firehose

ProPublica

This story was co-published with Frontline.

In a two-week span last August, four workers died from falls on cell towers scattered across the country. Before the year ended, another worker had plummeted to his death, this time in Kansas.

Then, in early February, two workers were killed and two more were hospitalized when two cell towers collapsed in West Virginia.

Hello all! My friends were all busy and/or too poor to join me for this, sure to be, fantastic show and I have thus been left to fend for myself. I firmly believe that the tunes of NMH should always be experienced and shared with friends, and as such I'm wondering if any of you fine folks would be interested in meeting up and hanging out at the show??

Submitted by: (via Dump a Day)

Submitted by: (via Google)

Facing mounting criticism over his donation to an anti-gay marriage proposition in California in 2008, Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich said today he will continue to serve in the role unless Mozilla's board asks him to step aside. In an interview with CNET, Eich declined to discuss his personal beliefs, but said he should not be disqualified from his job for his personal beliefs. "Beliefs that are protected, that include political and religious speech, are generally not something that can held be against even against a CEO," Eich said, in his first interview since the controversy erupted. He added: "I understand there are people who disagree with me on this one."

Eich, a co-founder of Mozilla who also invented JavaScript, has drawn calls for his resignation as CEO amid outrage over the revelation that he donated $1,000 to Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in the state. (Prop. 8 was ruled unconstitutional in 2012.)  In a blog post last week, Eich expressed "sorrow at having caused pain" but stopped short of saying his beliefs on gay marriage have changed.

"Mozilla has always worked according to the principles of inclusiveness."

Eich is now trying to persuade Mozilla and the broader open-source community that a CEO can be effective even when one of his more prominent beliefs is at odds with, and hurtful to, a significant portion of that community. In the interview, he argues that Mozilla's founding principle of "inclusiveness" entitles him to the same respect he says he shows his LGBT colleagues. "Mozilla has always worked according to principles of inclusiveness," he said. "It may be challenging for a CEO, but everyone in our community can have different beliefs about all sorts of things that may be in conflict. They leave them at the door when they come to work on the Mozilla mission."

Eich also said the fact that half of Mozilla's board quit before Eich's appointment was made public was not related to his beliefs about gay marriage. "Three board members ended their terms for a variety of reasons," he said. "Two were planning to leave for some time." Eich says it remains to be seen whether pressure from the community forces his ouster. But given another chance to offer support of gay marriage, he wouldn't take it. Asked whether he would support Prop. 8 today, Eich responded, "I hadn't thought about that. It seems that's a dead issue. I don't want to answer hypotheticals."

Andy is upset. He's not a fan of a particular Monopoly rule, which requires players to go around the board once before they can buy any property. "Seems needlessly punitive," he says, posting on the board game's official Facebook page. But he's not simply yelling into the void — Monopoly publisher Hasbro is currently crowdsourcing new rule ideas for an upcoming special edition of the venerable board game, and Andy is just joining in.

This promotion is just the latest in the company's many schemes to keep its aging brands relevant, which includes everything from making board games based on Angry Birds to letting fans vote on which new word should be added to Scrabble. As for Andy, eventually a helpful user named Daniel explains that the new rule could actually help speed up the infamously lengthy board game. The Monopoly page thanks him for his contribution.

"Monopoly," says Daniel, "you are most welcome."

"Our dictionary has always been a hot topic of conversation."

Right now there are thousands of games available on a device that's always in your pocket, and they're all just a few taps away. These cheap and accessible titles mean that it's becoming increasingly challenging for physical experiences like board or card games to stay relevant. For Hasbro, the company has most recently turned to Facebook as a tool to combat this. Last year the company tested the waters by letting users decide which new token should be added to Monopoly, and which should be taken away. (In true internet fashion, you can now play the game as a cat.) But last month Hasbro really sped things up, kicking off two new promotions for two of its biggest games: Scrabble and Monopoly.

Both games have long standing traditions — Scrabble debuted in 1936, while Monopoly first launched in 1933 or earlier — and Hasbro is hoping to rile fans up by tapping into some of the more controversial aspects, like Scrabble's dictionary or the fact that everyone plays Monopoly with different rules. "If it was a topic that there was no emotion over, or no history with, it wouldn't have been as engaging," says Berkowitz. "Our dictionary has always been a hot topic of conversation."

In the same attempt to stave off irrelevancy, the company has also partnered with companies like Rovio, EA, and Zynga to create board game versions of the latest hot new thing in video games — if you ever wondered what swapping Bejeweled gems would be like in real life, there's a board game for that. It's gotten to the point where you can buy board games based on video games inspired by board games, including flash-in-the-pan hits like Words With Friends and Draw Something. Last July, Hasbro even purchased a 70 percent stake in mobile-game studio Backflip, creator of successful games like DragonVale and publisher of the upcoming SeaBeard.

You can buy board games based on video games inspired by board games

But while big companies like Hasbro are using an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to keeping their board games relevant, modern games made by independent companies are having an easier time making physical games that work in our increasingly digital world. Crowdfunded card game Cards Against Humanity, for example, made a stir thanks in large part to its purposefully offensive content — it's a game where you play cards with phrases like "the gays" and "MechaHitler," making it great for posting pictures on Twitter or Instagram.

It's also completely free if you want, because you can download the cards and the rules from the game's site and print them yourself. Meanwhile, a Creative Commons license invites other designers to remix the game in different ways, even allowing for fan translations in everything from Estonian to pirate. It's a kind of fan participation and crowdsourcing that's particularly native to the web, even though the game itself is physical. (There was also an expansion pack based on Netflix's House of Cards series.)

Even experienced creators like pen-and-paper RPG legend Jordan Weisman are using new online tools to make older game concepts feel more modern. His studio's upcoming title Golem Arcana is an elaborate blend of a mobile title and a traditional role playing game — there's a board and miniature figures, but you also have a Bluetooth-enabled stylus so you can tap on a real-world object and see information appear on your tablet. You get the nerdy fun of painting figures with some cool tech added in. Like Cards Against Humanity, the game also involved fans through crowdfunding, raising more than $500,000 on Kickstarter.

There's still room for a wide range of board games

While Hasbro is putting massive amounts of effort into reaching new audiences, fans are discovering these indie games and lesser known classics naturally online. Without big marketing pushes, board games like Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan have become huge success stories, while card games like Netrunner have slowly become a popular topic of conversation on Twitter, enticing new players nearly two decades after its initial release. The ongoing success of these smaller titles coupled with Hasbro's efforts (the company saw a 10 percent jump in games-related revenue in 2013) seems to show that there's still room for a wide range of board games — they just need the right digital components.

Meanwhile on Facebook, Monopoly fans seem particularly riled up about another potential new rule, which would let your mom get out of jail for free every time, no questions asked. The debate is surprisingly lively and everyone seems to be having fun. There are a few mothers who feel they could use the extra help, but it seems most people aren't in favor of this particular "house rule" being added to the game. "This is unfair, all players should have equal rights," says Julio.

"If and when I win," explains Holly, "I do not want anyone thinking it was a tainted win."

Google is not known for being a particularly focused company. It often brings in a lot of talent and technology through acquisitions, so problems are occasionally attacked by multiple teams, each creating separate products. These situations lead to redundancy in the company's product portfolio, which often leads to some confusing choices for Google customers.

Google famously cleans up some of this mess with "spring cleanings"—aka product shutdowns. While these shutdowns are sometimes catastrophic, they can also be helpful when the right product is shuttered at the right time. It just so happens that there are quite a few Google products out there right now that we think many people would be happy to see go. Since we're only about ten days into spring, here's our cleaning list of redundant Google products.

Google Earth (the app and plug-in)

The "Google Earth layer" in Google Maps versus the Google Earth desktop application.

In the past, the delineation between Google Earth and Google Maps was pretty clear. Google Earth was a powerful, 3D, video-card-using desktop app—basically a windowed video game—and Google Maps was a webpage in your browser. In 2010, Google blurred the line a bit by bringing Google Earth to the browser via a custom browser plug-in that Google Maps would prompt you to install. This was kind of like Flash or Shockwave or some 3D video game enabling an ActiveX plug-in.

Windows XP will receive its last-ever security update on April 8 next week. After that, any flaws, no matter how severe, will not be patched by Microsoft, and one would be well advised to not let Windows XP machines anywhere near the public Internet as a result. In spite of this, 28 percent of Web users were still using the ancient operating system in March.

This seems unlikely to end well.

Net Market Share

Net Market Share

Chrome has come close to Firefox's market share a number of times over the years. However, the market share tracker we use, Net Market Share, has never seen Google's browser actually surpass Mozilla's—until now. In March, Chrome finally overtook Firefox to claim the second spot. Internet Explorer dropped a quarter of a point, Firefox dropped 0.42 points, and Chrome reaped the reward, gaining 0.68 points. Safari was essentially unchanged, up 0.01 points; likewise Opera, dropping 0.03 points.