The Programmer’s Fulcrum: 06 March, 2026

This post first appeared on The Fulcrum. 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. 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. 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. We are taking next week off, so we’ll see you on the 20th. Featured Item(s) Euronews reports: Europe unites to build sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure to stop reliance on US The keyword to note here is federation. Open Media Network Site CMSs Ghost shares: Rekindling your writing FAIR has: Second star to the right and straight on till morning… Eleventy is becoming Build Awesome: Build Awesome Looks promising. WordPress Make WordPress has: Call for Testing – Pattern editing and content-only interactivity in WordPress 7.0 Iframed Editor Changes in WordPress 7.0 What’s new in Gutenberg 22.6? (25 February) Month in Test: March 3, 2026 WordPress has a great case study: Grist Human Made shows us: How WordPress solves visual editing without the complexity tax The Repository opines: WordPress Faces an Event Horizon, Not a Sunset Unfortunately, WordPress and Drupal are too big not to integrate with AI. At least it is opt in (for now). Delicious Brains explores: Database Indexing: The Missing Manual for WordPress Learn WP Theme Dev has: Building a Custom Block Part 8: Restricting Inner Blocks Building a Custom Block Part 9: Adding Block Toolbar Controls Gutenberg Times examines: 14 ways to add Custom CSS in WordPress Block Editor Good overview of overly complex system. Haurand has: Seitenleiste bei Block Themes Danny van Kooten looks at: Using phpactor as a language server for WordPress development Ghost Ghost announces: Improved editor for welcome emails Spectral Web Services has: Customizing theme text in Ghost Ghost Pro broke my embeds Drupal CMS Drupal Odyssey continues a series: The Automated Librarian: Part 6 – Building a System That Feeds Itself Back to top 👆🏼 Techno Anarchist / OMN Tools The Guardian says: Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more 9to5Linux reports: Calibre 9.4 Adds “Reading Stats” to the E-Book Viewer to Show Reading Progress F-Droid shares: This Week in F-Droid The NLnet Foundation has: 44 Digital Commons Projects Selected for NGI Zero Grants Dual SIM for Mobile Linux This an exciting one along with ActivityPub for Drupal. Chat Signal has: Signal introduces member labels for groups Signal brings sending view-once photos and videos to Signal Desktop Browsers Servo has an update: January in Servo: preloads, better forms, details styling, and more! I feel this has advanced enough that I can start experimenting with it. Great progress! Cloud Nextcloud has a video: Nextcloud Hub 26 Winter design update. 🎨 QR code login, intuitive icons, enhanced filters, and more! Techzine reports: Nextcloud doubles down on sovereign message with latest release Creative GIMP announces: GIMP 3.2 RC3: Third Release Candidate for GIMP 3.2 Inkscape has: Inkscape is hiring: Developers and Administrator (2026) Linux Tinker says: In prep for the Windows 12 rollout, get ready for your town’s Linux Install Parties Modal shares: Towards a Sovereign Mobile Stack This looks fucking awesome. And this seems like the closest phone (now available) to what Modal envisions. FLX1s Convergence Hub Use this to turn it into a desktop or server. 🤯 PostmarketOS announces: postmarketOS in 2026-02: generic kernels Motorola has: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS Foundation, marking a new chapter in smartphone security and expanding its enterprise portfolio Hosting / Serving SecureDrop asks: Help us test WEBCAT alpha This week’s featured OMN tool Bunny Fonts Push your privacy to the next level. Prevent your users from being tracked by 3rd party websites and simplify GDPR compliance. Bunny Fonts Back to top 👆🏼 OMN Programming Smashing Frames has: Artisanal care Ben Werdmueller asks: Can we build the dog? The Register reports: Open source devs consider making digital hogs pay for every Git pull Markdown David Duymelinck asks: Markdown pages, are they a good solution? HTML And CSS Tricks asks: Popover API or Dialog API: Which to Choose? CSS They also share: Yet Another Way to Center an (Absolute) Element Useful and easier. The Different Ways to Select < html > in CSS Frontend Masters shares: The Odometer Effect (without JavaScript) The Big Gotcha of Anchor Positioning Web Components And: Post Mortem: Rewriting AgnosticUI with Lit Web Components Other XWIKI has: Building a knowledge base that lasts: How to structure, maintain, and scale documentation Redefining enterprise collaboration with open-source solutions: XWiki and Spectrum Groupe Clemi Potiers explores: EMI et Forge : les indispensables! This week’s featured programming tool ATProto The Authenticated Transfer Protocol, aka atproto, is a decentralized protocol for large-scale social web applications. ATProto Back to top 👆🏼 ActivityPub ActivityPub for WordPress shares: 8.0.0 — Smash That Like Button Terence Eden examines: Adding “Log In With Mastodon” to Auth0 Very cool. This week’s featured ActivityPub featured tool Emissary Emissary is a Fedi server built for end users, developers, and admins. Emissary Back to top 👆🏼 Fediverse Matt Duggan says: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse Fediforum shares: Growing the Open Social Web un-workshop 2026/03/02 My Bad Take Space expounds: On Meeting Users Where They Are Maho Pacheco is working on: A Fediverse linktree Connected Places has: FR155 – Where Does Community Live – updates FR156 – Share Where? Roberta Fidora reports: Animation Array is a new animation programme on The Indie Beat Television HolosSocial has: The next Holos release will use Bloom filters What if every phone could contribute to the #Fediverse, not just consume it? In the next #Holos release: post expiration Mastodon announces: A new Share button Bonfire Elixir (the language used to build Bonfire) explores: Lazy BDDs with eager literal intersections Back to top 👆🏼 More Ricardo Mendes takes a: Deep Dive into Wafrn: How One Platform Self-Hosts Both ActivityPub and Bluesky Identities Very, very cool. The European Commission announces: Commission registers European Citizens’ Initiative calling for a European social media platform Hmmm. RSS NetNetNewswire says: Testing help for NetNewsWire 7.0.1 beta needed — runs on macOS 15 Other Slightly Federated Social Media Blacksy announces: The blacksky.community web application now uses our own API servers to load posts, timelines and profiles Rish explores: Living Documents on the Feed Daniel has: Permissioned Data Diary 2: Buckets Blaine says: atproto, meet alf pckt shares: Building Our Corner of the Open Social Web: pckt.cafe and More From WhiteWind to pckt.blog in Just One Click If you have the misfortune to be on the non-maintained Whitewind plaform you can migrate to pckt. EuroskySocial announces: You can now use our new tool EU-HAUL I guess this moves you from Bluesky to Eurosky. That would be fantastic. Tyler Fisher shows us how to: Sync your WordPress posts to standard.site records on your PDS Introducing Wireservice In a few weeks I think will get a Eurosky account and connect it to the Fulcrum backup site. And start cross-posting from there. And maybe to pckt as well. I have to admit ATProto is coming into its own. But Bluesky is still 100% doomed to enshittification. It’s not the code. It’s the company. eMail / Newsletters Tuta has: Blocking Gmail ads is possible! Here’s how in 2026. Buttondown shares: Filter sent emails by engagement rate 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