Category Archives: News

Source: OSNews

It’s hard to see how to move forward from here. I think the best bet would be for people to rally around a new community-driven infrastructure. This would likely require a fork of WordPress, though, and that’s going to be a messy. The current open source version of WordPress relies on the sites and services Mullenweg controls. Joost de Valk, the original creator of an extremely popular SEO plugin, wrote a blog post with some thoughts on the matter. I’m hoping that more prominent people in the community step up like this, and that some way forward can be found.

[…]

Update: Moments after posting this, I was pointed to a story on TechCrunch about Mullenweg deactivating the WordPress.org accounts of users planning a “fork”. This after he previously promoted (though in a slightly mocking way) the idea of forking open source software. In both cases, the people he mentioned weren’t actually planning forks, but musing about future ways forward for WordPress. Mullenweg framed the account deactivations as giving people the push they need to get started. Remember that WordPress.org accounts are required to submit themes, plugins, or core code to the WordPress project. These recent events really make it seem like you’re no longer welcome to contribute to WordPress if you question Matt Mullenweg.

↫ Gavin Anderegg

I haven’t wasted a single word on the ongoing WordPress drama yet, but the longer Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s CEO and thus owner of WordPress, keeps losing his mind, I can’t really ignore the matter any more. OSNews runs, after all, on WordPress – self-hosted, at least, so not on Mullenweg’s WordPress.com – and if things keep going the way they are, I simply don’t know if WordPress remains a viable, safe, and future-proof CMS for OSNews.

I haven’t discussed this particular situation with OSNews owner, David Adams, yet, mostly since he’s quite hands-off in the day-to-day operations and has more than enough other matters to take care of, but I think the time has come to start planning for a potential worst-case scenario in which Mullenweg takes even more of whatever he’s taking and WordPress implodes entirely. Remember – even if you self-host WordPress outside of Automattic, several core infrastructure parts of WordPress still run through Automattic, so we’re still dependent on what Mullenweg does or doesn’t do.

I have no answers, announcements, or even plans at this point, but if you or your company depend on WordPress, you might want to start thinking about where to go from here.

Source: Engadget

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is stepping down from the company after eight years on the job, according to reporting by Bloomberg. This follows last year’s disastrous app launch, in which a redesign was missing core features and was broken in nearly every major way.

The company has tasked Tom Conrad to steer the ship as interim CEO. Conrad is a current member of the Sonos board, but was a co-founder of Pandora, VP at Snap and product chief at, wait for it, the short-lived video streaming platform Quibi. He also reportedly has a Sonos tattoo. The board has hired a firm to find a new long-term leader.

“I think we’ll all agree that this year we’ve let far too many‬ people down,” Conrad wrote employees in a letter. “Getting back to basics is necessary, but clearly not enough to‬‭ unlock the future we all envision for Sonos.” He also suggested that he wants the company to expand “well beyond” home speakers and related gear.

As for Spence, he’ll be just fine. His payout package includes $7,500 per month until June, a cash severance of $1.9 million and his unvested shares in Sonos will vest. He was with Sonos for more than a decade.

The decision to swap leadership comes after months of turmoil at the company. It rolled out a mobile app back in May that was absolutely rife with bugs and missing key features like alarms and sleep timers. Some customers even complained that entire speaker systems would no longer work after updating to the new app. It was a whole thing.

Sonos tried to win back customer trust by extending the manufacturer warranty for home speaker products and creating an advisory board that would provide the company with "feedback and insights from a customer perspective to help shape and improve our software and products before they are launched.”

That didn’t ease the financial burden faced by the company. The stock price has fallen by around 13 percent since the app launched. Sonos laid off over 100 people in August as it tried to fix the software and revenue fell 16 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended on September 28. Analysts project an additional 15 percent decline throughout the holiday period.

Source: Hacker News

Source: Ars Technica

After ditching the traditional Dell XPS laptop look in favor of the polarizing design of the XPS 13 Plus released in 2022, Dell is killing the XPS branding that has become a mainstay for people seeking a sleek, respectable, well-priced PC.

This means that there won't be any more Dell XPS clamshell ultralight laptops, 2-in-1 laptops, or desktops. Dell is also killing its Latitude, Inspiron, and Precision branding, it announced today.

Moving forward, Dell computers will have either just Dell branding, which Dell’s announcement today described as “designed for play, school, and work,” Dell Pro branding “for professional-grade productivity,” or be Dell Pro Max products, which are “designed for maximum performance." Dell will release Dell and Dell Pro-branded displays, accessories, and "services," it said. The Pro Max line will feature laptops and desktop workstations with professional-grade GPU capabilities as well as a new thermal design.

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Source: Published articles

Source: Ars Technica

Over the holiday weekend, all but one member of the editorial board of Elsevier's Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned "with heartfelt sadness and great regret," according to Retraction Watch, which helpfully provided an online PDF of the editors' full statement. It's the 20th mass resignation from a science journal since 2023 over various points of contention, per Retraction Watch, many in response to controversial changes in the business models used by the scientific publishing industry.

"This has been an exceptionally painful decision for each of us," the board members wrote in their statement. "The editors who have stewarded the journal over the past 38 years have invested immense time and energy in making JHE the leading journal in paleoanthropological research and have remained loyal and committed to the journal and our authors long after their terms ended. The [associate editors] have been equally loyal and committed. We all care deeply about the journal, our discipline, and our academic community; however, we find we can no longer work with Elsevier in good conscience."

The editorial board cited several changes made over the last ten years that it believes are counter to the journal's longstanding editorial principles. These included eliminating support for a copy editor and a special issues editor, leaving it to the editorial board to handle those duties. When the board expressed the need for a copy editor, Elsevier's response, they said, was "to maintain that the editors should not be paying attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting."

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Source: Slashdot

Hackers have compromised several different companies' Chrome browser extensions in a series of intrusions dating back to mid-December, according to one of the victims and experts who have examined the campaign. From a report: Among the victims was the California-based Cyberhaven, a data protection company that confirmed the breach in a statement to Reuters on Friday. "Cyberhaven can confirm that a malicious cyberattack occurred on Christmas Eve, affecting our Chrome extension," the statement said. It cited public comments from cybersecurity experts. These comments, said Cyberhaven, suggested that the attack was "part of a wider campaign to target Chrome extension developers across a wide range of companies." Cyberhaven added: "We are actively cooperating with federal law enforcement." The geographical extent of the hacks was not immediately clear.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Hacker News

Source: Hacker News

Source: Hacker News