Oil and gas company Shell is buying electric vehicle charging operator Volta for $169 million through a subsidiary. The deal, which the companies expect to close in the first half of this year, amounts to 86 cents per share, around 18 percent more than Volta's closing price on Tuesday.

Volta's board of directors approved the deal unanimously, though it still requires the green light from shareholders. It's subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions too. Shell will provide loans to Volta to give it a hand through the closing of the transaction. On September 30th, Volta had $15.6 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared with $262.2 million at the end of 2021.

"While the EV infrastructure market opportunity is potentially enormous, Volta's ability to capture it independently, in challenging market conditions and with ongoing capital constraints, was limited," Volta interim CEO Vince Cubbage said in a statement. "Both Volta and Shell have a demonstrated ability to meet the changing needs of customers, and this acquisition will bring that experience together to provide the options that are needed as more drivers choose electric."

The company has more than 3,000 charging stations across the US and a handful in Europe, typically at grocery stores and malls. For a few years, its DC fast charging stations were free to use for up to 30 minutes, with advertising and sponsorships helping to cover the costs. However, it shifted its DC fast chargers to a paid model last year. Volta's more than 2,000 L2 chargers are still free to use. After the deal closes, "there will be no immediate change in driver experience," the companies said.

Odd as it may seem that an oil company is buying an EV charging network, it isn't the first time Shell has done so. It snapped up UK network Ubitricity in 2021 for an undisclosed sum. Last year, Hertz and BP announced plans to set up a charging network in the US.

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.

Meta has filed a lawsuit against Voyager Labs, which it has accused of creating tens of thousands of fake accounts to scrape data from more than 600,000 Facebook users' profiles. It says the surveillance company pulled information such as posts, likes, friend lists, photos, and comments, along with other details from groups and pages. Meta claims that Voyager masked its activity using its Surveillance Software, and that the company has also scraped data from Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Telegram to sell and license for profit.

In the complaint, which was obtained by Gizmodo, Meta has asked a judge to permanently ban Voyager from Facebook and Instagram. "As a direct result of Defendant’s unlawful actions, Meta has suffered and continues to suffer irreparable harm for which there is no adequate remedy at law, and which will continue unless Defendant’s actions are enjoined," the filing reads. Meta said Voyager's actions have caused it "to incur damages, including investigative costs, in an amount to be proven at trial."

Meta claims that Voyager scraped data from accounts belonging to "employees of non-profit organizations, universities, news media organizations, healthcare facilities, the armed forces of the United States, and local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as full-time parents, retirees, and union members." The company noted in a blog post it disabled accounts linked to Voyager and that filed the suit to enforce its terms and policies.

"Companies like Voyager are part of an industry that provides scraping services to anyone regardless of the users they target and for what purpose, including as a way to profile people for criminal behavior," Jessica Romero, Meta's director of platform enforcement and litigation, wrote. "This industry covertly collects information that people share with their community, family and friends, without oversight or accountability, and in a way that may implicate people’s civil rights."

In 2021, The Guardian reported that the Los Angeles Police Department had tested Voyager's social media surveillance tools in 2019. The company is said to have told the department that police could use the software to track the accounts of a suspect's friends on social media, and that the system could predict crimes before they took place by making assumptions about a person's activity.

According to The Guardian, Voyager has suggested factors like Instagram usernames denoting Arab pride or tweeting about Islam could indicate someone is leaning toward extremism. Other companies, such as Palantir, have worked on predictive policing tech. Critics such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation claim that tech can't predict crime and that algorithms merely perpetuate existing biases.

Data scraping is an issue that Meta has to take seriously. In 2021, it sued an individual for allegedly scraping data on more than 178 million users. Last November, the Irish Data Protection Commission fined the company €265 million ($277 million) for failing to stop bad actors from obtaining millions of people's phone numbers and other data, which were published elsewhere online. The regulator said Meta failed to comply with GDPR data protection rules. 

Instacart will pay workers $5.1 million as part of a settlement after it allegedly failed to provide some benefits, as The San Francisco Chronicle reports. San Francisco accused the company of violating healthcare and paid sick leave ordinances. The company, which has not admitted to wrongdoing, will pay an additional $150,000 to cover the city's legal costs and pay for a settlement administrator to distribute the funds.

“Instacart has always properly classified shoppers as independent contractors, giving them the ability to set their own schedule and earn on their own terms,” Instacart said in a statement. “We remain committed to continuing to serve customers across San Francisco while also protecting access to the flexible earnings opportunities Instacart shoppers consistently say they want.”

People who worked as independent contractors for Instacart in the city between February 2017 and December 2020 are eligible for payments based on how many hours they worked. San Francisco estimates that between 6,000 and 7,000 people are affected by the settlement. The city and Instacart previously reached a similar settlement that covered an earlier time period. San Francisco has settled a benefits-related case with DoorDash too.

After December 15th, 2020, Instacart workers were subject to Proposition 22, which afforded them some benefits without the company having to define them as employees. An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled in 2021 that the measure was unconstitutional, but it remains in force while Instacart, DoorDash, Uber, Lyft and other gig companies who bankrolled Prop 22 appeal the decision. Another suit — filed by San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego — claims that Uber and Lyft drivers should have been classed as workers until Prop 22 passed.

It's no secret that the conditions were ripe for a steep drop in PC demand this holiday, but now it's clear just how bad that plunge really was. Gartner and IDC estimate PC shipments fell by more than 28 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2022. That's the steepest quarterly decline Gartner has ever recorded — no mean feat when it began tracking the computer market in the 1990s. Both analyst groups also saw yearly shipments fall by more than 16 percent in 2022 compared to the year earlier.

Some manufacturers suffered more of a blow than others. The top three brands, Lenovo, HP and Dell, saw their shipments tumble between 29 percent and 37 percent in late 2022 compared to a year earlier. Acer took a staggering 41 percent hit, according to Gartner. Fourth-place Apple took a relatively light blow, although that still meant its shipments dropped by as much as 10 percent.

Gartner and IDC share the same explanation. PC sales soared in 2021 as people continued to work from home during the pandemic, but that interest tanked as people gradually returned to the office. Moreover, a worsening global economy left people with less money to spend on upgrades. Would-be customers either had a recent PC or had trouble affording a new one, to put it simply.

IDC is quick to put the seeming freefall into context. While the quarterly and yearly drops were sharp, shipments in 2022 were still "well above" pre-pandemic figures, according to researchers. While demand still looks grim, the market was still stronger than before.

Just don't expect the PC's heyday to return for a while. Neither analyst group expects the market to recover in earnest until 2024, and IDC only sees "pockets of opportunity" in 2023. Whether they like it or not, PC makers may have to brace themselves and hope that a combination of new designs and price cuts will sustain interest for the next year.

In mid-2021, medical technology company Masimo sued Apple over the Watch Series 6's blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. Masimo accused the tech giant of infringing on five of its pulse oximeter patents after introducing a device that has the ability to measure blood oxygen saturation. Now, a US International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has ruled that Apple did indeed infringe on one of Masimo's pulse oximeter patents. 

While the judge has also concluded that the tech giant did not infringe on the other four patents involved in the case, the ITC will now reportedly examine whether to impose an import ban on Apple Watches with the feature, as Masimo had requested when it filed the lawsuit. Newer Apple Watches, namely the Series 7 and 8, Ultra and SE, have blood oxygen monitoring features, so the ITC's decision will also affect them. 

Masimo CEO Joe Kiani told MD+DI in a statement that his company is happy that the judge "took this critical first step toward accountability." Kiani continued by saying that "Apple has similarly infringed on other companies' technologies" and that the "ruling exposes Apple as a company that takes other companies' innovations and repackages them."

Meanwhile, Apple accused Masimo of being the one that copied its intellectual property in its statement to the publication. "At Apple, our teams work tirelessly to create products and services that empower users with industry-leading health, wellness, and safety features. Masimo is attempting to take advantage of these many innovations by introducing a device that copies Apple Watch and infringes on our intellectual property, while also trying to eliminate competition from the market. We respectfully disagree with today’s decision, and look forward to a full review by the commission," a spokesperson said. 

The judge's decision was only an initial ruling that reflects the ITC's findings during its investigation, and the final ruling for the case won't be handed down until May 10th. 

Coinbase is letting another 950 employees go, seven months after it cut 1,100 jobs. In a note to staff, the company's CEO Brian Armstrong said that amid a downturn in the crypto market and the broader economy, he's made the call to reduce operating expenses by 25 percent quarter over quarter, resulting in the layoffs. Coinbase says on its website that it has more than 4,700 employees, so it's shedding around a fifth of its staff.

While acknowledging that some of the factors that resulted in the layoffs were outside of the company's control, Armstrong said he took accountability. He added that, in hindsight, Coinbase could have let more people go back in June.

Armstrong said the company is "well capitalized and crypto isn't going anywhere," and noted that recent events like FTX's collapse and clearer rules from regulators could benefit Coinbase in the long run. However, those changes won't happen overnight. "We need to make sure we have the appropriate operational efficiency to weather downturns in the crypto market and capture opportunities that may emerge," Armstrong wrote.

In planning for 2023, Coinbase's leadership determined it was necessary "to reduce expenses to increase our chances of doing well in every scenario." Armstrong notes that this is the first time that both the crypto market and the broader economy have simultaneously experienced a downturn, adding that planning has helped Coinbase to survive several bear markets over the last decade.

Due to the layoffs, Coinbase is canceling some projects that had a lower likelihood of success. Other teams will have to adjust for having a smaller headcount. Armstrong said the employees who are being let go will be informed today.

Impacted workers in the US will receive a compensation package of at least 14 weeks' base pay with an extra two weeks per year of service, health insurance and other benefits. The company says it will offer "extra transition support" to those on work visas. Coinbase will extend similar support to fired workers in other countries in line with local employment laws and it will help those being laid off to find their next job.

Coinbase has had to contend with other issues in recent times. In July, it was reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating the company over whether it sold unregistered securities. Earlier this month, Coinbase reached a $100 million settlement with a New York financial regulator over claims that it made the platform "vulnerable to serious criminal conduct," in part by neglecting to carry out sufficient background checks and having a large backlog of flagged transactions to review.

Crypto lender Celsius Network is still facing the consequences of its tumultuous 2022 long after it declared bankruptcy. New York State Attorney General Letitia James has sued former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky for allegedly defrauding investors out of "billions of dollars" in cryptocurrency. The executive purportedly misled customers about Celsius' worsening financial health, and didn't register either as a salesperson or as a commodities and securities dealer.

The Attorney General's office claims Mashinsky falsely boasted of low-risk investments and reliable lending partners while "routinely" exposing investors to high-risk approaches that resulted in losses the company chief hid from customers. He also made untrue statements about safety, strategies and user numbers, according to the lawsuit. Celsius' ex-chief supposedly deceived hundreds of thousands of investors (over 26,000 in the state), some of which James says suffered "financial ruin."

New York hopes to ban Mashinsky from doing business in the state. It also wants him to pay damages and otherwise compensate investors. In a statement to Engadget, Celsius would only reiterate that Mashinsky resigned as CEO in September and is "no longer involved" in managing the firm.

Celsius is one of the more prominent casualties of last year's crypto crash. Its token's value plunged from $7 in 2021 to just $3 last spring. That was particularly damaging to a company that offered loans with little collateral and promised yields as high as 18.6 percent — it didn't have the resources needed to endure the crisis. It tried freezing withdrawals last June to stabilize its assets, but opted for bankruptcy the following month to restructure and otherwise give it a better chance to regroup.

The lawsuit isn't likely to be the end of the fallout. Several states are investigating Celsius' practices, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been in touch. Celsius isn't alone in dealing with legal repercussions. Just this week, the crypto exchange Coinbase reached a $100 million settlement with New York over alleged financial rule violations. However, it's notable that the state is going after Mashinsky directly, not just the business he once ran.

Amazon is cutting more jobs than it had previously planned, CEO Andy Jassy has admitted in a blog post. Back in November, reports came out that the e-commerce giant was eliminating 10,000 jobs, just as other companies in the tech sector had announced layoffs of their own. Now, the company is expanding its job cuts, and between the employees who'd already lost their jobs and the ones losing theirs in the near future, Amazon will be eliminating over 18,000 roles in the company. 

Jassy said majority of the upcoming layoffs would be from its retail and recruiting divisions. As The Wall Street Journal notes, Amazon benefited from the COVID lockdowns over the past few years, since people had to shop online more often than before. The company reportedly added hundreds of thousands of employees to keep up with the surge in demand — and then launched cost-cutting reviews to see which units weren't making profit. It then froze hiring, closed brick-and-mortar stores and shut down business units.

When news broke that Amazon was planning sweeping layoffs, Meta had also just revealed that it was letting more than 11,000 of its employees go. Like Amazon's executives, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg significantly increased Meta's investments following a large revenue growth due to the pandemic. However, people's spending habits eventually went back to pre-pandemic trends, leading to a smaller revenue for the company. More recently, Slack owner Salesforce revealed that it's cutting 10 percent of its workforce and closing down offices. The company also grew rapidly during the pandemic and can't sustain its bloated workforce in the current economy. 

Amazon will be cutting more jobs than Meta did by the time it's done. Jassy said the company will reach out to impacted employees starting on January 18th, so the layoffs will likely take place over the coming weeks. He added that Amazon will offer them packages that include a "separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits and external job placement support."

Apple is the second tech giant today to receive a fine over personalized ads. France's National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) has issued an €8 million (roughly $8.5 million) penalty over allegations Apple automatically collected identifying data from App Store visitors using iOS 14.6 without their permission, helping the company target ads. The firm was profiting from violations of data protection law, according to officials.

You could turn off the ad targeting, but it was enabled by default and couldn't be disabled without wading through multiple menu levels, CNIL added. That reportedly made it impossible for users to give proper consent. Apple has since changed its practices, and CNIL said it conducted "several" checks between 2021 and 2022 to make sure the company was honoring data rules. France launched its investigation in March 2021.

We've asked Apple for comment. As 9to5Mac noted, Apple told Financial Times' Patrick McGee in a statement that it was "disappointed" with the decision and planned an appeal. The iPhone maker argued that its Search Ads system went "further" than any rival in offering choice over targeted ads, and didn't track user cross third-party apps or websites.

Apple has had a contentious relationship with French regulators. In 2020, the country's competition authority issued a fine equivalent to $1.2 billion (now down to $364.6 million) for alleged antitrust abuses in its distribution chain. The company also received a $27.3 million fine over iPhone performance throttling that same year. While the French government defended Apple's iOS 14 anti-tracking measures against industry pressure, it's evident that the brand remains under close scrutiny.