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  "description": "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...",
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  "tags": [
    "ActivityPub",
    "Akkoma",
    "ATProto",
    "bluesky",
    "Buttondown",
    "CSS",
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  "textContent": "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. Website CMSs Tools Programming ActivityPub Fediverse More 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: 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. The Noble Path 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 “enshittification”, or gradual deterioration, of digital products and services. “We wanted to show that you wouldn’t accept this in the analogue world,” said Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, the council’s director of digital policy. “But this is happening every day in our digital products and services, and we really think it doesn’t need to be that way.” ‘Another internet is possible’: Norway rails against ‘enshittification’ 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: WordPress Everywhere Your product is getting too complicated for that Matty. WordPress.org has: Your Browser Becomes Your WordPress WordPress 7.0 Beta 5 The Repository has: WordPress Launches Playground-Powered Personal Workspace, but Reception Is Mixed From Experimental Tool to AI Infrastructure: Adam Zieliński’s Vision for WordPress Playground in 2026 Also cool. Typo3 and Laravel even run in it. We’re Building Google Docs Inside WordPress While the AI Opportunity Slips Away Opinion piece. Roots Launches WP Composer as Open Source Alternative to WPackagist WordPress 7.0’s 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. What’s 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: What’s 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 — 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: Inkwell for Mac Write.as Back to top 👆🏼 Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools Fabio Manganiello examines: The local tech neighbourhood This is a fantastic idea that fits perfectly within the Techno Anarchism and Open Media Network projects. Framablog has: La Suite numérique de l’État : critique des critiques Numérique : l’alternative ne viendra pas d’un champion européen, mais des communs Tuta asks: What is digital sovereignty – 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 Label yourself Browsers It’s FOSS Not a Firefox Fork! Kagi’s Orion Browser Arrives on Linux as a Public Beta Waterfox releases: 1.2.1 – Stability and cleanup Writing 9to5 Linux reports: Sigil 2.7.5 Open-Source EPUB Ebook Editor Is Out with New Features and Bug Fixes Joplin shares: Collapsible Sections LibreOffice reports: Germany’s Sovereign Digital Stack Mandates ODF: a Landmark Validation of Open Document Standards Creative GIMP announces: GIMP 3.2 Released 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: Normalizing app store choice This week’s featured OMN tool Sigil As noted above Sigil is an Epub E-book editor. Sigil Back to top 👆🏼 OMN Programming Hamish Campbell explores: The Tech “Empiricism” Problem It was inspired by this from Dead Simple Tech: Tech’s empiricism problem 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: Marknote 1.5 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: Twig 3.24.0 released 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: OpenProject 17.2.2 This week’s featured programming tool OpenProject OpenProject is open source project management software. OpenProject Back to top 👆🏼 ActivityPub Emelia Smith explains: How Standards Are Made The Social Web Foundation has: ap, the ActivityPub API command-line client Introducing tags.pub 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 Mastodon’s Consent-Respecting Quote Posts (FEP-044f) may finally land in Akkoma Terence Eden shares: Some updates to ActivityBot 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. activitypub-cli 0.5.1 Back to top 👆🏼 Fediverse Hamish Campbell shares: A note on the current voices speaking for the Fediverse Jaz Michael King explains: There Are a Million Fediverses, and They’re 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: Hubzilla 11.2RC Released! Peertube announces: PeerTube v8.1 is out! Mastodon has its: Trunk & Tidbits, February 2026 On a related note: This is a good resource NodeBB announces: ActivityPub user and category outboxes coming soon And Holos announces: Release 1.0.0-rc-5 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 👆🏼 More Connected Places shares some hard thinking in: The Purpose of Protocols RSS FeedGrab announces: A new way to discover feeds P2P Teaching the Web New Tricks explores: Distributed Web Apps Other Slightly Federated Social Media ATProto Community has: AHOY! 2025 – Anirudh Oppiliappan demonstrates Tangled on ATprotocol Connected Places published: FR157 – 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. Eurosky Feature Requests Igalia announces: Advancing the AT Protocol in Partnership with Eurosky Good news. Daniel Holms examines: Permissioned Data Interlude: Spaces Democracy Tech Decidim reports: Decidim arrives in Mozambique 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 That’s it for this week. Please share The Programmer’s Fulcrum. Follow us on Flipboard or at @thefulcrum@thefulcrum.dev on the Fediverse for daily coverage. Read, live, and share The Techno Anarchist Manifesto! And please build something for a community! Blasts from the past Previous Battalion Posts Previous Symfony Station Posts",
  "title": "The Programmer’s Fulcrum: 20 March, 2026",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-21T15:14:23.000Z"
}