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Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai has a number of problems with the FCC's incentive auction framework, which he plans to share with the House Communications Subcommittee.

According to his prepared testimony, Commissioner Pai will tell them that he is concerned about the proposal that the only condition for closing the auction is that it cover the costs of reverse auction -- paying and moving broadcasters. That, he says, is like ending an auction after the reserve price is met. If the FCC only covered the cost, it would not have any money for a first responder network, public safety research or deficit reduction. "The Spectrum Act mentions each of these items, which makes it difficult to square that legislation with an auction that would provide no funding for them," he says. Commissioner Pai is also concerned about possible limits on who could bid, which could also affect the proceeds and success of the auction.

After months of negotiations, federal regulators and Google could reach a deal as soon as this week over how the search company uses its acquired stockpile of patents to target its competitors, according to sources close to the investigation.

Google will most likely agree to curtail using key patents it picked up when it purchased Motorola Mobility to block competitors that are infringing those patents from getting their products to the market. Observers say it’s unclear how tough the Federal Trade Commission settlement with Google will be and that discussions are ongoing. But indications are the final settlement could provide Google an out that will allow it to continue blocking products in court actions around the world. The company is also facing an FTC antitrust investigation over its search service, an unrelated case that is more controversial and involves more active parties. The FTC may leave the search case to the European Commission while focusing on resolving the patent case.

Technology changes year to year, phone to phone, quarter to quarter. Here at The Atlantic, we like to focus on how those changes happen, the ideas that animate them, the people that execute them, the users who transform them. The last year saw massive change in this broad definition of the technology landscape -- from how we elect presidents to how we fight wars, from how we keep in touch with friends to how we read in solitude.

This year wasn't like 2011 in which a few key stories dominated headlines from month to month; it was a year in which there could have been 20 stories on this list as the industry and its watchers groped for an organizing narrative beyond "the rise of social media," the arrival of tablets, and the dominance of Apple. So, we left out the well organized protests against SOPA/PIPA that kicked the year off and the ongoing patent wars that define which companies can make what products, but these themes below reflect our obsessions, the things we've been thinking about, and hearing about from you. They provide a guided tour to how people used technology in 2012, for good, for bad, and for profit.
Election 2012; Drones; Nostalgia; Unplugging; Augmented reality; Memes and GIFs; Privacy; Reading; Evolutionary gadgets; and The end of a web era.

Twitter let loose with its list of the top trending topics for 2012. Slicing its massive store of data several ways, the company has highlighted the most popular single tweets, trends across a number of topics and the biggest conversations of the year. The most retweeted message of the year — and in the history of the network — came from President Barack Obama, whose message “Four more years” accompanied by a picture of the first couple garnered 810,000 retweets. The second most-shared message came from Justin Bieber, who occupies the highest echelon of the Twitterati, as he mourned the loss of six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh to brain cancer. The Summer Olympics generated 150 million Tweets, spiking with 116,000 tweets per minute during the closing ceremonies. Usain Bolt gained the distinction of being the games’ most-discussed athlete. The U.S. election produced more than 31 million tweets on Election Day, and 10 million during the first presidential debate alone. The MTV Video Music Awards, Super Bowl, Euro 2012, Hurricane Sandy, UEFA Champions League Semi-Final and the death of Whitney Houston were also subjects of debate.