Getting Auth0 user information on non-firewall Symfony pages


Logo of the Symfony project.

I am using Auth0's Symfony library to allow users to log in with their social network providers. It works really well. Using this firewall configuration, a user who visits /private is successfully taken through the login flow and I can then use $this->getUser() to see their details. security: password_hashers: Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface: 'auto' providers: users_in_memory: { memory: […]

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How do you stop people accessing data they shouldn't?


A padlock engraved into a circuit board.

I used to work in a call centre for a Very Big Company. Every week, without exception, we'd get a bunch of new starters to train. And every week, without exception, a newbie would be fired after looking up a famous person's data. This was in the days before GDPR. There was a lot less […]

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Does AI mean we don't need the Semantic Web?


User: Read the following sentence: "Our opening hours are: Weekdays 10 until 7. Weekend 10 until 10 (Early closing 9 o'clock Sunday)." ChatGPT: The given sentence states the opening hours of a certain establishment. Here is the breakdown of the opening hours mentioned: Weekdays: The establishment is open from 10 in the morning until 7 in the evening. Weekend: On weekends, the establishment is open from 10 in the morning until 10 at night. Early closing on Sunday: On Sundays, the establishment closes earlier than usual, at 9 o'clock in the evening. Please note that this information is based solely on the provided sentence, and the specific establishment or its type is not mentioned. User: Is the establishment open at 2130 on Sunday? ChatGPT: Based on the information provided in the sentence, the establishment has early closing on Sunday, with the closing time set at 9 o'clock in the evening. Therefore, the establishment would not be open at 21:30 (or 9:30 PM) on Sunday.

If you hang around with computerists long enough, they start talking about the Semantic Web. If you can represent human knowledge in a way that's easy for computers to understand it will be transformative for information processing. But computers, traditionally, haven't been very good at parsing ambiguous human text. Suppose you saw this text written […]

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Responsible Disclosure: arXiv - redirect on login


A padlock engraved into a circuit board.

Suppose you are sent a link to a website - e.g. https://example.com/page/1234 But, before you can access it, you need to log in. So the website redirects you to: https://example.com/login?on_success=/page/1234 If you get the password right, you go to the original page you requested. Nice! But what happens if someone manipulates that query string? Suppose […]

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Fonts with threatening auras


Screenshot of text where all the characters lean to the left.

I was browsing the web recently when I can across this utter horror show of a font. Warning, not for the faint of heart. The thing is, I can't adequately describe why I - and many others - find it so disturbing. In all my years of reading English, I've never found a font which […]

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Review: Rachel Bloom "Death, Let Me Do My Special"


Cartoon showing a stand up comedian casting a shadow of the grim reaper.

I've never heard such whooping and hollering from a Bloomsbury Theatre audience. When Rachel Bloom prances on to the stage it is like seeing a revivalist preacher work the faithful. It would have been so easy for Bloom to rest on her laurels and give a "best of Bloom" revue - the crowd would have […]

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What's the best thing you've ever won in a competition?


A tiny lego Storm Trooper eats a chocolate coin.

When I was... Oooh... 8 or 9 I entered a "count the number of spots on the giraffe" competition one summer holiday. Apparently I was the only child who noticed that there was a spot on the tail, so I won a YEAR'S SUPPLY of Cadbury's Curly Wurlys. Nothing I've ever won since has lived […]

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The limits of CSS styling select options


Checkboxes in a line.

Sometimes you learn the most from failures! I wanted a <select multiple> element where the <options> were laid out in a grid. I nearly got there. It's possible to have the <option>s in a horizontal row - but only on Chrome and Firefox. Here's a quick fiddle showing the results: As you can see, it's […]

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Review: GreenChef / HelloFresh meal boxes


Green Chef logo which looks like a chopping board.

I'm a reasonably adventurous eater - but a rather underwhelming cook. So I thought I'd give these "posh ready-meals" a go. The pitch is simple. GreenChef will send you a big box of ingredients and a bunch of recipes to follow. You get exactly 175g of tomatoes, a precise number of lentils, and a sachet […]

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The new .zip TLD is going to cause some problems


Many years ago, Google applied for the .zip Top Level Domain. ICANN, in its infinite wisdom, granted it. And now, I think, bad things are going to happen. You see computers try to be helpful. They see you wrote "visit example.com" and autolink the thing which looks like a domain name. That's handy - especially […]

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