Monthly Archives: December 2024

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

Source: Hacker News

Source: OSNews

After two years of intense development, the third major Linux desktop environment has released a new version: Xfce 4.20 is here. The major focus of this release cycle was getting Xfce ready for Wayland, and they’ve achieved quite a bit of that goal, but support for it is still experimental.

Thanks to Brian and Gaël almost all Xfce components are able to run on Wayland windowing, while still keeping support for X11 windowing.

This major effort was achieved by abstracting away any X11/Wayland windowing specific calls and making use of Wayland/Wlroots protocols. A whole new Xfce library, “libxfce4windowing” was introduced during that process. XWayland will not be required to run any of the ported Xfce components.

↫ Xfce development team

A major gap in Xfce’s Wayland support is the fact that Xfwm4 has not been ported to Wayland yet, so the team suggests using Labwc or Wayfire instead if you want to dive into using Xfce on Wayland. While there are plans to port Xfwm4 over to Wayland, this requires a major restructuring and they’re not going to set any timelines or expectations of when this will be completed. Regardless, this is an excellent achievement and solid progress for Xfce on Wayland, which is pretty much a requirement for Xfce (and other desktop environments) te remain relevant going forward.

Of course, while Wayland is a major focus this release, there’s a lot more here, too – and that’s not doing the Xfce developers justice. Xfce 4.20 comes packed with so many new features, enchancements, and bug fixes across the board that I have no idea where to start. I like the large number of changes to Thunar, like the ability to use symoblic icons int he sidebar, optimising it for small window sizes, automatically opening folders when dragging and dropping, and so much more. They’ve also done another pass to update any remaining icons not working well on HiDPI displays, removing any instances where you’d encounter fizzy icons.

I can’t wait to give Xfce 4.20 a go once it lands in Fedora Xfce.

Source: Engadget

Reddit is taking down posts linking to the manifesto of the suspected shooter of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The company says it’s enforcing a longstanding policy, but its actions have angered and frustrated some users.

Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old who was arrested and charged with murder earlier this week, has been the subject of widespread fascination online since New York police first released images of the suspected killer. Small excerpts of the 261-word manifesto were published by the New York Times, while journalist Ken Klippenstein obtained and published it in its entirety on his Substack Tuesday. Links to Klippenstein's newsletter containing the manifesto began to disappear off Reddit, with some being removed by individual subreddits' community moderators and some being taken down by Reddit staff.

In a widely viewed post in r/popculturechat, a moderator explained that Reddit had instructed them to remove posts of the manifesto. “We have officially been notified by Reddit that we must adhere strictly to their site-wide rules regarding violent content,” moderator clemthearcher wrote. “Specifically, Reddit has told us that we are not allowed to post Luigi Mangione’s manifesto, even if it is reported neutrally.”

Reddit removed a post linking to the manifesto in r/interestingasfuck, which had nearly 20,000 upvotes, which was later detailed in a lengthy post in r/subredditdrama. Posts were also removed from other subreddits, including r/witchesVsPatriarchy and r/antiwork. Engadget confirmed that the site now automatically blocks posts attempting to link to the Substack post with the manifesto.

Though the move has angered many Redditors, the company says it’s not a new policy. A Reddit spokesperson confirmed that “manifestos related to violent acts” violate the company’s violent content rules, which state:

Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual (including oneself) or a group of people; likewise, do not post content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals. We understand there are sometimes reasons to post violent content (e.g., educational, newsworthy, artistic, satire, documentary, etc.) so if you’re going to post something violent in nature that does not violate these terms, ensure you provide context to the viewer so the reason for posting is clear.

The policy further refers to posts “containing mass killer manifestos or imagery of their violence” an example of violating content (Magione has not been accused of mass murder). The Reddit spokesperson confirmed that Redditors are permitted to discuss the manifesto, including news coverage of it, as long as they don’t violate other aspects of the company’s rules.

While it’s not unusual for social media users to accuse a company of “censorship” amid disputes over content moderation, Reddit’s actions come at a time when many online commentators have expressed sympathy for Mangione, who has become something of a “folk hero” in some corners of the internet. His actions have also put the American healthcare system under renewed scrutiny as people have shared their experiences with insurance company denials in the wake of the shooting.

“I’m sure Reddit’s admins find themselves far more aligned with the class of people like Brian Johnson (sic) than they do with the rest of us," one commenter wrote in response to moderator clemthearcher’s post in r/popculturechat, "so the only violence they care to moderate is that against Brian Johnson (sic) - not misogyny, racism, homophobia, or the rampant greed of our healthcare industry which has killed or caused the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people.”

Source: Ars Technica

Source: Hacker News