The Rise Of Shopify, $68 Billion In Size. How Did It Get So Big?
Shopify is the leading E-commerce platform in the United States with 23% market share and has become the second-largest platform in terms of total merchandise volume, surpassing eBay in September 2019 and just behind Amazon. The company’s stock is up more than 20 times its IPO price.
Rebekah Neumann’s Search For Enlightenment Fueled WeWork’s Collapse
WeWork’s bailout by its largest investor, SoftBank, may permanently obscure the ugliest details behind its demise. But if the epidemic of self-delusion surrounding WeWork’s potential can be traced to anyone, it is Rebekah, the girlfriend of WeWork’s founder Adam Neumann.
The Diabetes Patients Who Hacked A Pancreas
While diabetics anxiously awaited the release of commercial systems, tech-savvy diabetics and their loved ones worked on do-it-yourself systems. How could a bunch of hackers, working in their free time, create something medical manufacturing companies had yet to put on the market?
If Everyone Hates Spirit Airlines, How Is It Making So Much Money?
Spirit borrowed the unbundling model from Ryanair and AirAsia. Instead of thinking of a flight as a means of getting from point A to point B plus a certain set of extras and amenities built into the ticket price, an unbundled fare promised nothing more than the get-you-from-A-to-B part. Everything else would cost extra.
The Death And Afterlife Of The Mall
Once a cornerstone of American consumerism, shopping malls are now mostly ghost towns. In a new episode of The Atlantic’s Idea File, staff writers Jim and Deb Fallows explore the phenomenon of the dead mall, and its emerging afterlife.
Young Girls Force-Fed For Marriage In Mauritania
Some Mauritanian communities believe that the fatter girls look the wealthier and more attractive they appear to men. Sahar Zand meets the families force feeding their young girls a 9,000 calorie-a-day diet during a brutal “feeding season” in Mauritania.
Korvaa Is The World’s First Headphones “Grown” From Bio-based Materials
Helsinki-based multidisciplinary design studio Aivan recently unveiled Korvaa, the world’s first headphones made exclusively from microbially grown materials. Created using synbio, Korvaa is the first physical implementation of the technology and marks a potential shift away from a fossil fuel-based economy.
The Celebrity Airport Lost In Time
In the early years of aviation, the Gander Airport in Newfoundland, Canada served as an obligatory stop for refueling between Europe and America. This made the small town of Gander into an unlikely international hub, hosting celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and the Queen of England.
How Ring Went From ‘Shark Tank’ Reject To America’s Scariest Surveillance Company
Amazon’s Ring started from humble roots as a smart doorbell company called “DoorBot.” Now it’s surveilling the suburbs and partnering with police. Although there’s no credible evidence that Ring actually deters or reduces crime, claiming that its products achieve these things is essential to its marketing model.
How The Government Came To Decide The Color Of Your Food
Tomatoes are red, margarine is yellow, and oranges, are, well, orange. We expect certain foods to be in certain colors. What we don’t realize is that these colors are not necessarily a product of nature but rather of historical controversies and deliberate decisions by various actors—including the government.
What If Russia Invaded The Baltics?
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Baltic region has strengthened economic integration with the West and all three nations have become increasingly prosperous as a result. However, the Baltic success story also highlights NATO’s vulnerabilities in the region.
Why Apple’s ‘Trash Can’ Was A Colossal Failure
Apple’s 2013 Mac Pro was a classic case of form over function. Pro users were unable to upgrade the “trash can” or customize it to their liking. There were also thermal limitations that Apple didn’t think about with this design. And 6 years after the revolutionary “trash can” design, Apple goes back to the cheese grater design.
The Radioactive ‘Capital’ Of The World
Jachymov, a small uranium mining town in the northwest of the Czech Republic, has been key in the field of radioactivity research. More than a century ago, Marie and Pierre Curie based their revolutionary work on radioactivity on material brought from there.
What Comes After TV?
A mobile-storytelling platform called Quibi has loomed on the content horizon, promising that, when its app launches this spring, it will be a home to a huge library of short-form shows made specifically for your phone. But Snapchat has been operating in that space for years. It’s harder than you’d think.
3D Printing Homes For The Homeless In Austin
ICON, the 3D-printing construction company, has partnered with Mobile Loaves & Fishes (MLF) to build 3D-printed homes in Austin. The only neighborhood of its kind in the nation, Community First! Village provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness.
What Facial Recognition Steals From Us
In just the past five years, the meaning of the human face has quietly but seismically shifted. That’s because researchers at Facebook, Google, and other institutions have nearly perfected techniques for automated facial recognition.
No, You Don’t Really Look Like That
Every digital camera uses algorithms to transform the different wavelengths of light that hit its sensor into an actual image. What makes the iPhone XS’s skin-smoothing remarkable is that it is simply the default for the camera. Snap a selfie, and that’s what you get.
The 30 Year-Old Airline That’s Never Flown
Back in 1989, a guy by the name of Igor Dmitrovsky filed the paperwork to incorporate a small little business in the state of New York. This company would enter the metal cylinder organism transport business under the name Baltia Airlines. The airline was to fly from New York, US to St Petersburg, USSR.
The Diamond Cartel: History’s Greatest Monopoly
A cartel is a group of companies coming together to fix the price of a product. Like how major oil countries come together as the cartel OPEC, to fix the price of crude oil, except with a diamond. Once these locals catch on to how profitable the diamond trade is, they’ll started trading diamonds and smuggling it.
The Deep Ocean Is The Final Frontier On Planet Earth
Only three people have ever reached the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. The deep is a world without sunlight, of freezing temperatures, and immense pressure. It’s remained largely unexplored until now. Cutting-edge technology is enabling a new generation of aquanauts to go deeper than ever before.
The Internet Is Destroying Our Collective Attention Span
The length of time our “collective attention” is on any given event has grown shorter, and topics become popular and then drop out of public view at an accelerating rate. It’s no surprise if it feels harder and harder to dwell deeply on any topic.