Why this government data breach is worse than other hacks
The latest cyberattack on the US federal government goes deeper than a typical hack. Also: Samsung may unveil the next Galaxy Note sooner than usual, and clues point to new iPods next week.
It's easy to become desensitized to hack reports these days, but the latest government data breach isn't your standard hack. Watch CNET Update below for the details on the cyberattack to the Office of Personnel Management that affected more than 22 million people.
Also in this tech-news roundup, it looks like Samsung may unveil the next Galaxy Note sooner than expected to get ahead of Apple. But Apple could have its own surprises in store next week with new iPods:
CNET Update delivers the tech news you need in under three minutes. Watch Bridget Carey every afternoon for a breakdown of the big stories, hot devices, new apps, and what's ahead. Subscribe to the podcast via the links below.
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Why this government data breach is worse than other hacks
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After user revolt, Ellen Pao is out as Reddit interim CEO
Pao, a polarizing figure in Silicon Valley after a high-profile gender discrimination suit, stepped down as the leader of the popular social-networking and news site after hundreds of thousands called for her to resign.
Interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao has stepped down after controversy involving a political firing of a key staffer and debates over free speech on the popular Internet message board.
Pao resigned after reaching a mutual decision with the company's board of directors, Reddit board member Sam Altman said Friday. Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder and the company's original CEO, takes over immediately, Altman said.
Pao came under scrutiny at the San Francisco-based community forum site after an online petition that began in June called for her resignation. Users accused her of ushering in "a new age of censorship," as the petition collected more than 200,000 signatures. The drive was preceded by the debated removal of five community forums, known as subreddits, as part of the company's newly adopted antiharassment policy, and the sudden firing of a well-respected key administrator.
Pao, 45, said in a post on Reddit on Friday that in her eight months as the company's CEO, she's seen "the good, the bad and the ugly," on the site, mentioning that the good has been "off-the-wall inspiring," and the ugly "made me doubt humanity."
"I just want to remind everyone that I am just another human; I have a family, and I have feelings. Everyone attacked on reddit is just another person like you and me," she said. "When people make something up to attack me or someone else, it spreads, and we eventually will see it. And we will feel bad, not just about what was said.
"Also because it undercuts the authenticity of reddit and shakes our faith in humanity."
Read: Pao's resignation letter from Reddit
Pao's departure comes as Reddit and many of the world's largest social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, attempt to strike the right balance for users between uninhibited speech and a more controlled climate from abusive, racist and pornographic content by introducing new policies. Social networks have spent the past decade working behind the scenes to police their sites.
In an interview with CNET, Altman rejected the suggestion that Reddit is struggling to control its community. Instead, he attributed their outrage to the company's communications.
"I think there are clearly users who are really upset by the lack of attention to moderators...and the communication of the company," said Altman, who has also defended Pao's contributions as interim CEO.
Users who commented on Pao's resignation letter, which was posted on Reddit, agreed. One, posting under the name 1millionbucks, said Pao "interacted with the community more in this post than in her entire tenure as CEO."
Though some were supportive, many others cracked jokes at her expense, often referencing her high-profile lawsuit.
Altman said Pao brought focus to chaos at Reddit and recruited a world-class team of executives and drove growth.
"She brought a face to reddit that changed perceptions, and is a pioneer for women in the tech industry," said Altman, adding that Pao will remain as an adviser to the board through the end of 2015. During an "Ask Me Anything" session later Friday with members, Altman said Pao walked into an incredibly tough situation.
"She made some mistakes, for sure, but I think she did remarkably well in a very tough situation. And Steve is happy to be taking the baton for her here," he said.
Huffman is currently the co-founder of the flight and hotel startup Hipmunk. He founded Reddit in 2005 with his college roommate Alexis Ohanian. Reddit has grown to become one of the most visited sites on the Web. It's been called "the front page of the Internet," for people who are drawn to its free-for-all style where they can share or say nearly whatever they want, whenever they want.
That emphasis has attracted a diverse array of voices who've weighed in on everything from politics to food to sports and everything else imaginable. It's also attracted audiences larger than most countries. Nearly 164 million people visited the site in June, 3 million of whom logged in as members who can post and comment. More than 36 million accounts have registered on its service, according to the company.
Altman said that Reddit members deserve clarity on what its content policy is going to be.
"The team will create guidelines to both preserve the integrity of reddit and to maintain reddit as the place where the most open and honest conversations with the entire world can happen," he said.
Altman also told CNET that to repair its relationship with users, Reddit should begin delivering on product changes that the community has called for, including a mobile app.
Pao joined Reddit as its business and partnerships strategist in April 2013, a year after she filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against prestigious venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. That lawsuit made her a household name in the tech industry while reigniting the debate over Silicon Valley's treatment of women and minorities. Pao sought $16 million on accusations she was fired in 2012 after complaining about pervasive sexism. A San Francisco jury in March rejected her claim, but Pao has intimated she intends to appeal the verdict.
All the while, Pao continued doing her job at Reddit, even being promoted to interim CEO of the site in November 2014.
That changed in early June when Reddit banned five community forums, claiming it violated a new antiharassment policy and had caused some people to shy away from the site. Some users cried foul, arguing the site was straying from its roots as a champion of free speech.
Tensions flared again in July after moderators discovered Reddit had fired Victoria Taylor, the site's popular director of talent and quasi-liaison between the company and volunteer moderators. She had run the popular Ask Me Anything "subreddit," a section that allow Reddit users to engage in real-time Q&A sessions. Celebrities ranging from Bill Gates to Elon Musk and even President Barack Obama have participated in the format.
In response to Taylor's abrupt dismissal, moderators shut access to dozens of subreddits, each of which had tallied millions of subscribers.
Pao eventually apologized. She said Reddit "screwed up," and admitted the company had made "a long history of mistakes" communicating with its community. She said the company vowed to make changes in three key areas: tools, communication and search.
Altman reiterated that in his post on Friday.
"(Moderators), you are what makes reddit great," he said. "The reddit team, now with Steve, wants to do more for you. You deserve better moderation tools and better communication from the (administration)."
Huffman also posted that he was "super excited" to be back.
"It's been a crazy day," he said. "We've got a lot of work to do. Fortunately, I've got five years of ideas stacked up, and I'm looking forward to getting to work."
Update, 3:45 p.m. PT: With comments from Altman and Huffman.
-CNET's Max Taves contributed to this report.
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Enough, already! Why we all share the blame for notification overload
From CNET Magazine: Might as well face it -- you're addicted to your smartphone's constant alerts. It may be time for an intervention.
David Taylor's phone came with a potentially useful feature: It rang hourly to remind him he had voice mail. But when one interruption too many piled on top of an overstuffed to-do list, he destroyed his phone in a late-night rage.
"It's OK when there's one message, but if you get five messages in a meeting, the phone just starts ringing -- 20 rings over the next four hours," says Taylor, an attorney in Paris. "I went to bed at quarter to midnight, put down the phone, and it rang again. It sent me over the edge. I picked it up, threw it against the wall and smashed it."
His reaction illustrates a downside to the smartphone revolution: too damn many notifications.
We love the way our smartphones give us always-on connections to family and friends, allow us to be productive employees anywhere and deliver an endless supply of entertainment and information. But too many notifications from our apps, calendars and email can lead to two seemingly contradictory reactions -- either we reject the technology altogether, or we become addicted to it. One result has a direct impact on our mental health, while the other may affect the health of the mobile software industry.
The solution, say experts in psychology and software design, is to make smartphone notifications useful but not overwhelming.
"We get notifications our message has been read, our tweet has been retweeted, our recent post on Facebook has been liked," says Hector Postigo, an associate professor at Temple University's School of Media and Communication.
"All of these are important psychologically for a species that wants to communicate and wants affirmation that we were heard. The problem is that there are limits to what we can accommodate in our attention spans."
World's smallest slot machines
It's easy to blame app developers for being pushy, or Apple, Google and Microsoft for mobile operating systems that fail to shield us from notification madness. And they do bear some responsibility. Unfortunately, so do we.
That's because we get a buzz in more ways than one when our phone vibrates.
"The smartphone is the world's smallest slot machine," says Dr. David Greenfield, founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at University of Connecticut's medical school.
"Every time you go on to that smartphone and check something, there is an unpredictability about what you're going to find, when you're going to find it and how good it's going to be for you."
That feeling of surprise and reward becomes irresistible and keeps you coming back for more. When you get it, your brain produces a bit of dopamine, a chemical that signals the brain to feel pleasure. Dopamine causes us to seek out food, sex and drugs -- and leads to addictive behavior. The chemical is at its most stimulating when the rewards come on an unpredictable schedule, just like phone alerts.
That's why app developers have a huge incentive to use notifications. People will launch an app 88 percent more often if it has notifications enabled than if it doesn't, according to Localytics, a company that offers notification-related marketing services and uses analytics to monitor effectiveness. Notifications also make us twice as likely to continue using an app.
Rein them in
"They work really well until it turns to just noise," says Jeff Francis, chief operating officer of Copper Mobile, which has helped clients write more than 400 mobile apps.
That can have serious consequences when notifications are used for critical communications. A case in point: a project that Copper Mobile did for Westinghouse Electric to replace paper-based procedures on nuclear power facility maintenance with a tablet app. In this case, circumstance and usage dictated that the app ping people only for urgent items.
Other app developers, who now err on the side of notification overload, could be forced into greater restraint as users uninstall their apps, says Anindya Ghose, a professor of information sciences and marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business.
"I've talked a lot about this issue to retailers and mobile app developers," says Ghose. "There is an increasing consensus that abusing this system can come back to bite them."
Enough is enough
For their part, makers of mobile operating systems are also thinking about ways to limit notification overload. Apple's iOS, for example, won't let an app send notifications to your iPhone or iPad unless you permit it at installation.
Google doesn't like that approach for its Android operating system, though, says Tom Karlo, product manager for the
Android user interface. "I think it would be asking the user to make a decision at an earlier point than they need to, when they have less information to make that decision properly."
That's why the new Lollipop version of Android gives users a way to manage notifications -- treating high-priority and ordinary notifications differently. A long press on a notification will take you directly to a control panel to fine-tune settings.
"Eventually your device can be more intelligent about how aggressive it is getting your attention," Karlo says.
Microsoft also revamped notifications in Windows Phone 8.1 with a new Action Center, a centralized place to check and manage notifications. As with iOS and Android, the big focus is giving users control.
In the future, the phones themselves could filter notifications by deducing when they're appropriate. A phone can tell by movement patterns that it's in a car, for example, and geographic cues can tell a phone when it's in a theater, says J. Kim Fennell, chief executive officer of deCarta, which adds navigation, maps and other location services to mobile apps.
"I think your phone should work differently if you're sitting inside a coffee shop as opposed to driving to a coffee shop," says Fennell.
Ahhhhhhhh
Taylor, who bashed his phone after one too many alerts, admits he enjoyed being without a smartphone.
"It's been quite wonderful," he says. "I feel like I'm back in the physical world and not the virtual."
He now prefers using his primitive 2005 Nokia phone, which only handles calling and texting, although he sometimes pulls out his Nokia smartphone when he needs its more-sophisticated features.
Taylor's reaction wouldn't surprise Temple University's Postigo. "Once the machine is doing exactly what you want, it's an amazing feeling," Postigo says. "It's a hell of a thing to command."
The trick is being the one in control.
This story appeared earlier in CNET Magazine. For other magazine stories, go here.
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