Symfony Station Communiqué — 15 March 2024. A look at Symfony, Drupal, PHP, Cybersecurity, and Fediverse news!

This communiqué 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. 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 and democracy).

There good content in all of our categories, 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. 😉

Or jump straight to your favorite section via our website.

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 5.4.37, 6.4.5 and 7.0.5 maintenance versions were released. Meanwhile, in preparation for PHP 8.4 release at the end of 2024, we started testing all Symfony versions with it and we already fixed some deprecations."

A Week of Symfony #897 (4-10 March 2024)

SymfonyLive Paris 2024: Only 2 weeks to go for the conference!

SymfonyCasts continues its free Symfony 7 course:

This week on SymfonyCasts!

Featured Item

The Intrinsic Perspective writes:

The amount of AI-generated content is beginning to overwhelm the internet. Or maybe a better term is pollute. Pollute its searches, its pages, its feeds, everywhere you look. I’ve been predicting that generative AI would have pernicious effects on our culture since 2019, but now everyone can feel it.

Here lies the internet, murdered by generative AI

This Week

Aghar Saifeddine has:

Set up JWT authentication with Symfony using the LexikJWTAuthenticationBundle

Implementing Mailjet Mailer in Symfony 6

Liip shares:

Symfony User Group Zurich Meetup Recap

WPCrux shows us:

How to Override Form_errors() From Twig In Symfony?

I suspect there is some AI involved with this site, but you rarely see Twig items so I'm sharing it.

Serghei Pogor explores:

PHP Mastering CORS and Bypassing the Same-Origin Policy Issues

Shapehost examines:

Mastering the Installation of Symfony Framework on Rocky Linux 9

Matheo D. shows us:

How to integrate Component Architecture into Symfony?

Jean-Michel Lievin explains the:

Clock component in Symfony 7

Platforms

Sina Ahamadpour looks at:

Concurrency in PHP

eCommerce

Sitepoint shows us:

How to Use Magento 2 for International Ecommerce Success

John Smith shares:

Mastering Magento: A Developer's Guide to Building Powerful eCommerce Stores

Details block

I ran across this series of recent posts on modules from Sylius:

CMSs

TYPO3 has:

Taking Regional Governance Digital with TYPO3

Drupal has:

Contributor guide: Maximizing Impactful Contributions

Dries Buytaert has an ioT application for Drupal 🤓:

Building my own temperature and humidity monitor

You see why Dries built something like Drupal versus WordPress.

Paul Johnson wants our help:

Demonstrating Drupal’s impact to evaluators — call for research and statistics

Computer Minds announces:

Webform Protected Downloads

Matt Glaman says:

Drupal has made contributing to open source a marketing opportunity

There are good and bad consequences to this as he points out.

ImageX show us how to:

Integrate Zoom Meetings Seamlessly into Your Drupal Website via Our Developer’s Module

This involves two things you should never get involved with, Zoom and Firebase.

Specbee explores:

Better Page Layouts with the CSS Grid Layout Module in Drupal

Drupal Easy is:

Reintroducing Drupal core's Views "Combine fields filter"

The Drop Times examines:

The Revolutionary Impact of Gander Automated Performance Testing

This looks useful.

Balint Pekker ruminates on:

The Future of Drupal

I have a more detailed and pessimistic view in Does Drupal Have a Path to Growth?.

Liip shares a:

Throwback to Drupal Mountain Camp 2024

Ten7 opines:

Just Say Drupal

They are wrong about upgrades.

Four Kitchens looks at:

Custom Drush commands with Drush Generate

PreviousNext asks:

How can free open source CMSes remain competitive with enterprise clients?

This is important for Drupal.

Kevin Gautreau shows us how to:

Drupal - Add fields to the “Basic site settings”

Previous Weeks

Jolicode show us how to:

Forcer le redémarrage d’un worker Symfony

PHP

This Week

Leandro Luccerini shows us how to:

Encapsulate a set of repositories operations within a single transaction

PhpStorm published:

PHP Annotated – February-March 2024

OpenLAMPTech shares their best interview yet:

OpenLampTech - Developer Interview With Doeke Norg

And with the best developer so far.

Grumpy Learning shares:

When giving talks gets boring

Nikolay Nikolov explores:

Unlocking PHP Generators: Revolutionizing Memory Efficiency

Serghei Pogor demonstrates a:

PHP Currency Exchange Converter

Oh Dear examines:

Reducing PHP's CPU usage by nearly 40% by upgrading from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04

Florian Engelhardt documents:

Processing One Billion Rows in PHP!

Laravel News shows us:

How to Detect n+1 Queries in PHP

Dragan Rapić has:

Most useful PHP packages for improving project functionality

Mastering PHP Dependency Management with Composer

Steve Grunwell looks at:

The Beauty of PHP Value Objects

Senik Hakobyan explores:

Routing implementation using PHP attributes

Nic Anatasio is back with:

Debugging PHP Applications Like a Pro (in 2024)

Jochelle Mendonca examines:

Choosing the Right PHP DateTime Class: A Practical Comparison

Previous Weeks

Laravel News show us how to:

Make your app faster with PHP 8.3

Alexandre Daubois is:

Introducing Phikl: Apple PKL in PHP

Interesting.

More Programming

The Internet Review has:

Big Tech on Blast as Sir Tim Berners-Lee Reflects on the Web’s 35th Birthday

What could have been if corporate America hadn't fucked it up.

See Tim's thoughts:

Marking the Web’s 35th Birthday: An Open Letter

Ashan Fernando says:

Composable Software Architectures are Trending: Here’s Why

Julia Evans shows us:

How HEAD works in git

Stefan Zweifel shares:

My Reusable GitHub Actions Workflows

Docker shows us:

How Kinsta Improved the End-to-End Development Experience by Dockerizing Every Step of the Production Cycle

Obsidian announces:

Announcing JSON Canvas: an open file format for infinite canvas data

Deque explains:

Distinguishing between ARIA and native HTML attributes

This points out one of the many reasons why getting accessibility right is difficult.

Pieces

5 Tips For Writing Technical Documentation That Developers Love

Good advice.

Raymon Camden examines:

Responding to HTML Changes in a Web Component

That HTML Blog recommends:

More Fun with Web Components and MutationObserver

Fighting for Democracy

Please visit our Support Ukraine page to learn how you can help kick Russia out of Ukraine (eventually, like ending apartheid in South Africa).

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

Euro News reports:

If Big Tech 'comes together,' Ukraine could defeat Russia faster, says Ukraine’s digital minister

EU Parliament votes to protect media freedom and limit spying on reporters

Google begins global restrictions on election-related queries put to its Gemini AI chatbot

Let's hope they can implement it. Unlike Fuckupbook and Shitter at least Google is competent. Oh wait, in AI they aren't. See below in Cybersecurity section.

TechCrunch reports:

EU’s use of Microsoft 365 found to breach data protection rules

MalwareBytes Labs reports:

Data brokers (forced to) admit they’re selling information on precise location, kids, and reproductive healthcare

Fixed the headline. Thank you California.

Bleeping Computer reports:

Tor’s new WebTunnel bridges mimic HTTPS traffic to evade censorship

The Verge reports:

Apple (forced) to allow iOS app downloads direct from websites in the EU

Fixed the headline.

The Register reports:

Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

FTC goes undercover to probe suspected antivirus scam, scores $26M settlement

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

Euro News reports:

GPS jamming by Russia was already a concern. For the Nordic NATO countries, it may only get worse

Foreign Policy reports:

The West Is Still Oblivious to Russia’s Information War

The Register reports:

French government sites disrupted by très grande DDoS

404 Media has:

Why Is 404 Media Included in a Fake Netflix Trailer Made by Russia?

Amazon's Hidden Chatbot Recommends Nazi Books and Lies About Amazon Working Conditions
The U.S. Wants to Ban TikTok for the Sins of Every Social Media Company

TechCrunch reports:

The controversial bill that could ban TikTok faces a rocky road in the Senate

I have no problem addressing the threats of TikTok as long as the same applies to Shitter, FuckupBook, Instacrap, DumbTube, etc.

The BBC reports:

Desperate TikTok lobbying effort backfires on Capitol Hill

DarkReading reports:

Japan Blames North Korea for PyPI Supply Chain Cyberattack

Alabama Under DDoS Cyberattack by Russian-Backed Hacktivists

One set of c^nts attacking another set of them.

The Markup reports:

Whistleblowing While Black: How Truth-Telling Changes the Careers of Black Women in Tech

The Verge reports:

CIA allegedly made fake social media accounts to troll the Chinese government

Of course this would originate with the inept Trump administration.

Ars Technica reports:

“Really bad timing”: Meta is killing misinformation analysis tool on August 14

I don't know. Why would you want to identify misinformation in 2024?

Platformer has more:

How CrowdTangle predicted the future

On a related note, Proof reports:

Leading AI Companies OpenAI and Anthropic Are Not Keeping Their Election Promises

How surprising.

Cybersecurity/Privacy

On another related note, Infoworld explains:

Why generative AI systems are stupid

Dice reports:

Biden’s Port Security Executive Order: What Tech Professionals Need to Know

This is relevant here in Fascism Friendly Florida.

BleepingComputer reports:

Over 15,000 hacked Roku accounts sold for 50¢ each to buy hardware

Why in the fuck would you have a Roku device?

Forbes show us how to:

Put New Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative Priorities Into Action

The Register reports:

JetBrains is still mad at Rapid7 for the ransomware attacks on its customers

DarkReading reports:

GAO: CISA's OT Teams Inadequately Staffed

Borrow some from the fucking military.

Google's Gemini AI Vulnerable to Content Manipulation

The Register reports:

International effort to disrupt cybercrime moves into operational phase

Krebson on Security reports:

CEO of Data Privacy Company Onerep.com Founded Dozens of People-Search Firms

Since they are Belarussian this is hardly surprising.

Fediverse

The Fediverse Report has:

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 59

You know the Fediverse has made it when academics start writing papers about other papers researching it.

FOSS Academic published:

Researching the Fediverse: Instances and Individuals

First Monday published:

Showing your Ass on Mastodon

Domain Tools has:

Nowhere Near Extinction: Mastodon One Year Later

FYI, Mastodon just passed 15 million users.

PieFed shares:

Moderation & the design of social platforms

Evan Podromu (creator of Activity Pub) has thoughts on:

Tiktok and the Fediverse

The Internet Review expands on:

Flipboard has long been an enthusiastic proponent of the Fediverse...

Other federated social media

TechCrunch reports:

Bluesky is funding developer projects to give its Twitter/X alternative a boost

Bluesky starts letting users pick their own moderation filters

FYI, Friendica is integrating Bluesky. Unlike others they are making it opt-in.

CTAs (aka show us some free love)

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