The Los Angeles Times says an unusual cyberattack that disrupted its printing operations and those at newspapers in San Diego and Florida the weekend of Dec 28 came from outside the United States, but it stopped short of accusing a specific foreign government. Computer malware attacks on infrastructure, while relatively rare, are hardly new: Russia has been credibly accused of shutting down power grids in Ukraine and a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia, Iran crippled a casino in Las Vegas, and the United States and Israel attacked a nuclear enrichment plant in Iran. But this would be the first known attack on major newspaper printing operations, and if politically motivated, it would define new territory in recent attacks on the media.

The malware was focused on the networks used by Tribune Publishing, which until recently owned The Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune. The two papers still share their former parent company’s printing networks. The Los Angeles Times said the attack also affected the Dec 29 distribution of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which share use of a large printing plant in Los Angeles for their West Coast editions. Both appear to have been collateral damage; there was no evidence that they were hit by the same malware aimed at the Tribune company. The online editions of the news organizations were not affected, and Tribune Publishing said no data about its subscribers was compromised.

Here are 10 questions about broadband we hope to find answers to in 2019:

1. How many people exactly lack broadband and will they get it?
2. Who will have the next edge in broadband, telecom or cable companies? 
3. Will 5G flop at first? 
4. Spectrum: Which bands do carriers want and who will get them? 
5. What will T-Mobile do in video? 
6. How important will cable wireless offerings be? 
7. Will AT&T get it right with its myriad video offerings?
8. Will the Sprint T-Mobile merger happen and if so, will they keep their promises? 
9. How big will the Internet of Things be this year?
10. Will the industry gain another telecom real-estate investment trust? 

Spring 2018, soon after Facebook acknowledged that the data of tens of millions of its users had improperly been obtained by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, a top enforcement official at the Federal Trade Commission drafted a memo about the prospect of disciplining the social network. Lawmakers, consumer advocates and even former commission officials were clamoring for tough action against Facebook, arguing that it had violated an earlier Federal Trade Commission consent decree barring it from misleading users about how their information was shared. But the enforcement official, James A. Kohm, took a different view. In a previously undisclosed memo in March, Kohm — echoing Facebook’s own argument — cautioned that Facebook was not responsible for the consulting firm’s reported abuses. The social network seemed to have taken reasonable steps to address the problem, he wrote, according to someone who read the memo, and most likely had not broken its promises to the FTC.

In more than 40 interviews, former and current FTC officials, lawmakers, Capitol Hill staff members, and consumer advocates said that as evidence of abuses has piled up against tech companies, the FTC has been too cautious. Now, as the Trump administration and Congress debate whether to expand the agency and its authority over privacy violations, the Facebook inquiry looms as a referendum on the FTC’s future.

Television viewers on New Year’s Eve tune in for performances by the latest hitmakers and nostalgia acts. This time around, 11 journalists — ranging from familiar faces like Martha Raddatz of ABC to behind-the-scenes editors like Karen Toulon of Bloomberg News — shared the Times Square limelight, part of an effort by the Committee to Protect Journalists and organizers to recognize the erosion of press freedoms at home and abroad. The journalists were tasked with pressing the crystal button that initiates the minute-long descent of the New Year’s Eve Ball, a prime moment on a night that attracts tens of millions of viewers. Just before they pressed it, the journalists gathered around the button, cheering and waving to the crowd before bringing the ball down.

Facebook will stop displaying political campaign ads in Washington State in order to comply with campaign finance laws, and will pay more than $238,500 to settle a lawsuit alleging violations of those rules. Google was also alleged to have violated state laws by failing to maintain records of election ads on its platform, and ceased its political ads this summer, after Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit against the companies. The lawsuits will end without an admission of guilt from either Facebook or Google. Ferguson told the Stranger that the two payments, which will go into the state’s Public Disclosure Transparency account, represent “two of the largest campaign finance resolutions in state history.”