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 Fediverse 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), 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 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.

Featured Item(s)

Hamish Campbell writes:

The “cloud lords” (Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple etc.) operate their own digital fiefdoms. We are the new “cloud serfs” producing data and metadata for free, generating value through participation while feeding systems that learn from us and reshape our behaviour.

Even businesses and workers are pulled in. Sellers depend on Amazon marketplaces while workers are managed through platform systems and as the EU is finding, entire infrastructures depend on AWS-style cloud provision.

From this narrowing view, capitalism starts to look secondary to rent extraction from controlled digital spaces. But is this actually a new economic system?

Techno feudalism what changes

Firesphere writes:

Do the test, The AI Compass. It’s a simple series of questions and answers, to define where you sit on the AI opinion scale. And, of course, every outcome has their patron saint.

The AI compass

I took it and here’s the screenshot of the result. On the scale, I’m the union organizer. My patron saint is Cory Doctorow (although he’s a little libertarian for me). So, it mostly tracks.

CMSs

Silex announces:

Silex was just added to European Alternatives, an open source catalog of alternatives to US software

This would be a good 11ty builder to experiment with. Especially the self-hosting route.

Martin Paul Eve explores:

FAIR and Square: making a static site support FAIR signposting

Interesting.

Omicron introduces:

Omicron: A Home for Free Expression on the Fediverse

This looks great.

Build Awesome

Adam DJ Brett has:

Easier Font Awesome SVGs in 11ty

11tyx5, Reprise: Build Awesome Alpha, a Whitestone Metasearch, and the Quest for Four 100s

Back to top 👆🏼

Tools

Waag Futurelab opines:

European digital ID wallets are a gift to Google and Apple

Of course.

The Free Software Foundation Europe reports:

Apple held accountable under the DMA – A victory for developers and computer users!

Fuck Apple.

Organic Maps announces:

Satellite imagery, public transport routes, alternate routes, new Android search & route planning interface, accessibility fonts support for iOS, and more

Rolle Design demonstrates:

Getting my photos Google-free – how to move from Google Photos to PixelUnion and quickly host your photo albums in Europe

Chat / Team Chat

Signal has:

Signal lets admins end groups for everyone

Signal is working on support for linking multiple phones to a single account

Writing

LibreOffice continues a series:

The non technical dependency layers: the Calendar and the Invoice

And has:

Policy and Digital Sovereignty – TDF Annual Report 2025

LibreOffice 26.8 Beta1 is available for testing

Marijn Haverbeke announces:

Wordgard Release 0.1

Creative

404 Media reports:

Patreon Blocks Crawlers From Stealing Creators’ Work for AI Training

Kdenlive announces:

The last maintenance release of the 26.04 series is out

GIMP shares:

What’s up lately in ZeMarmot and GIMP?!

Subvert announces:

Subvert’s First Annual General Meeting: September 19

Linux / Open Android

Phosh announces:

Phosh 0.56.0

Librist has:

Linux for Mobile Devices: Introducing postmarketOS

9to5Linux reports:

[BleachBit 6.0.2 Adds Support for Cleaning AI Models from Google Chrome]()

I had not heard of BleachBit but it’s a great idea and should be very useful. Especially for shoveling out AI horseshit.

TUXEDO Computers Plans to Rebase TUXEDO OS on Debian Testing

It’s FOSS says:

Packet is the Linux App You Didn’t Know You Needed for Fast Android File Transfers

This could be useful.

Modal examines:

Image-Based for Developers

openSUSE announces:

Uyuni Joins openSUSE Project Ahead of Annual Conference

F-Droid shares:

This Week in F-Droid

Hosting / Serving

HCCF shares:

Reclaiming Our Digital Selves: HCCF’s Vision for a Human-Centered Top-Level Domain

This week’s featured OMN tool

Hyper8

Hyper8 is a static site generator for video publishing.

Hyper8

Cool.

Back to top 👆🏼

Programming

Git

The Software Freedom Conservancy reports:

GitHub & other LLM-gen-AI Companies Urge You to Misdirect California Legislature on FOSS Licensing!

Fuck ShitHub and Microslop.

Mihaela Mihaljević Jakić reveals:

Humans Don’t Work at GitHub

For sure not ones who aren’t cunts.

Noma announces:

GitLost: How We Tricked GitHub’s AI Agent into Leaking Private Repos

Rafael Martins shows us the way around this garbage:

Leaving GitHub

Dead Simple Tech asks:

Why don’t people use git properly?

Maybe because like most things in programming these days, it’s an overly complicated clusterfuck.

Tangled announces:

GM Tanglers! Its release time

HTML

Krijn Hoetmer looks at:

Code snippets and live previews

Master.dev shows us:

How to Make an Interactive Element Invisible but Accessible

CSS

Master.dev has:

Thinking Horizontally in CSS @layer

Boundary-Aware Styling in CSS

CSS god, Josh Comeau explores:

Getting Started with Anchor Positioning

David Bushell examines:

Fixing full-bleed CSS

Pawel Grzybek looks at:

Masonry aka waterfall aka collapse aka pack aka Pinterest-style layout — display grid-lanes cheatsheet for my future self

JavaScript

Code Utopia says:

Svelte feels like the “Native Language” of the Web

Svelte is definitely one of the least shitty JavaScript frameworks.

AI

David Bushell provides:

Select your starter class

Very witty. And true.

Tech Policy Press opines:

The World Doesn’t Need Another UN AI Declaration. It Needs Architecture.

Ben Werdmuller says:

Governance can prevent AI from being used to undermine democracy. But only if it has teeth.

SysDig reports:

JADEPUFFER: Agentic ransomware for automated database extortion

Live by the sword, die by the sword. And the sooner the better.

Other

XWiki shares:

[Change management and best practices to navigate your migration from Confluence]()

OpenProject announces:

OpenProject 17.6 is here

This week’s featured programming tool

Pears

Unleash the Power of P2P. Empower Developers, Disrupt the Norm!

Pears

Back to top 👆🏼

ActivityPub

Fedify has:

Why implementing ActivityPub is hard, and why it doesn’t have to be

Great stuff. It needs to be as easy to build things with ActivityPub as it is with ATProto.

BotKit 0.5.0: A new design language, multi-bot instances, and consent-respecting quotes

Hrefna says:

Let’s talk about hashtags in ActivityPub

Let’s talk for a moment about what an actual actor model could look like in a protocol like ActivityPub

ActivityPub for WordPress announces:

ActivityPub for WordPress 9.0.0 is here

BTW and for better or worse, WordPress is handing Ghost its ass when it comes to ActivityPub integration. And even ATProto.

Tod Sundsted announces:

There are two significant new additions in release v3.8.0 of ktistec

This week’s featured ActivityPub featured tool

Kazarma

Kazarma is a bridge between two decentralized protocols: Matrix and ActivityPub.

Kazarma

Back to top 👆🏼

Permanent aside here (unfortunately)

This is necessary because many people aren’t able to comprehend this -> the Fediverse is for communities (private, semi-private, formal, informal, or otherwise) and the Atmosphere is for the masses (unwashed, washed, or otherwise). Corporate social media is for naive fools and intentional cunts.

Also, you can avoid surveillance on the Fediverse if you want to (and choose the correct tools) but not on the Atmosphere.

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

Connected Places explores:

The Algorithm, Singular

Casually says:

The Fediverse Grew Up. Its Sign-Up Page Didn’t.

See my permanent aside above.

Federated Mind continues a series:

The Written Fediverse: Where the Words Live

PieFed announces:

PieFed v1.7 is released: Following People, Faster Browsing & Smarter Moderation

Tod’s Homelab shares:

The Mastodon Migration

Tim Bray opines on:

Mastodon, The Only Good Choice

I would say the Fediverse in general. And don’t use mastodon.social.

Kuketz IT Security shares:

UnplugBigTech: Das Fediverse als Alternative zu X, Instagram und Facebook – Teil 7

Back to top 👆🏼

More

The Democratic Tech Fund has:

Our socials, not our trap

LoRes Mesh looks at:

Binding apps to Regions in a LoRes Mesh

Matrix

Matrix announces:

Matrix 1.19 is officially here

Element says:

We’re interoperable, so you can be sovereign

Webmentions

Alex Hyett has:

Setting up Webmentions on my Static Site

Opting for privacy in webmentions

RSS

The Electronic Frontier Foundation opines:

Hate “The Algorithm?” RSS Is One of the Tools You’ve Been Looking For

XMPP

XMPP publishes:

The XMPP Newsletter June 2026

Ignite Realtime announces its:

Openfire 5.1.1 Release

Other Federated Social Media

Jon is not impressed with Gander:

Social networks and ID verification is here

It’s throwing off strong W Social vibes.

Erlend’s Notes reviews:

Mu for democracy

Bits of Entropy says:

All data should be permissioned data

What’s Happening on My Feed? is:

Putting the Trust back in Trust and Safety

Blacksky announces:

The launch of Blacksky-Only Posts

Community Trash explains:

Why I’m excited about Roomy

Jon Worth shares:

Bluesky, we don’t get fooled again, the sequel

Democracy Tech

Decdim announces:

New release 0.32

Decidim and the New York City Civic Engagement Commission formalise Partnership with a Memorandum of Understanding

eMail / Newsletters

Andrew Marder notes:

Ghost Spam Signups Suck

I have also decided to go the invite only route for subscribing to our newsletter. So hit me up on open social if subscribing via a newsletter is your thing.

Ghost announces:

Publisher gift links

Magic Pages has:

A Simpler, More Secure Newsletter Sending Setup

Why a Subdomain, Not Your Main Domain, for Newsletter Sending

Tuta announces:

Tuta One-Click Migration is now in closed beta!

Cool. I think I will move my ancient personal gmail account to this when it’s ready.

Tara Tarakiyee says:

I Cannot Be Trusted to Send Email

CTAs

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Blasts from the past

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