Tom McKay, Author at Gizmodo

Cattle Ranchers Are Trying to Get the Word ‘Meat’ Taken Off the Labels of Meat Substitutes

The rise of Impossible Foods and its signature Impossible Burger, the plant-based burger brand that is all the rage lately, and their faux-meat ilk has apparently rattled some in the cattle business. The New York Times reported this weekend on a spate of state laws aiming to outlaw the use of the word “meat” on…

Health Tom McKay

Report: DHS Wants to Build Trump’s Dumb Border Wall Right Through SpaceX’s Texas Launch Facility

The 50-acre Boca Chica, Texas facility where Elon Musk’s SpaceX is testing the prototype version of its Starship rocket—recently in the news for tipping over in high wind—could be split in twain by Donald Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border, Bloomberg reported on Friday. According to the report, Department of Homeland Security planning documents…

Space & Spaceflight Tom McKay

Texas Bill Would Make It Illegal For Verizon and Any Other Wireless Provider to Throttle Disaster Zones

Legislators in Texas are mulling a bill that would make illegal to “impair or degrade” mobile data in any declared disaster zone, in an apparent response to telecom giant Verizon’s decision last year to tell California firefighters busy tackling the deadly Mendocino Complex fire they needed to upgrade their plan or continue to suffer slow…

Tech News Tom McKay

The Army Thinks Their New Rifle Will Be Like an iPhone

There are not many ways in which an iPhone resembles a battle rifle, but military officials searching for a contractor to build the gun of the future seem to think there is. Officials at the Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at New Jersey’s Picatinny Arsenal told military and veterans news site Task & Purpose…

Tech News Tom McKay

Hmm, This Anti-Vaccination Rally Amid a Major Measles Outbreak Is a Little Too on the Nose

Amid a measles outbreak in Washington state that officials have confirmed has spread to at least 51 people and suspect to have spread to over a dozen others, hundreds of people showed up to a rally on Friday to demand the right to keep exposing their kids to the possibility of contracting easily prevented, potentially…

Health Tom McKay

Study Says Over 400 Organ Transplant Studies Using Chinese Data Should Be Retracted Over Ethical Concerns

A new study published in BMJ Open has called for over 400 scientific papers on the subject of organ transplantation to be retracted because they did not comply with international ethical standards designed to ensure the organ donors freely consented, the Guardian reported this week. Macquarie University in Sydney professor of clinical ethics and lead…

Health Tom McKay

Tinder and Its Owner Match Group Had a Very, Very Horny 2018

Unstoppable online dating giant Match Group, a subsidiary of holding company InterActiveCorp, has acquired so many dating sites that some critics have wondered why it isn’t facing antitrust concerns. But the prize jewel in its empire is the Tinder app, which last year added 1.2 million subscribers and pulled in nearly as much money as…

Tech News Tom McKay

Mountain Lion Attacks Runner in Colorado, Runner Strangles It to Death

An unidentified man who was running on Horsetooth Mountain Open Space’s West Ridge Trail near Fort Collins, Colorado had a nasty encounter on with a juvenile cougar on Monday, which ended with the runner wounded and the animal strangled to death, the Coloradoan reported this week. According to the Coloradoan, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW)…

Biology Tom McKay

Apple’s Retail and Online Stores Chief, Angela Ahrendts, to Leave By April

Apple’s head of retail and online stores, former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts, is departing the tech giant after five years, CNN reported on Tuesday. Ahrendts was not only one of the company’s highest-paid executives, but the sole senior female executive at the time of her hire in 2014. According to CNN’s report, Apple originally hired…

Tech News Tom McKay

Snap Is Now Slightly Less Fucked

Snap Inc., the company behind the Snapchat app and a failed line of wearable cameras, is slightly less fucked than it was before, according to Q4 2018 earnings released on Tuesday. Per CBS News, Snap’s posting shows that it lost a staggering $192 million, less than the $350 million it lost in Q4 2017 but…

Tech News Tom McKay

Fireball Over Cuba Exploded With the Energy of 1,400 Tons of TNT, NASA Says

Last week, local media reports indicated that a meteorite hit the Cuban town of Viñales after soaring across the Florida Keys, with residents reporting hearing a massive sonic boom as well as seeing a trail in the sky. The event was apparently picked up by the National Weather Service Key West’s radar some 26,000 feet…

Space & Spaceflight Tom McKay

Even Apple Isn’t Immune to AT&T’s ‘5G E’ Bullshit

AT&T is continuing to move forward with its bullshit strategy to rebrand slightly enhanced 4G service as “5G E,” 9to5Mac reported on Monday, with some of its customers who have downloaded the latest iOS 12.2 beta reporting that the 5G E icon has replaced the LTE service icon on iPhones. To be clear, “5G E”…

Tech News Tom McKay

Crypto Exchange Says It Can’t Repay $190 Million to Clients After Founder Dies With Only Password

Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX says it cannot repay most of $190 million in client holdings after its 30-year-old founder Gerald Cotten, the only person who knew the passwords to its “cold storage,” unexpectedly died in India in December 2018, Coindesk reported on Friday. In a sworn affidavit with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, widow Jennifer…

Tech News Tom McKay

Security Sets Man on Fire With ‘Taser-Style Device’ in Philadelphia

A “Taser-style device” set a man’s clothing on fire on South Street in Philadelphia early Saturday morning after a security guard attempted to stun him, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported this weekend. Details on the incident are limited, but a video posted to Twitter shows that the man’s pants caught fire after an electroshock weapon was…

Tech News Tom McKay

Google Yanks 29 Malicious Photo Apps From Play Store, But Not Before Millions of Downloads

Google yanked some 29 photo apps from the Play Store this week after they were discovered to have malicious code that pushes full-screen ads, steals information from users by tricking them into believing they have won a contest, and in some cases even lifted photos from devices to send to the malware designers behind the…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

Jack Dorsey: Trump Is Kind of Like Obama If You, Like, Really Think About It

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has some more muddled thoughts on moderation on his platform, including a half-assed explanation of why he banned Infowars host Alex Jones and why the president should be allowed to use his platform to threaten nuclear war with North Korea. Per the Daily Beast, Dorsey took to comedian-turned-podcaster Joe Rogan’s show…

Tech News Tom McKay

Report: Attorneys General in Six States Are Now Investigating Facebook’s Data Practices

Amid the constant scandals swirling around social media giant Facebook and its questionable handling of user data, at least six state attorneys general have launched their own investigations of the company, Bloomberg reported this week. Two distinct groups have formed, according to Bloomberg’s report: Pennsylvania and Illinois have joined Connecticut in an investigation of “existing…

Social Media Tom McKay

Russia Also Suspends Nuclear Weapons Treaty, Calling It ‘Tit-for-Tat’ Response to U.S. Withdrawal

Russia announced on Saturday that it is also suspending the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) following a U.S. decision to pull out of the agreement, upping the odds that the treaty will collapse entirely. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. would be suspending the treaty, which prohibits both…

Tech News Tom McKay

Sheryl Sandberg: The Teens ‘Consented’ to Putting Facebook Spyware on Their Phones

On Tuesday, news broke via TechCrunch that Facebook ran a sketchy “Research” program involving paid participants who downloaded an app onto their phones that was capable of monitoring virtually everything that they did—including in some cases teens as young as 13, who were recruited via social media ads that appeared designed to keep Facebook’s involvement…

Social Media Tom McKay

New York Attorney General Finds That Sale of Social Media Bots, Fake Engagement Is Illegal

The New York Attorney General’s office has announced a settlement with Devumi LLC, a social media-marketing firm whose tactics were exposed by the New York Times last year, in what the office wrote is “the first finding by a law enforcement agency that selling fake social media engagement and using stolen identities to engage in online…

Tech News Tom McKay

Tom McKay

Cattle Ranchers Are Trying to Get the Word ‘Meat’ Taken Off the Labels of Meat Substitutes

Report: DHS Wants to Build Trump’s Dumb Border Wall Right Through SpaceX’s Texas Launch Facility

Texas Bill Would Make It Illegal For Verizon and Any Other Wireless Provider to Throttle Disaster Zones

The Army Thinks Their New Rifle Will Be Like an iPhone

Hmm, This Anti-Vaccination Rally Amid a Major Measles Outbreak Is a Little Too on the Nose

Study Says Over 400 Organ Transplant Studies Using Chinese Data Should Be Retracted Over Ethical Concerns

Tinder and Its Owner Match Group Had a Very, Very Horny 2018

Mountain Lion Attacks Runner in Colorado, Runner Strangles It to Death

Apple’s Retail and Online Stores Chief, Angela Ahrendts, to Leave By April

Snap Is Now Slightly Less Fucked

Fireball Over Cuba Exploded With the Energy of 1,400 Tons of TNT, NASA Says

Even Apple Isn’t Immune to AT&T’s ‘5G E’ Bullshit

Crypto Exchange Says It Can’t Repay $190 Million to Clients After Founder Dies With Only Password

Security Sets Man on Fire With ‘Taser-Style Device’ in Philadelphia

Google Yanks 29 Malicious Photo Apps From Play Store, But Not Before Millions of Downloads

Jack Dorsey: Trump Is Kind of Like Obama If You, Like, Really Think About It

Report: Attorneys General in Six States Are Now Investigating Facebook’s Data Practices

Russia Also Suspends Nuclear Weapons Treaty, Calling It ‘Tit-for-Tat’ Response to U.S. Withdrawal

Sheryl Sandberg: The Teens ‘Consented’ to Putting Facebook Spyware on Their Phones

New York Attorney General Finds That Sale of Social Media Bots, Fake Engagement Is Illegal

Don’t Get Too Attached to Any AI App

‘Paradise’ Writer Teases What’s Coming in Season 3 After That Huge Twist

Trump’s New White House App Is Mildly Concerning and Weird for a Lot of Reasons

Bloodsucking Ticks Can Survive Inside Your Home Longer Than You Might Think

The Best New Toys of March 2026

Judge Denies Liking LinkedIn Post Critical of Elon Musk But Reassigns His Cases Anyway

Amazon Slashes 50% Off Keurig K-Cup Pod Coffee Maker, Now a Budget Alternative to Breville and Nespresso Espresso Machines

Sun’s Latest Outburst Complicates Planned Launch of Artemis 2

Instagram Will Finally Let You Lurk to Your Heart’s Content—for a Price

Popular Sweetener Found in Protein Bars Tied to Stroke, Blood Clot Risk

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

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