AT&T has struck a deal to buy Time Warner in an acquisition valued at more than $80 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed people familiar with the plans. The two companies’ boards are meeting Saturday to approve the half-cash, half-stock deal, and an official announcement could come as early as Saturday …

I mention it in nearly every headphone review, something along the lines of, “The Reference 1000 was easy to drive, but the Reference 2000 was hard to drive.” What’s up with that, and what does “easy or hard to drive” mean to prospective headphone buyers? Simply this: if you’re using a smartphone or portable music player, a hard to drive …

Audiophile digital converters have come a long way, they used to just be converters, but the Arcam irDAC-II not only transforms your music’s digital bits into analog signals with utmost care, it can also serve as a digital preamp, and a headphone amp. I assume most buyers will either use the Arcam irDAC-II with a set of desktop powered speakers, …

Now playing: Watch this: Pixel XL vs. iPhone 7 Plus: Battle of the cameras 2:41 Before you can begin taking stellar photos with your new Google Pixel ($75 at Amazon), you need to learn a thing or two about the camera app itself. For those who’ve used Google’s Camera app previously, you’ll feel right at home with a few minor …

Now playing: Watch this: The Internet is having a bad day after massive cyberattack 1:27 Across the US on Friday, people screamed at their phones and computers and went a little crazy trying to figure out which of their favorite websites were still working. At 7 a.m. local time, folks on the East Coast discovered that sites like Twitter, Spotify, …

So you decided to save money and get the 32GB version of the iPhone 7 (instead of 128GB or that 256GB monster) and now you’re wondering if you’re on the short end of the performance stick. Well, technically, you are. Lower-capacity storage chips tend to perform slightly slower than higher-capacity ones. It has to do with the number of parallel …

Now playing: Watch this: Google Pixel unboxing 2:38 Google‘s Pixel phone ($695 at Amazon) ships with a new Night Light mode, similar to Night Shift on iOS devices. When enabled, either mode will change the tint of your device’s display in an attempt to eliminate eye strain as bedtime nears. The idea is that you’ll have an easier time falling …

Now playing: Watch this: Google Pixel reviews are in and new Macs are incoming 1:12 No matter how much storage your Pixel phone ($695 at Amazon) has, odds are you’ll eventually have to free up storage space on your device. It’s never fun to have to pick through apps or photos and videos to decide what stays and what goes, …

Maybe AT&T can offer a free HBO Now subscription to every wireless customer. That might help reverse the company’s flagging growth in its core wireless phone business, as illustrated in its third-quarter results (PDF). They were released shortly after AT&T confirmed it would purchase media company Time Warner for $85.4 billion. Perhaps Time Warner will put a spring in AT&T’s …

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 has one more transportation agency against it. Amtrak announced on Twitter that it is prohibiting passengers from bringing the beleaguered smartphone onto its trains, joining the FAA in banning the device from planes. An Amtrak spokesperson told CNET this: “The safety of our passengers and employees is paramount. Effective immediately, Samsung Galaxy Note 7 cell phones …