmpiricismâ Problem
It was inspired by this from Dead Simple Tech:
The Register reports:
Linux Foundation kicks off effort to shield FOSS maintainers from AI slop bug reports
Node.JS explains:
Evolving the Node.js Release Schedule
XWIKI has:
Europe's open-source infrastructure gap and how to fix it
January and February Pro Apps updates
Markdown
Interconnected examines:
mist: Share and edit Markdown together, quickly
KDE Blogs announces:
HTML
Micah Torcellini looks at a:
Simple Pure CSS/HTML Timeline (with Extra Eleventy Integration)
HTMX
HashBangCode explores:
Drupal 11: Making Interactive Elements With HTMX
Twig
Symfony announces:
CSS
Always Twisted examines:
Un-Sass'ing My CSS: Colour Functions Without Sass
Frontend Master has:
Flexbox Masonry Layout (Explained with Math)
Web Components
And:
Form-Associated Custom Elements in Practice
JavaScript
Bloomberg looks at:
Temporal: The 9-Year Journey to Fix Time in JavaScript
And Smashing Magazine has:
Moving From Moment.js To The JS Temporal API
CSS Tricks explores:
JavaScript for Everyone: Destructuring
This is one of the things I hated in developer bootcamp.
AI
Dries Buyeaert says:
Never submit code you don't understand
Other
OpenProject announces:
This week's featured programming tool
OpenProject
OpenProject is open source project management software.
Back to top đđŒ
ActivityPub
Emelia Smith explains:
The Social Web Foundation has:
ap, the ActivityPub API command-line client
Bruno Rocha show us how to:
Deploy your own Fediverse instance with Snac
Interesting.
Self-Hosting compares:
Friendica vs Mastodon: Which Fediverse Platform?
Fabio Manganiello announces:
Support for Mastodonâs Consent-Respecting Quote Posts (FEP-044f) may finally land in Akkoma
Terence Eden shares:
And Chao-c' shares a:
Mastodon boost/fav/reply #bookmarklet idea
Michael Thomas looks at:
Self-Hosting Mastodon Behind Cloudflare Tunnel
This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool
ap
ap is an ActivityPub cli tool that could be useful for testing.
Back to top đđŒ
Fediverse
Hamish Campbell shares:
A note on the current voices speaking for the Fediverse
Jaz Michael King explains:
There Are a Million Fediverses, and Theyâre All Regulated
Elena Rossini opines:
Openness, transparency and reach: three reasons why public institutions should embrace the Fediverse
One of the O.Gs, Hubzilla announces:
Peertube announces:
Mastodon has its:
Trunk & Tidbits, February 2026
On a related note:
NodeBB announces:
ActivityPub user and category outboxes coming soon
And Holos announces:
Bonfire
Finally, Bonfire Networks announces:
Bonfire 1.0.2: Shaping Your Space
Tres, tres bon. Now that I have settled in France I will begin experimenting with my test instance.
Elixir explores:
Lazy BDDs with eager literal differences
Back to top đđŒ
More
Connected Places shares some hard thinking in:
RSS
FeedGrab announces:
P2P
Teaching the Web New Tricks explores:
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
ATProto Community has:
AHOY! 2025 - Anirudh Oppiliappan demonstrates Tangled on ATprotocol
Connected Places published:
FR157 â Social Software Distribution
TechCrunch reports:
Bluesky announces $100M Series B after CEO transition
This should fast track the enshittification. The mofos hid this news for a year.
Ben Werdmuller is:
Coming Off the Bench for Bluesky
Meanwhile, I am wanting ATproto to succeed, not Bluesky.
Speaking of, Eurosky has:
A Eurosky Account is just the start
I set up my Eurosky at @thefulcrum.eurosky this week. So, be sure to follow us there if you prefer ATProto to ActivityPub.
Igalia announces:
Advancing the AT Protocol in Partnership with Eurosky
Good news.
Daniel Holms examines:
Permissioned Data Interlude: Spaces
Democracy Tech
Decidim reports:
The Free Knowledge Institute has:
Democratic Technology: Building Alternatives to Techno-Authoritarianism
There are some fantastic references in this extensive article.
eMail / Newsletters
Buttondown explains:
How we enabled Content Security Policy for everyone
Magic Pages announces you can:
Send Newsletters From Your Actual Domain
CTAs
- Thatâs it for this week. Please share The Programmer's Fulcrum.
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And please build something for a community!
Blasts from the past
Previous Symfony Station Posts