Tom McKay, Author at Gizmodo

Uber Claims ‘Aerial Ridesharing’ On Track to Be ‘More Economically Rational’ Than Driving in About Three Years

Look out, because Uber has an airborne bridge it wants to sell you. The ridesharing giant announced that Melbourne, Australia will join the cities of Dallas and Los Angeles for tests of its “aerial ridesharing,” “electric vertical takeoff” Uber Air service at its third annual Uber Elevate event on Tuesday, the Guardian reported, with test…

Tech News Tom McKay

Rick Santorum Is a Cryptocurrency Guy Now, Apparently

In what is either an incredible blockchain-enabled monetization opportunity or a sign that perhaps the gears are finally starting to fall out of this thing, Republican politician, failed presidential candidate, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is a cryptocurrency guy now. Yes, per the Financial Times’ Alphaville blog, Santorum—who you may remember for his virulent…

Tech News Tom McKay

Meet the Deepfake Zuck, Same as the Flesh Zuck

Mark Zuckerberg may be famed for looking and acting like a (slightly damp) synthetic being trying to infiltrate human society, but a team of artists working with advertising company Canny appears to built a software version of the Facebook CEO that could one day threaten to make hardware Zuckerberg obsolete. The artists in question, Bill…

Social Media Tom McKay

Facebook Is Betting People Are Still Hungry For Another Heaping Ladle of Portal

Facebook isn’t done with its spiffy new Portal video phones. You know, the ones which got largely favorable reviews, but are virtually impossible to fully trust, given they came out after months (years, really) of massive privacy scandals for the globe-spanning social media giant and are totally capable of spying on their owners for advertising…

Social Media Tom McKay

Kim Jong Un’s Half Brother Kim Jong Nam, Killed With VX Nerve Agent, Was Reportedly CIA Informant

Kim Jong Un’s half brother Kim Jong Nam was an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency who met more than once with unspecified “agency operatives” before he was killed with VX nerve toxin in a Malaysian airport in February 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday—albeit citing a “person knowledgeable with the matter.” The…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

InfoWars Must Pay Pepe the Frog Creator $15,000, Never Sell Pepe Merch Again in Settlement

InfoWars founder, conspiracy theorist, and tainted supplement pitchman Alex Jones has settled with artist Matt Furie, creator of the unfathomably widespread Pepe the Frog meme, for $15,000 after InfoWars used the image on an obnoxious poster it sold during the 2016 elections, Vice reported on Monday. In the past few years, the Pepe character—originally designed…

Tech News Tom McKay

Chernobyl, Schrödinger’s Cat, and Telegram Terrorists: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

Happy Sunday evening! Hopefully the events of the last week have been going better for you than YouTube, which spent an impossibly long time flailing around like a Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man after refusing to remove videos of a conservative internet personality taunting a journalist with racist, homophobic harassment. Hopefully the week…

Tech News Tom McKay

Report: Google News Does Not Have an Anti-Conservative Bias So Much as a Pro-Credible Source One

It’s pretty much conservative dogma at this point: Silicon Valley is secretly discriminating against Republicans and conspiring to push left-wing propaganda on everyone! Donald Trump throws out unsubstantiated bile on the topic left and right, while Republicans in Congress and right-wing media parrot it nonstop. That’s all been despite a lack of any credible evidence…

Tech News Tom McKay

G20 Countries Agree on Approach to Shut Down Big Tech’s Tax Loopholes

Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in Fukuoka, Japan reached a tentative agreement on Saturday to “compile common rules to close loopholes used by global tech giants” such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, Reuters reported—with a particular focus on reducing the practice by some companies of routing profits through countries that offer rock-bottom corporate…

Tech News Tom McKay

Raytheon, United Technologies to Merge, Forming One of World’s Biggest Defense and Aerospace Firms [Updated]

Update: 6/9/2019 at 10:10 p.m. ET: Per a Raytheon press release on Sunday, this merger is now official (and announced slightly sooner than expected). Gizmodo’s original coverage follows below. Sometimes, when two major military contractors love money very much, they get together and reverse-mitosis into one larger military contractor. Defense contractor Raytheon, manufacturer of everything from…

Tech News Tom McKay

Google Fails to Have Lawsuit Originally Brought by James Damore Thrown Out

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Brian Walsh rejected tech giant Google’s efforts to have a lawsuit originally brought by ex-Google engineer James Damore dismissed, the Mercury News reported on Friday, meaning that the case can now proceed into the discovery phase. Google fired Damore in August 2017 after he authored a lengthy anti-diversity document…

Tech News Tom McKay

Report: China Warns Foreign Tech Companies Not to Comply With Trump Trade Bans

Chinese government officials summoned representatives from major tech companies both from the U.S. and elsewhere this week to warn them of “dire consequences” if they go along with the Trump administration’s prohibition on sales of certain U.S. technology to a number of Chinese companies, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing two “people familiar…

Tech News Tom McKay

Lyft Is Suing San Francisco to Keep Bike Rental Competitors Out

Ridesharing giant Lyft is fighting to retain total control of the docked and dockless bike share market in San Francisco, the Verge reported Friday, and has filed a lawsuit that its contract prohibits the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) from issuing permits to competitors. Per the San Francisco Chronicle, Motivate, which Lyft acquired for…

Tech News Tom McKay

YouTube Just Can’t Stop Mumbling Nonsense About Its Harassment and Hate Speech Policy

YouTube has not had an easy go of it over the last 24 hours. Right in the middle of LGBT Pride Month, the platform responded to Vox Media host Carlos Maza’s claims that right-wing YouTube host Steven Crowder had repeatedly taunted him with racist, homophobic language including “lispy queer,” “token Vox gay atheist sprite,” “gay…

Tech News Tom McKay

CDC Says Measles Cases in U.S. Have Now Reached Over 1,000 So Far in 2019

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that 1,001 cases of measles have been reported so far in the U.S. throughout 2019. That number is all but certain to continue climbing in the second half of the year. Last week, the CDC warned that U.S. measles cases had reached a 25-year high—with more…

Health Tom McKay

Baltimore Officials Estimate Damage From Ransomware Attack At Over $18 Million, Likely to Rise

Early last month, hackers infected somewhere around 10,000 Baltimore, Maryland city computers with a “file-locking” ransomware variant called RobbinHood. Those hackers demanded a ransom of 13 bitcoin (at the time worth around $76,000, and today around $100,000) that would go up over time if it was not promptly paid out—and which the city refused to…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

YouTube: No, We Won’t Remove These Videos of Racist, Anti-Gay Harassment Because It’s Just ‘Debating’

YouTube has chosen not to take action against right-wing video personality Steven Crowder after Vox host Carlos Maza posted clips of Crowder repeatedly harassing him with derogatory, anti-gay, and racist statements, which Maza says resulted in hordes of Crowder’s fans doxxing him and subjecting him to abuse on social media. Last week, Maza posted a…

Tech News Tom McKay

SEC Sues Messaging App Kik Over $100 Million Initial Coin Offering

The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing anonymity-focused, Canada-based messaging service Kik Interactive, claiming the company’s Hail Mary pivot to raising money via a cryptocurrency sale in 2017 amounted to an illegal, unregistered securities offering, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. That 2017 sale was an initial coin offering (ICO), a complicated financial vehicle in which investors…

Tech News Tom McKay

Lab Testing Giant Quest Diagnostics Says Data Breach May Have Hit Nearly 12 Million Patients

Clinical lab testing titan Quest Diagnostics acknowledged in a press release on Monday that an “unauthorized user” had gained access to personal information on around 11.9 million customers, including some financial and medical data. Per NBC News, news of the breach comes via way of a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in which Quest wrote…

Privacy & Security Tom McKay

House Judiciary Committee Launches Tech Antitrust Inquiry Amid Reports DOJ, FTC May Take Action

Over the past week, the two federal agencies with mandates to enforce antitrust law—the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission—have apparently been divvying up Silicon Valley for potential probes. Reports have indicated that the DOJ has scooped up responsibility for Google and Apple, while the FTC could be going after Amazon and Facebook.…

Tech Policy Tom McKay

Tom McKay

Uber Claims ‘Aerial Ridesharing’ On Track to Be ‘More Economically Rational’ Than Driving in About Three Years

Rick Santorum Is a Cryptocurrency Guy Now, Apparently

Meet the Deepfake Zuck, Same as the Flesh Zuck

Facebook Is Betting People Are Still Hungry For Another Heaping Ladle of Portal

Kim Jong Un’s Half Brother Kim Jong Nam, Killed With VX Nerve Agent, Was Reportedly CIA Informant

InfoWars Must Pay Pepe the Frog Creator $15,000, Never Sell Pepe Merch Again in Settlement

Chernobyl, Schrödinger’s Cat, and Telegram Terrorists: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week

Report: Google News Does Not Have an Anti-Conservative Bias So Much as a Pro-Credible Source One

G20 Countries Agree on Approach to Shut Down Big Tech’s Tax Loopholes

Raytheon, United Technologies to Merge, Forming One of World’s Biggest Defense and Aerospace Firms [Updated]

Google Fails to Have Lawsuit Originally Brought by James Damore Thrown Out

Report: China Warns Foreign Tech Companies Not to Comply With Trump Trade Bans

Lyft Is Suing San Francisco to Keep Bike Rental Competitors Out

YouTube Just Can’t Stop Mumbling Nonsense About Its Harassment and Hate Speech Policy

CDC Says Measles Cases in U.S. Have Now Reached Over 1,000 So Far in 2019

Baltimore Officials Estimate Damage From Ransomware Attack At Over $18 Million, Likely to Rise

YouTube: No, We Won’t Remove These Videos of Racist, Anti-Gay Harassment Because It’s Just ‘Debating’

SEC Sues Messaging App Kik Over $100 Million Initial Coin Offering

Lab Testing Giant Quest Diagnostics Says Data Breach May Have Hit Nearly 12 Million Patients

House Judiciary Committee Launches Tech Antitrust Inquiry Amid Reports DOJ, FTC May Take Action

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