When Dorothy Burrell’s lupus flares, she has days when she can’t walk or get out of bed, much less work outside of her Kansas City home. On those days, her home internet connection is a lifeline.

“It’s like my life. I depend on it; I need it,” Burrell said.

But the 54-year-old Missouri resident couldn’t afford home internet until 2022, when her pastor told her about the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

After a local nonprofit helped her sign up and provided her with a Chromebook, Burrell used her connection not only to search for work-from-home jobs but also to attend virtual doctor’s appointments, order medication and groceries to her door, and stay active with chair exercise routines she found on YouTube.

Her job search ended recently when she found work as a digital navigator with Essential Families, the nonprofit that first helped Burrell obtain internet service.

Because of the broad nature of the work Essential Families conducts, the nonprofit said Burrell’s job will remain secure even if the ACP sunsets. But thousands of other community workers stand to lose both their internet connections and a chunk of their livelihoods once the ACP shuts down. The pandemic-era initiative aimed at getting more Americans online has so far connected 23 million households, but it’s slated to run out of money by the beginning of May.

Keep reading here.—KG

…stay for the speakers. The SoftwareOne ITAM Virtual Summit is here to help leaders achieve visible and streamlined IT, all in a short n’ sweet format.

Here’s how it goes: There are three one-hour sessions over the course of three days. Speakers from orgs like Microsoft, Forrester, and Flexera will discuss how to enable smart, data-driven IT procurement decisions for maximum ROI and minimized risk.

Expect to learn more about:

• combatting and recovering from tech debt and application sprawl
• maximizing savings and driving profitability through FinOps, ITAM, and cloud economics
• cost optimization to fund innovation and drive business growth

And no need to fly out to a venue—simply block 12–1pm EST from April 23–25 on your cal. Just don’t forget to reserve your spot first.

The United Auto Workers’ bid to organize the nonunion auto industry and make inroads in the South will be put to the test this week.

Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will vote by secret ballot April 17–19 in an election administered by the National Labor Relations Board. For decades, the union has struggled to expand its reach beyond the domestic auto industry and into the South, a major auto manufacturing hub that’s widely covered by anti-union laws.

The VW vote will set the tone for the UAW’s drive to organize about 150,000 autoworkers at more than a dozen foreign automakers and EV manufacturers. The push is aimed at boosting the UAW’s membership and securing workers’ place in the EV transition.

Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Tech Brew that the election is the union’s “best chance,” given a long history of organizing efforts there that yielded narrow losses for the union votes in 2014 and 2019.

The odds may be more in the union’s favor this time.

Keep reading here.—JG

Recently, Retail Brew shared how Unilever has turned to 3D printing to speed up the time-consuming and expensive process of packaging development for products like dish soap—but that’s not the only operation it’s working to accelerate.

Along with a slew of home and personal care brands, the CPG giant produces food brands like Hellmann’s and Knorr, and as the company looks to add new food products—whether they be more sustainable or better-for-you formulations, vegan varieties, or just new flavors—Unilever has been looking to AI to make the product development process more efficient.

Manfred Aben, global VP of science and technology for nutrition and ice cream at Unilever, who oversees the company’s “longer-term breakthrough technology,” is leading the effort. Aben has been with the company for nearly 30 years, and was hired for his experience in AI, which looked a little different back then. The first AI models were used to assess products’ shelf lives. The AI of late is a bit more intricate, and has meant less IRL experiments and tests in the lab or pilot plants, he said.

“At that time, AI was very much about rule-based systems. So you have a number of rules and the system checks those rules for you,” he said. “Nowadays, if we talk about AI, we talk a lot about more data-driven models and data-driven analysis.”

Keep reading here.—EC