Fewer Than 1 in 5 Residents Can Afford a Home in Bay Area
August 9th, 2018Via: Mercury News:
The Bay Area continues to lead the state in shattered home-ownership dreams.
Record home prices and rising interest rates have pushed statewide home affordability rates to a 10-year-low. In the Bay Area, fewer than 1 in 5 residents can afford to buy into one of the nation’s most expensive real estate markets, according to a study released Wednesday by the California Association of Realtors.
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A typical state resident needs an annual income topping $125,000 to afford a median home priced at $596,000. In Los Angeles, about 3 in 10 households could afford to buy, while about 4 in 10 residents in the Inland Empire could make a purchase.
Bay Area residents find a much starker balance sheet. A household needs roughly $220,000 in income to afford a home at the median price of $1.04 million, according to CAR. After a down payment of more than $200,000, a typical new Bay Area homeowner would have a $5,500 monthly mortgage payment.
Psychological Techniques Used to Keep Kids Online
August 8th, 2018Parental controls. Use them.
Via: AP:
Children’s advocates want the American Psychological Association to condemn the tech industry’s practice of using persuasive psychological techniques to keep kids glued to their screens.
The advocates, citing research that links excessive use of social media and video games with depression and academic troubles, say it’s unethical for psychologists to be involved in tactics that risk harming kids’ well-being. Skeptics say the research is inconclusive, and they note that psychologists have been involved in other industries’ marketing and advertising for decades.
The group seeking intervention includes 60 U.S. psychologists, researchers, children’s advocates and the Children’s Screen Time Action Network, a project of the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. The network was publishing a letter Wednesday to the American Psychological Association, coinciding with the association’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
Millennials Try to Explain the First Amendment
August 7th, 2018Via: Campus Reform:
A recent survey found that many Americans are unable to name a single one of the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. Would Ivy League students do any better?
Massive Wildfire Becomes Largest in California History
August 6th, 2018Via: Reuters:
The Mendocino Complex became the largest wildfire in Californian history on Monday as it raged at the southern tip of the Mendocino National Forest where crews battled to keep flames from descending into foothill communities.
The Mendocino Complex Fire, made up of two separate conflagrations that merged, grew to 283,800 acres (114,800 hectares) and was still growing, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
The fire surpassed the Thomas Fire, which burned 281,893 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in 2017, as prime weather conditions are expected to persist.
Older Americans Increasingly Filing for Bankruptcy
August 6th, 2018Via: SSRN:
The social safety net for older Americans has been shrinking for the past couple decades. The risks associated with aging, reduced income, and increased healthcare costs, have been off-loaded onto older individuals. At the same time, older Americans are increasingly likely to file consumer bankruptcy, and their representation among those in bankruptcy has never been higher. Using data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we find more than a two-fold increase in the rate at which older Americans (age 65 and over) file for bankruptcy and an almost five-fold increase in the percentage of older persons in the U.S. bankruptcy system. The magnitude of growth in older Americans in bankruptcy is so large that the broader trend of an aging U.S. population can explain only a small portion of the effect. In our data, older Americans report they are struggling with increased financial risks, namely inadequate income and unmanageable costs of healthcare, as they try to deal with reductions to their social safety net. As a result of these increased financial burdens, the median senior bankruptcy filer enters bankruptcy with negative wealth of $17,390 as compared to more than $250,000 for their non-bankrupt peers. For an increasing number of older Americans, their golden years are fraught with economic risks, the result of which is often bankruptcy.
Oil Giant Shell Leads Investment in Startup with ‘Electric Cars for Everyone’ Goal
August 6th, 2018Via: Electrek:
Shell, the major British–Dutch multinational oil and gas company, has been leading several efforts having to do electric cars as it sees the auto industry transition to electric propulsion affecting its business.
Now the oil giant Shell is leading an investment in a startup with the goal to make ‘Electric Cars for Everyone’ with a new charging technology.
Shell’s VC arm Shell Ventures confirmed that it is leading a $31 million Series A round of financing in Ample, which describes itself as “a technology company focused on solving the energy delivery challenge for electric cars.”
Facebook, Apple and Spotify Ban Infowars’ Alex Jones
August 6th, 2018Update: YouTube Deletes Alex Jones Channel
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Via: Guardian:
Facebook has banned four pages run by the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for “repeated violations of community standards”, the company said on Monday.
The removal of the pages – the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page – comes after Facebook imposed a 30-day ban on Jones personally “for his role in posting violating content to these pages”.
Following that suspension, a Facebook spokesperson said: “More content from the same pages has been reported to us – upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanising language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”
Related: YouTube Deletes Entire Health Ranger Video Channel
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Office Employed Chinese Spy for 20 Years
August 6th, 2018Via: CBS:
New details emerged Wednesday about how a mole for the government of communist China managed to stay by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s side for nearly 20 years.
It happened five years ago, but additional information is just surfacing about how the Bay Area senator’s office was infiltrated by a Chinese spy.
The Bay Area is a hotbed for Russian and Chinese espionage. Late last year, the feds shut down the Russian consulate in San Francisco.
You may remember the thick black smoke that billowing from building before Russian diplomats turned it over to authorities, presumably produced by burning documents.
Now, all eyes are on Chinese intelligence in the Bay Area after the website Politico reported last week that a staffer for Senator Feinstein turned out to be a Chinese spy who reported back to the government officials about local politics.
On Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle uncovered additional details in a column written by reporters Phil Matier and Andy Ross.
The column revealed that the Chinese spy was Feinstein’s driver who also served as a gofer in her Bay Area office and was a liaison to the Asian-American community.
Hong Kong: McSleepers
August 6th, 2018Via: South China Morning Post:
The number of people sleeping in McDonald’s outlets has increased six-fold over the past five years, a trend partly driven by rising rents and substandard housing that makes life especially unbearable in the city’s baking weather, a study has found.
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Researchers were able to interview 53 McRefugees aged between 19 and 79 in depth, and found 57 per cent of them had a job and 71 per cent of them had flats that they rented or owned, contrary to the common belief that these people tended to be jobless and homeless.
Saving on air conditioning costs, as well as comfort and security, topped a list of reasons given by these interviewees, followed by high rents, conflict with family members, the ability to develop social relations at the chain and substandard housing.
Other reasons included saving on transport costs and time to work, and seeking temporary shelter while waiting for low-rent public housing.
Scientists Have Successfully Transplanted a Bioengineered Lung Into a Pig
August 5th, 2018Via: BBC:
To create a new lung, experts used a “scaffold” that provided structural support and slowly built up the lung tissue around it, using cells from the pig that was due to get the transplant.
This was done to prevent the lung being rejected by the pig’s immune system.
Once transplanted, the lung alveolar tissue and blood vessels carried on developing for up to two months.
Not only was the lung not rejected, but it even developed an important population of bacteria.
Lungs suitable for transplant are in short supply and the study is a significant step forward in finding an alternative solution. “People wait for a long time on a transplant list before they are able to receive a donated lung,” said co-author Professor Joan Nichols.
The transplantation of bioengineered lungs has been tried before in small animals, but these efforts have met with failure. There were problems with the blood vessels and the animals suffered from an accumulation of fluid, known as oedema.
“We were able to make a much better developed vasculature in the lungs… and transplant into a larger animal with a larger lung,” said co-author Prof Joaquin Cortiella, from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, US.
