Symfony Station Communiqué — 03 March 2023. A look at Symfony, Drupal, PHP, Cybersecurity, and Fediverse news!
Reuben Walker, Jr.
Posted on March 5, 2023
This communiqué originally appeared on Symfony Station, your source for cutting-edge Symfony, PHP, and Cybersecurity news.
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.
Please take your time and enjoy the items most relevant and valuable to you. There are a plethora of Drupal and PHP items.
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, the upcoming Symfony 6.3 version experienced an intense development activity to finish many new features such as: adding a remember me option for JSON logins, allowing to trim parameters in XML config files, introducing a new Exclude attribute, allowing to define the batch size in Messenger component and allowing to extend the Autowire attribute.“
A Week of Symfony #843 (20-26 February 2023)
Symfony announced:
SymfonyOnline June 2023 - Submit you paper until March 6th!
Blackfire has:
Blackfire, a complete observability solution
Featured Item
The brilliant writer, Cory Doctorow explains why large corporate platforms suck:
“online platform businesses have a distinctly more abusive and sinister character. To a one, they follow the “enshittification” pattern: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.
Why are digital businesses more prone to this conduct than their brick-and-mortar cousins? One answer is tech exceptionalism: namely, that tech founders are evil wizards, uniquely evil and uniquely brilliant and thus able to pull off breathtakingly wicked acts of sorcery that keep us all in their thrall.
There’s another, simpler explanation for the enshittification of platform economics. Rather than trusting the self-serving narratives of the Prodigal Techbros who claim to have superhuman powers but promise that they have stopped using them for evil, we can adopt a more plausible worldview: that tech barons are ordinary mediocrities, no better and no worse than the monopolists that preceded them, and any differences come down to affordances in technology and regulation, not an especial wicked brilliance.”
Twiddler
This Week
Anton Lytvynov has three good items:
Symfony 6 and PHP 8: A Promising Future for Web Application Development
Creating Custom Web Applications with Symfony 6 and Php 8: A Step-by-Step Guide
Symfony vs. Other Web Frameworks: A Comprehensive Comparison
There’s not much new here information-wise, but some exciting graphics make viewing worthwhile.
Filip Horvat shows us how to:
Set up framework for testing security in API Platform (Symfony)
eCommerce
And Webkul shows us how to:
Generate Symfony route in PrestaShop module
Magecom explores:
Profiling and Debugging for Magento and What to Consider When Choosing
Lemberg Solutions looks at:
Drupal Commerce + SAP Integration: Solutions and Benefits
CMSs
bitExpert announces:
Sulu Security.txt Bundle 0.1.0 released!
André Laugks shows us how to:
Use XInclude to organize Content elements in Page templates in Sulu
Hurray, Sulu CMS pieces.
Opensource examines:
3 myths about open source CMS platforms
Specbee shows us how to:
Migrate to Drupal 9 (or 10) Without Losing Your Hard-Earned SEO Ranking
And ComputerMinds shares a series on updating a Drupal Site:
Drupal 10 upgrade: Defining the project scope
Drupal 10 upgrade: File to media
Speaking of versions CTI Digital looks at:
Drupal Through The Years: The Evolution of Drupal
And:
How Drupal Has Evolved to Make Content Editors Lives Easier
ADCI Solutions reviews the official Drupal frontend theme.
Adam Vertsson explores:
7 security modules for Drupal that you cannot live without
Drupal Journal shows us how to:
Create custom Middlewares in Drupal
And Marouene shows us how to:
Enforce Drupal Conventional commits using GrumPHP
Matt Glaman wants us to:
Check out the "Drupal at your fingertips" developer reference guide
Very helpful.
Evolving Web shares:
Hands-On With Drupal 10: Discover the Best Modules Through Project Browser
Axelerant looks at:
How Acquia DXP Is Empowering Businesses To Design Digital Experiences
Speaking of Acquia, it and Drupal’s founder, Dries Buytaert opines on:
Artificial Intelligence, the future of Content Management and the Web
He’s much more optimistic than I am.
Lullabot examines:
Orientation and Wayfinding: A Quick Overview
Palantir shares:
Yang's DrupalEasy Fellowship Experience: Taking a chance on a career change
Previous Weeks
And this one I missed in February:
Tessa's DrupalEasy Fellowship Experience: Collaborative, supportive, and agile
Drupal Journal also has:
Printing a certificate by using the pdf_api in Drupal
Dynamic routes and route_callbacks in Drupal
Specbee explores:
Taming JavaScript in Drupal (Includes FAQs)
ADCI Solutions also reviews the official Drupal backend theme.
Jolicode examines:
How TaggedLocator Can Help You Design a Better Symfony Application
PHP
This Week
The PHP Foundation’s latest roundup is out.
Tomasz Dobrowolski has two articles for us:
9 Essential PHPStorm Shortcuts That Will Skyrocket Your Productivity as a PHP Developer
7 Concepts Every PHP Developer Must Understand To Succeed
Outstanding stuff here.
George looks at:
Also excellent.
Muhammad Noman Rauf shares a:
Guide to Managing Dependencies with Composer
Florian Bauer shares the cogent point that PHP needs better marketing.
Why PHP should be renamed to HypeScript
Farhan Tanvir is back with another:
7 Useful PHP Libraries You Should Use in Your Next Project
Tom Smykowski has:
PHP 8.3 Coming Soon: json_validate()
Samuel Fontebasso looks at:
PHP+Nginx with Docker in production
Nacho Colomina Torregrosa explores:
Using GitHub actions to execute your PHP tests after every push
Hamid Ghorashi explores:
Using DTOs for Safe Data Transport in PHP Projects
php[architect] examines:
And on a related note, Veshraj Ghimire explores a:
Deserialization Disaster in PHP
The Tech Cat opines on:
PHP and Artificial Intelligence: A Match Made in Heaven
Alin Pintilie looks at:
PHP generators or how to simplify iterators
Vlad Reshetilo examines:
The difference between PHP-Imagick and PHP-GD
Camilo Herrera looks at:
Querying Whois information with PHP
Lukasz explores:
This is an interesting article, as he is not discussing threads.
Localheinz examines organizing tests code:
Charles Sprayberry shares:
Introducing database-test-case
Previous Weeks
Stefan Priebsch explores:
Joe Tannenbaum examines:
Creating a Loading Spinner in the Terminal Using PHP
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
This week marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s reign of terror in Ukraine. So, there were a lot of good articles published.
TechCrunch reports:
A year on from Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian startups show astounding resilience
Hacker group defaces Russian websites to display the Kremlin on fire
Ampere News reports:
A Ukrainian cyber defender looks back after 1 year in the trenches: "This is war and crazy tragedy"
The Next Web reports:
Ukraine’s year of war exposes changing roles for cyber weapons
DarkReading reports:
How the Ukraine War Opened a Fault Line in Cybercrime, Possibly Forever
The Washington Post reports:
Impact of Ukraine-Russia war: Cybersecurity has improved for all
CEPA reports:
Sanctions Against Russia Are More Effective Than Skeptics Suggest
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Grid reports:
One year later, Russia’s misinformation war is still getting help from western companies.
Axios reports:
Russian cybercrime is starting to rebound after war disruption
HackRead reports:
News Corp: Hackers sat undetected on its network for 2 years
He He He. They are about as competent (aka shit) at cybersecurity as they are at “journalism”.
The Register reports:
Russian hacktivists DDoS hospitals, with pathetic results
Ars Technica reports:
Russia fines Wikipedia for publishing facts instead of Kremlin war propaganda
Bleeping Computer reports:
Russia bans private messaging apps owned by foreign entities
The Guardian reports:
China spends billions on pro-Russia disinformation, US special envoy says
Bleeping Computer reports:
Chinese hackers use new custom backdoor to evade detection
Cybersecurity/Privacy
And:
White House releases new U.S. national cybersecurity strategy
Hackernoon reports:
Network Detection and Response: the Future of Cybersecurity
Portswigger reports:
NIST plots biggest ever reform of Cybersecurity Framework
CSF 2.0 blueprint offered up for public review
NBC News reports:
GovTech reports:
Feds Push Local Election Officials to Boost Security Ahead of 2024
Darkreading reports:
What GoDaddy's Years-Long Breach Means for Millions of Clients
More
The Markup asks:
Section 230 Is a Load-Bearing Wall—Is It Coming Down?
Jens Oliver Meiert maintains this handy tool.
Jennifer Wjertzoch shows us:
How to Make a Fully Accessible CSS-Only Carousel
No JS required. For more like this check out CSSUI in our website’s footer.
Spicyweb points out the obvious:
The Great Gaslighting of the JavaScript Era
JS frontend frameworks are bullshit.
KD Nuggets shares:
SQL Query Optimization Techniques
Mafiree explores the:
Significance of using Invisible Primary key (GIPK) with MySQL 8.0
Kinsta shows us how to:
Remove Docker Images, Volumes, and Containers in Seconds
Fediverse
Andy Piper has:
Thoughts on Dev Rel in the post-Twitter era
There is big news this week from Flipboard.
Via TechCrunch:
Flipboard joins the Fediverse with a Mastodon integration and community, plans for ActivityPub
Engadget looks at what drove the decision.
Flipboard is leaning into Mastodon — and away from Twitter
As doe the Fediverse Report.
Here’s the official announcement.
The Future of Flipboard Is Federated
So, if you are on Flipboard but not Mastodon, now is the time to join.
And follow us on Flipboard to get an idea of what will be in next week’s communiqué.
The Verge reports:
Mozilla thinks Mastodon could be the next HTTP
Also, this week, Medium started allowing signups to their Mastodon instance. If you are also interested in content production, marketing, strategy, and related fields, you can follow me at @mobileatom@me.dm.
And don’t forget that Tumblr and Flickr are joining in the future.
CTAs
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Keep coding Symfonistas!
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Author
Reuben Walker
Founder
Symfony Station
Posted on March 5, 2023
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