Los Angeles Times

A proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, the country’s third- and fourth-largest wireless operators, would have a profound impact on Californians. Wireless prices will rise so the merger will be particularly onerous for customers on tight budgets. In California especially, low-income customers tend to be people of color and immigrants. The merger would therefore disproportionately burden this vulnerable group — many of whom rely on cellphones as their only form of internet access.

Harvard Law School's Susan Crawford has written a new book,  “Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution — and Why America Might Miss It.” She's assembled her concerns about US connectivity, along with her suggestions how to alleviate them. The data-carrying capacity of the next generation of fiber-optics, known as “5G” (as the fifth generation of wireless telecommunications technology), will give countries that invest in those advanced networks a huge advantage over those that don’t.

Facebook's business model has always been simple: acquire as much personal information from users as possible, then find a way to make money off of it. For more than a decade, it proved to be a remarkably successful strategy, bringing to the social platform 2 billion monthly users to friend, feud and play Farmville. But as the year comes to a close, Facebook is facing a pair of major lawsuits in the US and reeling from a string of public relations disasters.