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Symfony Station Communiqué - 12 April 2024

By Reuben Walker, 12 April, 2024
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. Because open-source equals open societies, peeps. That necessitates a mission of destroying big tech. We also cover the cybersecurity world and the Fediverse (more open-source).

There's good content in all of our categories (especially the Symfony and Fediverse sections), so please take your time and enjoy the items most relevant and valuable to you. This is why we publish on Fridays. So you can savor it over your weekend.

Tragically, there is also some incredibly sad news.

Or jump straight to your favorite section.

Once again, thanks go out to Javier Eguiluz and Symfony for sharing our communiqué in their Week of Symfony.

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

Symfony

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

Highlight -> "This week, Symfony organized the SymfonyLive Paris 2024 conference with great success. Development activity focused on fixing bugs and tweaking new features for the upcoming Symfony 7.1 version. Lastly, this week we celebrate the 900th issue of the "A Week of Symfony" series. Thanks to all the folks who read this every week."

A Week of Symfony #901 (1-7 April 2024)

They also have:

Ryan Weaver Needs Our Help

This is the horrendous news from SymfonyCasts this week as Ryan Weaver announces he has incurable brain cancer.

I rarely share anything on YouTube. But, I will make an exception for his brave announcement.

The Announcement

I love Ryan’s work. Watching a lesson on SymfonyCasts literally makes this depressed, old curmudgeon happy for a short while.

I had the privilege to meet him once. He’s as wonderful as he appears on SymfonyCasts. Please donate to help his family in the short term. And subscribe to SymfonyCasts if you haven’t as it's a family business and his wife will carry on.

Please donate

Subscribe to SymfonyCasts

Life is not fair, so make the most of it while you can. And be thankful for your privilege and good fortune.


Featured Item

Here's Ryan's post about his situation.

Ryan has Incurable Brain Cancer - but SymfonyCasts is Strong


This Week

Ghaith Gtari shares:

A Detailed Guide on Implementing Registration and Authentication in Symfony7 (Part1)

Serghei Pogor is hanging with the Hows down in Howville:

How to Send PHP Symfony Application Logs to Slack Using Monolog

How Do We Use AWS Secrets Manager in PHP Symfony

How Do Queues Boost Email Efficiency in PHP Symfony

And this Grinch is okay with it.

He also has:

PHP Encryption: The Symfony Guide to Securing Database Tables

Why Are PHP Symfony Developers Switching to Attributes?

Are You Making These Top 10 PHP Symfony Errors?

When to Use Cache in PHP Symfony?

I don't know if Serghei is the most prolific writer ever, reposting a backlog from a personal blog, or using the most authentic AI I have seen, but as long as it's of middling quality or better, I will share it.

Dmitry Zhebrak looks at:

Programmatically sending emails with attachments in Drupal 10 using Symfony Mailer

David Garcia explores:

Using Symfony to create an API targeting Microservices

Adamo Crespi shows us:

How to debug ANY Symfony command simply passing -x

Raziel Rodrigues examines:

Creating your Own Makers in Symfony 7

Jan Böhmer looks at:

User-configurable settings in Symfony applications with jbtronics/settings-bundle (Part 1)

MongoDB announces a:

Symfony and MongoDB Workshop: Building a Rental Listing Application

Very cool.

Mounir Mouih explores:

Microservices: The Key Errors You Can’t Afford to Make (Examples in Symfony)

Oleksii Marakhin shows us how to:

Limit login attempts in Symfony 5+

Matheo Daninos says:

Symfony can help you fall in love with your front-end team!

Platforms

Laravel News shares:

Jeffrey Way's PhpStorm Setup in 2024

eCommerce

Shopware announces:

Release notes Shopware 6.6.1.0

Tideways examines:

Optimizing Shopware 6 Checkout Performance with Callgraph Tracepoints

Sylius has:

Month of Sylius: March

Security Affairs reports:

Magento flaw exploited to deploy persistent backdoor hidden in XML

Jigar Karangiya shows us how to:

Patch to Debug Blocks and Containers in Magento 2

CMSs

TYPO3 has:

Sitegeist Drives Solar Leader’s Business Pivot with Flexible, Scalable TYPO3 Solution

TYPO3 Camp Mitteldeutschland and a Newcomer’s Introduction to Open Source CMS

Joomla announces:

Release News: Joomla 5.1.0 Release Candidate 2

Drupal has:

Upgrade Your Drupalcon: Register for DrupalCon's Higher Education Summit

Gábor Hojtsy will be:

Supporting Drupal transitions at DrupalCon Portland 2024 

Ramsalt compares:

WordPress vs Drupal, which is the best CMS?

Slightly biased but mostly accurate.

The Drop Times has:

Leveraging Drupal and Symfony for Enhanced Web Development

2024 Drupal Developer Survey Seeks Global Input to Shape the Future

Please spare a few moments to take the survey.

Horizontal Digital explores:

Improving the authoring experience and editorial workflow with ECA

Adam Vertsson shares:

12 fun Drupal modules

Drupixels asks:

Slow Drupal Permissions Page? Use Better Permissions Page Module!

DrupalCampCemaes announces:

Discussion Forum Now Available

Oliver Davies examines:

PHP attributes: coming soon to a Drupal version near you

Golems looks at:

Innovative Methods of Integrating Drupal with Other Systems to Expand Your Website's Capabilities

Evolving Web explores:

Highlights and Insights from DrupalCamp New Jersey 2024

Talking Drupal has:

Talking Drupal #445 - Drupal Bounty Program

PreviousNext shows us how to:

Make upgrading easier for your module users

And Specbee shows us:

How to create custom tokens in Drupal

LN Webworks has:

PHP Attributes In Drupal Development: All You Need To Know

How To Create Hooks Vs Event Subscribers in Drupal 9

Previous Weeks

Tommy examines:

Self-hosted Gitlab CI for PHP Symfony project

Matheo Daninos shows us:

How to integrate Component Architecture into Symfony?

And ComputerMinds shows us how to:

Format Drush output for easy wins!


PHP

This Week

Laravel News reports:

PhpStorm 2024.1 Is Released With a Integrated Terminal, Local AI Code Completion, and More

Alex says:

SQL Injections Are Worse Than You Think

Soner Sayakci explores:

Building PHP docker images in a better way with Wolfi-OS

Hikari is:

Exploring 7 Efficient Alternatives to MAMP for Local Development Environments

Elastic Search Labs takes us:

From ES|QL to PHP objects

Arnaud Langlade examines:

The repository design pattern

Angel Cruz looks at:

Entendiendo el patrón Abstract Factory

Rob Allen shows us how to:

Check licenses of composer dependencies

And Kinsta shows us:

How to install PHP dependencies and extensions with Docker

Enamul Haque explores:

Simplifying if-else in PHP with Ternary and Null Safe Operators


More Programming

Clan Cats Station shares:

Creating animated code snippets with Tempest Highlight & PHP-GLFW

The Next Web asks:

Do developers still need to learn programming languages in the age of AI?

JetBrains has:

JetBrains AI Assistant 2024.1 Updates

GitHub shares:

4 ways GitHub engineers use GitHub Copilot

Free Code Camp helps us:

Learn GitHub-Flavored Markdown Syntax and Formatting – With Examples

This is a helpful resource. Even if you write in MD everyday like I do.

HackerNoon asks:

PostgreSQL or MySQL: What Should I Choose for My Full-Stack Project?

The T-Shapes is:

Demystifying the Shadow DOM

Go Make Things shows us:

How to build a reusable grid system with CSS grid

Sitepoint shares a:

Quick Tip: How to Animate Text Gradients and Patterns in CSS

Ethan Marcotte is:

Blockin’ AI bots


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

NPR reports:

Brazil's Supreme Court judge opens an investigation of Elon Musk over misinformation

Hopefully, there are criminal penalties for enabling sedition and treason in Brazil. Unlike the U.S.!

Time reports:

Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel

CNN reports:

Biden administration preparing to prevent Americans from using Russian-made software over national security concern

Long overdue.

The Verge reports:

A new bill wants to reveal what’s really inside AI training data

Lawmakers unveil new bipartisan digital privacy bill after years of impasse

The Register has more:

US legislators propose American Privacy Rights Act - and it looks quite good

Wow. Could the nitwits in the House actually help pass something helpful?

ArsTechnica reports:

Starting today, ISPs must display labels with price, speeds, and data caps

EuroNews reports:

EU Policy. G7 need tech trust tests to counter China, Vestager says

Belgium investigating Russian influence network suspected of paying EU lawmakers

EU candidate Moldova takes action to prevent Russian influence in referendum

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

Unfortunately, this is a large section this week.

The New York Times (which is in the process of being enshitified itself) reports:

How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.

NewsGuard, which rates news orgs for credibility and quality, has downgraded the NYT for the first time because it so often falsely presents opinion pieces as news columns.

The Guardian reports:

Top Israeli spy chief exposes his true identity in online security lapse

Netanyahu wants to ban Al Jazeera to hide Gaza’s horrors – but reality is getting through

Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation

China will use AI to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea and India, Microsoft warns

The Kyiv Post:

Russian Influences Expected in Upcoming Europe Elections: NATO Deputy Secretary General

The Tor Project reports on:

Surveillance as a Service: The Global Impact of Israeli “Defense” Technologies on Privacy and Human Rights

The Israeli government develops these for their oppression of the Palestinians and then sells them to your government so it can fuck you.

ArsTechinca reports:

AT&T: Data breach affects 73 million or 51 million customers. No, we won’t explain.

TechCrunch reports:

Elon Musk accused of profiting from tragedy as study finds X rewards hate targeting Israel-Gaza war

This week in Meta C^ntitry

Bleeping Computer reports:

Fake Facebook MidJourney AI page promoted malware to 1.2 million people

The Kansas Reflector reports:

Facebook apologizes for blocking Kansas Reflector, then expands crackdown to other news sites

Facebook’s AI failure wiped out Kansas Reflector links. Even Facebook may not know what went wrong.

The Handbasket reports:

Here's the column Meta doesn't want you to see

Little Green Footballs reports:

WTF? Meta Cancels LGF

404 Media reports:

‘AI Instagram Influencers’ Are Stealing Women’s Bodies

FYI, they are adult models, so large breasts warning.

And to be fair, here are a few positive things Meta did this week.

TechCrunch reports:

Meta will auto-blur nudity in Instagram DMs in latest teen safety step

No Film School reports:

Meta to Add 'Made With AI' Labels to Photos and Videos

But TechCrunch also reports:

Meta’s new AI deepfake playbook: More labels, fewer takedowns

So, if lying, malicious propagandists are honest enough to report they use corporate AI, Meta will just label it for them rather than take it down.

They also report:

US says Russian hackers stole federal government emails during Microsoft cyberattack

Apple alerts users in 92 nations to mercenary spyware attacks

More Israeli spyware.

Speaking of dirty deeds, Time reports:

Exclusive: Google Contract Shows Deal With Israel Defense Ministry

Dark Reading reports:

DPRK Exploits 2 MITRE Sub-Techniques: Phantom DLL Hijacking, TCC Abuse

Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Register asks:

What can be done to protect open source devs from next xz backdoor drama?

TechCrunch reports:

Hackers stole 340,000 Social Security numbers from government consulting firm

Proton asks:

Is TikTok safe?

It's as safe as a CAT5 hurricane at a 55+, beachside mobile home park on the Gulf Coast.

Mashable reports:

X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in users' posts, breaking legit URLs

Wow, a scammer's dream and disaster waiting to happen. Great work, Space Karen.

BleepingComputer reports:

CISA makes its "Malware Next-Gen" analysis system publicly available

Great.

Brian Krebs shares:

Why CISA is Warning CISOs About a Breach at Sisense


Fediverse / ActivityPub

The Fediverse Report has:

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 63

Terence Eden wants:

The Fediverse of Things

Great idea.

The W3C Community Group reports on:

ActivityPub and HTTP Signatures

Piefed (a new kbin, mbin, and lemmy adjacent platform) says:

Good progress being made on moderation tools

Newsmast is:

Mapping Fediverse Communities

Tedium asks:

A decade ago, real-time social news coverage was a machine that simply worked. With our recent social media disarray, it feels broken. Can it be fixed?

A new study looks at:

Decentralised Moderation for Interoperable Social Networks: A Conversation-based Approach for Pleroma and the Fediverse

Write.as announces:

Some priorities for new Write.as development

GoToSocial announces the:

First spring time release of GoToSocial

The Rolling Stone reports:

WTF Is Going on With Truth Social: A Timeline

Speaking of the c^nts on Truth Social, TechDirt reports:

Jim Jordan Demands Major Ad Companies Explain Why They Won’t Advertise On Truth Social

It's incredible how stupid these "supporter of capitalism" mofos are.

Hey Jim, maybe they don't think it's a good investment to be associated with fascists, racists, fundamentalist Jesus freaks, and Russia's butt boys.

And yes, Truth Social is part of the Fediverse. Though it's blocked by almost all of it. And it's nothing but a ponzi scheme rather than social media.

Hence things like this from The Verge:

Two former execs of the company behind the Truth Social merger are caught up in a messy hacking lawsuit

TechCrunch reports:

Lyrak to take on X by combining the best of Twitter with Fediverse integration

Meta’s X competitor Threads invites developers to sign up for API access, publishes docs

9 to 5 Mac reports:

Meta shares more details on Threads API ahead of June release

Augment opines on:

Threads on Mastodon and The Bright Future of the Fediverse

Flipboard announces:

Flipboard Federates 11,000 Magazines by 400 Creators and Enthusiasts

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. 😉

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

Founder
Symfony Station

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