Consumers may begin to have a choice when it comes to set-top boxes. “The Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan Wednesday that aims to break the cable industry’s strangle­hold on the market for set-top boxes, potentially paving the way for a new generation of devices that could allow viewers to easily switch back and forth between TV channels and online services like Netflix,” writes Brendan Sasso in National Journal.

New York Times technology columnist Nick Bilton was spied on by a drone while writing about drone-related altercations between neighbors. “I looked up, and hovering 20 feet from my window was a black drone with a beady-eyed camera pointed at me,” he writes. The law, he adds, has not caught up with the technology, but Congress is working a bill to regulate recreational drones, which is expected to address privacy.

Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and University of Iowa scientists have used CRISPR to repair a genetic mutation responsible for retinitis pigmentosa (RP), an inherited condition that causes the retina to degrade and leads to blindness in at least 1.5 million cases worldwide. The study was published in Scientific Reports. “Our vision is to develop a personalized approach to treating eye disease,” said Stephen Tsang, MD, PhD, the László Z. Bitó Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and associate professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at CUMC, and one of the study’s senior authors.