The Programmer’s Fulcrum 23 October, 2026
This post originally appeared on the Fulcrum. Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum. It’s your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social 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...
his post originally appeared on the Fulcrum.
Welcome to this week’s The Programmer’s Fulcrum.
It’s your weekly curation of the essential news in the Open Media Network and Open Social 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), Open Social, 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 open social and use the hell out of them. And do the same with a RSS feed reader.
If you want some recommended tools see our LESS stack.
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 scroll down 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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Or in the Atmosphere
Again, just copy and paste @thefulcrum.eurosky.social into your Atmosphere app’s search field and hit follow.
Featured Item(s)
Open Media Network has this timely item:
In the Open Media Network (#OMN), the commons represents both the foundation and the destination of the native open web. Rather than relying on closed web corporate dotcons or top-down state power, it re-frames the commons as a practical, lived alternative. You might call it a “quiet” form of collective ownership and mutual aid grown into daily social infrastructure.
For example:
I finally got around to customizing our Bear (cross-posting) blog:
I am seriously considering practicing what I preach with LESS, and moving this site to Bear (or an equivalent) next year. I’ve had it with convoluted, increasingly AI ensloppified, and heading towards enshittified CMSs like Drupal, WordPress, Ghost, etc. They are no longer fit for purpose with small sites. Jamstack sites are just as bad.
Sticking to markdown, HTML, and CSS is a constraint that breeds creativity, resists techno feudalism, and refuses fascist artifacts like AI.
I would move our Fediverse account to self-hosted serving with Starling. And kill the newsletter.
CMSs
Offprint News announces:
Publii has a new theme:
Blogmere: a magazine theme for lifestyle and culture journals
Silex announces:
Silex 3.10.0-canary.4 is out, a prerelease for testing
Typemill announces:
[https://typemill.net/news/typemill-2-28-0-soloprint-is-free-and-deeper-git-integration]
WordPress
Roddie Ouijital explores:
WordPress parent’s problematic plans for .php (pending primary-string payoff)
Blind Access Journal shares:
An Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg on Accessibility in WordPress
I doubt they will get any satisfaction from WP’s increasing deranged, techcunt founder.
I ran across this new federated blog project this week:
Omnicron: Write freely. Share universally.
This could be a promising Bear alternative.
IndieWeb
Joe Crawford has:
Ilyess shares:
My Quest for IndieWeb Citizenship
Small Web
Nat’s Space is:
Challenging myself to make for the web
I’m not quite here yet. But, see my Bear note above.
Ghost
Ghost announces:
As usual, this is for the Pro plan or self-hosted versions.
Magic Pages shows us how to integrate:
Emoji reactions for your posts, without tracking
Tools
The NLNet Foundation has:
NLnet Labs as an open-source software steward under the CRA
NLnet Publishes More Stringent Generative AI Policy
Small Web
Long Live the Web shares:
Let’s hope this is true.
Chat / Team Chat
About Signal reports:
Signal registration without a phone number now available on Android
Xoron examines:
Anything is better than NodeJS.
Browsers
Servo shares:
August in Servo: CSS Grid, text selection, and more!
Better a late update post than none. 😉
Webkit announces:
Blocking Identity Resolution Infrastructure
Cloud
Nextcloud takes a look at the techcunts at Microsoft:
Your Data. Their Rules. – Sovereignty washing at its finest
Writing
The Document Foundation documents:
The history of the standardisation process of the proprietary OOXML format
Creative
9to5Linux reports:
Calibre 9.17 E-Book Manager Adds JPEG XL Support and Performance Improvements
Linux / Open Android
And:
Ubuntu Touch OTA 2.1 Rolls Out with Support for Volla Tablet, Various Updates
Nura announces:
Improvements in internationalization and localization
F-Droid announces:
F-Droid and F-Droid Basic were updated to 2.0.1 and 2.0.2
And iode announces:
Find My Device: find your phone, keep your privacy
Alternatives numériques has an:
Interview croisée d’Agnes Crepet (Fairphone) et Gaël Duval (Murena et /e/OS)
This week’s featured OMN tool
Hyper8
Hyper8 is a static site generator for video publishing.
Programming
Tech Policy Press reports:
EU’s Digital Sovereignty Push Runs Up Against Budget Cuts for Civil Society
Whenever you think things can’t get worse with governments, you’re wrong. And other than the U.S. (ironically) it’s about to be a bad election season for democracy. As anarchists have said for years, you can’t count on governments for funding anything other than repression. So, it’s up to us to support and donate to TAM software tools.
TetraLogical looks at:
WCAG 3: a different future for accessibility
Eric Bailey says:
The Accessibility Compat Data project has a homepage now, and you should support the project
And Rob Ricci says:
What a Terrible Day to Have a Computer
This is so tiring.
The PHP Foundation (the gods bless them) explain:
Today’s PHP Security Release, and How We’re Strengthening PHP Security
Fortunately, as Elias Taylor notes:
There isn’t an easy exploit for this PHP vulnerability
And The Atlantic has this click bait headlined (but important) related article:
‘If Anything Happens to This Guy … Everyone Is Screwed’
Git
Bastian Greshake Tzovaras explores:
Using Codeberg’s git-pages deployment with git lfs
Markdown
I ran across the ATProto markdown tool, Reams this week:
Michael Hanscom shares a:
Wishlist: Truly Semantic Plain Text Markup
CSS
Piccalilli examines:
Native masonry layouts with CSS grid lanes
CSS god, Josh Comeau looks at:
AI
404 Media reports:
AI Is Changing Everything About Hacking. No One Knows What Happens Next.
Other
OpenProject has:
Passion Project: Discover what’s new in OpenProject
This week’s featured programming tool
HTML
Structure your site.
ActivityPub
Lorenz Diener explores:
New Features in Mastodon.py 2.3
This week’s featured ActivityPub featured tool
FediDB
FediDB indexes 41,097 servers across 522 software projects, checks every one of them each day, and publishes all of it through a free public API.
Permanent aside here (unfortunately)
This is a perpetual pet peeve because many people aren’t able to comprehend ⬇️:
- The Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise)
- and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise).
- and corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional techcunts.
So, recognize their natures and don’t ask the two protocols to go against them. This is also why we have accounts on both platforms and use them differently.
Fediverse
Steffen Voß says:
Das Fediverse ist viel mehr als nur ein weiterer Social-Media-Kanal
FediDB heralds:
Phoenix Paulina Schmid looks at:
Threads and the Fediverse: The Threat that Wasn’t
Let’s hope it stays this way.
Mastodon announces:
Everyone is celebrating the competent UI.
Catodon has:
Catodon recently implemented Mobilizon/Gancio events
HolosSocial announces:
My mistake was making it easy to run the server on your device, but not to get your own identity.
More
A New Social shares its thoughts on:
On Nostr, Farcaster, and other protocols
Tech Policy Press says:
A great new project, SocialSpec has:
App Spotlight: WordPress (Plugins)
I got this rolling on the backup Fulcrum Too (WordPress) site. You have to import your RSS following list via a plugin as well. Here’s our list if you want to bulk follow it. Which you should. 😉
David Gardiner examines:
WebSub notifications when my blog has new content
TechDirt opines:
Accident Or Not, The No Kings Takedown Is Why You Shouldn’t Rent Your Megaphone From Zuck
True, but his boys at Bluesky are on a path to catch up with Failbook level enshittification in the next few years.
ATProto
ATProto announces:
An Intro to Atmospheric Groups
Again, this is one of the main developments for why we pivoted with our Manade project.
We just cut another spaces alpha release
Tynan Is Typing claims to be:
JolaDev shares a clickbait headlined, but good article:
The time Bluesky tried to kill my server
This is why you shouldn’t self-host your PDS, yet.
Atmosphere
Atmosphere Money is:
Skyreader has a:
Skyreader update – Saved searches, PDFs and books, Semble Connections, and more
Cosmik Labs explores moving:
From Personal Knowledge Management to Collective Knowledge Gardening
W Don’t Have Time reports:
Just 18 unverified VIP accounts produce more than half of all W Social content
P2P
LoRes Mesh examines:
Offline websites with Kiwix, but P2P
Worm Blossom looks at its:
RSS
Buttondown says:
Google Reader was building the wrong future
Dropping Reader and pimping Google+ was definitely the moment the enshittification of Google gained steam.
I found this super solid RSS tools resource:
RSS isn’t dead. It’s the resistance.
Incognito Cat has:
Privacy Tool Spotlight: FreshRSS
XMPP
Aetherius Eldritch explores:
Un clásico del software libre para platicar con los amigos: así funciona Pidgin y el protocolo XMPP
Movim announces:
Movim 0.35.2 bug fixes and improvements
CTAs
- That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer’s Fulcrum.
- Follow us on Surf or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse or at @thefulcrum.eurosky.social on the Atmosphere for daily coverage.
- Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto!
- Escape techshit with the LESS Stack.
And please build something for a community! We’re promoting the LESS stack via our Manade project.
Copy and paste:
Explore this week’s “The Programmer’s Fulcrum”. https://www.thefulcrum.dev/the-programmers-fulcrum-23-october-2026/ #ActivityPub #ATProto #WebDev #Programming
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