Technology

Congress on Wednesday approved $8.3 billion in emergency funding to respond to the spreading novel coronavirus, COVID-19, which has already sickened 80 people across 13 states and killed nine in the U.S. alone.

More than $3 billion of that funding will go to the research and development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics — and some of that financing will likely find its way into the coffers of startup companies working on technologies to combat the disease.

Another $2.2 billion will fund the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including $950 million to support state and local health agencies, according to a breakdown of the spending in Politico. About half of the $950 million will be distributed within the next 30 days to help states pay for test kits and services, with no state receiving less than $4 million.

The bill also includes a $300 million carveout to help ensure that all Americans can receive a coronavirus vaccine once itdeveloped — regardless of their ability to pay.

Other agencies that are set to receive money as part of the spending bill include the National Institutes of Health, which will receive $836 million, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which will receive a $1.3 billion block of funding.

As part of the spending package, the Food and Drug Administration will receive $61 million to pay for vaccine testing and other efforts, including new spending to boost U.S. manufacturing of critical medical devices and pharmaceuticals whose supply chains are jeopardized by their reliance on components and materials made in China.

Remote care is also getting a boost under the spending plan. Telehealth services will receive a $500 million boost from Medicare spending so that elderly patients can avoid going to emergency facilities and risk potential exposure.

Ford said it will produce and sell an all-electric version of its popular Ford Transit cargo van for the North American market starting with the 2022 model year as part of the automakerbroader bet on electrification.

The all-electric Transit, which will be assembled in the U.S., is part of Fordmore than $11.5 billion investment in electrification through 2022. FordEV plan includes an all-electric Transit for the European market that it announced in April 2019, the Mustang Mach-E SUV and an electric F-150 truck.

Forddecision to include commercial vans in its EV strategy is linked to sales in the U.S. and the companyoutlook on future growth. The companyU.S. truck and van fleet sales have grown 33% since 2015. Ford said it expects continued growth of van sales in the U.S. as e-commerce and &last-mile& delivery increase.

Ford said it expects electric vehicles to grow to 8% of the industry in 2025 in the United States.

&Commercial vehicles are a critical component to our big bet on electrification,& Ford chief operating officer Jim Farley said in a statement. &As leaders in this space, we are accelerating our plans to create solutions that help businesses run better, starting with our all-electric Transit and F-150. This Ford Transit isn&t just about creating an electric drivetrain, itabout designing and developing a digital product that propels fleets forward.&

Ford will focus on tech features like in-vehicle internet and driver assistance.

&The world is heading toward electrified products and fleet customers are asking for them now,& Farley said. &We know their vehicles operate as a connected mobile business and their technology needs are different than retail customers. So Ford is thinking deeply on connectivity relationships that integrate with our in-vehicle high-speed electrical architectures and cloud-based data services to provide these businesses smart vehicles beyond just the electric powertrains.&

These built-in &smart& features could help customers optimize fleet efficiency and reduce waste or improve driver behavior, according to Ford, an indication that fleets will be able to access data collected through Fordtelematics system using an embedded FordPass Connect modem featuring a 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot with connectivity for up to 10 devices. Ford said managers can use Forddata tools like live map GPS tracking, geofencing and vehicle diagnostics to see key performance indicators at a glance for vehicle and driver.

Google cancels its big developer conference, Justin Kanlegal startup shuts down and Robinhood offers more details about a recent outage. Hereyour Daily Crunch for March 4, 2020.

1. Google cancels its 2020 I/O developer conference

After Facebook canceled its F8 developer conference and Google itself moved its Cloud Next event in April to a digital-only conference, this wasn&t a huge surprise, but it provides another sign of how the COVID-19 coronavirus is clearing the 2020 industry calendar.

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg has outlined some of the steps that Facebook and his familynonprofit, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, are taking to respond to the pandemic. Facebookresponse focuses on three areas: providing accurate information, stopping misinformation and providing data for research.

2. $75M legal startup Atrium shuts down, lays off 100

Justin Kan hybrid legal software and law firm startup Atrium is shutting down today after failing to figure out how to deliver better efficiency than a traditional law firm. The startup has now laid off all its employees; it will return some of its $75.5 million in funding to investors, including Series B lead Andreessen Horowitz . The separate Atrium law firm will continue to operate.

3. Robinhood offers $15 discount, blames outage on record trades

It wasn&t the leap year, a coding blip or a hack that caused Robinhoodmassive outages earlier this week that left customers unable to trade stocks. Instead, the co-CEOs write that &the cause of the outage was stress on our infrastructure — which struggled with unprecedented load. That in turn led to a ‘thundering herd& effect — triggering a failure of our DNS system.&

4. India lifts ban on cryptocurrency trading

IndiaSupreme Court has overturned the central banktwo-year-old ban on cryptocurrency trading in the country in what many said was a &historic& verdict. The Reserve Bank of India had imposed a ban on cryptocurrency trading in April 2018 that barred banks and other financial institutions from facilitating &any service in relation to virtual currencies.&

5. The future of gig work could involve unions and co-ops

Behind the scenes, an alternative approach to CaliforniaAB 5 worker protection law has been picking up steam. Called the Cooperative Economy Act, the draft legislation is designed to accomplish much of what AB 5 aims to achieve, such as worker protections and benefits. But it also brings unions and co-ops into the mix. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. VSCOnew editing tool Montage lets you edit and layer both photos and video

VSCO already allowed users to apply photo-like edits to their videos by doing things like applying filters or adjusting the exposure. But Montage is an entirely different sort of video editing experience.

7. Uber sold its food delivery business in India to Zomato for $206M

In January, Uber announced that it had sold the India business of Uber Eats to Zomato for a 9.99% stake in the loss-making Indian food delivery startup. In a regulatory filing, the company has now disclosed that the deal was worth $206 million.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you&d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Clothing giant J.Crew said an unknown number of customers had their online accounts accessed &by an unauthorized party& almost a year ago, but is only now disclosing the incident.

The company said in a filing on Tuesday with the California attorney general that the hacker gained access to the customer accounts in or around April 2019.

According to the letter, the hacker obtained information found in customers& online accounts — including card types, the last four digits of card payment numbers, expiration dates and associated billing addresses. Online accounts also store customer order numbers, shipping confirmation numbers and shipment statuses.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed the hacker used a technique known as credential stuffing, where existing sets of exposed or breached usernames and passwords are matched against different websites to access accounts.

The spokesperson said a &small number& of customers were affected but did not say specifically how many.

Companies operating in the state are mandated to warn the stateattorney generaloffice of security incidents involving more than 500 California residents. The letter to the attorney generaloffice said ita &multi-state& notification, indicating that customers in other states are also affected.

A bigger, unanswered question is why it took J.Crew took almost a year to detect and disclose the incident to regulators and customers.

The spokesperson said &routine web scanning& detected the improper access and that customers were &promptly notified.& Itnot known when the scanning took place or why the account breaches weren&t detected sooner. Under the laws of both California and New York — where J.Crew is headquartered — thereno specific time period under which a company must disclose a breach, only that customers are notified in &the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay.&

J.Crew becomes the latest in a string of companies disclosing security incidents as a result of credential stuffing. Amazon-owned doorbell maker Ring, Chipotle, Spotify and game streaming service Twitch have all seen customers complain of account breaches in the past year.

Google Cloud today announced its plans to open four new data center regions. These regions will be in Delhi (India), Doha (Qatar),Melbourne(Australia) andToronto(Canada)and bring Google Cloudtotal footprint to 26 regions. The company previously announced that it would open regions in Jakarta, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Seoul and Warsaw over the course of the next year. The announcement also comes only a few days after Google opened its Salt Lake City data center.

GCP already had a data center presence in India, Australia and Canada before this announcement, but with these newly announced regions, it now offers two geographically separate regions for in-country disaster recovery, for example.

Google notes that the region in Doha marks the companyfirst strategic collaboration agreement to launch a region in the Middle East with the Qatar Free Zones Authority. One of the launch customers there is Bespin Global, a major managed services provider in Asia.

&We work with some of the largest Korean enterprises, helping to drive their digital transformation initiatives. One of the key requirements that we have is that we need to deliver the same quality of service to all of our customers around the globe,&said John Lee, CEO, Bespin Global.&Google Cloudcontinuous investments in expanding their own infrastructure to areas like the Middle East make it possible for us to meet our customers where they are.&

At Facebook2019 F8 developer conference, the company announced plans to introduce desktop apps for its popular communications app Messenger. Now, less than a year later, the Messenger Mac App is beginning to roll out. Though not yet available in the U.S., Messenger for Mac has popped up in the Mac App Store in several non-U.S. markets.

We asked Facebook to confirm whether this signals a broader rollout that will include the U.S.

A company spokesperson responded that this is not yet a full launch.

&We&re conducting a small test of the Messenger app for macOS in a couple of markets,& the spokesperson said. &We don&t have a date when it will be available as we&re still gathering feedback from our users,& they added.

9to5Mac and iPhone Hacks first spotted the applaunch, referencing a post published to a French tech news site called MacGeneration. However, you can visit the French Mac App Store URL directly to confirm.

We&ve also seen Messenger arrive in a few other international markets, including Mexico, Poland and Australia, for example. (There may be more as well — we haven&t yet clicked through links on every global Mac App Store to confirm them one by one.)

The desktop version of Messenger offers a similar feature set to the mobile client, including support for voice and video chat, in addition to texting. Group chats, calls and video chats are available too. And like the mobile app, users can share files, react with emojis and enable a dark theme to cut down on glare.

The app is built using Electron, not Catalyst. While Electron is a popular way of building apps for the desktop from a web app, but not the most secure by any means.

The apparrival comes only days after Facebook introduced its slimmed down and faster Messenger app for iOS. The new mobile app does away with the Discover section to simplify the appinterface and reorients the Messenger experience around people and Stories, not businesses and apps.

Facebook recently announced it has canceled this yearF8 conference due to the coronavirus outbreak. That could mean we&ll see more news and launches from Facebook that it would have otherwise waited to reveal.