Putting aside the fact that headlines are usually chosen by editors, not writers – this is where it comes up in the article itself:
> When the stock market was sky-high in January [...] Palihapitiya was tweeting, “Tell me what to buy tomorrow and if you convince me I’ll throw a few 100 k’s at it to start. Ride or die.” [...]
> Such peacocking, [financial historian Irene] Finel-Honigman told me, is fun to watch and potentially useful: “These kinds of scam artists are really important, because, though maybe they go too far, they’re the ones who convince everyone else to start paying attention. They’re Pied Pipers. They notice things other people miss.” Then, as these fanciful tales are replaced with legal fine print, living happily ever after becomes having a 401(k).
The deal has been announced but it hasn't actually been completed yet. Though obviously the layoffs are part of the process before the sale is final.
News reports very frequently treat deals that have been announced as complete long before they are finalized, even if government approval is not guaranteed (e.g., some of the early coverage of the proposed Comcast-TWC merger said "Comcast has bought...").
Some of the nuance has been lost in the media coverage. The National Geographic Society will still exist as a non-profit, but it is selling control of its media assets to Fox (and presumably would use the proceeds to fund its remaining charitable work).
Per the USPTO trademark database (on mobile so can't readily link), FiftyThree has a trademark on "Pencil by FiftyThree", not on "Pencil". Moreover the trademark they do have specifically disclaims exclusive rights to the word "pencil" by itself. (IANAL but typically USPTO will ask for these sorts of disclaimers if part of the trademark is deemed generic/descriptive.)
Similarly Apple's product is officially named "Apple Pencil".
U.S. cable/satellite-only channels like Fox News do not have FCC licenses. There may be a few general regulations they have to abide by – things like closed captioning – but they do not have to answer directly to the FCC (unlike local broadcast stations).
Theoretically the Federal _Trade_ Commission could go after them if they had proof they were advertising falsely, though I think people have tried to bring complaints in the past along those lines and failed.
Yeah, they really should have just looked at rebranding. A few Instagram-related services (e.g. Webstagram, Statigram) had to do so recently, IIRC, and I don't think they're significantly worse off.
Thing is, even if Twitter tacitly condoned it for years, the name "TwitPic" is pretty obviously derived from "Twitter" and is trading on their (Twitter Inc.'s) reputation. Even their logo is styled similarly to the old Twitter wordmark. The blog post didn't even say Twitter wanted to force them to stop using the name, only that they shouldn't attempt to register a confusingly-similar trademark (though granted, forcing a rebrand might well have been the next step).
It's worth remembering that Time Warner is much smaller than it used to be – it has sold off or spun off AOL, Warner Music, Warner Books, TWC, and even Time Inc. in the past few yesrs.
Even then, the size and scope of a combined Fox / Time Warner in the movie/TV market alone would be ludicrous. Even if Fox sold off CNN as they're proposing, they'd own two of the six major movie studios, the Fox broadcast network, HBO, many of the top-rated cable channels (Fox News, FX, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network / Adult Swim), and plenty of other stuff, and that's just in the U.S.
You may be working with outdated information. The separate publicly-traded "AT&T Wireless" company disappeared in 2004, and its successor has been wholly-owned by AT&T Inc. since late 2006.
Meanwhile, Verizon Communications has always been the majority shareholder in Verizon Wireless, and sole owner since February.
Whatever separation there may still be between these operations in the corporate structure (e.g. AT&T Inc. vs its subsidiary AT&T Mobility LLC) is only that - corporate structure. It does not ultimately change what each parent company owns / does.
It's an all-stock deal though. Comcast isn't actually paying any money (in fact I believe they still have a significant amount of debt from buying NBC), instead they're proposing giving TWC shareholders the equivalent of $45B in new Comcast shares in exchange for giving up their collective ownership of TWC.
But yeah, Comcast and TWC's recent lobbying efforts in general sound pretty suspect. Not defending that aspect by any means.
Well, they're still competing with your local telco (AT&T / Verizon), DirecTV, Dish Network, and Google Fiber and/or others in some areas. (Though granted some of those are TV-only, not Internet.)
Not really much different than how Comcast and TWC are individually competing right now (as their service areas don't overlap). Though I'm not suggesting either one is a shining paragon of customer service or fair pricing (I don't have any first-hand experience to speak of there; I'm in Canada).
Originally (and perhaps still in some specific areas), yes. Most regions have deregulated though, which is why FiOS, U-Verse and Google Fiber TV are able to exist.
But the infrastructure costs for Comcast to build out a brand new network in TWC territories (or vice-versa) on a mass scale would be pretty high.
It doesn't violate anti-trust laws to buy another company you do not compete with. And there are very few, if any, territories where Comcast and TWC directly compete at present – depending on where you live, you can subscribe to one or the other (or some other cable company), but not both.