Apple appears to have taken its most aggressive step yet to warn its retail employees against unionizing. According to Bloomberg, the company recently held meetings at all of its roughly 270 stores across the United States. The tone of the gatherings was “consistent” across Apple’s retail footprint. Managers reportedly opened with a prepared statement from corporate leadership before turning to the state of union negotiations in Towson, Maryland, the location of the company’s first unionized store in the US.

According to Bloomberg, Apple management cast the election at Towson, and the slow progress workers at the store have made toward securing a collective bargaining agreement “as a bit of a cautionary tale.” Managers leaned on talking points that criticized union dues and the unionization process, including the collection of authorization cards. “While Apple didn’t say it, the underlying message to the company’s tens of thousands of retail employees: if your store unionizes, you may be at a disadvantage,” according to Bloomberg.

Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union that represents workers at the company’s Townson Town Center location in Maryland, said it would share a statement on Monday.

Bloomberg suggests some employees saw the meetings as a “scare tactic” and an attempt to “pour cold water on the idea” of unionization. Last May, Apple Store employees in Atlanta accused the company of subjecting them to anti-union captive audience meetings. For decades, companies were allowed to hold such gatherings until 24 hours before a union election begins. In 2022, however, National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo claimed captive audience meetings were a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

"Forcing employees to listen to such employer speech under threat of discipline — directly leveraging the employees’ dependence on their jobs — plainly chills employees’ protected right to refrain from listening to this speech," Abruzzo wrote last April. At the end of the year, the agency found had Apple violated federal law with its efforts to discourage workers at its Cumberland Mall store in Atlanta from unionizing.

Tesla is building a new battery factory in Shanghai. On Sunday, the automaker announced it would start construction on a new Megapack facility later this year. Once the plant is complete sometime before the second half of 2024, it will be capable of producing 10,000 Megapacks annually. Each container-sized battery can store enough energy to power about 3,600 homes for one hour. Tesla told Bloomberg it plans to sell the Megapacks it makes in China globally. The company has built Megapack installations in a few locations around the world, including Texas and South Australia.

Sunday’s announcement sees Tesla increasing its reliance on China at a time when the US is using economic policy to push automakers and other manufacturers to produce more of their products domestically. At the end of last month, the Treasury Department issued updated guidance detailing what electric vehicles qualify for the Inflation Reduction Act’s $7,500 EV tax credit. Under the updated rules, the department states companies must source the minerals in their car batteries from the US and other approved trading partners for the vehicles to qualify for the incentive. Separately, the Biden administration recently said CHIPS Act funding recipients would need to sign agreements promising they won’t expand production capacity in China.

In a reversal of a limitation the platform put in place earlier in the week, Twitter is once again allowing users to interact with Substack links freely. At least for the time being, you can retweet, reply to and like posts that feature a link to a Substack newsletter. The platform also won’t issue a safety warning if you click those links. However, as of the writing of this article, searching for “substack” still produces results involving the word “newsletter.”

“We’re glad to see that the suppression of Substack publications on Twitter appears to be over,” Substack tweeted late Saturday evening. “This is the right move for writers, who deserve the freedom to share their work.”

Twitter began throttling Substack links mere days after the company announced Substack Notes, a feature that adds a Twitter-like feed to the newsletter platform. When Elon Musk eventually addressed the situation, he claimed Substack was “trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone,” an assertion Chris Best, the CEO of Substrack, strongly denied. “None of this is true,” he said in a Notes post shared with The Verge. “This is very frustrating. It’s one thing to mess with Substack, but quite another to treat writers this way.” Among other outcomes, Musk’s decision to limit access to Substack led to a feud with Matt Taibbi, the journalist who worked on the so-called “Twitter Files.” On Friday afternoon, Taibbi said he was quitting Twitter over the restrictions.

For it is worth, this week’s episode doesn’t seem to have convinced Substack to alter its plans around Notes. “We look forward to making Substack Notes available soon,” the company said. “But we expect it to be a new kind of place within a subscription network, not a replacement for existing social networks.”

Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts have shared one final look at Star Wars Jedi: Survivor ahead of the game’s release later this month. Released on Sunday during Disney’s ongoing Star Wars Celebration event in London, the clip offers a mix of story and gameplay highlights. Specifically, you can see protagonist Cal Kestis use his new crossguard lightsaber in combat, and join forces with a few non-playable companions, including Merrin from Jedi: Fallen Order, to take out a KX-series security droid. I won’t spoil the best part of the trailer, but I will mention it involves a speeder bike. If you want to go into the game blind, note that the trailer points at a few story beats – though Respawn suggests “not all images appear in-game.”

I got a chance to preview Jedi: Survivor at the end of last month. The game feels like a better, more polished version of Jedi: Fallen Order, with more things for the player to do and discover. If you’re a fan of the first game, or Star Wars more generally, I suspect you’ll want to check the game out. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor arrives on April 28th on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Twitter has removed a label that designated NPR as a “US state-affiliated” media outlet mere days after first applying the label earlier this week. As of Saturday, the company now lists the public broadcaster as a “government funded” organization. NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn was the first to report on the change. He said Elon Musk told him Twitter would apply the “government funded” designation to other institutions in the coming days. “Tesla, which has received billions of dollars in government subsidies over the years, does not appear to have the label,” Allyn added.

The main NPR account has not tweeted since Twitter first applied the state-affiliated label on Wednesday. After NPR CEO John Lansing issued a statement pointing out that the “state-affiliate” did not apply to the public broadcaster under Twitter’s own guidelines, the company changed those guidelines. "State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media," the page said before Tuesday. By Wednesday, the company had removed the section of text that had referenced NPR. According to NPR, less than one percent of its annual operating budget comes from government grants. Over the last five years, the majority of the non-profit’s revenue, about 70 percent, has come from corporate sponsorships and programming fees.

Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi is heading back to theaters. At its Star Wars Celebrations event in London, Disney announced today it would rerelease the classic film in cinemas in the US, UK and other parts of the world on April 28th. The theatrical rerun will give Star Wars fans the chance to celebrate the movie ahead of its 40th anniversary on May 25th.

Return of the Jedi won’t be the first time Disney has brought an old Star Wars film to theaters. Last year saw the brief return of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to the silver screen in anticipation of the debut of Andor on Disney+. In 2020, it was also possible to see The Empire Strikes Back in theaters in between Covid-19 lockdowns. Looking to the future, fans can look forward to three new Star Wars films, one of which will feature the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey.

Separately, Disney announced on Saturday that a new season of Tales of the Jedi is in production. Creator Dave Filoni shared the news during a Star Wars Celebrations panel dedicated to The Clone War. “Tales of the Jedi was so fun the first time, I decided to do some more,” he told event attendees. Filoni didn't say when the new season would debut, but between all the new live-action series coming to Disney+ over the next year-and-a-half, there won’t be a dearth of Star Wars content anytime soon.

Joseph Staten, one of the creatives most closely associated with the Halo franchise, is leaving Microsoft. News of the departure was first reported on Friday by IGN. “We’re grateful for Joseph’s contributions to the Halo franchise and Xbox as a whole," Microsoft told the outlet. “We wish him all the best in his new adventure.” Staten later confirmed the news that same day. "Hey folks, I am indeed leaving Microsoft,” he said on Twitter. “I'll have more info to share soon, but for now, I'd just like to thank all my Xbox colleagues for all their understanding and support as I embark on a new adventure."

Staten was a writer and director of cinematics for Bungie’s first three Halo games and later served as a co-creative director for Destiny. He left the studio in 2013 and joined Microsoft the following year as a senior creative director on the Xbox Games Studios team. In 2020, he moved over to 343 Industries to help the studio complete work on Halo Infinite. Staten’s departure from Microsoft comes following months of uncertainty around 343 and the future of Halo. In January, the company reassigned Staten to its Xbox publishing division at the same time that it “cut at least” 95 jobs at the studio. Later that same month, Bloomberg reported the studio was “starting from scratch” on a new Halo game following its struggle to maintain interest in Infinite. 

SpaceX could conduct Starship’s first orbital flight test as early as the week after next. On Thursday, the private space firm tweeted new photos of the super heavy-lift rocket at its Boca Chica facility in Texas. “Starship fully stacked at Starbase,” SpaceX said of the images. “Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week followed by Starship’s first integrated flight test ~week later pending regulatory approval.” That same day, SpaceX owner Elon Musk offered an even more aggressive timeline. “Starship is stacked & ready to launch next week, pending regulatory approval,” he said on Twitter.

The date of Starship’s first orbital flight has been a moving target for nearly two years. At the start of February, a week after SpaceX successfully carried out the rocket’s first-ever stacked fueling test, Musk said the company would attempt to launch Starship in March if its remaining tests went well. Days later, SpaceX attempted to static fire all of the vehicle’s 33 first-stage Raptor engines, something it had not tried to do before. The trial was a critical step toward Starship’s first orbital flight, though the rocket didn’t exactly ace the test, with two engines failing before the end of the firing.

Still, the timeline Musk shared this week may be overly optimistic. According to Space.com, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) set a provisional April 17th launch window for Starship. However, the outlet reports the FAA has yet to grant SpaceX a launch license for the rocket, something it will need to do before Starship can legally fly.

If you missed the chance to buy the PlayStation 5 God of War: Ragnarok bundle when it was $50 off last month, now you have another opportunity to do so. Amazon is again offering the bundle for $509, down from $560. With the discount, you’re effectively getting God of War: Ragnarok for $10 since the disc variant of the PS5 will set you back $499 on its own.

Before this year, Sony’s latest console was notoriously tricky to find in stores and online due to pandemic-related supply shortages. That meant the console rarely went on sale, so while $50 off is not much of a discount, it is an all-time low price for the disc version of the PS5. The fact you get God of War: Ragnarok, one of the PlayStation 5’s best games, in the bundle makes this an even better deal. Now is also the perfect time to play the game. Sony’s Santa Monica Studio recently released a hefty update for Ragnarok that added an NG+ mode, alongside new armor and enhancements for players to collect.

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Spotify is shutting down Spotify Live, the company told Music Ally on Monday. Previously known as Spotify Greenroom, the standalone live audio app came out of Spotify’s $62 million acquisition of Betty Labs in 2021. Shortly after the deal went through, Spotify rebranded the startup’s Locker Room app to Spotify Greenroom, and expanded the scope of the experience to include topics outside of sports. Then, almost exactly a year ago, the streaming giant renamed the platform yet again and integrated some of its functionality into the main Spotify app.

“After a period of experimentation and learnings around how Spotify users interact with live audio, we’ve made the decision to sunset the Spotify Live app,” a Spotify spokesperson told Music Ally. “We believe there is a future for live fan-creator interactions in the Spotify ecosystem; however, based on our learnings, it no longer makes sense as a standalone app. We have seen promising results in the artist-focused use case of ‘listening parties,’ which we will continue to explore moving forward to facilitate live interactions between artists and fans.”

Spotify did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. However, the company shared confirmation of the impending shutdown with TechCrunch. When Spotify first announced it was moving into live audio at the height of the medium in 2021, CEO Daniel Ek predicted the format would become ubiquitous. "Just like Stories with video where every major platform has them as one way for its audience to communicate with each other, I see live audio similarly," he said at the time. "I expect all the platforms to have it."

However, at the end of last year, the company canceled a host of live audio shows, signaling a scaling back of its previous ambitions. It’s worth noting Spotify is not the only company to pull back from the format. Last May, Facebook parent company meta announced it was shutting down a host of audio products, including Soundbites, the short-form audio-sharing tool it introduced in 2021.