A federal judge has denied Elon Musk’s request to move his upcoming trial against a group of Tesla shareholders to Texas, according to Bloomberg (via The Verge). On January 7th, less than two weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin on the 17th, Musk’s legal team asked to move proceedings out of California, claiming “a substantial portion” of the potential jury pool in San Francisco was likely to hold a bias against the billionaire, in part due to the ongoing layoffs at Twitter.

The upcoming civil trial stems from a class action lawsuit related to “false and misleading” statements Musk made in 2018 when he said he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. Musk’s “funding secured” tweet drew the attention of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, eventually leading to a $40 million settlement.

The shareholders involved in the suit allege Musk’s tweet affected Tesla’s stock price. They’re asking the court to order Musk to stop his “public campaign to present a contradictory and false narrative” of the episode. They say he should also be accountable for potential damages. The group won an early victory last spring when District Judge Edward Chen concluded Musk had “recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity.”

Of the approximately 200 candidates the court is considering for the jury, 82 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of Musk in a pre-trial questionnaire. Ahead of the hearing, Alex Spiro, Musk’s lawyer, said the sheet showed “not only that a vast majority of potential jurors hold ill-will toward Mr. Musk. but that they are not afraid to declare it proudly and vividly to the court.” However, Judge Chen didn’t buy Spiro’s argument. Alluding to the recently concluded Theranos trial, Chen said a fellow judge in a nearby courthouse was able to assemble an “unbiased” jury to decide whether Elizabeth Holmes was guilty of criminal charges. He also dismissed the idea of moving the case to Texas, noting Tesla’s main office was located in California when Tesla shareholders sued Musk.

Madden NFL 23 developer EA Sports says it will remove CPR touchdown celebrations from the game in light of Damar Hamlin’s recent light-threatening injury. Hamlin, a second-year safety with the Buffalo Bills, suffered an on-the-field cardiac arrest on January 2nd during a Monday Night Football match between the Bills and Cincinnati Bengals. Following a routine tackle of Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins, Hamlin collapsed to the ground. The incident saw the Bills’ medical team administer CPR to Hamlin, and an ambulance eventually transport him off the field to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for critical care.

“EA Sports is taking steps to remove the celebration from Madden NFL 23 via an update in the coming days,” a spokesperson for the studio told CBS Sports. Incidentally, the announcement comes just days after Pittsburg Steelers linebacker Alex Highsmith took part in a CPR celebration during his team’s Sunday win against the Cleveland Browns. The incident raised more than a few eyebrows on social media. “I just don't want people to think of me that way and think I was doing anything,” Highsmith said after the game, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Because I would never, ever, ever, ever want to do that intentionally, and I never ever would do that.” On Tuesday, Hamlin shared an update on his recovery, posting on Twitter that he was at Buffalo General Hospital and completing a series of tests to ensure his heart is okay.

Five years after debuting at CES 2018, Hyundai’s e-Corner technology is closer to reality. Following its most recent appearance at CES 2021, the system was on display at last week’s show. And this time around, rather than building a dedicated prototype to showcase the tech, the automaker’s Mobis arm instead integrated e-Corner into an Ioniq 5 EV.

As you can see from the video the Hyundai shared (via Autoblog), the module, much like the Hummer EV’s “CrabWalk” functionality, allows a car’s wheels to turn in ways they can’t in a vehicle with a traditional suspension system. Subsequently, that allows you to complete maneuvers you can’t in other vehicles. Parallel parking, for instance, is as easy as turning the wheels 90 degrees and driving the car horizontally. Less practical but just as cool, e-Corner also enables cars to move diagonally and rotate on the spot. It’s even possible to pull off a pivot turn.

It will likely be another few years before e-Corner modules start showing up in production vehicles. In 2021, Hyundai Mobis said it was planning to begin rolling out the technology in 2025. That said, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other automakers incorporate the technology into their cars since the division produces parts for other companies, not just Hyundai.

YouTube's long-awaited revenue-sharing program for Shorts creators is nearly ready. Starting today, the company is rolling out a new Partner Program agreement ahead of February 1st, when creators can begin earning ad share revenue on their Shorts views. Creators have until July 10th to accept YouTube's new Partner Program terms. As part of the change, the company is introducing new "Monetization Modules" to give creators more flexibility over how they earn money on YouTube — though the company recommends accepting all of them to unlock your full earning potential on the platform. As previously announced, creators with at least 1,000 subscribers and more than 10 million views on Shorts over a 90-day period can apply for the Partner Program. They then need to accept the new "Shorts Monetization Module."

With Shorts revenue sharing rolling out, YouTube notes its $100 million creator fund is going away. However, the company expects most fund recipients to earn more through revenue sharing than they did through the fund. The formula YouTube has devised for determining how much each creator will make for their Shorts is complicated due to the involvement of music licensing. As YouTube users watch Shorts, the company will display ads between clips in the Shorts Feed. YouTube says the money generated by those ads will go towards paying music licensing companies and creators through a shared pool the company will divvy out at the end of each month. How much money ends up going to the creator pool will depend on the number of musical tracks creators feature in their Shorts. If you upload a clip with no music, then all the revenue associated with that video will go toward the creator pool. Conversely, when it comes to a Short with a single song, one-third of the related revenue will go toward paying for licensing. In a Short with two songs, two-thirds will go toward licensing. 

Once that's all sorted out, YouTube will determine how to distribute the creator fund. The company will dole out the fund based on a creator's share of total Shorts views. So say your videos accounted for 5 percent of all eligible Shorts views in your country for the month of February, you would then get 5 percent of the money in the fund, whether you used licensed music in your Shorts or not. YouTube then takes its 55 percent revenue cut, leaving you with 45 percent of what's left. If your contribution to the Creator Pool was $1,000 one month, you would get $450 once everything is said and done.

The humble honeybee hasn’t had an easy go of things recently. Between climate change, habitat destruction, pesticide use and attrition from diseases, one of the planet’s most important pollinators has seen its numbers decline dramatically in recent years. All of that bodes poorly for us humans. In the US, honeybees are essential to about one-third of the fruit and produce Americans eat. But the good news is that a solution to one of the problems affecting honeybees is making its way to farmers.

This week, for the first time, the US Department of Agriculture granted conditional approval for an insect vaccine. A biotech firm named Dalan Animal Health recently developed a prophylactic vaccine to protect honeybees from American foulbrood disease. The drug contains dead Paenibacillus larvae, the bacteria that causes the illness.

Thankfully, the vaccine won’t require beekeepers to jab entire colonies of individual insects with the world’s smallest syringe. Instead, administering the drug involves mixing it in with the queen feed worker bees eat. The vaccine then makes its way into the “royal jelly” the drones feed their queen. Her offspring will then be born with some immunity against the harmful bacteria.

The treatment represents a breakthrough for a few reasons. As The New York Times explains, scientists previously thought it was impossible for insects to obtain immunity to diseases because they don’t produce antibodies like humans and animals. However, after identifying the protein that prompts an immune response in bees, researchers realized they could protect an entire hive through a single queen. The vaccine is also a far more humane treatment for American foulbrood. The disease can easily wipe out colonies of 60,000 bees at once, and it often leaves beekeepers with one choice: burn the infected hives to save what they can.

Dr. Annette Kleiser, the CEO of Dalan, told The Times the company hopes to use the vaccine as a blueprint for other treatments to protect honeybees. “Bees are livestock and should have the same modern tools to care for them and protect them that we have for our chickens, cats, dogs and so on,” she said. “We’re really hoping we’re going to change the industry now.”

Elon Musk has asked a federal judge to move his upcoming Tesla shareholder trial out of San Francisco. Per the Associated Press, Alex Spiro, the billionaire’s personal lawyer, filed the request late Friday, less than two weeks before the trial is scheduled to kick off on January 17th. Musk’s legal team argues “a substantial portion” of the potential jury pool in San Francisco is likely to hold a bias against Musk due to recent media coverage criticizing his actions at Twitter and the seemingly never-ending layoffs at the company. Musk has asked to move the trial to Texas, which has been home to Tesla headquarters since late 2021.

The class action lawsuit involves “false and misleading” statements Musk made in 2018 when he said he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. Musk’s now-infamous “funding secured” tweet landed the billionaire in trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, eventually leading to a $40 million settlement with the agency. The shareholders involved in the suit won an early victory last spring when federal judge Edward Chen concluded that Musk had “recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity.” The upcoming trial will determine whether Musk’s tweet affected the automaker’s stock price and if he should be held accountable for potential damages.

“Musk’s concerns are unfounded and his motion is meritless,” Nicholas Porritt, one of the lawyers representing Tesla shareholders, told the Associated Press. “The Northern District of California is the proper venue for this lawsuit and where it has been actively litigated for over four years.” On Saturday, Judge Chen told the two sides he would hear Musk’s request on January 13th.

In what has become a monthly occurrence at Twitter, the company has cut more of its workforce. On Friday night, Twitter reportedly laid off “at least a dozen” workers across its Dublin and Singapore offices. According to Bloomberg, the casualties include Analuisa Dominguez, the company’s former senior director of revenue policy. The outlet reports that Twitter also cut workers responsible for handling the company’s misinformation policy, in addition to a handful of employees involved with the platform’s global appeals process and state media program.

Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed the company recently laid off more staff but disputed the teams impacted by the cuts. “It made more sense to consolidate teams under one leader (instead of two) for example,” she told Bloomberg, adding Twitter eliminated roles in areas where the company didn’t see enough “volume” to justify the talent expenditure. She also said Twitter increased staffing at its appeals department and would continue to have a head of revenue policy.

On November 21st, shortly after issuing his “extremely hardcore” ultimatum to Twitter employees, Elon Musk reportedly said the company wouldn’t fire or lay off any more workers during an all-hands meeting. While the scale of Twitter's subsequent layoffs hasn’t matched those that came shortly after Musk’s takeover, the company has cut staff despite the billionaire’s pledge. The company let go of part of its infrastructure division halfway through last month. One recent estimate by The Information puts the company’s headcount at around 2,000 employees or a little over a quarter of what it had before Musk’s purchase.

After years of development, Apple’s long-rumored augmented and virtual reality headset is nearly ready. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company plans to announce the device sometime this spring ahead of its annual WWDC conference in June. In a sign that a launch is finally on the horizon, Apple has reportedly shared the headset with a handful of high-profile software developers, giving them a first look at its new “xrOS” software. After announcing "Reality Pro" in the spring, Gurman expects Apple to release the device in the fall.

The final sprint to get the headset out the door will impact the rest of Apple’s 2023 product lineup. On the software front, the next version of the company’s iOS operating system is likely to ship with “fewer major changes than originally planned” due to Apple reassigning software engineers to the xrOS team. “The same goes for macOS 14,” Gurman adds. Apple’s hardware plans are even less thrilling. The company has no updates of “of note” planned for its iPad, Apple Watch and audio lines. Gurman says new iPad Pro models with OLED displays are on the way, but those likely won’t arrive until 2024. He warns the upcoming Apple Silicon MacPro will be “another disappointment.” The forthcoming desktop will reportedly feature the same design as its 2019 predecessor, and you won’t be able to upgrade the computer’s RAM on your own due to the architecture of Apple’s M-series chipsets.

The only bright spots in an otherwise dull release schedule could be a new 15-inch MacBook Air and the iPhone 15. Of the latter, Gurman says the entire iPhone 15 line will feature Apple’s new Dynamic Island feature and USB-C charging. The Pro models will also include new titanium frames and haptic volume buttons.

Apple has reportedly canceled the development of a new iPhone SE. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company recently told suppliers it would not release a fourth-generation SE model sometime in 2024. In a Medium post spotted by MacRumors, Kuo said the device would have been the debut of Apple’s first in-house 5G modem, adding that the company had planned to test and fine-tune the chip on the SE before rolling it out more broadly to the iPhone 16 and beyond. Instead, Kuo suggests Apple is now more likely to continue using Qualcomm modems through 2024.

Kuo doesn’t say why Apple shelved the fourth-generation iPhone SE or if the performance of its own 5G chip had anything to do with the decision. For the better part of a decade, Apple has tried to reduce its dependence on Qualcomm. In 2019, the two ended their bitter patent feud and signed a “multiyear” wireless chip supply deal. Months later, however, Apple bought the majority of Intel’s mobile modem business. Then, at the end of 2020, the company disclosed it was working on its own cellular chipset. There’s been little news about the project since.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is ceding control of Alipay owner Ant Group. Per The Wall Street Journal, the Alibaba-affiliated company announced it would end agreements that had allowed Ma to hold a dominant position within Ant Group’s corporate governance structure. The outspoken entrepreneur previously possessed more than 50 percent of voting rights at Ant, even though he did not sit on the company’s board of directors or was involved in day-to-day operations. Ma’s influenced Ant Group through a handful of investment vehicles that owned a combined 50.5 percent stake in the fintech giant.

Moving forward, Ant said Ma and nine other company executives and employees would have voting rights they had agreed to use independently of one another. Reuters estimates Ma will own 6.2 percent of Ant Group shares once the company implements the changes it announced over the weekend.

In 2020, shortly before Ant was scheduled to hold an initial public offering that was expected to raise a record $34 billion, Ma drew the ire of Chinese authorities after he called the country’s banks “state-owned pawnshops” during a speech in Shanghai. Chinese regulators went on to block the impending IPO and ordered Ant to scale down its business. Specifically, the company was ordered to return to its roots as a payment provider. A year later, authorities fined Alibaba, Ma’s other company, $2.8 billion following an antitrust investigation into alleged monopolistic practices by the company. Ma has avoided the public eye ever since.