The Programmer's Fulcrum: 5 June, 2026
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.
The big news this week was obviously The European Commission's European Technological Sovereignty Package. So, there's much more on that below. It's ten years later than it should have occured, but it's a start. And starts can be directed.
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 jump straight to your favorite section.
- Sites/Blogs/CMSs
- Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools
- OMN Programming
- ActivityPub
- Fediverse
- More
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)
Violet Pixel writes:
Yes, the web has morphed our perception, but I disagree that, "everything needs to generate money because everything is considered valuable." The web hasn't made everyone consider everything valuable, it's pushed people to monetize.
The pressure isn't to create valuable content, it's to create content that sells. Many things that sell have little or no value. Many things with immense value are things you can't put a price tag on (although some people will try).
Worth on the Web
So, join the Open Media Network and do your thing whatever it is. You can be sure it has worth!
Lingua Celta writes:
This essay is explicitly addressed to my fellow technologists: software developers, hobby coders, digital humanists, computer science theorists, and all the other members of this big family of people who do tech.
I want to talk about our community, and why it’s important. I want to suggest that using LLMs to generate content to be included in technology projects, whether that’s code or text or images, or code reviews or proofreading, harms our shared community.
The Community is the Achievement; the Achievement is the Community
This is similar to what we preach weekly.
Speaking of communities, Ben Werdmuller writes:
The biggest exceptions (to journalistic decline) are local news startups, which are building trust, evolving business models for journalism, and building far more representative editorial rosters.
Most of all, they’re engaging with their local communities. Their constituents know them; that representation and those relationships are how trust is built. And their readers are more loyal because they know they can’t get the context and information they need from anywhere else.
The community-first software era
Fantastic stuff from Ben as always.
CMSs
Amber Weinberg says:
WordPress 7.0 is out, Let’s shut off that pesky AI!
Done. If WordPress had not gone all in on the Fediverse, I literally would have nothing to do with it anymore.
Dries Buyaert explores:
Contentful and the limits of "Buy European"
AKA use open source or eventually get fucked by corporate software. And Germany should block the sale BTW.
Mastro lists:
Four ways to do component-scoped CSS (in Mastro) without a complex build step
This looks to be a fairly KISS option for a CMS.
Simon Repp shares a:
Quick recap of the last week or so in Faircamp 2.0 development
Leaflet
Leaflet announces:
New, for folks doing newsletters on Leaflet
This may only be for Pro plans.
Ghost
Ghost is:
Expanding your social presence
We migrated our Symfony Station Mastodon account into the one here with the new capabilities. So, welcome Symfonistas, Drupalers, and PHP peeps.
Synaps Media announces:
A New Chapter for Synaps Media
And Magic Pages announces:
llms.txt for AI Search in the Customer Portal
IMHO Jannis is slightly amoral (in a nice way) on this topic, so we recommend enabling blocking and disabling crawling. That way you may have a chance to be reincarnated as something other than a cockroach. And BTW we are a client of his company and will remain so (for now) because at least you get to choose (kudos). And sadly, that beats most alternatives.
They also explain:
Ghost, Ghost(Pro), Magic Pages − what's the difference?
Build Awesome
Blades examines:
Minimal 11ty starters
Micro.blog
Micro.blog has:
Standard.site in Micro.blog
More notes on Standard.site
Back to top 👆🏼
Tools
A Poor Player looks at:
Digital Feudalism and the Rise of Digital Serfs
If you don't want to be a serf, explore and live the Techno Anarchist Manifesto.
Mullvad asks a discouraging question:
Age verification for social media – the beginning of the end for a free internet?
The Internet Exchange explains:
Stifling Speech Through DNS Infrastructure
In big news, the European Commission has:
Commission boosts open and interoperable digital ecosystems for public administrations
Great. Now back it up with adequate funding and large-scale purchasing.
The European Digital Rights Initiative responds:
Europe’s digital sovereignty starts with open source
Free Software Foundation Europe has:
EU Tech Sovereignty: A milestone for Public Code? Now implementation is key
Restack: a new European consortium for a digital Europe
Dries Buyaert shares:
Europe turns to Open Source for independence
Hamish Campbell has his usual spot on take:
The EU tech sovereignty plan
And finally Jos Poortvliet gets into the ambivalent fine details:
The Tech Sovereignty Package encourages and disappoints
If you are an European Union citizen, start pressing your government to walk, not just talk.
Chat / Team Chat
Signal announces:
Signal improves notification reliability for devices without Google Play services
Signal will soon automatically delete call events in disappearing chats
Tuta lists:
Best private Discord alternatives in 2026
Movim announces:
The last few days have been wild!
Browsers
Servo has:
April in Servo: new Android UI, focus, forms, security fixes, and more!
Waterfox announces:
6.6.14 - Web compatibility and ad blocker refinements
Search
Alternative To reports:
DuckDuckGo’s No AI search tool reports huge traffic growth as Google pushes AI results
Erin shares:
Tip: Use DuckDuckGo NoAI as your browsers default search engine
Or better yet pay for Uruky. Or use Mojeek or SearXNG.
Euractiv reports:
European Parliament to ditch Google for European alternative
Super.
Cloud
Jorijn Schrijvershof writes:
Nextcloud is not a Google Workspace clone. That is the point and the trap.
This article is aimed at team users. And I am not sure why it's a trap. Google is the prison.
Writing
LibreOffice shares:
The Document Foundation Releases LibreOffice 26.2.4
A Standard in Name Only: What OOXML Transitional Tells Us About Format Sovereignty
Tuta announces:
Tuta joins Euro-Office - one week before launch
Linux / Open Android
Heisse Online reports:
Linux App Summit 2026: Meeting of the Linux Desktop Avant-garde
I wasn't familiar with Bluefin, but anything that makes Linux easier to install and use is great.
Gaming On Linux reports:
Flathub moves to ban nearly all apps and submissions made with generative AI
Fantastic.
KDE and Plasma Design asks:
What Even is Ocean???
Postmarket OS announces:
pmbootstrap: strict builds are now the default
MNT has an update:
MNT May 2026 Update
Hosting / Serving
Elena Rossini continues a series:
A newbie's guide to self-hosting with YunoHost. Part 5: Upgrades & Maintenance
Jeremy Cherfas explores:
A Server for a Purpose
Zils Norvilis examines:
The Developer’s Way to Track Traffic: Self-Hosting Ackee or Plausible
Especially useful if you have a Rails background.
Siddhant Goel demonstrates:
Self-hosting static sites on a Caddy-powered VPS
This week's featured OMN tool
Decidim
Decidim is a free/libre platform for opensource citizen participation.
Decidim
Back to top 👆🏼
Programming
Kevin Wagner asks:
Extended Note: Is AI causing a repeat of Frontend’s Lost Decade?
React was the worst thing to ever happen to web development. Until, AI came along. Both are anti-labor, de-skilling, fascist artifacts.
On a similar note, DutchCelt opines:
Front-end doesn't exist
Business Insider reports:
Zig president says AI coding contributions are 'invariably garbage,' so he banned them
Daring Fireball asks:
What Is a Dickover?
Tim Bray looks at:
XML and JSON in 2026
Git
Henderson Reed Hummel demonstrates:
Blocking “recommended for you” items on the GitHub feed
Better yet, don't use ShitHub period.
HTML
Olivier Forget shares:
DOM Patching from a BackflipHTML Template
CSS
Frontend Masters has:
The Fundamentals and Dev Experience of CSS @function
In-N-Out Animations: Dialogs (Part 1/3)
A neat but unnecessary effect.
Sam Hermes explains:
Why I don’t like utility class CSS frameworks
Failwind is the third worst thing to ever happen to web development.
That HTML Blog explores:
Designing an Autogenerated Live Color Scale in CSS
JavaScript
Zil Norvilis says:
Stop Using JS for Everything: Harnessing the Power of Pure CSS in 2026
Absolutely.
AI
Jorijn Schrijvershof has:
Claude Mythos: what Anthropic's cyber model means, and how to stay ahead of it
KISS is also a good security practice.
Emerald Pages reports:
The Great AI Boomerang: Google, Meta, Klarna & More Are Quietly Rehiring the Workers They Fired
Let’s see if the c^nts learn any lessons.
404 Media reports:
But, probably not.
Satya Nadella ‘Not Sure’ Who Said Microsoft Wanted to Make Addictive AI, Is Looking for Guy Who Did This
Google Employees Internally Share Memes About How Its AI Sucks
This week's featured programming tool
HTML
Structure your site with simple but essential HTML.
HTML
Back to top 👆🏼
ActivityPub
Jeremy Herve says:
The web was always social
IT Notes shares a note:
FediMeteo, timezones, and the art of not breaking what already works
This week's featured ActivityPub featured tool
ActivityPub Rocks
This site is maintained by the current steward of the ActivityPub stack of standards.
ActivityPub Rocks
Back to top 👆🏼
Fediverse
The Social Web Foundation has:
European Social Sovereignty
Mastodon shares:
Europe's New Tech Strategy Puts Open Source Front and Centre
Following up a post feature here last week, Ecologia Digital asks:
Fediverso ou Web Social?
VM Crawl announces:
The dashboard now shows a heat map of all detected ActivityPub platforms in comparison to Mastodon
The largest number of Fediverse instances are Ghost websites, then Mastodon, and soon to surpass it WordPress sites. This is good.
Alexia's Space examines Fediverse:
Moderation
EnbySpacePerson looks at:
Fediverse migration
Holos announces:
HolosSocial 1.8.1 is available
Elk announces:
Finally, Elk v1.0.0 is out!
And FediLab announces:
Fedilab 3.41.0 is available.
Paths and Patches reports on:
Connected community spaces
Connected Places has:
FR 165 – Fediverse News May 2026
A New Social announces new:
Launches: Credible Exit, Bridged User Notifications, & Fediverse Re-Bridge
Bonfire
Our Manade project is rolling along. So, (as hinted at last week) we have set up an announcement account on the Fediverse via a self-hosted Starling server. It's PHP-based, which is in my wheelhouse.
Follow it at @gardian@social.manade.org.
You can learn more about the project at https://site.manade.org.
Elixir announces:
Elixir v1.20 released: now a gradually typed language
Bonfire is written in Elixir which is not in my wheelhouse or even in the neighborhood.
LAUTI announces:
The next step in our ActivityPub implementation is ready
Back to top 👆🏼
More
European.social announces:
The European Social Stack
Technology Adventures announces:
SovereignS3nc: Building a Decentralized Network Without a Backend
Very interesting KISS experiment.
Matrix
Sky Schubert shows us:
How to rename yourself on Matrix
Definitely a pain point in open social.
Web Mentions
Dale Mellor extends an:
Invitation to Join a Posse of Webmention Scratch-Builders to Work Towards Interoperability
Other Federated Social Media
Standard.Horse is:
Your printing press for standard.site
Mat Marquis is:
Implementing Standard.Site
Great article.
And Rachel Andrew is:
Joining the atmosphere
pckt answers:
Atmosphere 101: Do I need to make an account?
Hannah explains:
Putting my Neocities blog on ATProto
Daniel's Leaflets explores:
Modeling communities on permissioned data
VMX examines:
Floats on ATProto
Democracy Tech
Fedivariety looks at:
Safeguarding Democratic Debate
Devin Thakker explains:
What Makes Civic Data So Hard to Structure
Tor is:
Supporting those who speak out with Richochet Refresh
eMail / Newsletters
Buttondown announces:
(Private) Notes on your team members
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