Technology

With the future of WWDC 2020 increasingly in doubt, therelittle surprise that interest in whatcoming in iOS 14 is beginning to intensify, particularly if Apple is forced to provide a remote version of the conference. Herewhat we think we know about iOS 14 so far:

New product hints inside the code

The leaked iOS 14 builds seem full of new product hints. Not only does it seem to confirm that iPhone 9 will boast Touch ID and Express Transit, but also seems to show that the iPad Pro will indeed feature an iPhone-like triple-lens camera and time of flight sensor.

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This user complains to pilot fish that the network drive mapped to his PC has disappeared. Fish remaps it and goes on with his day.

But fish hears back from the user, who now says he can&t access a folder he used to be able to enter. That doesn&t make sense to fish, and after some back and forth, he finds that the map in the userhead needs adjusting. Hebeen trying to open a folder that he should have nothing to do with, and the folder he is looking for is one level down, in another folder but bearing the same name as the one hetrying to open.

Route your true tales of IT life to Sharky at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter.

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Autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles are making serious progress — and the mobile communications capabilities of those cars are also rapidly growing, perhaps too fast for their own security good — but they are going to run head on into a massive obstacle: human trust. It's a big deal for someone to let go of the steering wheel and brake and trust a computer to make all of the right calls. (Heck, I am still trembling from when I taught our 16-year-old daughter to take over the wheel. And you're asking me to trust the same operating system that crashes at least five times a week? Really?)

Two recent developments both increase trust and rip it apart. And off we go.

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Just days ago, Y Combinator announced that its upcoming Demo Day event would be moving online due to &growing concern over COVID-19.& The event, previously planned to span across two days at San FranciscoPier 48 building, would instead be hosted entirely online on March 23rd.

More changes this evening: YC is shifting Demo Day forward one full week, from March 23rd to March 16th.

In a blog post on the change, Y Combinator CEO and partner Michael Seibel cites an &accelerated& pace from investors in recent days as having encouraged the move:

Over the last few days, a large number of investors have accelerated their outreach to our current batch of founders. They are moving quickly to make investment decisions, and we&re going to match their pace and accelerate our schedule by one week. YC W20 online Demo Day will now be on March 16.

On March 16, the YC Demo Day website will go live, a modified version of the website that investors and founders have used over the past five years. Through the website, investors will have access to a single-slide summary, a short description of the company, and a team bio. They can sort companies by industry and geography, and will be able to export the list of companies to a spreadsheet.

While YC initially said that the pitches each company traditionally does live onstage for Demo Day would be &pre-recorded and released to all investors at the same time,& the announcement of the sooner-than-expected Demo Day only mentions slide summaries, company descriptions, and team bios — suggesting plans might have changed a bit to accommodate the new schedule.

Y Combinator confirmed to me that the Demo Day site will not have video presentations.

Baptist Health is a three-hospital, nonprofit system serving Montgomery, Ala. and the surrounding region. It has 680 beds, 550 affiliated physicians and is the largest private employer in the area.

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The number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. crossed 1,000 on Tuesday as President Donald Trump met with the nationlargest insurers and members of his cabinet to discuss how to pay for treatment and lessen the financial blow of the diseasespread.

With the nationhealthcare apparatus beginning to get a better understanding of the proliferation of the virus that causes COVID-19 within its borders, efforts have shifted fully from containing the diseasespread to stopping the contagion from getting worse.

&What we would like the country to realize is that as a nation we can&t be doing the kinds of things we would be doing a few months ago,& said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during the daily briefing from the PresidentCoronavirus Task Force. &It doesn&t matter if you&re in a state that has no cases or one case, you have to start taking seriously what you can do now, if and when the infections will come, and they will come.&

The government and private testing facilities Quest and LabCorp are quickly distributing new test kits, with the expectation that 5 million will be made available by the end of the week. The availability of testing means that more cases will be diagnosed and efforts will be made to limit the spread in the new clusters as they&re identified.

However, that rollout might be hampered by a potential shortage of a critical component of the tests — the &RNA extraction& kits, first reported by Politico earlier on Tuesday.

&RNA extraction is the first step in being able to perform& a COVID-19 test, Michael Mina, associate medical director of molecular diagnostics at Brigham and WomenHospital in Boston told Politico. &If we cannot perform this step, the [coronavirus] test cannot be performed.&

More roadblocks to testing could limit the identification of clusters of the virus that causes COVID-19 and stop governments from taking the kinds of dramatic action that medical professionals think could be necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus.

&When you have community spread you&re going to ratchet up the kinds of mitigations that you have,& said Fauci. &Everyone should be saying all hands on deck. This is what we need to be doing.&

In New York state thatmeant establishing a containment zone around New Rochelle, a city that has been the focal point for the diseasespread in the region.

That mitigation strategy looks like an extreme version of the steps that Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration chief recommended over the weekend.

Meanwhile, more companies made calls for remote work for their employees and took steps to shield their workers from financial hardship caused by the disease — either through illness or because of the mitigation strategies imposed by the companies themselves. Their commitments come as President Trump and his economic advisors move forward with a stimulus package to boost the economy and provide a safety net for companies that are paying for workers& time off.

Earlier in the day in a briefing at the White House, Vice President Mike Pence outlined the steps that insurance companies would be taking to ensure that patients receive the treatment they need.

&All the insurance companies here — either today or before today — have agreed to waive all copays on coronavirus testing and extend coverage for coronavirus treatment in all of their benefit plans,& Vice President Pence said. Last week the government said that Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries would have their testing and treatment covered.

&They&ve also agreed to cover telemedicine so that anyone, particularly among the vulnerable senior population, would not feel it necessary to go to a hospital or go to their doctor,& said Pence. &They&ll know that telemedicine is covered.&

And for tech companies like Instacart, Postmates, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and Facebook, which have all committed to paying for hourly workers sickened by the virus or who have lost work due to office closures, the Federal government may provide some financial assistance (not that the tech companies need it).

Following up on the commitment made yesterday, Director of the United States National Economic Council Larry Kudlow said at Tuesdaybriefing that the administration is putting together a proposal for a payroll tax cut and tax deferrals for small and medium-sized businesses who are impacted by the spread of COVID-19.

Technology companies and the billionaires that own them are also chipping in to help local communities and finance initiatives looking for new diagnostics to identify the disease and treatments for the sick.

Earlier today, Amazon announced a $5 million initiative to help local businesses affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 in Seattle, while the Gates Foundation committed $50 million to a $125 million effort to develop treatments.

Still, executives at startups operating clinics in geographies affected by the virus that causes COVID-19 are saying that the infrastructure is not yet in place to adequately and effectively diagnose and treat the disease.

&Testing isn&t being done widely,& said one executive at a startup that runs a network of clinics and urgent care centers. &The supplies in the country are just very limited right now.&