Tom McKay, Author at Gizmodo

Flat Earth Researcher Told He Can’t Blast Himself Into the Sky at 500 MPH on Public Lands

61-year-old stuntman and amateur Flat Earth theory researcher “Mad” Mike Hughes, who planned to launch himself some 1,800 feet up at 500 miles per hour in an untested homemade steam-powered rocket over the Mojave Desert ghost town of Amboy, California on Saturday in some sort of gambit to prove the Earth is flat (spoilers: it’s not),…

Gadgets Tom McKay

The FTC May Be Looking Into Tripadvisor After It Deleted Reviews Alleging Rape, Suspicious Deaths

Review site TripAdvisor may have frantically backpedaled after a Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal expose showed that it had a habit of censoring reviews mentioning blackouts, rape, and suspicious deaths or injuries incurred at certain resorts—specifically Mexican ones, though it remains unclear if other destinations were involved—by adding new functionality warning of potentially dangerous hotels. But the site’s…

Tech News Tom McKay

Search For Lost Argentine Submarine ARA San Juan Hits ‘Critical Phase’ as Air Supply May Run Out

The search for an Argentine Navy submarine lost with some 44 souls on board has reached a “critical phase,” a naval spokesman told Reuters, as the length of the seven-day search indicates the vessel is likely not on the surface and could be reaching the limits of its air supply. Per Reuters, a search team…

Tech News Tom McKay

YouTube Says It Will Crack Down on All Those Creepy Videos Targeted at or Featuring Kids

Google, along with fellow tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter has drawn increasing scrutiny this year over concerns that its “concentrated authority resembles the divine right of kings,” as the New York Times put it. In recent months, it’s faced stumbling blocks when it returned misinformation and conspiracy theories during crises like mass shootings…

Tech News Tom McKay

Russia Allegedly Threatens Retaliation Against Google if It Lowers RT or Sputnik’s Search Rankings

The ominous cloud of doom surrounding the ongoing U.S. investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 federal elections got a little darker on Tuesday, with Russian state communications agency Roskomnadzor allegedly threatening retaliation against Google for suggesting it could lower government-funded outlets RT and Sputnik in search rankings. Per Reuters, Roskomnadzor chief Alexander Zharov…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

Julian Assange Tries to Save Net Neutrality With Rambling Appeal to Trump’s Paranoia

Julian Assange—whose organization Wikileaks’ sad, thirsty Twitter DMs to Donald Trump Jr. recently leaked, revealing he sought to coordinate with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—appears to have had a moment of buyer’s regret on Tuesday evening. Upon hearing the Republican-controlled FCC had finally scheduled a vote to scrap Barack Obama-era net neutrality rules, potentially enriching massive…

Tech News Tom McKay

Belgian Gaming Commission Decides Battlefront II-Style Loot Boxes Are Gambling, Wants Them Banned

Electronic Art’s Star Wars Battlefront II, one of the biggest video game titles of the year, debuted to disaster in recent weeks after both consumers and the gaming press revolted against the $60 game’s reliance on microtransaction-fueled, pay-to-win loot boxes. At launch, the title prevented players from accessing key features of the game like playing…

Games Tom McKay

Initial Coin Offering-Backed Startup Confido Goes Dark After Getting $374,000 From Investors

A few weeks ago, Jordan Belfort—the notorious “Wolf of Wall Street” and convicted financial scam artist—warned the entire internet not to get into sketchy cryptocurrency-backed startups. Specifically, he warned that initial coin offerings, a form of almost completely unregulated investment vehicle where crypto-backed startups offer blockchain-based “tokens” in exchange for things of real value like…

Tech News Tom McKay

Uh, This Flat Earther’s Homemade Manned Rocket Launch Does Not Sound Totally Advisable

61-year-old DIY enthusiast and stuntman “Mad” Mike Hughes is planning his first manned launch of a homemade, $20,000 steam-powered rocket with “RESEARCH FLAT EARTH” written on the side on Saturday, the Associated Press reported. According to the AP, Hughes says he expects his new rocket to hurl him through the skies above the Mojave Desert…

Gadgets Tom McKay

Some Instacart Contractors Are Striking in Protest of Allegedly Awful, Sub-Minimum Wage Pay

At least some delivery workers for Instacart, a so-called gig economy app that dispatches an army of shoppers and drivers to deliver groceries and other supplies directly from retail stores to customers, have launched a two-day strike from Sunday to Monday in protest of what they claim are abusive working conditions and pay rates below…

Tech News Tom McKay

No, Facebook Didn’t Remove the Ability to Delete Posts—But It Did Hide It From Some Users

There’s a popular conception that whatever you post online lives eternal—and while it’s probably true, the reality is that for most people hitting that delete button is usually sufficient to at least hide an embarrassing post from prying family, friends, and potential employers. Anyone who’s ever been on Facebook or sent a tweet knows the…

Social Media Tom McKay

The Fukushima Cleanup Is Progressing, But at a Painstaking Pace

Earlier this year, remotely piloted robots transmitted what officials believe was a direct view of melted radioactive fuel inside Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s destroyed reactors—a major discovery, but one that took a long and painful six years to achieve. In the meantime, the program to clean up the destroyed reactors has seen numerous setbacks…

Tech News Tom McKay

Guy in Charge of All the Nukes: Relax, I’m Not Gonna Let Trump Nuke Just Anything

The U.S. military’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is one of the most existentially terrifying arsenals ever assembled, and a conflict involving the detonation of even small percentage of those weapons could potentially destabilize the entire world. With a commander-in-chief who has shown a fairly incredible misunderstanding of how nuclear strategy works as well as a…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

Watch NASA Launch Its Shiny New JPSS-1 Weather Satellite

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched the Joint Polar Satellite System-1, the first in a “series of four highly advanced polar-orbiting satellites,” NASA announced on Saturday, with the agencies touting they expect significant improvements to their weather-forecasting abilities when JPSS-1 comes online in three months. “Emergency managers increasingly rely on our forecasts…

Space & Spaceflight Tom McKay

Pentagon Cache of Over 1.8 Billion Scraped Social Media Posts Left Unsecured on Amazon Server

The Pentagon accidentally left at least 1.8 billion publicly accessible posts it scraped from social media sites, forums and other web destinations unsecured on an Amazon S3 repository, where anyone with a free Amazon Web Services account could download the data, PC Mag reported. The data archive was originally found by security firm UpGuard, which…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

The Argentine Navy Is Missing an Attack Submarine With 44 Crew on Board

The ARA San Juan, a Argentine Navy diesel-electric attack submarine built in 1983, has been missing since November 15th with a crew of 44 sailors on board, CNN reported. Per CNN, the vessel was last spotted in the San Jorge Gulf a few hundred miles off the coast of Patagonia while traveling north from a…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

Donald Trump’s Administration to Reverse Ban on Some African Elephant Trophies [Updated]

President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to reverse a Barack Obama-era ban on the importation of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia to the U.S., ABC News reported on Wednesday, in a remarkably petty attack on rules intended to protect species registered under the Endangered Species Act. According to ABC News, a U.S. Fish and…

Tech News Tom McKay

Cards Against Humanity Sells Out Promotion to Screw Up Donald Trump’s Border Wall in First Day

Cards Against Humanity, the nerd-beloved party game which asks players to respond to a variety of Mad Lib-style prompts with extremely offensive words and phrases, is famous for promotions like selling unsuspecting fans boxes of literal shit. This year, it’s upping the ante (and paying for goodwill with well-meaning liberals who might otherwise feel bad…

Games Tom McKay

Bloomberg Is Starting a ’24-Hour Social News Network’ Based on Twitter

Twitter has not exactly survived the last few months with a sterling reputation, in between continued controversy over its failure to adequately address rampant harassment, allegations it sold political ads to Russian foreign agents, and most recently news it had verified the account of neo-Nazi Charlottesville organizer Jason Kessler. Then there’s Twitter’s, uh, presidential problem,…

Tech News Tom McKay

Alabama Robocalls Are Allegedly Spreading Twitter-Fueled Roy Moore Conspiracy Theories

Over the course of the past week, Republican candidate Roy Moore’s already contentious campaign to win the Alabama senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Session went full garbage fire over allegations he molested children decades ago. Moore refused to back down, endorsing a Twitter-fueled conspiracy theory the Washington Post paid women to fabricate the…

Tech News Tom McKay

Tom McKay

Flat Earth Researcher Told He Can’t Blast Himself Into the Sky at 500 MPH on Public Lands

The FTC May Be Looking Into Tripadvisor After It Deleted Reviews Alleging Rape, Suspicious Deaths

Search For Lost Argentine Submarine ARA San Juan Hits ‘Critical Phase’ as Air Supply May Run Out

YouTube Says It Will Crack Down on All Those Creepy Videos Targeted at or Featuring Kids

Russia Allegedly Threatens Retaliation Against Google if It Lowers RT or Sputnik’s Search Rankings

Julian Assange Tries to Save Net Neutrality With Rambling Appeal to Trump’s Paranoia

Belgian Gaming Commission Decides Battlefront II-Style Loot Boxes Are Gambling, Wants Them Banned

Initial Coin Offering-Backed Startup Confido Goes Dark After Getting $374,000 From Investors

Uh, This Flat Earther’s Homemade Manned Rocket Launch Does Not Sound Totally Advisable

Some Instacart Contractors Are Striking in Protest of Allegedly Awful, Sub-Minimum Wage Pay

No, Facebook Didn’t Remove the Ability to Delete Posts—But It Did Hide It From Some Users

The Fukushima Cleanup Is Progressing, But at a Painstaking Pace

Guy in Charge of All the Nukes: Relax, I’m Not Gonna Let Trump Nuke Just Anything

Watch NASA Launch Its Shiny New JPSS-1 Weather Satellite

Pentagon Cache of Over 1.8 Billion Scraped Social Media Posts Left Unsecured on Amazon Server

The Argentine Navy Is Missing an Attack Submarine With 44 Crew on Board

Donald Trump’s Administration to Reverse Ban on Some African Elephant Trophies [Updated]

Cards Against Humanity Sells Out Promotion to Screw Up Donald Trump’s Border Wall in First Day

Bloomberg Is Starting a ’24-Hour Social News Network’ Based on Twitter

Alabama Robocalls Are Allegedly Spreading Twitter-Fueled Roy Moore Conspiracy Theories

6 Magic School Anime and Manga to Discover Instead of Thinking About ‘Harry Potter’ Ever Again

Unprecedented Images Show Sperm Whales Acting as Midwives to Help a Mom Give Birth

‘Butt Birth’-ing Rhinoceros from Ace Ventura Sequel Sold at Auction for a Whopping $60,000

The Ryan Gosling Sci-Fi Streak Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Study Challenges Popular Theory on Why Primordial Bugs Were So Darn Huge

Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway’s Mystery’s Sci-Fi Film Has Its First Trailer

Scientists Just Found the Salt Limit That Pushes Your Heart to the Breaking Point

White House Social Media Just Had Its Covfefe Moment

Roborock F25 Ultra Steam Wet Dry Vacuum Is Now at Its Lowest Price, but Only During the Spring Sale Window

This $450 Semi-Dumb Phone Is Barely Even a Phone

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets

Apple Studio Display XDR Review: It Looks So Good, I Wish It Were an iMac

RayNeo Air 4 Pro Review: My Eyes Love These Video Glasses, but My Nose Disagrees