Seattle restaurant owners sound off on delivery apps | Melinda French Gates’ $1B for women’s issues

As the Seattle City Council prepares to vote Tuesday on a controversial minimum pay law for food delivery drivers, we spoke with restaurant owners to learn about the impact of tech-fueled delivery platforms like Uber Eats and DoorDash on their businesses. Read more. Above, Spice Waala owner Uttam Mukherjee (left) and Smarty Pants owner Michelle Braash.?

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Melinda French Gates is planning to grant $1 billion over the next two years to programs and people working on women’s and family issues. The news comes two weeks after French Gates announced her resignation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Read more.

T-Mobile reached an agreement to acquire “substantially all” of U.S. Cellular’s wireless operations in a $4.4 billion deal that will help the Bellevue, Wash.-based company expand its coverage in rural areas. Read more.

Tech Moves: Seattle marketing vet Lynn Girotto joins Qualtrics as chief marketing officer; and more personnel changes in PNW tech.

Less than a year after the loss of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate’s submersible and its five-person crew during a dive to the Titanic, Triton Submarines is planning a trip to the shipwreck in a completely different kind of vessel. Read more.

Seattle startup Humanly (humanly.io) , which helps companies automate their recruiting functions, is acquiring Teamable , a San Francisco startup offering similar AI-boosted HR tools. Read more.

In an era when chatbots and generative AI are being plugged into seemingly everything, Seattle-based Help Texts is taking a simpler approach. The subscription service provides customized, supportive text messages pre-written by humans for people experiencing grief from a loss or in need of a mental health boost. Read more.

Hot Links:

• A “cybersecurity event” at the Seattle Public Library disrupted access to staff and public computers, online catalog and loaning systems, e-books and e-audiobooks, in-building Wi-Fi and more. (Seattle Public Library)
• Bill Gates loves a burger, and the Burgermaster that he grew up going to with his father. In a new video, Gates laments the closing of one of the chain’s locations. (Instagram)

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