New York Times

John R. MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s Magazine, is uncompromising in his support for print journalism.

Harper’s, which is nonprofit and funded by a foundation, has been available online for a decade. But to read anything, you must subscribe to the physical magazine too.

It remains to be seen whether history will judge him as a resolute visionary or a stubborn martyr.

Regulators in Washington won not one but two major merger battles -- without even firing a shot. In telecommunications, Sprint abandoned a bid for its rival T-Mobile.

And in media and entertainment, 21st Century Fox dropped its pursuit of Time Warner. Both deals were proposed mergers of direct competitors, which often reduce competition and, as a result, usually attract heightened scrutiny from regulators.

In neither case did the Justice Department or the Federal Communications Commission announce a formal position, and in Fox’s bid, the antitrust division and the Federal Trade Commission, which share jurisdiction, hadn’t even decided which agency would conduct the inquiry. But the threat of action may have been enough -- certainly so in Sprint’s case, and at least something that had to be seriously considered in Fox’s case.

[Commentary] Dr Bernie Mayer, author of several books on conflict resolution and a professor at the Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, noted that beyond keeping up with the sheer near real-time pace of heated Internet discussions, another problem with digital arguments is that people can’t detect tone, facial expression and, most of all, sarcasm.

A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion username and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say.

The records, discovered by Hold Security include confidential material gathered from 420,000 websites, ranging from household names to small Internet sites.

Last quarter, Xiaomi was the top smartphone seller in the largest market in the world: China. A report published by Canalys highlighted Xiaomi’s remarkable growth, surpassing giants like Samsung and Lenovo to become the top player in China.

Because of its huge growth in China, Xiaomi became the fifth largest smartphone maker in the world.

Judge Loretta Preska of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York upheld a magistrate judge’s earlier ruling that Microsoft must turn over the customer’s e-mails, held in a Microsoft data center in Ireland. Judge Preska agreed to stay her order while the company pursues an appeal.

The issue at the heart of the case is whether communications kept in data centers operated by American companies are beyond the reach of domestic search warrants. The Microsoft case is believed to be the first time that a United States company has fought against a domestic search warrant for data stored overseas.

Google says complying with Europe’s so-called right to be forgotten ruling is getting complicated.

In a lengthy response to questions from the region’s data regulators, the search giant said that it often lacked enough information to decide whether it should remove links to web pages to comply with European law.

Google said it had rejected a number of requests made by journalists, who wanted links to articles at publications where they no longer worked to be taken down.

Some members of gay and minority groups in Utah say The Salt Lake Tribune represents their concerns in culturally and ethnically changing Salt Lake City better than the competing paper, The Deseret News, which is owned by the Mormon Church.

And they say that changes made last fall in the joint operating agreement between the publications -- which include cutting The Tribune’s profits in half in exchange for cash and other benefits -- are certain to spell The Tribune’s demise.

Activists like State Senator Jim Dabakis (D-UT), a longtime gay rights advocate, are campaigning to save The Tribune -- though it remains unclear whether The Tribune needs saving.

[Commentary] Yes, phones feel slower over time as they hold more software and as our expectations of speed increase. But the spikes show that the feeling doesn’t grow gradually; it comes on suddenly in the days after a new phone is released. Yet that’s all it shows: People suddenly feel that their phone is slowing down. The data doesn’t show our iPhones actually became slower.

The important distinction is of intent. In the benign explanation, a slowdown of old phones is not a specific goal, but merely a side effect of optimizing the operating system for newer hardware. Data on search frequency would not allow us to infer intent. No matter how suggestive, this data alone doesn’t allow you to determine conclusively whether my phone is actually slower and, if so, why.

[Mullainathan is a professor of economics at Harvard]

Forecasts and studies of the impact of the Obama Administration’s incentive program for digitalization of healthcare have been varied. Some predicted big dollar savings and improved care, while others came to the opposite conclusion, seeing higher costs and medical errors induced by complex technology.

While the principle of the technology-payoff time lag is true in many industries, in health care, there is a case for special vigilance as well as for patience. The more digital patient records and decision-support software become part of diagnosis and treatment, the higher the stakes: In health information technology, there are no clinical trials or tests with randomized controls, as there are for drugs, for example.

True, digital data does not go into the body, but it can increasingly guide what does. That is why the Food and Drug Administration, in cooperation with the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Federal Communications Commission, is developing what the government calls a “risk-based regulatory framework” for digital health technology.