If you're looking to zhush up your workspace or gaming setup, or you simply need more screen real estate to help you get things done, you may want to consider picking up a Samsung Smart Monitor, as several models are currently on sale. Take, for instance, the 43-inch M70B. It's a 4K monitor with a 60Hz refresh rate that is currently available for $380. That's $120 off the regular price, and the lowest we've seen this monitor dip to since last year's holiday season.

The M70B can help you to get some work done without having to hook it up to a PC. You can use it to connect to a computer remotely, access the Microsoft 365 suite directly and link to a Samsung mobile device to use the Samsung DeX productivity experience. You can connect a SlimFit camera to use video calling apps such as Google Duo. The camera has a privacy cover and you can always disconnect it.

When you're done with work, you can kick back, relax and watch your favorite shows and movies via streaming apps. You'll be able to access free streaming channels through Samsung TV Plus and get personalized recommendations. You can stream games from the likes of Microsoft Cloud Gaming, NVIDIA GeForce Now and Amazon Luna as well, as it's possible to connect a wireless controller to your TV.

On top of all of that, you can use the M70B to control smart home devices. There's support for the Bixby and Amazon Alexa voice assistants, as well as AirPlay.

The sale includes deals on several other Samsung displays, including some Odyssey gaming monitors. The 32-inch Odyssey Neo G8 is a curved, 240Hz, 4K monitor with G-Sync and FreeSync Premium Pro support. It has a resolution of 3840 x 2160 and latency as low as 1ms. The Neo G8 is available right now for $1,200, or 20 percent off the regular price of $1,500.

Elsewhere, you can snap up the Odyssey G51C for $270. That's 23 percent off the typical price of $350. This is a 27-inch, QHD display with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 and a 1ms response time. There's FreeSync Premium support to minimize screen tearing as well.

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On Thursday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said he had appointed someone to take over from him as CEO, and it didn't take long for that person's identity to be confirmed. Less than a day later, Musk confirmed that NBCUniversal's head of ad sales Linda Yaccarino is taking on the job. Yaccarino is expected to start her new role in around six weeks.

Yaccarino "will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design and new technology," Musk wrote. "Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app."

Shortly after Musk said he is giving up the CEO gig to become Twitter's chief technical officer and executive chair, reports suggested that Yaccarino was in talks for the position. On Friday, NBCU confirmed that Yaccarino was leaving the company. That's not exactly ideal timing for NBCU given that the company is set to show off its upcoming programming slate to advertisers early next week. 

Under Yaccarino's watch, NBCU has continued its close ties with Twitter. The two sides recently expanded their partnership for the 2024 Olympic Games, which will see Twitter host video from the event. Yaccarino tweeted at Musk around the time news emerged of the companies' renewed partnership. "“Hey, @elonmusk, here’s an idea for our new partnership: Periscope for Paris 2024. Let’s just go hi-res first," Yaccarino wrote.

Yaccarino could help Twitter to smooth over its fractured relationships with some advertisers. In the months after Musk assumed control of Twitter, reports suggested that many of the company's top advertisers had temporarily stopped spending ad dollars on the platform. Some were said to have expressed concern about their ads appearing next to hate speech and misinformation under Musk's looser approach to content moderation.

Musk bought Twitter in October and his tenure has been chaotic, to say the least. From swiftly firing the former leadership team and laying off thousands of workers to moving forward with a plan to purge inactive accounts (including those of the deceased), it seems like barely a day has gone by over the last seven months without something happening around Elon Musk and Twitter.

Back in December, Musk posted a poll on Twitter, asking users if he should remain as CEO or bring someone else in. More than 17.5 million votes later, the majority (57.5 percent) voted in favor of Musk stepping down. Musk promised to do just that and focus on the technical side of Twitter's operations as soon as he could find someone to take over. Five months later, it seems he has stuck by his word.

Shortly after Musk said he is stepping away from Twitter's top job, Tesla's share price jumped up. With Tesla falling behind on its goal of delivering 1.8 million vehicles this year despite a litany of price cuts, and the Cybertruck perhaps being pushed back again due to a battery production delay, Musk may need to pay closer attention to that company. Stockholders appear to be pleased that he may be able to devote more time to Tesla — but rumors suggest he might be moving on from the CEO position at that company too.

Electric vehicle brand Polestar plans to reduce its headcount by 10 percent as part of an effort to cut costs. It will also institute a global hiring freeze and it has trimmed production guidance for 2023. Polestar now expects to produce between 60,000 and 70,000 vehicles this year, down from the previous figure of 80,000.

The brand cited a delayed start to production of the Polestar 3 and "the economic environment affecting the automotive industry" as key reasons for the changes. The electric SUV is now expected to enter production in early 2024.

Polestar says Volvo (which, as Autoblog notes, is Polestar's vehicle producer and largest shareholder) needs more time for software development and testing of the new electric platform. Volvo has delayed the start of production of the EX90 for the same reason. Production is slated to start in the first half of next year.

There are no changes to the Polestar 4 schedule as things stand. Polestar expects to start production of that EV for China in the fourth quarter of this year and in early 2024 for other markets.

Polestar said in its latest earnings report that it delivered 12,076 cars in the first three months of 2023, an increase of 26 percent from a year earlier. More than 100,000 of the brand's cars are now out in the wild. Polestar's revenue rose to $546 million, up from $452.2 million a year earlier, while the net loss for the quarter was $9 million, compared with $274.5 million in Q1 2022.

There's enough cash in the kitty for Polestar to make it through this year, the company previously said. It received a $1.6 billion injection from Volvo and fellow major shareholder PSD Investment in November. Polestar had $884.3 million cash on hand as of March 31st, though it expects to need more funding over the next few years.

Other nascent EV players have also been struggling to manage their expenses. Last month, Lucid said it would lay off 1,300 workers to cut costs, accounting for 18 percent of the total workforce. Rivian has also laid off more than 1,000 workers since last summer.

Peloton has had a rough couple of years after pandemic restrictions lifted and people returned to working out at the gym and outside. Now, the company has suffered yet another body blow. A voluntary recall has been issued for 2.2 million Peloton Bikes sold in the US between January 2018 and this month because of seat post safety concerns. "The original Peloton Bike seat post can break unexpectedly during use, creating a potential fall and injury risk," Peloton said in a statement. 

A recall notice on the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) website urges consumers to "immediately stop using the recalled exercise bikes and contact Peloton for a free repair." However, Peloton won't have to eat the cost of returning millions of bikes to its facilities and sending them back out to customers after repairs. The company will send out a free seat post that consumers can install by themselves.

According to the CPSC, there have been 35 reported instances of the seat post breaking and detaching from the Bike during use, causing users to fall in some cases. Those incidents resulted in 13 reports of injuries, including a fractured wrist, lacerations and bruises.

This is not the first time that there have been reports of injuries related to Peloton products. Earlier this year, the company agreed to pay $19 million to settle CPSC charges that it didn't immediately disclose reports of people, pets and objects being pulled under the rear of the Tread+. The CPSC said that by the time it received a report from Peloton about such issues, there had been more than 150 such incidents, one of which resulted in a child's death. Other people sustained injuries including broken bones, lacerations, abrasions and friction burns.

The settlement and Bike recall come after a brutal 2022 for Peloton, in which the company laid off thousands of workers. It tried other tactics to cut costs and increase revenue, including a switch to third-party manufacturing and adjusting prices of its products. However, the company posted a larger loss than expected in its most recent earnings report.

Google Stadia may be gone for good, but one of the game streaming service's few exclusives will soon return from the ether. As promised, Gylt, the very first Stadia exclusive, is coming to Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series and Xbox One. It'll hit those platforms on July 6th.

Gylt is a third-person survival horror game from Rime studio Tequila Works. You play as Sally, who has to sneak around her gloomy town and the dark corridors of her school while evading monsters and looking for her missing cousin. I played a few hours of Gylt on Stadia and enjoyed my time with it. Gylt might be a bit too scary for younger kids and it may not be a great fit for those looking for more depth in terms of gameplay mechanics. However, the solid blend of puzzle solving and spooky setting could make Gylt a decent entry point into horror titles for tweens.

Folks looking for more sci-fi to sink their teeth into on Apple TV+ after getting hooked on Silo won’t have too much longer to wait. The streaming service has revealed that the second season of Foundation will premiere on July 14th. The show, which is based on a series of Isaac Asimov novels, will return with one episode on that day, and more will follow on a weekly basis.

The season runs for 10 episodes and it's set over a century after the first season's finale. It features "a vengeful queen" who aims to destroy the Galactic Empire from within, Apple said. The Foundation, meanwhile, has moved into its religious phase. It's promoting the Church of Seldon throughout the Outer Reach and bringing about the second crisis — in other words, war with the Empire. Alongside the release date, Apple TV+ has released another visually dazzling trailer:

AI-generated music has been in the spotlight lately, between a track that seemingly featured vocals from Drake and The Weeknd gaining traction to Spotify reportedly removing thousands of songs over concerns that people were using them to game the system. Now, Google is wading further into that space as the company is opening up access to its text-to-music AI, which is called MusicLM.

Google detailed the system back in January when it published research on MusicLM. At the time, the company said it didn't have any plans to offer the public access to MusicLM due to ethical concerns related to copyrighted material, some of which the AI copied directly into the songs it generated. 

The generative AI landscape has shifted dramatically this year, however, and now Google feels comfortable enough to let the public try MusicLM. "We’ve been working with musicians like Dan Deacon and hosting workshops to see how this technology can empower the creative process," Google Research product manager Hema Manickavasagam and Google Labs product manager Kristin Yim wrote in a blog post. 

As TechCrunch points out, the current public version of MusicLM doesn't allow users to generate music with specific artists or vocals. That could help Google to avoid copyright issues and stop users from generating fake "unreleased songs" from popular artists and selling them for thousands of dollars.

You can now sign up to try MusicLM through AI Test Kitchen on the web, Android and iOS. Google suggests that you can try prompts based on mood, genre and instruments, such as “soulful jazz for a dinner party” or "two nylon string guitars playing in flamenco style." The experimental AI will generate two tracks and you can identify your favorite by selecting a trophy icon. Google says doing so will help it to improve the model.

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2023 right here.

Google Maps is expanding the Immersive View format it revealed last year to an important part of the app: routes. When you look for directions in Google Maps on iOS and Android in select cities, you'll see a more detailed view of the route.

The feature isn't just about making your journey look nicer than a bold line tracing the steps from point A to B (and maybe C). The idea is to bring all of the key information that you may need about the trip into a single place. You'll see details on traffic, weather, air quality, bike lanes and where to find nearby parking.

If you're planning a journey ahead of time and the weather is expected to be foggy or rainy, you'll see that in the visualization. Google is also using a blend of AI, real-time data and long-term trends to give you a sense of how busy traffic might be by displaying a certain number of vehicles on the virtual roads.

Ahead of Google I/O, Miriam Daniel, the vice-president of Google Maps Experiences, told Engadget that the team was focusing on the above-ground parts of the journey for now. So, don't expect the visualizations to include your subway trips quite yet. Still, given that Google Maps users look up around 20 billion kilometers' worth of directions per day, Immersive View for Routes could come in handy for many folks.

Google plans to roll out Immersive View for Routes in 15 cities by the end of the year. In the coming months, you'll be able to check it out in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dublin, Florence, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Paris, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Tokyo and Venice.

Immersive View uses AI and computer vision to blend together billions of aerial and Street View images to create 3D models of spaces. Google announced the feature at I/O last year and started rolling it out more broadly in February.

Elsewhere, Google has some Maps-related updates for developers (I/O is the company's annual developer conference, after all). The Google Maps Platform is offering a preview of an Aerial View API for locations in the US starting today. Developers can use this to add "a pre-packaged, birds-eye view video" of a location to their apps or websites. Some of Google's partners are testing out the API, including Rent, which is using it to offer potential renters a more expansive look at a property and the surrounding area. That could give folks a clearer idea of the location where they may end up living before they visit an apartment in person.

Meanwhile, Google is adding Photorealistic 3D Tiles to the Map Tiles API on an experimental basis starting today. This grants developers access to the high-resolution 3D imagery that powers Google Earth. It could make it easier for folks to create their own 3D maps. Google suggests that a tourism company might use the tiles to build interactive maps for guided tours or to show off the most striking features of a national park.

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2023 right here.

It’s Google I/O time, which means the company is about to host a keynote that will likely be packed with announcements and updates. We’ll be covering all the news on our liveblog and Google I/O 2023 hub, but you can watch the event in full below. The livestream starts at 1PM ET.

In terms of what to expect from the keynote, one thing that's for certain is we'll get more official details on Google's first foldable phone. The company finally announced the Pixel Fold last week after months of leaks and rumors. More information on Android 14 is also a dead cert. Get ready to hear the term "AI" a lot too, as Google is widely expected to make a ton of announcements on that front, perhaps including updates on its Bard AI chatbot.

Follow all of the news from Google I/O 2023 right here.

Spotify has reportedly pulled tens of thousands of tracks from generative AI company Boomy. It's said to have removed seven percent of the songs created by the startup's systems, which underscores the swift proliferation of AI-generated content on music streaming platforms.

Universal Music reportedly told Spotify and other major services that it detected suspicious streaming activity on Boomy's songs. In other words, there were suspicions that bots were being used to boost listener figures and generate ill-gotten revenue for uploaders. Spotify pays royalties to artists and rights holders on a per-listen basis.

“Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service,” Spotify, which confirmed that it had taken down some Boomy tracks, told Insider. "When we identify or are alerted to potential cases of stream manipulation, we mitigate their impact by taking action that may include the removal of streaming numbers and the withholding of royalties. This allows us to protect royalty payouts for honest, hardworking artists."

Universal Music's chief digital officer Michael Nash told the Financial Times, which first reported on Spotify removing Boomy's tracks, that his company is "always encouraged when we see our partners exercise vigilance around the monitoring or activity on their platforms."

AI-generated music hit the headlines last month after a song that appeared to include vocals from Drake and The Weeknd went viral. Universal Music Group, which represents both artists, claimed that using the duo's voices to train generative AI systems constituted “a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law." Both Spotify and Apple Music removed the song from their libraries.

Music industry figures have been sounding the alarm bells about the overarching impact of AI-generated tracks, as well as people using bots to drive up listener figures and siphon money out of the kitties that streaming services use to pay royalties.

Boomy, which opened its doors in 2021, enables people to generate songs based on text inputs. Over the weekend, the company said that "curated delivery to Spotify of new releases by Boomy artists has been re-enabled."

Boomy says its users "have created 14,554,448 songs" or just under 14 percent of "the world's recorded music." Its website states that users can create original songs in seconds, then upload them "to streaming platforms and get paid when people listen."