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This as-told-tos Essay is based on a conversation with Matt and Anya Schodorf, Owners and Cofee of Café de Leche, a Coffee Raasting Café and Small Business in Los Angeles. IT HAS BEEN EDIted for Length and Clarity.

My Wife, Anya, and i Had Four Locations of Café de Leche Around the Los Angeles Area, but Our Altadena Location – Our Popular and Busiest One – Burned Down in the Palisades Fire. Most of Our Livelihood comes from that location, which we didloped into a thriving business over the past nine years.

To us, the café was more than just a budilding. It was a spot where the community gathered, whether Customers Held Celebrations for Momentious Occasions, From Wedding Receptions to Baby Showers, and Where of Our Employees, Who Latter Started Relationships, First Met.

Right Now, we’re mourning the loss of all these intangible things, like the sense of community connected to that space, and worrying what will will next.

That location had six permanent employs, and we are also worry about their ability to provides for their families.

We’re still stunned at how this all happened so fast

We’ve Had Windstorms in Altadena Before. We went there at 9:30 pm to batten down the hatches – put away outdoor umbrellas and checkpouring had blown over. We Watered Down the Patio in Case or Embers Came in and Disposed of A Downed Christmas Tree Leftover from the Holidays. We Walked Around; it was so Peaceful. Thatn, we sat in the office for a minute to do.

We got the Mail and Locked The Door, Giving One Last Look at Our Business before we got in the Car. Although we saw the fire on the foothills near east altadena, we never expensive the Winds to Blow the Fires so Close to Our Business, let Alone for it to Catch Fire. We didn’t think to take anything from the shop.

We Woke Up Scared the Next Morning and TRIED to Check on Our Business

We drove up at 6:30 am Along West Altadena, Thinking It Wauld Be the Safest Route. EVEYWHERE we look, houses were Burning Down, and Businesses Were on Fire. We is the whole through the pitch-black smoke, so we turned around. It was getting unsafe.

Later, Our Daughter Discovered online that the fire station half a block from the café had caught on fire. Come we heard that, we know Things Wauldn’t be good. Thatn, someone commaned on one of our instagram posts Saying they saw the café on fire. We tried to occupy ourselves, but we couludn’t stop thinking about what Might be happy to our business.

When it was safe to return, we were back up. Nothing was left. We were stunned.

We realie ry busines is just a thing, but we put a lot of love into it, and it make up the bulk of our livelihoods

We are a small, mom-and-pop-ro Business; We don’t have investors or a franchise. We put everything into the business, and each décor Item was chosen and curated with love.

We’re trying to finds roles for the six permanent employs within other other locations, but in the meantime, we’ve set up a Gofundme to help.

Our goal was to get $ 10,000 for our employs, and it was amazingly fully ended with the first 24 hours. At this point, over $ 20,000 has been raissed. The support has ben beyond anything we have imagined, and we are grateful beyond mesure.

Most Employees Live Within 20 Minutes of the Café, if Not Directly in Altadena or Pasadena. Mary Had to Evacuate, Some Lost Their Homes, and All Have Been Impacted Sevelely by this Tragic Event. We hope that they help help bring say someone comfort.

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We Hope to Rebuild and Come Back Stronger

People have special places they have confened to, and this spot was that that that is for many members of our community.

We Hope the Insurance Companies Will Be TRUE to their Word and Cover Our Losses, and the Government Will Payments on Our Mortgage. How Can We Pay a Mortgage on Land That No Longer Has a Business on It? These are just some of the Things we are worrying about.

AFTER THOSE WHO’VE LOST THEIR HOMES ARE TAKE CARE OF, WE’D LIKE TO SEE SOME AVAILABLE TO SMALL BUSINESSES TO HELP US.

Our Hearts Go Out to Those Who Lost Their Homes. We are Very Cognizant of People Who Lost More than we did, and we want to love and support to say.

Wen Matteo Paz Scored a High School Internship at the California Institute of Technology, The Scientists there gave the Daunting of Manage Sorting Reams of Data from Mission.

It was “Classic Intern Work,” Paz, an 18-Yaar-Old from Pasadena, California, Told Business Insider. “The Very Menial, Tedious, Dirty Tasks that Require a Lot of Time.”

Instead of manualy sifting through the date, pas budilt an he algorithm to do it for Him. Ultimately, he discovered 1.5 million new objects in Space, Including Supernova and Supermasive Black Holes.

On Tuesday, he won $ 250,000 in the regereon science talent search for his effects.

Everyday the Competition Casts A Net Across the Nation for High Schoolers Doing the type of research you May Expect from Graduate Students. This Year Paz Snagged First Place Out of Nearly 2,500 Entrants.

“Surprised isn’t a Strong Enough Word,” Paz Said Shortly after the award ceremony. “I didn’t eda give a thought to what i’d say to people if i’d won.”

The Objects in Paz’s Catalog aren’t JUST PLAIN OLD STARS OR PLANS. They’re all variable objects, meaning they Change dramatically, violently, and offten unredictable. A Black Hole, for Example, Can EMIT Powerful Jets vary in brightness Depending on how Much material is Gobbling up or how fast it is spinning.

That makes these objection a wealth of information about the universe’s Most Befuddling Myteries. For example, they can be used to measure how quickly the universe is expanding from the Big Bang – a puzzle scientists are still trying to solve, whic culd rewrite physics.

Most of the Objects Paz Discovered Are “Candidates,” Meaning Further Study is Required for Scientists to Confirm What Paz’s Analysis These Are.

Luckily, astronomers are already digging into his catalog.

Building an he to scan the Sky

Paz Needed His Machine-Learning Algorithm to Combied Nearly 200 Terabytes of Data from A 10-Eyar Infrared Survey of the Entire by Nasa’s Neowise Telescope.

Looking in the Infrared – Wavelengths Invisible to the Human Eye – The Neowise Mission Searched for Asteroids and Comets Near Earth. Infrared WavelEngths, Howver, Can Also Show Objects Deep in Space That Are Shrouded in Interstellar Dust.

That’s though neowise wasn’t designated to look for Such Objects, Paz though he could tease say out with his algorithm.

“Prior to Matteo’s Work, No One Had TRIED TO USE The Entire (200-Billion-Row) Table to Identify and Classify All of the Significant Variability that was there,” Davy Kirkpatrick, who was Paz’s mentor at Caltech, Told bi in an email.

Other Surveys HAD TRIED TO COMING THROUGIS DATA FOR SPECIFIC TYPES OF VARIABLE OBJECTS, he added.

At the end of the summer program, “we were so impressed with his results that we have Himed Him part-time at Caltech to finish the catalog,” Kirkpatrick Said.

Paz Said a Lot of that Work Was Him “in a Dark Room, Eye Bags Heavy, Looking at My Computer, trying to solve a bug.” SOMESTE HE WORKED OUT MATH PROBLEMS ON A WHITEBARD AT CALTECH. He Also Consulted A Variety of Astrophysicists and Astronomers.

Once the algorithm was Ready though, it blew Him Away.

MAKING 1.5 MILLION NEW DISCOVERIES

In order to analyze all 200 terabytes of data, Paz Divided up the date into 13,000 EQUAL PARTS.

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The Algorithm Analyzed Minuscule Changes in Infrared Radiation to Identify Variable Space Objects and Sort say into different classes, Such as Black Holes or Double-Systems. In some constellations, the algorithm was discoverying more objets than anticipated.

“That Was Where I First Started to see a lot of promise in the project,” Paz Said.

In the end, he surveyed more than 450 million objects in the Sky and Identified 1.9 million that May Be variable objets Such as Black Holes or Supernovae. Of Those, 1.5 million had never been cataloged before – They were new discovery.

“IT’S VEY BEAUTIFUL. NOT JUST THAT NUMBER – IT’S A BIG NUMBER THAT OBVIOUSLY MAKES YOU PROD – But to be visualizes the date,” Paz Said.

Here’s that visualization, plotting all the candidate objects he discovered:

“You can see the milky way, you can see satellite galaxies, you can see andromeda, you can see start-forming regions,” Paz Said. “SHE THOUGH HIGHT A VERY ONE-DIMENSION VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE, JUST FLOTING A POINT AT EVERY DISCOVERY WE’VE MADE, WE CAN REALLY SEE the intricacies and the Glory of the Night Sky.”

Now an Infrared Research Group at Caltech is Already USING HIS CATALAL, CALLED VARWISE, TO STUDY-STAR SYSTEMS IN THE DISTANT UNIVERSE. They’ve already foundns of Star Systems in Varwise that we weren’t previously detected, kirkpatrick said. He added that the research was helping say the Calculate the mass of distant alien planets.

Paz is submitting the catalog for publication in the astrophysical Journal late this year. The catalog has not yet gone through the peer-review process, but the algorithm itelf was peer-reviewed and published in the astronomical journal in november.

“The Variable Candidates That He’s Uncovered Will Be Widelly Studied and Illustrate the Endering Value of Astronomical Surveys,” Amy Mainzer, A Scientist who led the neowise mission, toold bi in an email.

“IT’S CLEAR THAT he is Simply a unique talent – Smart, hardworking, and with a crazy ability to assimilaate Newfound Knowledge in New Ideas for Studying the Universe,” Kirkpatrick Said.

From LA Fires to the Big Bang

As for Paz and His $ 250,000, the Next Frontier is College. He Said He’d Been Accept at Stanford University and Was Keeping His Mind Open About Career Paths.

Just Weeks before Flying to Washington, DC for the Awards ceremony, Paz Woke up in His Pasadena Home to see Flees Outside the Window. The eaton fire traveled so quickly that he’d received no Official warning. AFTER EVACATIONS AND SEVERAL LAGES OF FIRE, HIS FAMILY’S HOME WAS SPARED.

“It really gives you a new Perspective,” he said. “I have a new appreciation for the problems that have the privilege not to worry about.”

Now and Pondering the postsitility of Putting an Infrared Telescope ino Earth Orbit – this time to monitor earth itelf for Emerging Fires.

More immediately, though, Paz want to use his neowise findings to study the elusie expansion rate of the Universe, Starting from the Big Bang, and Hopefully Help Scientists Solve the Biggest Mystery in Cosmology.

“It will be the resolution of a Very Contentious Topic in Current Research, or Its Going to Reveal something Truly Foundational About The Origins of the Universe, “Paz Said.

Tech Leaders have ben warning that he is coming for junior development jobs, but one amazon executive Says Entry-Level Engineers shouldn’t be worked-and they might actually have the Most to Gain.

Rory Richardson, Director of Go-to-Market for General he at Amazon Web Services, Said that he is leveling the playing Field between junior and veteran Developers.

“A lot of studies that we’re seeing as far as the impact of generatory he on this particular population is about your shating noobs more performant,” she said on an episode of “Digital Disruption” podcast aired tuesday.

He tools that use Natural Language Make It Easier for Early-Career Developers to Learn and Contributs, Richardson Said.

“I don’t see anyone Being Left Behind in this, Mainly Becausea Its SO DARN EASY TO USE,” Richardson Said. “It ‘not like you have to learn a new programming Language. IT’S ALL Through Natural Language.”

She sees the Biggest Shift Coming for NewComers Rather than veteran camelopers. “It ‘opening the aperture of who’s going to be able to the relationship to the Technology,” Richardson Added.

Richardson’s optimism stands out in an area where Layoffs have been widespread and nonb postings for software enginers are down more than a third from five years ago.

This month, Google’s Jeff dean Said he May Perform at a Junior Coder’s Level “With the Next Year -i.” Microsoft Cto Kevin Scott Predicts “95% of Code is Going to Be AI-GENERATED” WITHIN FIVE YEARS, while anthropic’s dario amode Expects he to be write “essentially all of the code” by next year.

Richardson instead sees he does not changing what entry-level camelopers will, Rather than replace.

She compared it to be graphing calculators reshaped database administrator Jobs. “We’re gonna see that same shift with all of our our family, I think, over the next two years,” she said. “What they are actually will probably going to change as well, meaning you’re going to not see this just a cost you have to be to the Old Code.”

Richardson Said that when hen Kid is applying for a nonb in 2027, they probably not related to the Computer Language in the Same Way.

“But the role of invention, context switching, synthesis, those higher-ordder ideas that make human super valuable are going to be more valuable,” she said.

The Real Risk, Richardson Said, Isn’t Being Too Junior But Refusus to Adapt. “Grit, creativity, those are Those still very important, the Most Human Things Posible,” She Said.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.

“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” Cast Broke the Fourth Wall in Season Two When Arguments About Pay Spilled Onscreen.

The reality show, which follows a group of unconventional mormon-adjacent tiktok influencers known as momtors, was one of the hulu’s biggest new hits of 2024. Double the Length of Season One.

In Season Two, Episode Six, The Cast Revealed That Negotiations for the Second Season Led to an Argument Where Asced for Jessi to Be Kicked to Boost Her and Their Castmates’ Pay Packets.

This surprised fans and the other cast Members SINCE DEMI AND JESSI WERE CLOSE FRIENDS UP UNIL THAT MOMENT.

Whitney, Another Cast Member, Told Business Insider on May 20 That’s the Cast Currently Paid Equally for Starring in the Show, but suggestted that there is more conversations “down the line.”

Here’s what to know the Cast’s Pay and How to Jessi and Demi’s Fallout.

JESSI SAID DEMI WANTED AN ‘ABSURD’ AMOUNT OF MONE

On May 20, Jessi Told the “VILL Files” podcast that Dempt to kick her off the show was the “cathalyst” for the End of the Friendship.

In the episode, Jessi Said that the argument began during a call with the cast, their managers, and lawyers as they devised a plan to negotiate higher for season two before season one aired.

Jessi Said She Joined The Call and Heard Demi’s Husband, Bret, Tall the Cast to Quit the Show If they Didn’t Get the Salary and HIS WIFE. Jessi Said She Responded by Saying She Didn’t Want to Quit, Which She Said Angehed Bret and Demi.

“She Basically Threw with Under the Bus Becausee of Didn’t Care to Fight for More Money, and She Wanted an Absurd Amount of Money,” Jessi Said, Without Stating How Much Bret and Demi Wanted.

Jessi Said AFTER the initial call, bull Called the other Cast to say Say Jessi Should be kicked off the show so they cany.

Mikayla, Jessi’s Costar Who Appeared on the Same “VILL Files” Episode, Also Said That The Amout Demi Requested Was Too Much, Adding that the Cast Not Know How SuccessFul the Show Wauld Be.

Mikayla Added that Demi Told Cast Metmers That Jessi Had “No Morals, No Walues.”

Whitney and Layla Told Business Insider that the Cast Eventually deciding to Be Paid Equally for Season Two.

Explaining How the Show’s Cast is Paid, Whitney Said: “It is equal and i think maybe more seasons down the line, we’ll have more conversations about it because just naturally more people filmed more than others.”

Demi and Jessi’s Fallout Shows the Struggles of Business Business with Friendship

Demi and Jessi Made Up Before Filming Season Two, but the start to show when Jessi learned that Demi Told their Costar, Taylor, Not to Get Hair Done at Jessi’s Hair Salon, Jz Styles, and Criticized Her Business.

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Taurus Said She was repeating criticism from others and that she didn’t do anything workgus.

Jessi Said The Final Straw Was when Demi kept criciticking her to not supporting her in various arguments.

“I was just like ‘i’m not doing this pattern where i have to beg for your love if you doing exactly what you want,’” Jessi Said.

Demi Told “VILL Files” on May 15 that the fallout was just a “misunderstanding” that could be resolved, but she said Jeid refused to talk with her off-name.

The arguments are a problem for a show built around the idea that the cast is supportive, close friends.

Any rifts that Might Make Viewers Question How Genuine Their Friendship is COULD AFFECT BRANDS THAT THE MOMTOKERS GET AND THE SUCCESS OF THE SHOW.

Jessi and Demi Have Re-Followed Each Other on Instagram, Which Could Mean They Are Rebuilding Their Friendship.

A representative for Demi and Bret did not immediately respond to a comment Request from Business Insider.

Looking for the perfect air fryer? After rigorously testing 60+ models, our kitchen experts have identified which units deliver crispy, evenly cooked food with minimal oil. We’ve gone through pounds of fresh vegetables and frozen fries all to find the best air fryer for every home cook.

The Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven stood out in our tests with rapid preheating, a practical viewing window for monitoring food without disrupting the cooking process, and consistent cooking performance. For our more budget-conscious pick, the Beautiful Touchscreen Air Fryer provides exceptional results at $70 less and aces our design qualifications with 10 color options.

Through our testing, we found that the best air fryers are 30-40% faster than conventional ovens and have user-friendly features like intuitive controls and dishwasher-safe components.

Learn more about how Business Insider Reviews tests and researches kitchen products.

Our top-ranked air fryers of 2025

Best overall: Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven — See at Amazon

Best large-capacity: Ninja Foodi DualZone XL Air Fryer — See at Amazon

Best value: Beautiful Touchscreen Air Fryer — See at Walmart

Best toaster oven: Ninja Foodi XL Pro Air Fry Oven — See at Amazon

Best dual-basket: Midea Two-Zone Air Fryer Oven — See at Walmart

Most versatile: Instant Pot Duo Crisp + Air Fryer — See at Amazon

Best small: Dreo Aircrisp Pro Air Fryer — See at Amazon

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Best overall

From the makers of the popular Instant Pot, the Instant Vortex Plus is the best air fryer I’ve tested because it combines the best features of an air fryer and a toaster oven. It has a window in the front like a toaster oven, but it cooks quickly like a basket air fryer. Even factoring in preheating, the Instant Vortex Plus cooked food the fastest in our tests, including evenly cooked hand-cut fries in just 14 minutes. Best of all, it made moist and evenly cooked broccoli.

The air fryer oven is also easy to use. Select one of the six presets, use the temp/time button to adjust how long and hot the air fryer cooks, and press start. It was mildly annoying how the cook time countdown only starts once the unit preheats. You can’t just have it count down once you press the start button. 

The Vortex Plus has an air filter to prevent odors from escaping. While I didn’t systematically test this feature, it did a good job of containing smells. If removing odors isn’t important, you can often find the model without the air filter at a lower price. Both models feature a light to see your food through the window easily.

The basket and crisping plate are both dishwasher-safe. However, I much preferred cleaning the basket by hand because it takes up a lot of dishwasher space, and the nonstick surface makes clean-up effortless. After countless rounds of testing, this is still the best air fryer on the market.

Read our full Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven review.

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Best large-capacity

The Ninja Foodi DualZone is our pick for the best large-capacity air fryer because it’s like having two full-size basket air fryers in your kitchen. It features two 5-quart air fryer baskets that you can program to heat independently or for the same time and temperature. A “smart finish” function ensures that both baskets finish cooking simultaneously if you’re cooking two different types of food.

Most importantly, the Ninja Foodi DualZone cooks food evenly without drying out the food. While it was one of the slowest units preparing frozen fries, it quickly produced delicious broccoli and hand-cut fries. 

With so many functions, we assumed this $200 air fryer would have a steep learning curve, but the controls are intuitive. We had it up and running without referencing the instructions. Clean-up is also a snap since the baskets and crisper plates are dishwasher-safe. We like that the baskets are smaller than the traditional 6-quart models, so fitting them in the dishwasher is easier.

Another high-capacity option is the Ninja Foodi FlexBasket Air Fryer with MegaZone. It works similarly to the DualZone model, only instead of having two baskets, there’s a divider splitting the 7-quart basket so you can cook larger items more easily. It’s more affordable but has a smaller capacity.

The Ninja DualZone is also one of the best air fryers on Reddit, where users appreciate its versatility.

Read our full Ninja Foodi DualZone Air Fryer review.

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Best value

We’re always a little skeptical about products sporting a celebrity’s name. However, we wholeheartedly recommend the Beautiful 6 Quart Touchscreen Air Fryer by Drew Barrymore as the best budget air fryer. It might be one of the cheapest air fryers we tested, but it delivered a top-notch performance.

The controls are intuitive. First, you press the power button, which illuminates the presets. Once you select a preset, you can adjust the time and temp, and the flashing start button begins the cook. The unit is attractive and comes in 10 colors: white icing, cornflower blue, black sesame, and more. It’s also available in 3-quart and 9-quart options.

The $59 Beautiful air fryer was one of only two units to cook hand-cut fries in 15 minutes, and the results were evenly cooked and delicious. It was also among the fastest at cooking broccoli and frozen fries. The frozen fries were a little dry, but the broccoli was just right.

The basket and crisper plate are dishwasher-safe, though the basket, with its jutting-out handle, will take up significant space in your dishwasher. Thanks to the nonstick coating, hand washing is an effortless alternative.

Read our full Beautiful Air Fryer review.

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Best toaster oven

I tested over 20 units for my best air fryer toaster ovens guide, and the Ninja Foodi XL Pro Air Fry Oven (DT201) came out on top. The intuitive controls are built into the handle, freeing up more room for the massive front window. Thanks to this window and the interior light, it’s easy to monitor your meal as it cooks.

In my temperature variance test, the Ninja Foodi outperformed the pack. The average temperature during the two-hour test was only half a degree off the 350-degree target. It ranged from 349 to 352, varying by two degrees from the goal temperature. This air fryer oven was among the fastest at cooking chicken, producing a perfectly cooked bird in an hour and 10 minutes. The pizza and french fry cooking times were average, though the fries were crispy and evenly cooked.

The $330 Ninja Foodi XL Pro has a spacious interior. Thanks to the included second wire rack, it can fit two pizzas or other dishes. It also dehydrates and features other useful presets. The main negative is that it takes longer to preheat than most air fryer toaster ovens, taking eight minutes to reach 350 degrees and nine minutes to reach 400.

The Ninja Foodi XL Pro is also available with a built-in probe thermometer. I haven’t tested it, but it doesn’t cost much more and may be worth it if you like to cook meat and don’t already have a good meat thermometer.

Read our full Ninja XL Air Fryer Oven review.

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Best dual-basket

I’ve tested a few two-drawer air fryers that allow you to cook two items independently, and they tend to cook slower overall than if you used two separate air fryers. Thanks to a unique design, that wasn’t the case with the Midea Two-Zone Air Fryer Oven. The upper cooking chamber is your classic basket air fryer; the lower is like a tiny toaster oven. Both sections have windows and interior lights for monitoring your food.

The cooking speeds were average for a basket air fryer, which is much better than the other two-basket air fryers we tested. More impressively, the food items came out virtually perfect. The wings were as crispy and even as it gets, and the frozen fries were the same: crispy, not too dry, and restaurant-quality. The broccoli came out as well as you can expect from an air fryer: close to even, though the florets were more done than the stems.  

I tried the dehydration function and loved it. The two-drawer design made it easy to dehydrate larger quantities of food without crowding. In two hours, it turned cherry tomatoes into deliciously tangy sun-dried tomatoes.

Unfortunately, the Midea Two-Zone Air Fryer Oven is harder to use than most air fryers. Since I refuse to read user manuals, it took some trial and error to figure out how to program it. You must select which drawer you want to heat and press the knob once you’ve chosen your cooking function before you can adjust the time and temperature. Setting the unit with the SmartHome app (iOS and Android) was easier, though you can’t start it with the app.

None of the components are dishwasher-safe. Fortunately, the nonstick coating makes clean-up a breeze. Overall, the Midea is the best two-drawer air fryer for large families wanting to air-fry multiple dishes simultaneously.

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Most versatile

Air fryers often get a bad rap for being uni-taskers. Still, Instant Pot has bucked the trend by adding air fryer functionality to its already versatile multicookers, making it the best multitasking air fryer. The $200 Duo Crisp comes with two separate lids — a traditional Instant Pot lid for pressure and slow cooking and another lid equipped with an electric heating coil and fan that you’ll use for air frying, broiling, dehydrating, and more.

If you’ve used an Instant Pot, you’re already familiar with the Duo Crisp’s pressure cooking. In our guides to the best pressure cookers and best sous vide cookers, we rated it the best multitasking unit. 

The air fryer function excelled in my tests, producing tender broccoli and crisp frozen fries, though the tall cylindrical basket had some downsides. The basket allows you to stack two layers of food to compensate for the lack of horizontal space, but because the heat comes from above, the food on the bottom layer is often less crisp than the top. The air fryer basket also lacks a handle, which makes agitating the food difficult.

When you remove the lid, the heating coil is exposed, a burn hazard. The unit has a special plate for safely setting the lid down on your counter, but you must still be careful.

We tested the eight-quart Duo Crisp, but it’s also available in a six-quart size, which may appeal to individuals who only cook for one or two people and have limited kitchen space.

Check out our Instant Pots vs. Air Fryers review and our full Instant Pot Duo Crisp review.

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Best small

For our guide to the best small air fryers, we considered 11 compact air fryers. Due to size constraints, we used different tests from the full-size units. We used half as much fries, broccoli, and chicken wings.

No matter the test, the Dreo Aircrisp Pro Air Fryer was among the best in quality and speed. While broccoli is a challenge for air fryers, the Dreo did the best at balancing tender stems and crispy-yet-not-burnt florets. The fries and wings were evenly cooked and perfectly crispy.

Lights illuminate the buttons for time and temperature adjustments. However, the presets are confusing as they rely on ambiguous symbols, like an orange representing the dehydration mode. Still, we were happy to see a dehydration function since most air fryers don’t have one.

You can wash the tray and basket in a dishwasher. If you wash them by hand, the debris slides right off. However, the rubber feet that hold the tray in place and protect the nonstick basket from scratching kept falling off during washing.

The $74 Dreo Aircrisp Pro used space efficiently and had the best exterior size-to-food-capacity ratio of the small basket air fryers I tested. The air fryer is flat, so you could store items on top, though you’ll need to remove them to cook. Its 3.6-quart capacity makes it ideal for two people.

Read our full Dreo Aircrisp Pro Air Fryer review. Check out our guide to the best small air fryers.

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What else we tested

We tested over 60 air fryers for this guide. Here are some that didn’t make the cut, but we still recommend them.

Under $100

Chefman Small Compact Air Fryer: Among the $50 or less models, the Chefman Small Compact Air Fryer stands out. It excels at chicken wings, delivering crispy, flavorful results, though fries came out uneven. While its compact footprint is perfect for tight spaces, the small capacity best suits solo diners.

Gourmia Fry ‘N Fold Digital Air Fryer: This Gourmia has a transparent glass drawer that affords you a 360-degree view of your food cooking. Unfortunately, the design causes the appliance to lose a lot of heat, making it inefficient and slower than other basket air fryers.

Under $200

Cosori Max XL Air Fryer: The Cosori produced some of the best broccoli during our testing, but it dried out fresh-cut fries. It also takes a full five minutes to preheat. That said, it’s packed with user-friendly presets for everything from root vegetables to steak to bacon. Read our full Cosori Smart WiFi Air Fryer review.

Cuisinart 6-qt Basket Air Fryer: This was a strong contender for the best air fryer. Its large viewing window and interior light make monitoring food easy. The unit delivers consistently crispy frozen fries faster than most competitors. Its even cooking and quick performance make it a solid choice, even though it didn’t quite edge out our category winners.

Emeril Lagasse Air Fryer 360 Oven: This air fryer toaster oven has a nice rotisserie spit feature, though we like traditional roasting pans better for chicken. While the unit preheats rapidly and handles chicken, pizza, and cookies well, its toasting performance is inconsistent and slow. It also showed poor temperature control in our testing.

Over $200

Philips Premium Airfryer XXL: Philips popularized air fryers, and when this model was released seven years ago, it was our top pick. However, other brands have caught up with Philips, and at this price point, there are units that cook faster and more evenly. See our full Philips Twin Turbostar XXL Airfryer review.

Ninja Foodi Deluxe XL Cooker & Air Fryer: This is positioned as a competitor to our most versatile pick, the Instant Pot Duo Crisp. However, it doesn’t slow cook nearly as well as the Duo Crisp, and it doesn’t sous vide at all. Plus, it costs more. Read our full Ninja Foodi Deluxe XL review.

Breville Joule Air Fryer Pro Smart Oven: This air fryer toaster oven is a good splurge option. It excelled at maintaining consistent temperatures and cooking evenly. Yet, it preheated and cooked slower than most units. Also, the $500 price is a lot for an air fryer.

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Is there a microwave air fryer combo?

Yes, the GE 4-in-1 Air Fryer Microwave Oven is one of the better options. Just below $200, this appliance is an excellent microwave but limited as an air fryer. While the GE Combo handled thin items like pizza reasonably well, it struggled with air-frying thicker foods like large batches of frozen fries and a whole chicken.

Another option we tested is the Breville Combi Wave, but at $500, it performed worse overall than the GE model. Currently, these combo units just don’t match the performance of separate dedicated appliances. For more details, check out our air fryer microwave review and our guide to the best microwaves.

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What to look for in the best air fryers

Size: Choose a 4- to 6-quart unit if you’re only cooking for yourself or another person, says Laurie Fleming, creator of Fork to Spoon. For families of four and more, use air fryers that are 6 quarts and up. She recommends larger air fryers when possible because they give you more flexibility in what you can make.

Type: There are two main types of air fryers: traditional basket units and air fryer toaster ovens. Air fryer toaster ovens are more versatile and perform several tasks, including non-convection baking. Basket air fryers are usually smaller and cook food faster but have limited functionality.

Price: The air fryers in my guide range from $59 to $200. Higher prices generally equate to more functions and a larger capacity. If you don’t need fancy functions and only cook for one or two people, you can save a few dollars with an affordable air fryer.

Functions: Manufacturers continually introduce new functions. Some common ones are dehydration, dual-zone cooking, and WiFi connectivity. More and more appliances offer air fryer cooking, including some toaster ovens and pressure cookers, like the Instant Pot Duo Crisp. However, more functions usually lead to a higher price tag.

Accessories: Air fryer accessories range from a wire rack for stacking items to rotisserie kits for roasting chicken. Most accessories I’ve tested haven’t been very useful and are not worth the markup they add to the price of the air fryer. Plenty of accessories are available online if you need a specific item.

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How we test air fryers

James Brains/Business Insider

Cooking: Early in my testing, I discovered that even the best air fryers varied wildly in cook times. One unit charred broccoli to an undesirable crisp in 6 minutes, while another took 13 minutes to reach al dente. So, I cooked three recipes in each machine and evaluated how quickly and evenly they cooked.

Setup and ease of use: I try to approach testing each unit as if I were new to the process. To determine if the controls are intuitive, I don’t reference the user manual during setup. Ideally, you should be able to select the function (air fry, toast, warm, etc.), time, and temperature without referencing instructions. Still, I recommend that newbies familiarize themselves with the user manual to be more comfortable.

Cleaning: I tracked how many parts there were to disassemble and clean. A unit with dishwasher-safe accessories got bonus points. I’ve found washing the crisping tray in the dishwasher is best because it doesn’t take up much space, and cleaning the debris from the little vents and slots by hand can be a pain. I wash the basket by hand because the gunk comes off easily, and it frees up dishwasher space.

Read our full guide on how to clean an air fryer. If you want to speed up the cleaning process, use aluminum foil, parchment paper, or a silicone air fryer liner. Check the user manual for guidelines on how to use liners safely.

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Air fryer cooking tips

James Brains/Business Insider

What can you cook in an air fryer?

Since they rely on the same technology, air fryers can make anything a convection oven can make, including baking, convection baking, air frying, roasting, and toasting items. Some models can also broil and dehydrate your food. We like using one of the best air fryer egg molds to make quick and easy breakfasts.

What cannot be cooked in an air fryer?

Liquid foods, including soups and wet batters, should not be cooked in an air fryer. Fresh greens and other loose items should also not be cooked in an air fryer, as they will fly around and potentially catch fire on the heating element. This article covers the best and worst things to make in an air fryer.

Best air fryer recipes

• Air fryer bacon: Add a little water or a slice of bread to the basket and cook at a lower temperature to prevent smoking and to ensure you don’t overcook your bacon.
• Air fryer french fries: For crispier fries, wash and soak the hand-cut potatoes to remove excess starch.
• Air-fryer baked potato: For a crispier skin, lightly oil the potato; there is no need to pierce it.
• Air fryer hot dogs: Remember to add the hot dog bun to the basket at the end of the cook to toast it.

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Air fryer FAQs

Are air fryers worth it?

Yes. After testing over 60 models, we’re convinced that air fryers are worth the cost and counter space. At first we thought they were a gimmick, but experience proved to us that air fryers are versatile and efficient small appliances.

For the last six years, I’ve had at least one air fryer (and often a few) on my kitchen counter. Unlike even the best microwave, air fryers make foods crispy without drying them out, which means your leftover pizza and french fries taste the same as when you first ordered them.

During the summer, I like that air fryers don’t give off much heat, so you can keep your oven off when cooking. Plus, they preheat and cook faster than a standard oven, so your food is ready faster. Air fryers also work well when there is no space for an oven or if you are just cooking for one or two people. I’ve even been known to bring an air fryer to parties so I can cook my famous bacon-wrapped dates on-site without getting in the host’s way.

How do air fryers work?

Air fryers work like convection ovens, using a fan to circulate hot air. This browns the food and makes it crispy, similar to deep-frying. Air-fried food’s texture and taste won’t be the same as something deep-fried, but it’s as close as you can get without a tub of oil. One benefit of using an air fryer is you don’t have to monitor food too closely or cook it for that long. To learn more, check out our article on how air fryers work.

What’s the best way to clean an air fryer?

It depends on your air fryer model, so consult the user manual. Generally, you should clean the fryer basket and grease catcher with hot, soapy water and a soft sponge after each use. You can simplify cleanup by air frying your food on aluminum foil or parchment paper.

For more details, check out our article on how to clean an air fryer. Look at the best silicone air fryer liners for easy cleaning and grease-free cooking.

What size air fryer do you need?

Fleming recommends buying the biggest air fryer you can afford and have space for because it gives you flexibility in what you can make. She advises against anything smaller than four quarts, even if you just cook for yourself. Big families might consider air fryer toaster ovens, which have more capacity than basket air fryers.

What are the downsides of air fryers?

As with any kitchen appliance, air fryers have downsides. One complaint is that you must clean the crisping tray and basket after every use. However, as we covered above, you can circumvent this by using an air fryer liner, foil, or parchment paper. 

Another complaint is that air fryers take up valuable counter space while having a relatively small capacity. If this is a concern, consider an air fryer toaster oven instead, as they tend to hold more food without costing too much. 

Are air fryers healthy?

The short answer is “it depends.” For example, air-fried Oreos are not a healthy snack, but are lower in calories and fat than deep-fried ones. You’re cutting out oil and oftentimes the breading as well.

James Brains

Senior Reporter, Business Insider Reviews

James Brains is a home and kitchen reporter and product expert with over seven years of experience in service journalism. He is passionate about providing helpful buying advice to readers based on extensive testing. ExperienceAs a Senior Reporter for Business Insider’s Reviews team, James focuses on testing home and kitchen products. He uses his hands-on experience to write in-depth reviews and buying guides, tackling everything from air fryers and toaster ovens to air conditioners and vacuums. Before joining Business Insider in 2021, James worked as a freelance writer and ran Brains Report, his personal product review site. In addition to home and kitchen products, James also has a background in writing about tech, health, and fitness.   Why you can trust JamesJames uses his background in experimental psychology to develop objective tests and review methodologies for all the products he evaluates. He’s tested over 100 mattresses to write our guide to the best mattresses, even touring a mattress manufacturing facility to further enrich his expertise. Seeing how mattresses are constructed has provided key insights into what to look for and what materials and features are best for certain sleepers. James believes high-quality sleep is worth a premium, and he’s passionate about helping readers get a better night’s sleep — but he’ll always help you find a good deal on a mattress in the process. He is always on call to find the best mattress, bedding, and vaccum deals (among others) on any given day, but especially during big sale days like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. Expertise

• Mattresses and sleep products
• Emergency preparedness
• Kitchen appliances and cookware
• Heating and cooling products
• Vacuums

EducationJames holds a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Oregon and a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State. He lives in Lansing, Michigan, with his wife, two kids, and a kitty. When he’s not testing a new mattress or air fryer, James enjoys running the Facebook foodie group Lansing Foodies. The group has over 80,000 followers and puts on an annual Olive Burger Festival.  

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Patti has Become One of My Closest Friends. We go to show, crawfish boils, and out to eat. We show up at family party Arm-in-Arm, and Most recently Celebrated Her Daughter’s College Grade Together. It is a Beautiful Friendship-One i Never Expect to have with my ex-husband’s wife.

I made the first move

I remember the day i meti patti. I’d invited her to lunch after learning my ex-husband was dating her. I WANTED TO GET TO KNOW The Woman Who Might My Kids’ Stepmother and, Truth be Told, I was Feeling a Little Guilty About the impending divorce.

My Husband and I Had Been Married for 12 Years and Had Five Kids with the first five years. We didn’t really communicate much at all. He was a good provider and a great faater, but we were more parenting partners than Lovers.

I eventually Begin Searching for Affection and Companionship Outside of Mariage. He eventually discovered the Truth and Moved Out.

WE COPARENTED AMICABLY AT FIRST, TAKING TAKING TAKING STATYING IN THE FAMILY HOME TO PROVIDE STABILITY FOR OUR CHILDREN. It was Heartbreaking to see the hurt i’d caused, both to the children and to my ex-husband. I think of subconsciously felt it was my mission to help Him find happiness again. When i heard he was dating patti, i wanted to meet her.

We have had a great meal and conversation at a Local Mexican Restaurant with admitting to my shortcomings as a wife and building Him up as a husband. I was trying to be bot an honorable ex and updated car salesman that night. But i did like her and she left with my blessing if they decide to get married.

Not Long after, They did get married. It was just a couple of months after I have gotten Remarried MySelf. And then it all was south.

Coparenting Nearly Broke US

After the divorce, coparenting Became Difficult. We fought over Custody, Family Land, and More. By the time the details were worked out, we were so angry with the other that ours hendoffs had to take place in public.

On top of that, my ex-husband and my new husband to have each Other, Making Communication Tough. Through it all, patti and i were stuck in the middle, with all communication taching placery between us. No Longer Friendly, It was stable at best as we did weigtized tammy wynette’s song, “stand by your man.”

The Women took a Stand

With age comes wisdom, though, and we eventually realized Blind Loyalty to men was overrated. Girl Power took Its Its Place and Over the Years We Started Talking on the Phone, Bonding Over The Now-Grown Kids’ Antics, Our New Role as Grandmother, and the Ordeals of Living with Grumpy Old Men.

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This started while I was living out of state and patti was living mess than five miles from my parents. She started to take care of them. MANY People actually thought she was a third sister, swimming her Husband was actually an ex son-in-law.

My Relationship with My Ex Came Around, Too

Be my second marriage was ending, patti was one of the first People i tourned to. She had been there at the end, listening as weighed out my decisions and offering her Support. She, of all People, Knew the Struggles We’d Had. My ex-husband, who i’d regained a friend with byn as well, was also supportive.

While patti Had always been at family Birthday parties and Holiday Events, Our Friendship Gray Stronger in Recent Years. She’s just like any of my Other girlfriends, and has ect with to drop my car off at the mechanic, while I’ve picked up stuff at the store for her. I know I can count on her need to and she can do the same for me.

I didn’t turn my son’s bedroom into a craft room when he left. I’d heard too hurtful stories of rooms transformed the second a child moved out for college. I wasn’t going to be that mom.

SO very my son moved into his dorm in september, his room stayed exactly How it haad always been. HIS Anthony Edwards bobblehead stayed on its shelf, Next to His Vikings Piggy Bank.

In December, Though, I Needed Room for the Christmas Tree in Front of Our Big Picture Window. Therefore, my plant standed a new temporary home. The south-facing Window in my son’s bedroom was prime real estate, so we transported the three-tiered plant stand to make room for the tree.

“We’ll Put Your Room Back in Order by January,” I Promised.

But then the plants were so happy in the sun. The African Violets Doubled in Size, The Swedish Ivy Stood At Attention, and Dwarf Jade Thrived. So they stayed.

Next Week, Our Son Moves Back Home after Completing HIS First Year of College, and the plant standing isn’t the only thing going through a transition.

Because Circumstances are forcing geni z to take the Slow Launch Route, this might not be the only time one of the traces transitions out and the back into our house. The Coming and Going Is Not Going to Be Easy for Any of US.

I Learned to CREATE A NEW LIFE MY SON LIVING AT HOME

Be he moved out Last September, i Could Barely Enter HIS Room. He wasn’t Living ACROSS The Country, but he was in our house. I MISSED HEARING HIM SLAM DOWN HIS XBOX Controller in Frustration. HIS CLOSET AND DRESSER DRAWERS WERE EMPTY WASTELS.

Father first, Our Evening Were Quiet and Dull. My husband and i haad been used to traipsing acroSs the city to watch Him Play Soccer and Basketball. Now we had to find New Hobbies. We Started Volunteering at A NeighBorhouod Food Pantry and Got Involved in Classes at Church. Extra Time on the Calendar Meant More Opportunities to Invite Friends Over for Dinner and Start Watching “m*a*s*h” from season one.

I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MY NEW ROUND AND LIFE WEN MY SON MOVES BACK IN.

I Remember How DIFFICULT IT WAS YEARS AGO FOR TO MOVE BACK HOME AFTER AFTER

The Summer BetWeen My Freshman and Sophomore Years of College Decades Ago is Painful for Remember. I was back home on ours Iowa farm after a study abroad program in Paris, where i fell in lust with a handsome German, Wore Little Black dresses on a Weekend Trip to the Riviera, and Walked Along the Nighty A Beastie Boys Concert. I was just 19, but i felt like a full-grown adult. I HAD SURVIVED WITH RULES BY TAKING RISKS AND LEARNING FROM MISTAKES.

And thatn I Moved Back Home and TRIED to Remember My Previous Role As My Parents’ Child.

IT FELT LIKE THose moments on the soap opera i watched with my grandma a new actor suddenly appeared onscreen: “The roles of Kimberly Hanson Will Now Be Played by … a Complete Stranger.” I was still me, but i had Outgrown my original packaging.

That Summer, i Pushed Boundaries That Made My Mom Cry. I DROVE AROUND MY SMALL TOWN BLASTING ANI DIFRANCO and FIONA Apple, Wearing Short Dresses and Tyne Tank balls, anything to prove “you thught you knew me, but you were workg.”

Long Phone Calls and Occisional Visits with My College Best Friend Helped with Survive, and by the Time The Next Summer Arrived, I HAD DONE SOME MATING. I knew that another Summer Living at Home Might My Damage My Relationship with My Parents, SO I WORKED AT A SLEEP-AWAY CAMP-CLOSE ENOUGH TO SPEND A NIGHT BED ONCE A WEEK, but far ENOUGH TO COMFORTABLY STRETCH MY GROWING Wings.

These memory scroll through my heads on an endless playlist titled “Summer disaster waking to happy” as i count down the days unil my again strands his room with hoodies and thrift store t-shirts.

Will we enCounter the same wills i did with my parents when i returned home from College? I don’t know.

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This Transition Will Be Difficult for Both My Son and Me

Be my son comes home next week, i will Help him unpack his bags, cook his favorite meals, and hope he wants to watch the nba playoffs with me. I Will Listen If He Wants to Share How’s Changed and Grown, but if he d Hesn’t, i’ll Watch Closely and See It for MySelf.

I’ll try to remember what it felt like to be 19, caught between two versions of myself. I’ll remind myself this transition isn’t just his; Its mine, too.

Be i look at that plant stand, i’ll think of what i’ve learned: SOMESTEMES Growth Happens in UNEXPECTED PLACES. My plants thrived in that south-facing Window, just liked Hope he did in his dorm. They’re back in the Front Window Now, But I know they’ll flourish again when to moving. Just like he will.

Redddit’s first year as a publicly traded firm is going great. The Company, which is Nearly 20 Years Old, Shared An Extremely Strong Earnings Report This Week: Revenue is up 68 Percent Year Over Year, Daily Active Unique Visitors Are Up 47 Percent, An Reddit Tourned a Profit for the First Time in Its Entire History. The earnings exceeded analyst Expectations, and the Stock Price Shot Up More than 40 Percent.

Reddit HAD No Shortage of Other Good Numbers to Share. Ad Revenue Increased 56 Percent Year Over Year to $ 315 Million, while “Other” Revenue, Mostly From AI Licensing Deals, Went up 547 Percent to $ 33 Million, A Number that Comparatively Small But That Heavily Contributs to the Company’s Profitability. Its revenue for user is also up slightly, meaning that vits are being monatized more effectively on average. AFTER YEARS OF SLOW GROWTH AND A STUBBORN INABILITY TO MAKEY DESPITE DESPITE ITS SIZE AND INFLUENCE, REDDIT IS BLOWING UP.

Reddit’s Growth and Trajectory Are Undenable. In its news release and Letter to investorsThough, They’re ALSO somewhat underexplained. Why Might a Mathe, Mostly Unchanged Platform Suddenly Start Growing Like a Viral Start-up? (Reddit’s Last Quarterly Report Included similary EYE-Popping Growth Numbers.) The Company Suggests a Number of Factors-Machine Translation to Localize Content for New Markets, Better Posting Interfaces for User-But Ends up Talking the Obvious Answer: Google, The Mont Popular in the World and Larger Reference On the Internet by Far, is more People to reddit. Way More.

The backstory here is a bit fuzzy and contessted, but the basic outline is this: late Last year, google prioritizing Certain Sources of USER-GENERATED Content in Search in Surface More “First-Person Perspectives“In respect to queries. This, Among Other Less Clearly Explained Changes, SEEMED to Result in More Visibity for Forumlik Sites Like Quora and Especialy Reddit, Which some users were already adding to quiries as a sort of hack to make seerrs Batter (” BEST IPHULTS BETTERS BETTER BETTERS BETTER BETTERS BETTERS BETTER (“BEST Reddit, “For Example).

IT ALSO CORRESPONDED WITH A MASSESS DROP IN TRAXHIC TO AROUND OF ONLINE PUBLISHERS, CAUGHT The Attention of Google Analysts and Search-Engine Optimization (SEO) Experts, and Sent Waves of Panic Through Online Media, which Heavily on Google for Finding Readers. “Reddit’s Surge is unprecedented,” Says Lily rayA VP at Marketing Consultancy Amassive. “We’ve Never Seen Anyding like it in the seo space.” Between July and August of 2023, Ray Says, Reddit “Really Started to Take off” in terms of Visibity Acoss Thousands of Popular Searches. Now, for Information Searches – A Term of Art Reference to Queers in Which the User Has a Specific Question to Answer – “You’re Going to See Reddit.com Ranking Near the Top.” (Among Web Publishers and SEO Experts, there’s a widly held belief that this Change is related To google he licenses deal with reddit, which was disclosed Earlier this year; The Companies deny that the two Related.)

The source of Reddit’s Growth is also evident in it Official Numbers, although it dosesn’t break google or search traffic specifically. For Example, ITS logged-in Daily Active-Unique-Visitor Numbers Are Up 27 Percent Globally, while Its Logged-out Daily Active-Unique-Visitor Numbers Are Up 70 Percent. In Q3 of Last Year, Logged-in Users Accounted for A Slim Majority of Daily Unique Visits to Reddit; this year, logged-out Visitors have taken the lead. This is consistent with Growth Driven by People Taping on Redit Links in Google Rather than Organic Growth From People Seeking Out Reddit Specific.

In his letter to investors, CEO Steve Huffman Mentions How Important Reddit has Become to Google – “Redit Was the Most Google Word in the US,” he notes – but is somewhat more oblique in talking google Has Become to Reddit. This is as close as he gets (Bolding Mine):

Looking ahead, improving the search experience on reddit is a key part of our strategy. We want to enure that all ussers have the best experiment. This Includes User Coming to Reddit From External Search And Those Searching Directly on reddit look for recommendations on what to buy, what to watch, or which produces or servings are the best. We know MANY USSERS ARE LOOKING FOR MORE THAN JUST ASSWERS; They are looking for authentic, real-works insights and Advice from the communities on reddit. We are FOCUED ON MAKING THE EXPERIENCE OF Navigating Conversations and Content on Reddit Easier and More Intuitive.

Again, Things Are Going Well for Reddit, and Getting Lots of New Visitors, some of the whom will become users and controls to the platform, MAKING IT MORE USSISFUL AND VALUABLE, IS Good News in Multiple Ways. But getting a majority of your traffic-Your main source of revenue as an ad-supported busines-from a much partner is not with risk. JUST ASHT THose websites that just watched their previous visitors get redirected to reddit en mass. Or the Collapsing American News!

Reddit Built It Reputation As A Community of Communities, A Site Where People intentionally spend and oCCACONITALLY CONTRRIBUTE IN THE FORE OF POSTS, OR VOLUNTEER Moderation. ITS users were motivated by the presence of other users; Relatedly, for Better or for Worsse, the Company Had to be at Least Somewhat Responsive to the Demands of Redditors, Who Depended on Both for Advertising Revenue and As a Source of Free Content and Labor. (In the Run-up to Its IPO, Howver, Reddit Ran Out of Patience for This Dynamic and Reasserted Its Over A Restless Mod Community.) IF Reddit Begins to Function More as a de facto Extension of Google-AS A Website Full of Highly Search CONTENT RATHER THAN A MOSTLY SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY-IT WILL HAVE TO DIFFERENT Challenges.

Already, spammers Trying to take the advantage of reddditi visibility in Google are pumping the Full of Inauthentic and offening ai-Genrained “saosite“Content, Creating New Work for Already-Bleaguered Volunteer Moderators. In 2007, Demand Media, A Company That Exisable to Get Google Traffic, Rode a Mutually Beneficial Arrangement With the search Engine to a valute that briefly exceeded that of the New York Times. DEMAND media was a fairly cynical contents farm that paid freelanders Small Fees to Produce Huge Quantities of Passable Search Fodder, Which for A Brief Perioded Gaps in Google’s Results Pages. Reddit, Which Couldn’t be More Different in Terms of History, Its Role with the Broader Web, and Its Relationship with users, nonneheless finds itelf performing a simillar function and derivative simillary benefs. Its not a bad deal! But it is potentially a risk one, especially now that reddit is refusing indexing from Other Search Engines with Connections to AI FIRMS, WHICH is Basically All of the say.

Reddit’s New Success is at Google’s Mercy, in Other Words, A Fact of which Both firms are acutely aware: if the search giant decides to start showing Redit Links, or spreads starts summarizing more of them – it paid for all that dates, After. Wild Growth Could Stall or Reverse, which is a bit more of a problem Now that it has a ticker symbol.

Reddit’s Current Task is to try to convert it new traffic into users who’ll stick around, talc to one another, and keep producing enough actual credible, interesting, or useful content to kep other users around – but also for harvest and advertise. For Years, Reddit Had to Answer to Its Investors and ITS users, whose desires weren’t always aligned. Now, it has to be to the Most Powerful Website on the Internet.

This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

(This piece, and our package on Elon Musk, was originally published in August 2022. On October 27, Musk completed the acquisition of Twitter hours before a court deadline that would have required him to go to trial over the purchase. He immediately fired several top executives and tweeted “the bird is freed.”)

In January 2018, Tesla announced details of a new contract with its CEO, Elon Musk, that sounded less like an executive-compensation package and more like the premise of a game show. Under the deal, Musk would take no salary but could earn large bundles of stock options each time he raised the company’s value by $50 billion. If it went up by a mere $49,999,999,999, he would leave empty-handed.

The contract’s top prize could be unlocked only if the company’s market cap hit $650 billion by 2028, a 13-fold increase. Tesla was bleeding so much money — it was among the most shorted stocks on Wall Street — that growing its value that significantly in a decade, or ever, seemed hopeless. The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin described the feat as “laughably impossible.” And then, in December 2020, with seven years to spare, Tesla’s value blew past the target, lifting Musk’s personal net worth to $185 billion and making him the richest person on the planet.

There were lots of reasons for Tesla’s rise, many of them concrete. The company announced it would open new factories in Austin and Berlin. It reported four consecutive profitable quarters for the first time and was invited to join the S&P 500. It grew production to build half a million cars in one year and dominated the U.S. market for battery-powered electric vehicles. It was a pioneering company with incredible potential. Yet the single biggest accelerant — a factor that, today, explains why an industrialist memelord is the dominant figure in American business and culture — was probably Musk’s tweets.

Right after his new contract took effect, Musk started tweeting a lot. He had always been prolific, but this was the point where he went from, by one count, 197 tweets per month (December 2017) to 384 (May 2018), posting Baby Yoda memes and self-produced rap songs, calling a diver who had courageously helped rescue children from a cave a “pedo guy,” and announcing bogus plans to take Tesla private at $420 a share. And then, emboldened by his victory in the defamation lawsuit over his pedo-guy tweet and his light punishment from the Securities and Exchange Commission over his $420 tweet, Musk tweeted even more — 446 times in July 2020.

Whether Musk was making dubious claims about his company’s production capabilities (“1000 solar roofs/week by end of this year”), applying reverse psychology (“Tesla stock price is too high imo”), or hyping other meme stocks on the side (“Gamestonk!!”), Tesla’s stock went up — first by a little and then, during the pandemic, by a lot. His followers spent their stimulus checks on Tesla shares, then they discovered the options market, magnifying the gains. In late 2021, Musk’s net worth touched $315 billion, prompting Forbes to declare him the richest person who had ever lived.

It’s hard to fathom how somebody could make more money faster than anyone ever has by tweeting, yet that’s pretty much what happened: A carrot was dangled, and Musk, likely figuring he would never reach it on the basis of such old-fashioned metrics as quarterly earnings, yoked Tesla’s stock to his Twitter feed and went goblin mode. A little like when Neo from The Matrix realized that reality was a mirage and therefore he could do kung fu without any lessons, Musk intuited the illusory nature of the stock market and social media and ran up a new all-time-high score. If Tesla might have been a $300 billion company under a generic Silicon Valley CEO, it was a $1.2 trillion company with the guy who turned it into a product cult.

He had always been sui generis, but this is when he became the Elon Musk we know today — a master of atoms, bits, and bullshit who begs our awe, skepticism, and irritation in ever-shifting proportions and whose record-breaking fortune may be only the tenth-most-interesting thing about him. Musk puts a reported 80-plus hours a week into running two major companies, Tesla and SpaceX, with time left over for side projects in tunneling (the Boring Company) and brain implants (Neuralink) — and somehow even more time to host Saturday Night Live, suntan with Ari Emanuel, and spend entire afternoons explaining orbital physics and the limbic system to Joe Rogan. It’s no wonder Musk thinks we live in a simulation, because he definitely lives in one where the normal rules of the universe seem to hold less authority: Newton’s laws, financial regulations, mores of business and celebrity, and soon, he hopes, the legally binding terms of his purchase agreement with Twitter.

In April, Musk made an unsolicited $44 billion bid for his favorite social network. It looked like bad business; the company had lost money for eight of the past ten years. Musk insisted he wasn’t seeking a profit but rather to save what he called the internet’s “de facto town square” from partisan content moderators. “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” he said. “I don’t care about the economics at all.” But he cared about the economics somewhat when, amid a broader stock slide, Twitter’s value sank by almost a third from what Musk had agreed to pay for it. He then said the sale was “temporarily on hold” and accused the company of misleading him over the number of bots and spam accounts on the platform — though, he hinted, he might be willing to tolerate those extra bots at a discounted price. Twitter declined to bargain, and in July, Musk attempted to terminate his offer. (One theory is that Musk had always intended to bail on the deal and was using it only as cover to sell $8.5 billion of Tesla stock.)

Twitter sued to force Musk to follow through on the transaction, and a Delaware Chancery Court judge has scheduled an October trial. If Musk wins, it may prove he has reached escape velocity from all rules and laws; it’ll also probably decimate Twitter’s stock and leave the company exposed to another hostile takeover, assuming it isn’t incinerated by shareholder litigation first. If Musk loses, he’ll get the cosmic comeuppance of being judicially compelled to buy the stupidest company in the world at something like a $14 billion markup. Whatever the outcome, the Curb Your Enthusiasm tubaist waits in the wings.

Musk has played the troll so convincingly that it’s easy to forget he isn’t just one. Consider his offline skill set, an array of talents heretofore unimaginable outside Walter Isaacson’s most depraved fantasies. Musk’s formal education ended with bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania, but his self-taught expertise spans aeronautics, solar energy, artificial intelligence, and other fields. People he has worked with say he combines the abilities of a venture capitalist who can spot and manifest funding for far-off opportunities (such as the potential to power a car with lithium-ion batteries or make cheap rockets that can be launched more than once), an engineer who can help clear the practical hurdles to those opportunities (like designing the body of an automobile or stress-testing rocketry components), a systems savant who can align complex organizational processes (as in vertically integrating supply chains so that many of Tesla’s and SpaceX’s parts are made in-house), and a leader whose warped charisma can push employees through difficult deadlines. (Musk is said to have motivated, or possibly just frightened, Tesla workers during the production of the company’s Model 3 by sleeping nights on the factory floor.)

To whom could you even compare this Musk? He makes internet moguls such as Mark Zuckerberg and the Google guys look like dilettantes and their products like glorified spyware. He has been called an heir to Steve Jobs, but while Jobs might have talked about putting a “dent in the universe,” Musk is actually operating at the level of interplanetary ambition. Attempting to buy Twitter as a gag and then getting pantsed in front of the entire contract-abiding world may not engender much faith in his farthest-fetched plans to spread humanity across the cosmos. But while everybody’s laughing, his car and rocket companies are on track to keep thriving into 2023 and beyond.

Tesla is the most valuable automaker in the world even though it sells only a fraction as many cars as most of its rivals. In the second quarter of 2022, it doubled profits over the same period in 2021, which is remarkable in itself but more so given COVID-related factory shutdowns and Musk’s copious personal distractions. Coming next year (maybe) is Tesla’s second-generation Roadster, and if it ships as Musk has promised, it will be among the fastest electric cars ever made, with a top speed of over 250 mph, and the fastest-accelerating cars of any kind, able to do zero to 60 in just 1.9 seconds. SpaceX’s prospects may be even greater. The company has reduced the cost to send cargo into orbit by a factor of 20. One of its rockets, Starship, the tallest and most powerful ever built, is theoretically capable of hauling more than 100 metric tons. If Musk’s engineers can figure out how to get the prototypes to stop exploding on takeoff and landing, the Starship may someday be able to transport 100 people to the moon or Mars, then, because it’s fully reusable, flip over and blast off to Earth again. Musk has said the Starship could eventually fly for as little as $2 million per launch, which would make its cost per kilogram of payload something on the order of overnighting an envelope from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Or maybe none of that will happen, because Musk can be an appallingly bad estimator. As his biographer Ashlee Vance has noted, engineers at one of Musk’s early start-ups learned that if he anticipated a coding task would take an hour, it would usually take two or three days, and if he thought it would take a day, it might take a couple of weeks. He has bumped the ETA for SpaceX’s first manned rocket to Mars from 2026 to 2029. He predicted that Neuralink would test its brain interface in humans by 2020; now he says by the end of 2022. In May, he said that Tesla’s self-driving Autopilot feature would eliminate the need for human drivers by next year, which is similar to claims he has made every year since at least 2014.

Still, Musk has delivered on enough laughably impossible goals that those who doubt him do so at their own risk. He seems pathologically bent on silencing critics — either by succeeding or making them sign NDAs — and he might have been designed in a lab to carry long-term grudges as motivation. He says he was bullied as a kid in Pretoria, South Africa, and once got a nose job to reopen his airways after he was beaten up and thrown down a flight of stairs. He’s estranged from his father, a person he has called “a terrible human being.” He was ousted as CEO at his first two companies — Zip2, a maker of city-guide software for newspapers that sold to Compaq for some $300 million in 1999, and X.com, which became PayPal and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002 — so he put his own money into Tesla and SpaceX, making him harder to get rid of. Tesla’s entire 2018–21 stock run might in part have been his revenge on the short sellers that once targeted the company, including Bill Gates, who Musk alleges still hasn’t closed a multibillion-dollar short position. And to Musk’s credit, his original visions for Zip2 and PayPal, both overruled at the time, were at least partially vindicated later. He’d wanted to turn Zip2 into a consumer hub for maps and local-business reviews years before the launch of Yelp and Google Maps. And he reportedly thought PayPal should have held out for a better acquisition offer; it’s currently worth around $100 billion.

The question is whether Musk’s attempted jilting of Twitter is just one more sideshow on a general path to business glory or evidence that he’s immolating like one of those Starship prototypes. So far, his 2022 has included multiple accusations of racial discrimination from employees; a resurfaced sexual-harassment allegation from a SpaceX flight attendant; the recall of nearly 600,000 Tesla vehicles; animal-cruelty complaints against Neuralink; the discovery of three publicly unacknowledged children; and a Wall Street Journal claim that he had an affair with Sergey Brin’s estranged wife, Nicole Shanahan, that led to the Google co-founder filing for divorce. (Tesla denies the racial discrimination, Neuralink disputes the animal cruelty, and as for the affair: A lawyer for Shanahan denies it, as does Musk. “Haven’t even had sex in ages (sigh),” he posted.) None of these scandals hung around for long enough to inflict much damage in part because he tweeted right through them, creating an endless diversion.

Lately, there seems to be something purposeful about how Musk tweets the news, muscling his way into trending topics like a one-man bot farm. A tag cloud for one of his slower weeks may include climate, COVID, free speech, the 2024 election, abortion, gun control, the Russia-Ukraine war, UFOs, crypto, Elden Ring, the Johnny Depp–Amber Heard trial, and more. He has spread himself through every cultural jurisdiction so that he’s always the top story no matter which news bubble you’re in. Some billionaires own magazines and newspapers, but Musk may have built something bigger, a decentralized media empire that amplifies his every utterance into a blizzard of commentary and clickbait so that all praise, honest criticism, and exasperated overreach cancel one another out and he can wear our exhaustion like armor.

Once, during the post-dot-com innovation drought that spawned it, Twitter was the soft and ridiculous antithesis of everything that Musk, a maker of hard and serious tech, stood for. “We wanted flying cars,” went the motto of his PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s VC firm. “Instead we got 140 characters.” Now it’s existentially important to everything Musk does — and thanks to him, its own future has never been bleaker.

Musk’s Twitter imbroglio recalls one of his earliest vanity purchases. When Zip2 was acquired, he celebrated his first major payday by dropping $1 million on a McLaren F1, then the world’s fastest car. One afternoon, he was driving in Silicon Valley with Thiel, who asked, “So what can this do?” “Watch this,” said Musk as he stomped on the accelerator. The car hit an embankment, jumped three feet in the air, spun around, and touched down, its body and suspension totaled. “You know, I had read all these stories about people who made money and bought sports cars and crashed them,” Musk reportedly told Thiel. “But I knew it would never happen to me, so I didn’t get any insurance.” And then he climbed out of the wreck without a scratch on him.

Lots of People Experience a Little Something Called “Bob Regret” after chopping off their hair. Not so for kris Jenner. The Kardashian Matriarch First Debut Her “C- – – – Little Bob” Last Month and SEEMS to be Enjoying the Bob Life so Much that she hasn’t stopped smiling Ever Since.

On Thursday, Jenner Posted Several More Photos of her excitation new hairstyle – a relatively shocking departure from her decadeslong commmitment to her signature pixie cut – and i must say, the girl is glawing. In her post, the 69-YEAR-OLD credited Hairstylist Justine Marjan for Bringing the Bob to Life, This Time with an Accoutrement in the Form of A Little Black Bow. “Shoot days,” she wrote.

Jenner has been wearing her bob all over Town, Including to Monday’s Blue Origin launch (though, sadly, the bob was hiding underneath a hat) and, more visibly, to the skims Store opening in los angeles Earlier this month. And you know what? Good for Her. Bob Life Looks Great on Kris Jenner.