After looking at the pros and the cons, AT&T pulled the trigger on an $85 billion deal for Time Warner, the biggest media hook-up since the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger in 2000. Now the transaction faces an obstacle course lined with regulatory agencies, politicians, media and telecom rivals and consumer groups. — [Thomas Gryta, Shalini Ramachandran and Rebecca Ballhaus / Wall Street Journal]
Recode Daily: The AT&T-Time Warner deal will get a hard look from regulators
The Senate’s antitrust committee is already planning hearings.
Toby Jorrin/Getty Images
There are a couple of things you can do to try to prevent your smart-home gadgets from being conscripted into a zombie army like the one used to attack the internet Friday, but not much. Security experts saw this one coming, but the makers of cheap Internet of Things devices have little motivation to make them more secure. The upshot: Expect more of such attacks. — [David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth / New York Times]
So what should we look for at Apple’s “Hello Again” event on Thursday? The rumor mill consensus says the highlights will be a redesigned MacBook Pro with an OLED touch bar on the keyboard and a 13-inch MacBook Air. New iMacs and a stand-alone 5K display are reportedly in the works but not ready yet. — [Eric Slivka / MacRumors]
Samsung made a rushed decision to recall and replace its original Galaxy Note 7 phones based on incomplete evidence about the cause of overheating batteries, and when that initial diagnosis turned out to be wrong, the model was doomed. — [Jonathan Cheng and John D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal]
Online brokerage TD Ameritrade and its largest stakeholder, Toronto-Dominion Bank, are close to a deal to buy rival Scottrade for $4 billion. — [Matthew Monks, Anna-Louise Jackson and Doug Alexander / Bloomberg]
On the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, Sam Esmail, creator of “Mr. Robot,” says the key to making a successful show about hacking was to focus on the hackers and the other human facets of tech. — [Eric Johnson / Recode]
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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