Avatar photo

Ava Patel

Ava Patel is a cultural critic and commentator with a focus on literature and the arts. She is known for her thought-provoking essays and reviews, and has a talent for bringing new and diverse voices to the forefront of the cultural conversation.

Revolutionizing Agriculture’s HR Issues: Seso’s Innovative Software for Farm Workforces

Sc: Charleston Tea Plantation
Seso was founded five years ago to help streamline that process and now looks to expand into a one-stop-shop HR platform for the agriculture industry. Michael Guirguis co-founded the startup after his cousin asked for his advice on whether or not her organic farm should expand. Once he started talking to potential farm customers, he realized that farms could use a lot more help with their HR beyond just finding workers. “When it comes to the back office, every farm we visited had thousands of filing cabinets,” Guirguis said. “Your HR team is in the back office doing traditional HR work,” Guirguis said.

“Autism Impact Fund Concludes Initial $60 Million Fund and Expands Focus”

Screenshot 2024 04 01 At 1.31.08 pm
Autism Impact Fund (AIF) was a pioneer when it emerged in 2021, three years after the son of its co-founder and managing partner, Chris Male, was diagnosed with ASD. A joint effort of Male and others, its ambition was to become “the investment and innovation arm of the autism community,” Male told TechCrunch. Since then, startups in the neurodiversity space gathered momentum, and so did AIF, which recently closed its first fund at $60 million. AIF’s decision to broaden its scope has to do with autism itself, Male said. It’s also global, with healthtech Genial Care raising $10 million to help kids with autism and their families in Brazil.

“Revamping Content: Discord Advertisements, AT&T Passcode Restoration, and Podcast Modifications for Android Audiences”

Gettyimages 1215460368
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Monday show, where we dig into the weekend and take a peek at the week that is to come. We’ll talk more about Wednesday, but this is Y Combinator Demo Day week, so expect a deluge of startup news. On the podcast today we dug into the latest news from Discord that indicates it is moving towards opening its gates for advertisements. Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

“The Unstoppable Trio: Valkey Redis Fork Receives Support from AWS, Google, and Oracle”

Gettyimages 898655676
The Linux Foundation last week announced that it will host Valkey, a fork of the Redis in-memory data store. Valkey is backed by AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson and Snap. AWS and Google Cloud rarely back an open-source fork together. At the time, Redis said that despite this change for the modules, “the license for open-source Redis was never changed. This fork originated at AWS, where longtime Redis maintainer Madelyn Olson initially started the project in her own GitHub account.

A Call for Responsible AI Practices: Brandie Nonnecke of UC Berkeley Urges Investors to Take Action for Women in AI

Women In Ai Nonnecke
Nonnecke also co-directors the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, where she leads projects on AI, platforms and society, and the UC Berkeley AI Policy Hub, an initiative to train researchers to develop effective AI governance and policy frameworks. I’ve been working in responsible AI governance for nearly a decade. First, The University of California was the first university to establish responsible AI principles and a governance structure to better ensure responsible procurement and use of AI. For women entering the AI field, my advice is threefold: Seek knowledge relentlessly, as AI is a rapidly evolving field. Investors have the power to shape the industry’s direction by making responsible AI practices a critical factor in their investment decisions.

Revolutionizing Short-Haul Trucking: The Iron Sheepdog Approach

Isd Broker Truck
Will Lawrence, the co-founder and CTO of Iron Sheepdog, likes to say that sometimes building something simple is actually really hard. Companies can track their contracted trucks through Iron Sheepdog, giving them more transparency into where trucks are, how long a job takes and how much to pay. Iron Sheepdog announced this week a $10 million Series B round led by SJF Ventures with participation from Grand Ventures, Supply Chain Ventures and strategic partners. While not the first company to try to build software to manage these short-haul truckers, Iron Sheepdog has been able to see its growth double each year since it was founded. Contractors want to sign up, too, knowing the app gives them access to a network of more than 4,000 short-haul truckers.

“Upcoming Closure of Google Podcasts: Migration to YouTube Music Highly Recommended for Users”

Gettyimages 1079623010
Google is shutting down its Podcasts app in the U.S. in a matter of days. In 2020, YouTube Music offered a similar transition strategy to move music listeners away from Google Play Music ahead of its shutdown that same year. However, the Google Podcasts app continued to be maintained for years because YouTube Music wasn’t ready to support podcasts until more recently. By the end of 2023, YouTube Music was able to support podcasts globally, and, by February, they had the ability to upload their RSS feeds, too. From its earlier statements, though, the plan is to discontinue Google Podcasts in 2024.

“Artificial Intelligence Mastermind Demis Hassabis Receives Knighthood for Contributions at Google DeepMind HQ in UK”

Gettyimages 1760047727 E1711731094140
Alongside Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman, who Microsoft hired from AI startup Inflection AI last week, Hassabis founded DeepMind out of London in 2010. So it does make sense that the U.K. would seek to honor one of its most high-profile AI figureheads. Other notable figures from the technology world to receive knighthoods include Apple’s Jonathan “Jony” Ive back in 2011 for “services to design and enterprise.”Delighted and honoured to receive a Knighthood for services to AI. It’s been an incredible journey so far building @GoogleDeepMind over the past 15 years, helping accelerate the field and grow the UK & global AI ecosystems. the king or queen at that given time — technically making the final decision on who receives them.

X’s NSFW Communities Plans Confirmed

Twitter X Logo Musk 1
A day after researchers surfaced X’s plans to test NSFW adult communities on the platform formerly known as Twitter, the company confirmed that Community admins can now set an “Adult Content” label in their settings to avoid having their communities’ content auto-filtered. Otherwise, all NSFW content will be soon filtered across X’s Communities by default. Check out the latest updates and improvements for X Communities.👇 Updates (With the latest version of the app):– [All] Admins can now add topics to their Communities, and you can see topics linked to Communities on all devices. – [All] Soon, NSFW content will… — Dongwook (@DongWookChung2) March 28, 2024Now, included in a long list of updates to X’s Communities is the confirmation that NSFW-focused communities will be allowed to designate themselves as such to keep from having their content filtered automatically, as in other Communities. The X executives had not shared any plans for NSFW Communities at that time.