As part of CNET’s ongoing series about what it takes to be an informed citizen in the modern age, I looked at how shock and awe in social media is turning into $$$. There’s even a cameo by Barbra Streisand! A Quick Way to Go Viral in Politics? Get Your Ad Banned All it took was a shocking 30-second ad for Eric Greitens to become a trending topic on social media this summer. The…www.cnet.com

With the midterm elections coming, we at CNET have been publishing a series of stories looking at how to be an informed and active voter in today’s day and age. My story today looks at why the tone of politics has changed, and boy has it ever. You can read…

Today’s the 15th anniversary since the iPhone first launched, and I had a burning question: Will we ever have another iPhone-like moment again? After talking to a bunch of people inside and outside product development, including one of the leaders of the original iPhone team, Steve Jobs’ biographer and someone who was in the third row for the original Macintosh reveal, I got my answer: It’s tougher than you think:

Many of us are wondering when life will return to normal from whatever the pandemic’s been. But in some ways, it won’t. That’s especially true in the work world, where long-simmering demographic and technological shifts are taking hold. For the first time in any of our lives, there aren’t enough people to fill open jobs out there. And that probably isn’t going to change. So I wondered, what’s the new normal going to look like? I wrote about what I learned alongside my awesome colleague Erin Carson in my latest story for CNET:

Earlier, we published a story looking at how gift card scams work, who the victims typically are and why retailers aren’t doing much about it. You can read part 1 here. Today, we look at the people trying to change all that. I sought perspective from people including cybercrime experts…

Every year, scammers trick millions of Americans to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in gift card payments. Retailers aren’t doing much about it. Read the story on CNET, here. This story began for me when I stumbled on a corner of the internet devoted to wasting time. Specifically, someone else’s. More specifically, scammers. A new group of vigilantes were blowing up on social media, sharing their exploits as they recorded themselves baiting scammers…

It seems pretty straightforward why Apple doesn’t make phones in the US. Labor costs are higher here, regulations are different and it’s much easier to find thousands of people in China willing to work a manufacturing line. But when I started digging into it, there’s way more reason than that. …