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Symfony Station Communiqué - 03 November 2023

By Reuben Walker, 3 November, 2023
Small robot reading a book

Welcome to this week's Symfony Station communiqué. It's your review of the essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities focusing on protecting democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world and the Fediverse.

We're back from DrupalCon, and so are the communiqués. There will be a good amount of content in the previous weeks sections due to not having a communiqué for several weeks. And we concentrate on the Symfony ecosystem even more than normal. Plus, there is a plethora of TYPO3 content. Which is wunderbar. So, it's a long edition. Maybe exhausting. ;)

There is still good content in each category, so please take your time and enjoy the items most relevant and valuable to you.

Or jump straight to your favorite section. Especially this week if you are time constrained.

My opinions will be in bold. And often involve cursing.


Featured Item

Glen Hendrix writes about how the concentration of capital is destroying capitalism, the human race, and the planet:

"We live in a world where everything is owned by a relatively small group of individuals. In the process of accumulating all that stuff they ruined the environment and wantonly depleted planetary resources for future generations. They have left us a precarious future full of famine, drought, and unrelenting heat with just the whiff of an extinction event."

Big Tech is no exception in this disastrous trend.

Guess what, Albert Einstein predicted this would happen almost 75 years ago.

Glen goes on to look at what Einstein said in 1949:

"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones.

The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.

The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.

Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education, social media). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."


Symfony

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

Highlight -> "This week, Symfony continued tweaking and polishing the upcoming Symfony 6.4 and 7.0 releases. In addition, we published new blog posts about the main new features of Symfony 6.4 and 7.0. Finally, we announced three new for the SymfonyCon Brussels 2023 conference."

A Week of Symfony #878 (23-29 October 2023)

Over the last three weeks they also have:

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Do you really know JWT?

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Symfony is RAD

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Talkception : why non-technical talks in tech events are so important

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Simplified Processes With Symfony Workflow

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Need to search through your data? Heard about Meilisearch?

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Simplified Processes With Symfony Workflow 

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Testing with HttpClient, the automatic way

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Using symfony/messenger standalone

SymfonyCon Brussels 2023: Expression Language in Symfony: Beyond the Framework

New in Symfony 6.4: Build Dir Improvements

New in Symfony 6.4: Class-based Serializer Contexts

New in Symfony 6.4: Impersonation Utilities

New in Symfony 6.4: FQCN-based Routes

New in Symfony 6.4: Subprocess Handler

New in Symfony 6.4: CHIPS Cookies

New in Symfony 6.4: Datapoint

SymfonyCasts wraps up its latest API Platform course:
This week in SymfonyCasts

This Week

While killing time due to canceled trains resulting from Scotland's Storm Babet and on the flight home from DrupalCon Lille, I had time to write this post that's been on the backburner for a while:
Cooking Up Convenience - Symfony Flex's Recipes and the Drupal Recipes Initiative

Thanks to the Drop Times for featuring the article.
Comparing Symfony Flex's Recipes to Drupal's New Recipes Initiative: Reuben Walker

The same goes for OpenLampTech.
OpenLampTech issue #103

The Drop Times also have:
Scheduler for Symfony Messenger + Drupal: A Modern Task Scheduling Solution

Brian Thiely has:
CHIPS in Symfony 6.4/7.0: Adapting to the Cookieless Era

Optimizing Date Management with DatePoint in Symfony 6.4

Pranan Subba literally show us:
How to Integrate PayPal with Symfony 6 

And Tomas Votruba shows us:
How to Autowire Multiple Instances of Same Type in Symfony/Laravel

Steve McDougal explores:
Making APIs the Right Way with API Platform 

eCommerce

This is a bit of "use Vietnamese developers" pimp piece, but still has useful information:
Developing an E-commerce Website of Excellence with Symfony 

In Web Works shares:
Drupal E-Commerce CMS: The Incredible Solution That Outperforms the Rest 

Sylius published:
Month of Sylius: October 🎃

Platforms

Victor Todoran opines:
Laravel is Weird

CMSs

TYPO3 announces:
Marketing Team Sprint — Sales Support and TYPO3 v13 

“Mind-Blowing Insights” — T3CON23 in Review 

Coders' Corner: October 2023

Wolfgang Wagner has:
5 Überlebensstrategien für TYPO3 Einsteiger: So meisterst du dein erstes TYPO3camp (ohne Stress)

Sebastian Klein has a wonderfully designed website and these two articles:
Multi-step navigation in the TYPO3 Form Framework 

Tailor-made rendering of the Summary Page in TYPO3 Forms

In Web Works shares:
Drupal 9 End of Life: What to Expect and How to Prepare

Kevin Quillen reports:
DDEV being considered as the "official" Drupal development environment 
There is a related post to this in the previous weeks section below.

QTA Tech show us how to:
Rank up your Drupal site with these search engine optimization tips 

Golems examines:
The Future of Drupal Theming: an Overview of Emerging Trends and Tools 

The DropTimes reports:
Drupal 'Innovation Ideas': Platform for Community-Driven Creativity

In Web Works shares:
Drupal 9 End of Life: What to Expect and How to Prepare

Debug Academy has a quick tip:
"ddev pull pantheon" fails on Windows with Unknown command '\U'. 

QuantCDN shares:
A brief history of Drupal 7 and overview of end-of-life options 

Cyberschorsch provides:
Effortless Drupal Reinstallations: A Quick Guide Using Composer 

Mario Hernandez also has a guide:
Responsive images in Drupal - a guide 

Specbee has yet another one:
Getting Started with Drupal Feeds: a Beginner's Data Import Guide

Golems is:
Exploring the Potential of GraphQL in Drupal Development 

Lullabot continues their great work:
The Toolbar Redesign: Improving Drupal's UI for Site Builders and Content Editors 

DrupalCon Lille

Let's start our coverage of DrupalCon Lille with this whopper from Maxime Topolov:
Dries in Lille: Storytelling or Escapism for Drupal’s Challenges?

This is the spiritual sibling of my take on the future of Drupal in Does Drupal Have a Path to Growth?. While I made points about what Drupal has to do to stay relevant to mid-market small businesses, Max thinks it's doomed on the enterprise level as well unless it makes major changes. Drupal knows what it needs to do to modernize. Unfortunately, it seems to engage in two to three solutions to each issue at once and take forever to integrate the solutions into core. Let's hope Max and I are both wrong in the long term.

Dries's keynote was awesome by the way. :)

The Drop Times has:
Way to Lille: How TDT Remotely Covered DrupalCon Lille 2023

Hash Bang Code shares their experience at:
DrupalCon Lille 2023 

SystemSeed shares theirs as well:
User-friendly admin experiences in Drupal

Enhancing Application Stability, Performance, and Security: Best Practices 

A discussion on automated testing

Learning management systems and Drupal

Here are the sessions I attended at DrupalCon Lille and got something out of:

I also attended Amazee.io's Composable Now: The Future of the Open Web the day before DrupalCon began. That was quite interesting as it was a deep dive into Drupal as a Digital eXperience Platform. I may write an article about what I encountered during the week. I will have to process it first. The theme might be the modernization of Drupal.

Previous Weeks

My man, Smaine Milianni shares:
A retry mechanism for Symfony commands

Nico Anastasio has:
Symfony Event System, Understanding and Implementing Event-driven Architecture

Rahul Chavan explores:
Implementing the Factory Method Design Pattern in Symfony

Krzysztof Słomka shows us:
How to Deal with a Closed Entity Manager in Doctrine

Brian Thiely is:
Embracing The Future: Symfony’s Asset Mapper Over Webpack Encore

ESNES shows us how to:
Déployer une application Symfony et Vue.js sur Cloud Run

Bhavin Nakrani shows us:
How to Create a Bundle in Symfony

Jakub Skowron looks at:
Instant Messaging in Symfony: A Deep Dive into Mercure Integration

Jigarius explores:
Sending Emails with Drupal Symfony Mailer

PHP Scaling examines:
BunnyCDN via FlySystem on Symfony

Wooter de Jong looks at:
Combatting Login CSRF with Symfony

BitExpert explores:
Deploying Sylius with Deployer

Joppe De Cuyper examines:
Enhancing Sylius Security with Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) Using TOTP

Brian Thiely is:
Exploring Sylius: A Developer’s Gateway to Customized E-commerce

Matt Glaman announced:
Documentation added for supported hooks and APIs in Retrofit for Drupal

Velir shares:
Why We Merged Our Drupal Development Stack with DDEV

Specbee has:
8 Frequently Asked Questions About Drupal 7 to 10 Migration

PHP

This Week

The PHP Foundation has:
PHP Core Roundup #18

Roberto Butti has this resource:
The PHP open-source ebook

Doğan Uçar shares:
What's new in PHP 8.3

The latest issue of php[architect] is out:
Software Archeology: October 2023

PhpStorm released:
PHP Annotated – October 2023

Matt Glaman has:
To post, or put, patch, and delete? API design matters 

Mahfuzur Rahman looks at:
Mastering Exception Handling in PHP: Ensuring Code Resilience

Vonage shares:
Type Safety Done Right - PHP Array Hacking

Bref shares a case study:
Treezor: a serverless banking platform 

David Archer explores:
Enum in PHP — Real life examples

Exakat helps with yet another guide:
Mastering the (array) Cast Operator in PHP: A Comprehensive Guide 

Amit Merchant examines:
Portable PHP in the Browser using WebAssembly 

Laravel News shows us how to:
Easily Read and Write XML in PHP 

Edouard Courty looks at:
Creating and Publishing a Composer package

Dan Leech shares his terminal program:
PHP-TUI Progress

Previous Weeks

Laravel News shows us:
How to Convert HTML to Plain Text in PHP

PhpStorm announces:
The Pest Plugin Is Now Maintained by JetBrains

More Programming

The Guardian opines:
AI promises incredible benefits, but also terrible risks. It’s not luddism to rein it in

MIT Technology Review says:
We need to focus on the AI harms that already exist 

The Guardian has this fantastic and innovative piece:
How AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard work – visual explainer

Laravel New has:
Svelte by Example

Jake Lazaroff opines:
Web Components Will Outlive Your JavaScript Framework

Kinsta examines:
Mastering Git Hooks: Advanced Techniques and Best Practices

Fighting for Democracy

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

Decipher reports:
U.S., European Authorities Disrupt Ragnar Locker Ransomware Operation

CNBC reports:
Meta sued by 42 attorneys general alleging Facebook, Instagram features are addictive and target kids

Bleeping Computer reports:
Meta faces EU ban on Facebook, Instagram targeted advertising

Wired reports:
X Banned the Account of a Major Critic. Now He’s Taking It to Court

Mashable reports:
White House drops an AI regulation bombshell: 10 new mandates that'll shake up the industry 
Great stuff if they can get it implemented.

The Markup has an analysis:
The Problems Biden’s AI Order Must Address

The Guardian reports:
UK, US, EU and China sign declaration of AI’s ‘catastrophic’ danger

TechRepublic reports:
G7 Countries Establish Voluntary AI Code of Conduct

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

Decipher reports:
State Actors Targeting WinRAR Flaw in Multiple Campaigns 

TeamCity Flaw Exploited By North Korean Nation-State Actors 

The Hacker News reports:
Iranian Cyber Espionage Group Targets Financial and Government Sectors in Middle East

Dark Reading reports:
'Scarred Manticore' Unleashes the Most Advanced Iranian Cyber Espionage Yet

TechCrunch reports:
Apple warns Indian opposition leaders of state-sponsored iPhone attacks

Cybersecurity/Privacy

MIT Technology Review also reports:
Inside the quest for unbreakable encryption 

Decipher reports:
Okta: Stolen Credential Led to Support System Breach

CISA Pushes Organizations to Patch Known Confluence Bug

Atlassian CISO Warns of Critical Confluence Flaw 

Bleeping Computer reports:
Massive cybercrime URL shortening service uncovered via DNS data

TechCrunch reports:
US-led cybersecurity coalition vows to not pay hackers’ ransom demands

Meta’s latest privacy rip-off will test the EU’s mettle for reining in Big Tech 

Dark Reading reports:
Okta Data Compromised Through Third-Party Vendor

Fediverse

The Fediverse Report shares:
Last Week in Fediverse – ep 41

Lauren Shof reports:
Bluesky technical roadmap

The Verge has:
The poster’s guide to the internet of the future

The hunt for the next Twitter: all the news about alternative social media platforms 

Mastodon’s latest update makes it easier to follow the news

Stefan Bohacek shows us:
How to increase the number of Mastodon poll options 

Pleroma announces:
Pleroma major release: 2.6.0

We got a grant from NLNet!

Shell Sharks compares:
Ivory vs Feditext

TechCrunch reports:
Instagram head says Threads API is in the works

Speaking of Threads, they are being sued because, like all Big Tech companies, they think laws do not apply to them. See items on Facebook and Shitter above.
Meta given 30 days to cease using the name Threads by company that trademarked it 11 years ago

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

  • That’s it for this week. Please share this communiqué.
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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. 😉

More importantly, if you are a Ukrainian company with coding-related products, we can offer free promotion on our Support Ukraine page. Or, if you know of one, get in touch.

You can find a vast array of curated evergreen content on our communiques page.

Author

Reuben Walker headshot

Reuben Walker

Founder
Symfony Station

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