news.buyenne.com

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

The EU has demanded that Google make major concessions relating to its $2.1 billion acquisition of fitness-tracking company Fitbit if the deal is to be allowed to proceed imminently, according to people with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Since it was announced last November, the acquisition has faced steep opposition from consumer groups and regulators, who have raised concerns over the effect of Google’s access to Fitbit’s health data on competition.

EU regulators now want the company to pledge that it will not use that information to “further enhance its search advantage” and that it will grant third parties equal access to it, these people said.

We finally have the official full trailer for Bill and Ted Face the Music, courtesy of Orion Pictures, plus a new release date: September 1, 2020. And for those of us who are skeptical that the majority of theaters will have opened their doors by then, the studio will be releasing the film simultaneously on demand. That's most excellent news all around.

As we reported last month, in the original 1989 film, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are high school students in danger of flunking history. If that happens, Ted's father will ship him off to a military academy, thus breaking up their band, Wyld Stallyns. But the band is destined to usher in a future utopia, which is now threatened. With the help of a time machine in the form of a phone booth—provided by Rufus (George Carlin), a messenger from the year 2688—the pair travels through history, meeting Socrates, Billy the Kid, Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, and Abraham Lincoln, among others.

The movie was a surprise hit, grossing $40.5 million against its modest $6.5 million budget. So naturally it spawned a sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991), in which the boys must defeat their evil robot doubles from the future to preserve the utopian society based on their ideals. Among the highlights: Bill and Ted must play a game against Death in order to free their souls and return to Earth to win the Battle of the Bands. It's a clear nod to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) where a man plays a game of chess in hopes of defeating Death. Bill and Ted challenge the Grim Reaper to Battleship, Clue, and Twister, easily winning every time.

Enlarge (credit: Arm)

Hey, you! Do you want to control the future of basically every mobile device on Earth, and even some laptops and desktops? Have I got a deal for you! ARM Limited is for sale, the company in charge of the ubiquitous ARM CPU architecture that powers the majority of devices that run on a battery. It will only cost a few tens of billions of dollars. Bloomberg has two reports on the matter, one stating that Nvidia is interested in buying ARM and another saying that Apple isn't.

ARM is currently owned by SoftBank group, a giant Japanese holding company previously featured on Ars for buying Boston Dynamics, buying Sprint, and buying stakes in Uber and GM's Cruise. SoftBank bought ARM for $32 billion in 2016, and since then, ARM has only gotten more powerful. ARM doesn't manufacture chips; instead, it sells IP based on the ARM CPU architecture in the form of its in-house Cortex CPU designs or licenses to design whatever you want using ARM's instruction set.

In 2016, SoftBank described ARM as its prized possession, with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son describing it as “the center of the center of SoftBank.” In the coronavirus era, SoftBank has been hit hard by the tanking valuations of Uber and WeWork, along with the bankruptcy of OneWeb, and now it's willing to sell ARM to raise money.

• 

  Master Chief is back, alongside the man who saved his life.

As the not-quite-E3 season of sizzle video trailers comes to a close, Microsoft unveiled its biggest show of first-party force for its upcoming Xbox Series X console on Thursday. Hype began building for this one as soon as Microsoft confirmed plans to reveal Halo Infinite campaign gameplay, but the story was just as much about which new and familiar game series did (and didn't) show up alongside Master Chief.

The event wasted no time with all things Halo, complete with a voiceover from the popular character Cortana narrating the recontsructing of the Master Chief armor set: "Liquid crystal cannot rise on its own." Shortly after, we see Chief in a spaceship, piloted by the man who discovered Chief in last year's cinematic trailer, as they argue about what to do next. "You'd still be out there if it wasn't for me," the man says. "I thought I was going home."

"There won't be a home if we don't stop the Banished," Chief replies. This detail is the first potential confirmation that a 4chan leak from last night was actually accurate, and second indication came shortly after, once the reveal switched to live gameplay—and Chief is seen brandishing a grappling hook, which he uses to hook to a foe from a distance, zip directly into its face, and smack it with his fist. We also get a first glimpse ever at a Halo game with a built-in map, complete with marked mission locations—proving out years of rumors that Halo Infinite is likely an open-world adventure in the Halo-verse.

Enlarge

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a nice discount on Bose's Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, which are down to $299 on Amazon. The deal only applies to the white "Soapstone" model, but the deal matches the lowest price we've seen for the wireless noise-cancelling headphones to date. This discount is $100 off Bose's MSRP and about $80 off the device's typical street price online.

While we haven't formally reviewed the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 on the site, we have tested them for various gift guides over the past year. Generally speaking, they're a strong option for those in the market for a premium pair of wireless noise-cancelling headphones. Their metal design has a higher-end feel than competing pairs like Sony's WH-1000XM3 or Bose's own QuietComfort 35 II, and while they're slightly heavier on the head as a result, the ample padding on their ear cups and headband keeps them comfortable to wear for longer periods. In terms of audio quality, they have a more bass-forward sound than the more neutral QuietComfort 35 II, which results in a bit less treble detail but still sounds sufficiently "fun" for those who like punchy bass. They also average around 20 hours of battery life.

As is typical of Bose headphones, the quality of the active noise cancellation here is excellent. Though they're slightly less powerful than the WH-1000XM3 in raw measurements, they're still more than capable of muting ambient sounds and low-end droning. And unlike Sony's pair, the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 give you the ability to customize the strength of their noise cancelling effect on a 10-point scale, so if you only want to partially tone down outside noise, you can.