Gizmodo: gay

Hacker Claims He Shoved Amazon Into the Closet Using "Inappropriate" Flag Exploit

matt buchanan — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:59:00 EDT

Okay, maybe Amazon is off the hook. The well-known troll Weev is claiming that he's actually responsible for Amazon's sudden surge of LGBT prudishness. Which Valleywag says actually makes sense.

It's startingly simple: It doesn't take very many votes at all to get a product flagged as "inappropriate" and booted off the rankings. He says he created a script that generated a list of product IDs for every gay and lesbian book on Amazon. From there, he just needed a whole bunch of people to flag the books as inappropriate, which wasn't hard, because simply getting someone to go the URL of a successful flag would count as another one. Using an invisible iframe on popular websites owned by friends and a group of "third-worlders" he hired to register accounts, he generated enough votes to de-list gay and lesbian books en masse.

Lending credence to his claims, Valleywag notes that the "flag as inappropriate" feature is currently disabled. Free reign for inappropriate books! [Livejournal via Valleywag]

Amazon Unconvincingly Explains Its Bout of Homophobia Was Just a Glitch

matt buchanan — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:40:00 EDT

Amazon's now trying to explain that the blacklisting of LGBT books as "adult" titles that aren't ranked or even searchable was just a "glitch" in its sales rankings. Amazon is not a good liar.

Let's look at the evidence! When Amazon Advantage member and publish Mark Probst asked Amazon why sales rankings vanished from two high profile gay romance books—among hundreds of other gay titles—Amazon Member Services explained:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

HMMM.

Author Craig Seymour documents the timeline by which his memoir All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. was stripped of its sales ranking and branded an adult title over the course of the month of February—two months before the supposed glitch—even though Diablo Cody's own stripper memoir's rankings stayed just peachy.

So, expect their glitch explanation to become even more elaborate and ridiculous (maybe it was Conficker!!!!), since it really has to cover a lot of ground. And like Ryan says at Valleygawker, "The company will no doubt try to do that without reminding its homophobic customers that it is selling hot man-on-man and woman-on-woman and whoever-on-whoever purple prose for gays to read and do lord knows what else at the same time." [Gawker,

Gaydar Keychain Answers That Question Once And For All

Jason Chen — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:30:00 EDT

You know how you have that friend—for simplicity's sake, we'll call him Aaron Froucho—that you're never quite sure is gay or straight? What better way to answer the question for all eternity than with a $14 keychain? The thing has three readouts, "gay," "straight" and "maybe," so if you get "maybe," keep asking until it decides one way or the other. Or, if you're feeling lonely, just go with it. Aaron will. [Play via Nerd Approved]

Apple Perceived As Gay-Friendly, Samsung Not

Mark Wilson — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:38:00 EDT

In a recent survey, 757 gay and lesbian participants were asked to rank companies by their gay-friendly factor. Apple came in first place among tech companies with 39% of participants strongly considering the brand to be gay-friendly. Among all brands, Apple came in second behind Bravo (who dominated with a rating of 52%). But alas, things didn't turn out so well for our friends (we can no longer be seen in public with) at Samsung.

Samsung ranked in the lowest tier of companies with a scant 4% of the polled population feeling the brand is gay-friendly. That puts them right between Quaker (5%) and Cracker Barrel (3%). Technically Samsung tied with Wal-Mart and Frito-Lay.

By the way, we attempted to Photoshop the gay pride/rainbow flag onto the old Apple logo, only to find that, duh, their original logo almost did the job for us. Read more about that here. [Prime Access via MacWorld]

The Tale of the Gay TiVo

Travis Hudson — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:40:56 EST

Hot off of our intense gay car discussion, yesterday is this intriguing video discovered over on the 'tube of a man accusing his TiVo of being gay. With more and more consumer electronics having the ability to learn, can these devices really turn gay? Will the Zune start seeking out other Zunes with similar sexual preference? What will the future hold for the sexuality of today's consumer electronics? – Travis Hudson

Is Your Car Gay?

Charlie White — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 12:46:57 EST

South African website Wheels 24 has spent three weeks running a poll, determining which car will take home the title of "Alternative Car of the Year." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Alongside that poll were two others, determining which is the "straightest" car, as well as which car has the "sexiest rear-end." Guess which of the cars above was voted the straightest and the gayest, and then see if your fave car made the cut:

Gay car votes
1. Peugeot 207 (pictured above): 7155
2. BMW 3 Series Coupe: 3378
3. Jaguar XK: 2571
4. Honda Civic Hatch: 1776
5. Alfa Romeo 159: 1293

Straight car votes
1. Audi RS4 (pictured above): 9824
2. Toyota Fortuner: 2629
3. Dodge Caliber: 1808
4. VW Jetta: 979
5. Lexus IS250: 936

Sexiest rear-end votes:
1. Alfa Brera (pictured above): 6608
2. BMW Z4 Coupe: 5722
3. Opel Astra GTC: 2270
4. Renault Clio: 1071
5. Nissan Tiida: 505

Commenters: Which cars do you think are the gayest, straightest and have the best ass? – Charlie White

Gay and straight cars named [Wheels 24, via Autoblog]