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Symfony Station Communiqué - 03 February 2023

By Reuben Walker, 3 February, 2023

Illustration of a spaceship on the rocky surface of an alien planet.

Welcome to this week's Symfony Station Communiqué. It's your review of the essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities. We also cover the cybersecurity world and other programming items.

Please take your time and enjoy the items most relevant and valuable to you. While we have not expanded our curation, we have added a few sub-categories to improve scanability.

As always, thanks to Javier Eguiluz and Symfony for sharing our latest communiqué in their Week of Symfony.

My opinions will be in bold.


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Symfony

As always, we will start with the official news from Symfony.

Highlight -> “This week, Symfony 5.4.19, 6.0.19, 6.1.11, and 6.2.5 maintenance versions were released. The 6.0 and 6.1 branches will no longer receive any updates, so consider updating your projects to Symfony 6.2. Meanwhile, the upcoming Symfony 6.3 version marked DSNs as sensitive parameters and removed them from exception messages, added support for Redis Relay in cache, and updated the VarDumper component to display all invisible characters.“

A Week of Symfony #839 (23-29 January 2023)

Symfony announced:

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - Getting ready for Symfony certification - and beyond

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - Announcement of all pre-conference workshops

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - From social to tech - a plea for atypical profiles

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - Welcome to the wonderful world of distributed systems!

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - Announcement of all pre-conference workshops

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - Generics (in PHP)

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - Reinventing the Symfony Console component

Sponsoring Program - Symfony 6.2 backers

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - Designing your API for the future

SymfonyLive Paris 2023 - Once upon a time, the Workflow component

SymfonyCasts continued its course on the utterly excellent API Platform:

This week on SymfonyCasts


Featured Item

The Transnational Institute has an incredibly important interview with Cory Doctorow that's very relevant to us in the open-source community. It's also long, so here is a summary of its many points:

“So, our project needs to be not to snuff out technology but to figure out how to seize the means of computation, how to build a technological substrate that is responsive to people, that enables us to coordinate our will and our effort and our ethics to build a world that we want – including one with less carbon, and with less injustice, more labor rights and so on.”

Seizing the means of computation – how popular movements can topple Big Tech monopolies


This Week

Mislav Jantoljak shares:

Netgen Talk: Why We Love PHP for Building Next-Generation Websites

I am starting the SymfonyCast NetGen Layouts course, so I was happy to run across this.

Although it’s an obvious point, Ozan says that a framework isn’t perfect for every project:

Symfony is not the best framework.

Nacho Colomina Torregrosa explores:

Accessing Symfony security user on the background

eCommerce

Prestashop announces:

PrestaShop 8.1 is now in feature freeze

Henguelbert Loyo shows us:

How to Create a Magento 2 Admin Config & Access to it

CMSs

Drupal Partners asks:

What is the future scope of Drupal as a CMS technology in 2023 and beyond?

In addition to a look at the future, this is mostly a history of Drupal with some interesting graphs.

Agaric Coop shows us:

How to filter a view by content that references the current node in modern Drupal

Matt Glaman looks at the following:

The trinary states of Drupal access control: allowed, forbidden, neutral.

!#Code explores:

Drupal 10: Programmatically Injecting Context Into Blocks

The Drop Times reports:

Drupal Best Integrates WebGIS into a CMS

Martin Ricken shows us:

How to create a Views bulk operation

And the Aten Design Group shows us the following:

How to Use Cypress for Testing Drupal

Mike Herchel shares a case study.

Best Lawn Care Website on the Internet (built with Drupal)

I love case studies. Especially from Titans of Drupal like Mike.

Evolving Web shows us how to:

How To Install Drupal WxT 4 for Canadian Government Websites

I am going to check the theme out.

Platforms

WP Tavern takes:

A Look Under the Hood at Engine Awesome, a Laravel-based SaaS App Using Gutenberg

Previous Weeks

CivicUK shows us how to:

Build a grid section creating a new Drupal Media type

Nick Schäferhoff shares the:

8 Best Gutenberg Blocks (And How to Use Them)

Kinsta shows us:

How To Add Meta Boxes and Custom Fields To Posts in Gutenberg

Colorfield examines:

The state of GraphQL with Drupal 10 (part 1)

Sabatino Masala looks at:

Implementing an aggressive Redis caching strategy

PHP

This Week

Ollie recommends:

Start Programming in PHP OOP Now to Harness its Power

Andrei Birta explores:

Understanding the Single Responsibility Principle

Functional Flexibility with PHP Callbacks

JetBrains announces:

PhpStorm 2022.3.2 is now available

The PHP Foundation has:

PHP Core Roundup #9

Stitcher shares:

My top-10 favorite functions in PHP

Matus Stafura looks at:

PHP Array Reduce function

php[architect] explores:

Creating a PHP Library With Packagist

Geni Jaho examines:

Development Driven Testing

Marcus Brune asks:

What are TDD and BDD, and why do we need to know about them?

William P continues his testing series:

30 Days of Automated Testing:Using PHPUnit【D14】

30 Days of Automated Testing:Using PHPUnit【D15】

Claudio Ribeiro has the a:

Quick Tip: How To Manage Timezones in PHP

Nikola Stojiljkovic explores:

Mock nested PHP default functions in PHPUnit tests

[PHP Guidelines series] Final classes as a warning sign

Nacho Colomina Torregrosa looks at:

Using PHP attributes easily

David Senate examines:

CSRF Prevention for PHP and jQuery

Tomas Votruba says:

Good Bye, Monorepo

I will agree with him but only for 5-10% of the websites on the internet. It's overkill for the other 90%.

Ayesh Karunaratne shares:

How to extend lifetime of legacy PHP applications

Mahdad Kiyani has some:

Some Tips for Optimizing PHP Code to Improve Performance

Michael Etokakpan demonstrates:

Configuring PHP for debugging using Xdebug and VScode

Mr. Tuto asks:

Comment installer plusieurs version de PHP avec Homebrew ?

Previous Weeks

Ramiz Kongulov explores:

Mastering the Strategy Design Pattern in PHP

Viktor Progger shares:

An example of setting up xDebug in Docker

Mitul Patel lists:

11 Horrible Mistakes You’re Making With PHP Website Development

Other

Please visit our Support Ukraine page to learn how you can help kick Russia out of Ukraine (eventually).

The cyber response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery

The Hill reports:

Russia-Ukraine war has improved US cyber cooperation, says key official

The Register reports:

Uncle Sam slaps $10m bounty on Hive while Russia ban-hammers FBI, CIA

The Lawfare blog reports:

Project Texas: The Details of TikTok’s Plan to Remain Operational in the United States

The Markup reports:

Members of Congress Call for IRS to Investigate Tax Companies Sharing Data with Facebook

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

The New York Times reports:

Bias Played Part in F.B.I.’s Jan. 6 Failure, Documents Suggest

This is no surprise as the FBI has been more of a threat to democracy than a help from day one.

Delaware Online reports:

ChristianaCare website down, as pro-Russia 'hacktivist' group takes credit on social media

The Hacker News reports:

Ukraine Hit with New Golang-based 'SwiftSlicer' Wiper Malware in Latest Cyber Attack

New Russian-Backed Gamaredon's Spyware Variants Targeting Ukrainian Authorities

North Korean Hackers Exploit Unpatched Zimbra Devices in 'No Pineapple' Campaign

Microsoft reports:

Iran responsible for Charlie Hebdo attacks

PC Gamer reports:

Belarusian KGB adds World of Tanks stand udio boss to terrorist list

Fortunately, the company had enough sense to leave Putin’s puppet state when the war crimes kicked off in Ukraine.

Cyberscoop reports:

Chinese influence operations may lack critical element: influence

How surprising, authoritarian states are incompetent at everything except oppression and cybercrime.

Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Markup reports:

The FTC Is Taking on Telehealth’s Data Sharing Problem—Starting with GoodRx

CSO Online reports on:

How passkeys are changing authentication

Decipher reports:

GitHub Says Attacker Stole Encrypted Code-Signing Certificates for Desktop, Atom

Cyberscoop asks:

Reality check: Is ChatGPT really the next big cybersecurity threat?

And reports:

Cybercrime groups offer six-figure salaries, bonuses, paid time off to attract talent on the dark web

The Hacker News reports:

Experts Uncover the Identity of Mastermind Behind Golden Chickens Malware Service

New Threat: Stealthy HeadCrab Malware Compromised Over 1,200 Redis Servers

Atlassian's Jira Software Found Vulnerable to Critical Authentication Vulnerability

In great news for SEO practitioners everywhere, Ars Technica reports:

Massive Yandex code leak reveals Russian search engine’s ranking factors

More

MIT announces:

World Wide Web Consortium is now a public-interest nonprofit organization

The Harvard business review looks at:

Cultivating the Four Kinds of Creativity

I am definitely in the figure-ground reversal camp.

The Los Angeles Times opines:

The real aim of big tech’s layoffs: bringing workers to heel

Unfortunately, it’s the goddamned truth and not an opinion.

Isaac Lyman asks:

Is software getting worse?

Yes.

TechCrunch reports:

Big changes coming for GDPR enforcement on Big Tech in Europe?

Better late than never.

The Verge reports:

White House goes after app store ‘gatekeepers’ Apple and Google

Unfortunately, this is about ten years overdue and likely to result in nothing.

Mozilla looks at the efforts for browser interoperability:

Interop 2022: Outcomes

Addy Osmani shares:

Debugging Tactics

Norio Okawa looks at:

The 4 Essential Skills of the Software Developers

Ahmad Shadeed provides an excellent:

Guide To Responsive Design In 2023 and Beyond -

My kindred spirtit, Jason Knight explores:

Understanding CSS Position: Sticky

HTML Empty / Void / “Self Closing” Tags. We’re All Idiots.

Noble Okafor shows us:

How to Use CSS Variables Like a Pro

Chris Coyier says that, like ReactJS:

Hex Colors Aren't Great At Anything Except Being Popular

Shinichi Okada shares:

Two Easy Ways to Put a Svelte Project on GitHub Pages

The Fediverse

Glenn Fleishman asks:

Is Your Future Distributed? Welcome to the Fediverse!

Hilda Bastian examines:

Social Media Regeneration and Divisiveness

Kev Quirk explores:

An Algorithm vs. Time

Buffer announces:

Make Your Mark in the Fediverse with Buffer’s Mastodon Scheduler

I am thrilled with this announcement.

Engadget reports:

Like users, app developers are fleeing Twitter for Mastodon

Lifewire opines:

Twitter May Soon Be Irrelevant, Thanks to a Mastodon Version of Tweetbot

If only. Unfortunately, only Space Karen driving Twitter into bankruptcy has a chance at this.

Speaking of which, TechCrunch reports:

Twitter to end free access to its API in Elon Musk’s latest monetization push

So Shitter’s CuntEO makes this move several weeks after fucking over the businesses most likely to pay for this. A very stable genius.

And here’s what really boils my piss about it. Movetodon is/was a service that lets you find your Twitter followers who are also on Mastodon so you can follow them there.

Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield@mastodon.social)

Elon Musk Is Running Scared From Mastodon; Cuts Off The Best Tool For Finding Your Twitter Followers There

Take login by Twitter off your apps peeps unless you want to pay through the nose. And if you make Twitter apps or bots, I hope you have diversified.

CTAs (aka Show Us Some Free Love)

Do you own or work for an organization that would be interested in our promotion opportunities? Or supporting our journalistic efforts? If so, please get in touch with us. We’re in our infancy, so it’s extra economical. 😉

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Keep coding Symfonistas!

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