Tom McKay, Author at Gizmodo

This Robot Just Carried the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics Torch as It Cut Through a Wall

Robots are already coming for our jobs, and now it looks like they’re coming for our treasured cultural ceremonies, too. On Monday, the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s Hubo robot carried the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics relay torch for a stretch of the relay in Daejon, South Korea. Even more impressively, as shown in…

Sploid Tom McKay

FCC Chair Ajit Pai Forges Ahead With Bullshit Plan to Turn the FTC Into His Fall Guy

The Republican-dominated Federal Communications Commission and its chair, industry-adjacent hack Ajit Pai, have been charging towards a vote to repeal Barack Obama-era net neutrality rules on Thursday that seems all but guaranteed to result in a victory for ISPs. Part of the plan involves cutting a deal with ISPs to have them put net neutrality…

Tech News Tom McKay

SEC Chairman Urges Cryptocurrency Investors to Exercise Caution, Says Most ICOs Are Securities

After months of tension over what, if anything, the Securities and Exchange Commission was planning to do about cryptocurrencies and the billions of dollars people have sunk into initial coin offerings—a form of barely regulated investment vehicle in which investors trade real cash for tokens in crypto-backed startups—the agency’s chairman Jay Clayton has finally weighed…

Tech News Tom McKay

DIY Bed Bug Treatment Attempt Accidentally Results in Massive Fire

Bed bugs—the blood-sucking, chitinous nightmares which serve as the clearest proof that if there is a divine creator behind the universe, it hates us—were once nearly eradicated from the U.S. But in recent years they’ve come back worse than ever, beefed up from decades of exposure to insecticides and helped along by an increase in…

Tech News Tom McKay

Australia Hits Worst Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Record

Australia’s finally done it! A new NDEVR Environmental analysis shows Australia has never been emitting more greenhouse gas when unreliable estimates for land use-related emissions are excluded, the Guardian reported on Sunday. Over the past year, Australia released an estimated 138.78 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in greenhouse gases. The last quarter measured was…

Climate Change Tom McKay

Lumoid, Best Buy’s Supposed Gear Rental Partner, Shuts Down

Lumoid, a four-year-old San Francisco startup which was reportedly partnering with Best Buy to offer try-before-you-buy rental services on products like cameras, audio gear, and fitness trackers, has gone out of business. Per Recode, company CEO Aarthi Ramamurthy posted to Facebook thanking team members and announcing that “Over the last 4 months, we gradually wound…

Gadgets Tom McKay

You Can Now Click ‘Cryptocurrency OK’ on Craigslist, Because That’s Not Sketchy at All

Bitcoin has continued to explode in value, briefly reaching a high of over $17,000 a coin before settling back down to under $16,000 just weeks after it passed into the five-figure range. But the surge is being driven by speculation, not the ease of actually using bitcoins for transactions, as shown earlier this week by…

Tech News Tom McKay

Uber Settles Lawsuit Alleging It Obtained Rape Victim in India’s Confidential Medical Records

Uber has been accused of a lot of very, very bad things over the course of its existence, including a culture of rampant sexual harassment, spying on competitors and users, and covering up hacks by paying off the hackers. But one of the worst things it’s allegedly done was shadily obtaining the medical records of…

Tech News Tom McKay

Some Twitch Users Are Getting Angry About So-Called ‘Booby Streamers’

For years, Twitch.tv has been the web’s go-to for gaming live streams, crowd-sourced experiments like Pokémon playthroughs and commenter-controlled investment portfolios, and other bits of acceptably time-killing content. Unfortunately, this droll peace is being threatened by the internet equivalent of the dumb controversy surrounding desnudas in Times Square. Per the BBC, a “small number of…

Games Tom McKay

Kaspersky Closes DC Office, Says It Is ‘No Longer Viable’ to Work With Federal Government

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has had a rough season stateside amid claims the company’s software scans for and steals documents of interest to the Kremlin. With the use of its products at U.S. government agencies now banned, the company has elected to shut down its D.C.-area headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. “We are closing our facility…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

Airlines Decide All Your Checked Smart Luggage Must Become Real Dumb, Battery-Free Luggage

Leading U.S. airlines have all agreed that all your expensive smart luggage is dumb luggage now, CNN reported on Wednesday. Carriers including American, Delta, and Alaska are requiring customers remove lithium-based batteries from the bags and carry them personally before stowing them in their aircraft, citing the risk that the batteries could start a fire…

Gadgets Tom McKay

Valve: Your Bitcoin Isn’t Any Good on Steam Anymore

Valve’s Steam, the digital distribution platform which enjoys near-monopolistic control of the entire PC gaming industry, has stopped accepting bitcoins as a form of payment due to the currency’s volatility and increasingly unacceptable processing fees. In a blog post on Wednesday, Steam wrote that “In the past few months we’ve seen an increase in the…

Games Tom McKay

Nordea Bank Chief: Robots Can Help Us Fire Legions of My Fellow Bankers

If you’re like most people, you do not like Wall Street or the financial industry, which commanded a large amount of confidence among just 19 percent of Americans in a poll from last year—perhaps because they crashed the national economy nearly a decade ago and the vast majority of the recovery went to the already…

Tech News Tom McKay

As MoviePass Looms, Cinemark Starts Its Own Movie Club Program

Hollywood wrapped up the 2017 summer movie season with its worst number of tickets sold in a quarter century, ushered in by a series of massive box-office flops made worse by ubiquitous critical social media reviews and the growth of competing streaming services like Netflix and HBO Go. Theater chains in particular got real spooked…

Movies Tom McKay

Facebook Has Some Intensely Thirsty Questions for You

Hey, here’s a question for you. If a random stranger came up to you on the street and started asking you to tell them about who you’d like to be stuck in an elevator with or what your guilty pleasures are, do you think you would: A) Tell them. B) Run for safety. Probably not…

Tech News Tom McKay

The US Claims It Doesn’t Need a Court Order to Ask Tech Companies to Build Encryption Backdoors

Federal authorities say they can request a U.S. tech company build surveillance backdoors into their products without any kind of court order, according to statements from July released this weekend, ZDNet reported. According to the documents, intelligence officials told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that there’s no need for them to approach courts before…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

Apple Begrudgingly Agrees to Pay Ireland Nearly $15 Billion in Back Taxes

Apple, whose CEO Tim Cook likes to talk a big game about how the tech industry should be more socially responsible while overseeing an international tax-avoidance regime that puts Scrooge McDuck’s gold-filled vault/swimming pool to shame, has agreed to repay Ireland $14.6 billion (around €13 billion) in unpaid taxes, the Wall Street Journal reported. In…

Tech News Tom McKay

The SEC’s Cyber Unit Launches Its First Fraud Case, Targeting PlexCoin’s ICO

The Securities and Exchange Commission launched a new cyber fraud unit earlier this year amid the internet’s ongoing Bitcoin boom, seemingly telegraphing its intent to crack down on a cryptocurrency market rife with hacking, fraud, and scams. The first thing on its agenda was likely always going to be initial coin offerings—a form of almost…

Tech News Tom McKay

North Korean Defectors Say Radiation Is Leaking From Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site

North Korea’s infamous nuclear test site, a facility in Punggye-ri in Kilju County, has long been reported to maintain the standards one might expect for a pariah government low on everything but zeal and weaponry. Outsiders can only get a limited picture of the country, let alone the test site, thanks to its isolation from…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

Spooked by Amazon, CVS Decides to Buy Massive Health Insurer Aetna

E-commerce giant Amazon’s power has steadily grown to the point where it can flash-fry competitors just by pointing its fearsome gaze in the general direction of their retail sector, like a magnifying glass aimed at ants or a really efficient Eye of Sauron. Now it’s eyeing moving into the pharmacy sector, and competitors are sufficiently…

Health Tom McKay

Tom McKay

This Robot Just Carried the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics Torch as It Cut Through a Wall

FCC Chair Ajit Pai Forges Ahead With Bullshit Plan to Turn the FTC Into His Fall Guy

SEC Chairman Urges Cryptocurrency Investors to Exercise Caution, Says Most ICOs Are Securities

DIY Bed Bug Treatment Attempt Accidentally Results in Massive Fire

Australia Hits Worst Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Record

Lumoid, Best Buy’s Supposed Gear Rental Partner, Shuts Down

You Can Now Click ‘Cryptocurrency OK’ on Craigslist, Because That’s Not Sketchy at All

Uber Settles Lawsuit Alleging It Obtained Rape Victim in India’s Confidential Medical Records

Some Twitch Users Are Getting Angry About So-Called ‘Booby Streamers’

Kaspersky Closes DC Office, Says It Is ‘No Longer Viable’ to Work With Federal Government

Airlines Decide All Your Checked Smart Luggage Must Become Real Dumb, Battery-Free Luggage

Valve: Your Bitcoin Isn’t Any Good on Steam Anymore

Nordea Bank Chief: Robots Can Help Us Fire Legions of My Fellow Bankers

As MoviePass Looms, Cinemark Starts Its Own Movie Club Program

Facebook Has Some Intensely Thirsty Questions for You

The US Claims It Doesn’t Need a Court Order to Ask Tech Companies to Build Encryption Backdoors

Apple Begrudgingly Agrees to Pay Ireland Nearly $15 Billion in Back Taxes

The SEC’s Cyber Unit Launches Its First Fraud Case, Targeting PlexCoin’s ICO

North Korean Defectors Say Radiation Is Leaking From Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site

Spooked by Amazon, CVS Decides to Buy Massive Health Insurer Aetna

INIU Brings Another Power Bank to the Spring Sale as SnapGo Keychain Portable Charger Drops to Its Lowest Price

Attorney Hit With Historic Fine for Citing AI-Generated Cases

Travelers Experiencing the Longest Security Lines in TSA History

Could There Be a ‘Project Hail Mary’ Sequel?

Meta Has More Smart Glasses Coming Whether You Want Them or Not

Apple Requires Device-Level Age Verification in the UK Now. Could the US Be Next?

Astronomers Say Recent Rash of Meteor Sightings ‘Warrants Serious Investigation’

Did AMD Just Make the Best CPU for Gamers and Creators?

AI Just One-Shotted Another CEO

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

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