Technology

An online screening and testing &triage& tool for COVID-19 was launched this week by Verily Life Sciences, a healthcare technology company owned by Mountain View, Calif.-based Alphabet — though with a substantially reduced scope than initially suggested by President Trump.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden last Friday, Trump claimed that Google was directly involved in the project, though he appears to have overplayed the role of Google and the current scope of the screening website.

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If you didn&t know that Reno 911! is coming back, no one could really blame you. There&ve been rumblings about it since early December, but… well, things have been a little bananas since then.

But sure enough: eleven years after the end of its original run on Comedy Central, Reno 911! is coming back by way of… not Netflix… not Hulu… but Quibi . And they just dropped the first teaser trailer for it.

For the unfamiliar, Quibithing is that its content is meant to be watched in ten minute chunks. TV episodes? Ten minutes or less. Movies? They&ll be broken into chapters, ten minutes long at most.

Thatactually pretty perfect for Reno 911. While the original showepisodes came in at 22 minutes each, each episode was really more of a handful of loosely scripted/mostly improv&d bits. Give them a ten minute cap, and it&ll still workjust fine. Even in the little teaser clip above, it feels like the same, wonderful, ridiculous show.

Alas, no official launch date seems to be announced for the reboot; while Quibi itself is set to launch in April, the network has only said that Reno 911 is &coming soon.&

The world is vulnerable to a new type of trolling as people turn to Zoom video calls to feel connected amidst quarantines. Jerks are using Zoomscreensharing feature to blast other viewers with the most awful videos from across the internet, from violence to shocking pornography.

Thatjust what happened today on the WFH Happy Hour, a popular public Zoom call hosted by The Verge reporter Casey Newton and investor Hunter Walk. Suddenly, dozens of attendees were bombarded with disturbing imagery. A troll entered the call and screenshared Two Girls, One Cup and other horrifying sexual videos. Attempts to block the attack were thwarted as the perpetrator simply re-entered the call under a new name and screenshared more gross-out clips. The hosts ended the call rather than subject viewers to the assault until they could stop it.

The problem stems from Zoompolicy that &The host does not need to grant screen share access for another participant to share their screen.& However, hosts can disable this option in their setting or the Admin controls of a call. Anyone publicly sharing Zoom links where they could be discovered by trolls, like on Twitter, should be sure to change screensharing to Host Only before a call starts or as soon as they see the feature being abused.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that SoftBank Group is using regulatory investigations as a way to back out of its commitment to buy $3 billion in shares from existing WeWork shareholders.

WeWork spectacular train wreck of an initial public offering was an early harbinger that the good times might be over for a cohort of later-stage investments valued at multiple billions of dollars. And the buyout package was part of a broader effort by SoftBank to work out some of the issues at the most troubled company in its broad portfolio of high-priced, highly valued private startups.

Among those who would be left out of a potential buyback plan is WeWorkfounder and former chief executive, Adam Neumann, who was set to receive up to $970 million for his shares in the co-working company.

Citing a notice sent to WeWork shareholders, the Journal reported that if SoftBank reneged on the buyback, it would not go back on its commitment to give the office sharing company a $5 billion lifeline.

According to the Journalreporting, the deal to buy back shares isn&t canceled, and could just be an effort to renegotiate terms in light of the global economic slowdown caused by the worldresponse to the coronavirus pandemic.

So far, the SEC and the Justice Department, along with New York state regulators, have asked for information from SoftBank about WeWorkbusiness practices and communications to investors.

Tesla is not an essential business according to the Alameda County Sheriff, a declaration that could force the automaker to shutter some of its operations in the county under a shelter in-place directive that was ordered because of the global spread of COVID-19, a disease caused by coronavirus.

The county, which includes Fremont, where Teslafactory is located, issued Monday a shelter-in-place order that requires all nonessential businesses to close, including bars, gyms and in-dine restaurants. Takeout and delivery restaurants are still allowed.

Tesla kept the Fremont factory despite the order, claiming that part of the companyoperations fell under an exemption in the countyorder. Tesla CEO Elon Musk told employees in an email that the company would continue operations at the Fremont factory, where the automaker assembles the Model S, Model X, Model 3 and now Model Y electric vehicles. Musk did tell employees that should not feel obligated to come to work if they &feel the slightest bit ill or even uncomfortable,& according to an email first reported by Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg.

The email to Tesla factory employees came just a few days after Musk sent an email to workers at his other company SpaceX that seemed to downplay the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alameda County officials were determining whether Tesla was in fact able to claim that exemption. In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, the county sheriff said Tesla is not an essential business as defined in the Alameda County Health Order. &Tesla can maintain minimum basic operations per the Alameda County Health Order,& the sheriff said in the tweet, but did not elaborate what &minimum basic operations& meant or if it could still produce vehicles there.

TechCrunch was unable to reach Tesla for comment. We will update the story as we learn more.

Revolut is introducing a new product specifically targeted toward kids aged 7-17 years old —Revolut Junior. Revolut Junior is a new app and service that integrates directly with the main Revolut app on the parentside.

Parents or legal gardians who are also Revolut users can create a Revolut Junior account for their kid. After that, your kid can download the Revolut Junior app and get a Revolut Junior card.

The new app offers a limited set of features with an interface divided in two tabs — Account and Profile. Kids can see a list of transactions in real time in the Account tab. They can configure card settings in the Profile tab. And thatabout it.

On the other end, parents can control their kids& spending from Revolut. They can transfer money to a Revolut Junior account instantly. Parents can also access balances and transactions as well as disable some card features, such as online payments. They can also choose to receive notifications when a child is using their card.

The reason why Revolut Junior can attract a ton of users is that Revolut itself already has over 10 million users. Itgoing to be easier to convince existing Revolut customers to use Revolut Junior over a custom-made challenger bank for teens, such as Kard or Step. Arguably, the biggest competitor of challenger banks for teens is still cash.

As kids grow up, chances are they&ll switch to a full-fledged Revolut account if they&ve been using Revolut Junior for years. Revolut Junior represents a great acquisition funnel as well.

Revolut Junior is only available to Premium and Metal customers in the U.K. for now. The company will eventually roll it out to more users and more countries.

Revolut plans to add more features to Revolut Junior in the future. For instance, parents will be able to set a regular allowance and financial goals. Kids will get savings options, spending reports, spending limits and more.