The Start-Ups Building ‘Dark Kitchens’ For Uber Eats And Deliveroo
Venture capitalists have all aligned on the best solution: kitchens that only serve delivery customers, known as “cloud”, “ghost” or “dark” kitchens, that use a combination of advanced food preparation, underused real estate and algorithm-driven optimisation to lower overheads and increase output.

For Bumble, The Future Isn’t Female, It’s Female Marketing
Whitney Wolfe Herd set out to build a safer dating app for women, but it’s not clear that she’s made a measurable difference. According to a company user survey, about a third of Bumble women had received lewd photos from men, whether through text or other social media that Bumble couldn’t control.

Google Search Results Have More Human Help Than You Think, Report Finds
Google’s increasingly hands-on approach to search results, which has taken a sharp upturn since 2016, marks a shift from its founding philosophy of ‘organizing the world’s information’ to one that is far more active in deciding how that information should appear.

How Steak Became Manly And Salads Became Feminine
Beginning in the late 19th century, a steady stream of dietary advice, corporate advertising and magazine articles created a division between male and female tastes that, for more than a century, has shaped everything from dinner plans to menu designs.

In The Race For Cheap Airfare, It’s You vs. The Machine
Travel providers now use artificial intelligence software to re-price their offerings, sometimes dozens of times a day, to maximize revenue. For business and leisure travelers, the result is a variation of the cat-and-mouse game, where travel companies are almost always the cat.

Why Babies Can’t Drink Water
While drinking ample amount of water is generally good health practice for adults, it can be deadly for newborn babies. It turns out, just a few ounces of water can be too much for an infant to handle, resulting in water intoxication that can even be fatal.

Why Ban Dollar Stores?
Dollar-discount stores get the blame for “food deserts”—neighborhoods without supermarkets. It’s claimed, these stores drive out supermarkets with their low prices and saturate poor neighborhoods with junk food. But are dollar stores really to blame for bad diets?

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.

The Most Common Type Of Incompetent Leader
Research shows that absentee leadership is the most common form of incompetent leadership. Absentee leaders were promoted into management, and enjoy the privileges and rewards of a leadership role, but avoid meaningful involvement with their teams.

The Day The Pirates Came
For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life. But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate’s life upside down. His fate would come to depend on a band of drug-fuelled jungle pirates – and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King.

The Future Of Coffee
Over the past few years, the world of coffee has kickstarted a movement of cultural and creative influence. From unique jute bags, logos, or merchandise—cafes, roasters, and coffee shops around the globe are experimenting with new ways to provide spaces and product packaging that stand out from the crowd.

The Ever-Growing Car: Why Do They Keep Getting Wider?
We all know cars getting bigger and heavier. Most of us know why they are getting bigger, too. To comply with today’s stringent crash regulations – by passing offset, side and roof impact tests, as well as those evaluating pedestrian protection performance – cars require considerable cubic metres of controllably crushable bodywork.

What Google Learned From Its Quest To Build The Perfect Team
Our data-saturated age enables us to examine our work habits and office quirks with a scrutiny that our cubicle-bound forebears could only dream of. New research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter.

Living In Switzerland Ruined Me For America And Its Lousy Work Culture
Long commute, full-time, no benefits. No way, I thought. Who would want to do that? And then it hit me: Either I had become a completely privileged jerk or my own country was not as amazing as I had once thought it to be. This wasn’t an unusually bad offer: It was just American Reality.

Why The Coming Foreclosure Crisis Will Look Nothing Like The Last One
A prominent housing analyst expects hundreds of thousands of defaults next year as mortgage forbearance periods end. At first glance, those projections look bad. On closer inspection, however, this round of foreclosures should be mild in comparison to the financial carnage of 2008 to 2010.

How The Mast Brothers Fooled The World Into Paying $10 A Bar For Crappy Hipster Chocolate
While customers can’t get enough of the company’s bearded, Brooklyn hipster founders, and their brilliantly marketed, $10 “bean to bar” chocolates, a term reserved for chocolate that has been produced entirely under the maker’s control, from the cocoa bean to the wrapped bar, chocolate experts have shunned them.

Can Vertical Farms Reap Their Harvest? It’s Anyone’s Bet.
Food futurists and industry leaders say these high-tech vertical farming operations are the future of agriculture. Indoor-grown produce is available in more than 20 supermarket chains nationwide. But despite massive investment, questions remain about efficiency and costs.

The Controversy Behind Nike’s Vaporfly Running Shoe, Explained
Nike’s Vaporfly shoes have become a popular choice for both elite and amateur runners. But the shoes may soon be banned in professional competitions if World Athletics, the world governing body of track and field, decides they offer an unfair advantage.

I Lost My Identity To A Fraudster, And It Took Six Years To Clean Up The Mess
This essay is going to scare you. There is a better-than-average chance that, at some point in the last several years, your personal information was stolen. Not something small like a credit card account, but the good stuff, your Social Security number coupled with your birthdate.

How Boeing Crashed: The Inside Story Of The 737 Max
Boeing used to represent the gold standard in aircraft safety, but critics say it has lost its way in the pursuit of profit. We tell the story of two fatal crashes involving the 737 Max 8 jet: the Ethiopian Airlines crash last March that killed 157 people and the Lion Air disaster in October 2018 that killed all 189 on board.

The Diabolical Genius Of The Baby Advice Industry
Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer. While there might indeed be one right way to do things, you will never get to find out what it is.