Bad week for lovers of PHP (hi!) who still run their own servers. Matt Webb’s take on it is similar to mine: good time to shut off the internet, or at least the parts thereof for which you’re hands-on-keyboard responsible.

Context: two real bad vulnerabilities in PHP, which started circulating before the responsible disclosure timeline due to some irresponsibility (but also, these days, even the responsible timelines leave little room for swift action); discovery of eight compromised TLS certificates, remediation of which will take a long time across embedded hardware and the like.

Every day is a good day to hug your local sysadmin. (Or otherwise appreciate them as they see fit!)

• The sensitive work of making accessible millions of historical records of enslaved people.
• Just about finished reading (via audiobook) Apple in China. Methodical accounting of how the two built each other up, and where that now leaves Apple both practically and politically. Loads of fun anecdotes, too, particularly from the earlier years of pulling off audacious Apple hardware.
• “The Contemptible OSAP Cover-Up” by Alex Usher is an exemplary piece in the “put events on a timeline” genre of journalism (or whatever you’d call the kind of quality research and analysis Usher puts on his blog).
• Sean wrote a sort of ten-year retrospective on the Canadian Digital Service, from his work in the early days getting it going through to the most recent announcement of Digital Transformation Canada. Chock full of good links, as any Sean piece is.
• Gina Trapani with a good one in the “exercise is good, actually” category. (I collect these, to remind myself why it’s worth it to go and row. It is, every time!)
• Debunking claims of thousand-year pub lineage with dendrochronology. (via Shawn Graham)

All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas