Symfony Station Communiqué — 5 May 2023.
A look at Symfony, Drupal, PHP, Cybersecurity, and Fediverse news!
This communique originally appeared on Symfony Station.
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.
There is plenty of good content in each category this week, so please take your time and enjoy the ones most relevant and valuable to you. After a slow week for PHP goodness, you people have picked it up with some great articles this week.
Or jump straight to your favorite section via our website.
Once again, thanks to Javier Eguiluz and Symfony for sharing our latest communiqué in their Week of Symfony.
My opinions will be in bold. And will often involve profanity.
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Symfony
As always, we will start with the official news from Symfony.
Highlight -> “This week, Symfony 5.4.23 and 6.2.10 maintenance versions were released. Meanwhile, we continued polishing the new features of the upcoming Symfony 6.3 release, including the addition of return types to the entire codebase. Finally, we published more information about how to become a Symfony partner to gain visibility among tech experts in conferences.“
A Week of Symfony #852 (24-30 April 2023)
Symfony announced:
New in Symfony 6.3: Enum Improvements
New in Symfony 6.3: Login and Logout Improvements
New in Symfony 6.3: Query Parameters Mapper
New in Symfony 6.3: Performance Improvements
SymfonyOnline June 2023 - Modern UIs with UX, a little JS & Zero Node
I am looking forward to this one.
SymfonyOnline June 2023 - Enhance your skills by participating in workshops!
Via GitHub, they announced these very exciting updates to Symfony UX:
Release 2 new components, Twig HTML Syntax + Big Live Updates · symfony/ux
SymfonyCasts continues its API Platform course:
Featured Item
The Markup says:
Blacklight was created with one guiding premise: that it would be more robust to show people, in real-time, how they were being tracked online than to tell them such tracking was happening. Led by former Markup senior data engineer Surya Mattu, a team of programmers and journalists spent 18 months building Blacklight and released it in conjunction with a Markup story.
Surya and investigative reporter Aaron Sankin scanned 80,000 popular websites with Blacklight and found that nearly 90 percent of them had some sort of third-party tracker. Aaron also published a guide for readers on what to do if, after using Blacklight to scan a website, you find the results to be horrifying.
10 Million Blacklight Scans Later, Here’s What You Found
Keep tracking to a bare minimum, peeps, if you use it at all.
This Week
Zairig Imad explores:
Offline support for Symfony applications
Nicolas Nénon examines:
Symfony UUID, Doctrine and type-hinting : everything you should know
Doeke Norg looks at:
Reading bundle configuration inside Symfony Compiler Passes
Ihechikara Vincent Abba explores:
YAML Commenting – How to Add a Multiline Comment in YAML
Kinsta shows us:
How and Why To Run Redis in Docker
There is a plethora of Redis content this week.
eCommerce
Shopware announced:
Shopware 6.5 – all about the major release
Platform SH shows us how to:
Optimize your Shopware 6.x applications with new specific metrics
CMSs
bitExpert looks at:
Adding custom form field to Sulu Forms
Yay, Sulu.
There is good news for stubborn rich people who refuse to upgrade from Drupal 7:
Acquia Extends Commercial Support for Drupal 7 Until 2025
Take a look at Backdrop CMS, lazybones.
Matt Glaman explores:
Drupal module semantic versioning for Drupal core support
Manclu examines:
A Major Step Forward for Smart Date
Drupal NYC has:
Previous Weeks
Laravel has this from our periodic client Inspector:
Laravel Vapor application observability with Inspector
Nicolas Perussel asks:
PHP
This Week
The new issue of [php]architect is out:
Aphinya Dechalert asks:
Who are the people still using PHP?
A very through overview of PHP’s history and reputation.
jmau111 looks at:
Miladev95 explores:
Builder design pattern with PHP
shadowtje1990 examines:
Creating a DTO with Traits in PHP
Khalid Zeiter looks at:
PHP Security: Protecting Your Code with Best Practices and Proven Techniques
Jolicode shows us how to:
Create your own shiny Open Graph images with Imagine PHP
London Lingo explores:
Optimizing PHP Performance: Advanced Techniques for Speed and Efficiency
Andrew Pogulailo examines:
Unused code detector — How to make your PHP code cleaner
Aizaz Aziz looks at:
Adapter pattern using real world example in PHP
Zubair Idris Aweda shows us:
How to Use Redis in Your PHP Apps
Sergiu Pogor explores:
Laravel News examines:
And:
Small but powerful CLI apps with Minicli
Markus Staab looks at:
Ramy Hakam is:
Unleashing the Power of Xdebug for PHP Debugging
Previous Weeks
Ashley Allen has:
A Beginner's Guide to Closures and Arrow Functions in PHP
Using declare(strict_types=1) for More Robust PHP Code
Infinity Paul is:
Unleashing the Power of Pipelines: A Custom PHP Implementation
It must be unleashing week.
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 Verge reports:
Nobody wants to be another Oppenheimer
Too fucking late, but unfortunately, it was inevitable.
The Hacker News reports:
ChatGPT is Back in Italy After Addressing Data Privacy Concerns
Fast Company reports:
Can existing laws regulate AI? The federal government and experts say yes
Reuters reports:
Finnish daily uses shooter videogame to dodge Russia's press restrictions
Bloomberg reports:
Binance Faces US Probe of Possible Russian Sanctions Violations
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Cyber Careers reports:
NSA: Russian hackers targeting US, European supply chain for Ukraine
The Hacker News reports:
APT28 Targets Ukrainian Government Entities with Fake "Windows Update" Emails
North Korea's ScarCruft Deploys RokRAT Malware via LNK File Infection Chains
Chinese Hacker Group Earth Longzhi Resurfaces with Advanced Malware Tactics
Cristina Criddle reports:
Cybersecurity/Privacy
Bleeping Computer reports:
Researcher hijacks popular Packagist PHP packages to get a job
More Hacker News:
Vietnamese Threat Actor Infects 500,000 Devices Using 'Malverposting' Tactics
Wired reports:
Google Is Rolling Out Password-Killing Tech to All Accounts
EuroNews reports:
AI has been dubbed a 'nuclear' threat to cybersecurity. But it can be used also for defence.
Dark Reading reports on:
How Public-Private Information Sharing Can Level the Cybersecurity Playing Field
More
TechCrunch reports:
Hugging Face and ServiceNow release a free code-generating model
Edward Loveall opines:
Let's Make Sure GitHub Doesn't Become the only Option
Let’s also make sure it’s not the first option.
Xieur Old shares:
24 Powerful HTML Attributes Every Senior Web Engineer Should Master!
Mads Stoumann explores:
Dark Mode in 3 Lines of CSS and Other Adventures
Speaking of colors, CSS demi-god Josh Comeau examines:
Stephanie Eckles has:
An Introduction to the :has() Selector in CSS
SmashingMag examines:
Learning JavaScript With Imagination
Kinsta compares:
Redis vs MongoDB: Which One Should You Choose?
Go Make Things shares:
A few developer console tricks
Bluesky time.
Bluesky is the latest federated competitor to Shitter, although it is not part of the Fediverse. It is brought to you by the douchebag who created Shitter though.
The Verge asks:
What’s it like on Bluesky right now, anyways?
Mashable asks:
What to know before signing up for Bluesky
Fucking read this and the next link.
Scroll down to:
Rights in User Content Granted by You to Us.
Name, Likeness, Other Personal Rights.
Fediverse
There are two nuanced articles recently about Bluesky and Mastodon. Which is rare when it comes to social media.
Erin Kissane looks at:
Mike Masnick has:
Six Months In: Thoughts On The Current Post-Twitter Diaspora Options
As long as you leave Shitter I am good. Personally, I would never use anything from the person responsible for subjecting the world to Twitter. But if you are OK with eventually getting @$$reamed by Bluesky when it reaches its enshittification stage, knock yourself out.
Interested in Activity Pub development? Check out:
The Fediverse shares:
Mia Quagliarello shows us:
How the Fediverse Can Benefit Creators - Flipboard
There is a:
A new onboarding experience on Mastodon
This is for people who aren’t intelligent enough to pick their own instance.
Mozilla announces:
Mozilla Social Private Beta Launch
Joining Mozilla or Medium’s instances are also easy.
This is a better option. Mozilla asks:
Ready to try Mastodon? Here’s how to get started
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
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Author
Reuben Walker
Founder
Symfony Station