Month: January 2016

Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco, California

Nearly 200 Wikipedia editors have taken the unprecedented step of calling for a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors to be tossed out.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which governs both the massive Wikipedia online encyclopedia and related projects, appointed Arnnon Geshuri to its board earlier this month. His appointment wasn't well received by the Wikipedia community of volunteer editors, however. And last week, an editor called for a "vote of no confidence on Arnnon Geshuri."

The voting, which has no legally binding effect on the Wikimedia Foundation, is now underway. As of press time, 187 editors had voted in favor of this proposition: "In the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, Arnnon Geshuri must be removed from his appointment as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board." Just 13 editors have voted against, including Wikimedia board member Guy Kawasaki.

The smaller screen shows off Churchill Solitaire's "devil's six" row, whose cards can never be placed in the descending columns and must be played in order. (credit: Churchill Solitaire)

Aspiring video game designers are often pointed to a simple exercise: take a deck of cards and invent a new game. Apparently, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did just that (albeit with two decks) in inventing his own twist on solitaire during the 20th century.

That game could have easily been lost to the sands of time. Instead, it now exists as a free-to-try app on the iOS App Store all thanks to... Donald Rumsfeld?

As the Wall Street Journal reported, the former US Secretary of Defense teamed up with a game developer to develop and launch Churchill Solitaire for iOS devices. Rumsfeld told the paper he learned to play the game during an ambassadorship in the 1970s. Churchill's invention was shared with Rumsfeld by a Belgian ambassador who had been friends with Churchill, and while the Churchill family never found a reference to the game in his collection of letters, a family representative told the WSJ that Rumsfeld's story "is entirely credible."

(credit: Steven Depolo via Flickr)

The chemical and thermal history of the Earth enabled the reactions required to create the building blocks of life. Our nitrogen-rich atmosphere, for example, is critical for chemical reactions that have fostered the evolution of life.

The Earth is a dynamic planet, and elements critical to the formation of life (like nitrogen and carbon) are recycled through many natural processes. One of these processes is the movement of the Earth's continents, which recycles bits of the crust and some of the chemicals it contains. Though we have been aware that the Earth’s plates have been moving for quite some time, it has been much more difficult to establish the specifics of when and how plate motion initiated.

Now, new data from some very old diamonds suggests that plate tectonics was functioning more than three billion years ago.

(credit: Andrea Vallejos)

As expected, court records now show that San Francisco’s largest traditional taxi company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

According to a Friday filing, Yellow Cab Co-Op owes over $20 million in disputed claims under civil litigation, related arbitration and mediation, and other debts. The company's troubles come as the taxi industry as a whole has simultaneously been squeezed by startup newcomers such as Uber, Lyft, and the recently defunct Sidecar. Those companies are regulated under California’s "transportation networking company" (TNC) law, which is separate from traditional taxi law.

Yellow Cab Co-Op’s largest creditor is a woman who was awarded an $8 million judgement in 2015 after she sustained very serious injuries in a 2011 taxi crash. In that San Francisco case, known as Fua v. Yellow Cab, the company argued the driver was not an employee and therefore the company was not liable. Curiously, this is similar to arguments that Uber, Lyft, and like firms have made. Uber in particular is being sued over whether its drivers should be treated as employees or contractors.