Starting Tuesday, those over the age of 65, as well as those between ages 60 to 64 with pre-existing medical conditions, can call 213-263-5226 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. or visit the city’s site to enroll in free meal deliveries. Restaurants that want to participate can also call the hotline.

Here’s your Daily LA for Monday, April 27, 2020.

Happening in LA

So Many People Went To Newport Beach That It Might Get Shut Down Again

Orange County decided to reopen its beaches, and people decided they would go there. But people got too excited about getting some sun, packing beaches this weekend, and now Newport Beach is looking at shutting things down again.

Coronavirus Los Angeles update: LA County officials report 29 additional deaths, 900 new cases

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the city and county are expanded their drive-thru testing programs so that rideshare and taxi drivers can now get tested even if they aren’t showing any symptoms. The mayor previously announced that workers on the front lines of the pandemic, including health-care professionals and grocery workers, were eligible for testing even if they are asymptomatic.

L.A. Mayor Garcetti expands COVID-19 testing to asymptomatic people in transportation services and media

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Monday that coronavirus testing will expand to include asymptomatic people who work in transportation services, including delivery, rideshare and taxi drivers, and to those who work in media.

15 Santa Monica Restaurants Still Going Strong During the Quarantine

For Santa Monica residents sheltering-in-place, the choices are solid when it comes to restaurants offering takeout and delivery in the neighborhood. From iconic sandwiches to Japanese rice balls and good ol’ pizza, here now are 15 terrific restaurants keeping everyone fed and sane during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Headlines

The largest-ever Arctic ozone hole developed this spring. Now, scientists say it’s closed

An ozone hole that formed over the Arctic this spring and eventually grew into the largest ever recorded there has closed. Scientists who were tracking the hole at Copernicus’ Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) made the announcement late last week, noting the “rather unusual” hole was caused not by human activity but a particularly strong Arctic polar vortex, CAMS said.

JetBlue is first US airline to require travelers to wear face coverings

JetBlue is the first major U.S. airline to require all customers to wear face coverings during travel to help slow the spread of COVID-19.

TikTok launches Donation Stickers, allowing creators to fundraise for coronavirus relief efforts

TikTok is making it easier for creators and their fans to donate to favorite charities amid the coronavirus pandemic. The company today announced the launch of a new, interactive feature, Donation Stickers, that creators can use on their videos and live streams in order to raise funds for favorite charities directly in the TikTok app.

Verizon, AT&T, Comcast won’t cancel service through June due to coronavirus

Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc, the two largest U.S. wireless carriers, as well as cable giant Comcast Corp, said on Monday they will extend a commitment through June 30 not to cancel service or charge late fees to customers who have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Stay-at-home order for 7 million Bay Area residents extended to end of May

A stay-at-home order for several San Francisco Bay Area counties will be extended through the end of May due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision that affects 7 million residents and thousands of businesses. The Public Health Officers of the Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara as well as the City of Berkeley said in a joint statement issued Monday that it will issue revised shelter-in-place orders later this week.

Twitter turns off its original SMS service in most countries

Last week, Twitter turned off the ability to receive SMS messages containing the text of new tweets. The feature was disabled in all but “a few countries” that rely on the feature. This won’t be a huge deal for the vasty majority of Twitter users who access the service via the app or website. But there are already complaints from some people who still used SMS to read tweets. One business, DansDeals, said it relied on the feature to alert readers to sales.

Amazon tests screening new merchants for fraud via video calls in pandemic

Amazon.com Inc is piloting the use of video conference calls to verify the identity of merchants who wish to sell goods on its websites, in a new plan to counter fraud without in-person meetings in the pandemic, the company said on Sunday.

Ventures

What Early-Stage Investors Really Care About

In early-stage pitching, there’s often a clash between what entrepreneurs think investors care about and what investors actually care about. While entrepreneurs believe their technology and their revolutionary products are the most important topic, investors want to mitigate their innately high risks in exchange for high returns.

How the Pandemic Is Pushing Blockchain Forward

Because blockchain technologies are uniquely suited to verifying, securing, and sharing data, they’re ideal for managing multi-party, inter-organizational, and cross-border transactions. Over the past five years, enterprises across the globe have vetted the technology with thousands of proofs of concept, but live deployments have been slow to come because partners using blockchain as a shared ledger have to agree on IP rights, governance, and business models.

Big companies dominate video chat. Meet the startups racing to disrupt them

Videoconferencing has gone from novelty to niche to necessity in record time. But while a handful of tech giants dominate, with Zoom, Google, Facebook, Cisco, and Microsoft onboarding huge numbers of new users and scrambling to support new use cases, there’s a class of startups coming along with disruption on their mind.

John Diep

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Founder, Editor-In-Chief // A native Angeleno. John studied engineering at UCLA; founded Schmoozd, an offline social tech networking event in LA with 30,000 subs; ran a startup accelerator (StartEngine). Worked for several major brands like Toyota, DIRECTV, Hitachi, ICANN, and Raytheon. A mentor at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) Entrepreneur School, Dr. David Choi. And advises a dozen local LA startups building amazing tech in various industries; and invested in some. // Let's Connect: john@lastartups.com