The state of California is suing a Southern California city over its ban on new emergency shelters and supportive housing, reports Iman Palm for KTLA. Norwalk extended its moratorium in September in defiance of warnings from the California Department of Housing and Community Development that it would lose access to state housing and homelessness funds. 

In a September statement, Governor Newsom said, “We can’t leave people in dangerous and unsanitary encampments — the city of Norwalk needs to do its part to provide people with shelter and services.” The lawsuit claims Norwalk’s ordinance violates anti-discrimination and fair housing laws, among others.

• Norwalk
• Affordable Housing
• Regional Housing Needs Assessment
• State Preemption
• Housing Supply
• Shelters
• Supportive Housing
• Homelessness
• Unhoused
• transitional housing

Reno, Nevada Mayor Hillary Schieve is urging her city to loosen regulations that the mayor — and many housing advocates — argues are stifling housing construction and driving up costs.

In an article for Business Insider, Eliza Relman explains, “Since January 2017, home prices have risen 90% and rents are up 53% in Nevada, far outstripping national growth rates, Alex Horowitz, the director of Pew's housing-policy project, told Business Insider.” An influx of new residents after the pandemic drove up demand for housing, putting much of it out of reach for the average household.

According to Relman, “Under Schieve, Reno has loosened some of its regulations by allowing for more density, reducing parking requirements, and cutting fees. Since 2019, the city says it has waived $11 million in sewer hookup fees and $700,00 in building permit fees to help bring more than 2,000 units of affordable housing to the market.”

When asked about the proposal from both presidential candidates to open up public lands for new housing, Schieve says the issue is complex and must include considerations about infrastructure, services, and conservation. For Schieve, the focus should be on existing urban centers, which offer plenty of opportunity for infill development. “There's still a lot of work for cities to build up and not out,” Schieve said.

• Reno
• Affordable Housing
• Housing Crisis
• Housing Supply
• Housing Costs
• housing affordability
• Density
• Regulations
• Zoning
• Parking Requirements

• 16GB: General users, students, and professionals with standard workloads should opt for 16GB. This configuration is perfect for those who primarily browse the web, stream content, use productivity apps, and perform multitasking. Thanks to the performance of Apple silicon and the efficiency of macOS, 16GB is more than sufficient for a smooth experience with everyday tasks.


• 24GB: Users who need slightly more headroom for multitasking and moderate creative work should consider 24GB. This tier is ideal for those who work with slightly heavier applications such as video editing, gaming, graphic design, or coding but do not push these tasks to the absolute extreme. It provides an additional buffer for users who run multiple intensive apps simultaneously and perform more multitasking than what 16GB can handle comfortably.


• 32GB or 36GB: Professionals engaging in intensive creative workflows, such as video editing in 4K, music production with multiple tracks, or large-scale coding projects, should opt for 32GB or 36GB. These configurations suit users who frequently use memory-heavy applications like Adobe Creative Cloud apps, Xcode, or virtual machines. It provides sufficient power for consistent performance without frequent reliance on disk swapping, even under substantial workloads.


• 64GB: Power users and creative professionals who manage high-resolution media and extensive multitasking should choose 64GB. It is ideal for those working on large 3D modeling projects, editing 8K video, or handling complex simulations and data analysis. This memory quantity should support running multiple virtual machines or advanced software development environments without any slowdown.


• 96GB: High-end creative professionals and developers handling intensive projects involving large datasets or media should consider 96GB. This tier offers significant overhead for those who need more than 64GB, ensuring seamless performance when editing multiple streams of high-resolution video, detailed 3D rendering, or working with substantial datasets that need to be kept in active memory.


• 128GB: Professionals in specialized fields like film editing, data science, or engineering should look at 128GB. This memory configuration is designed for workflows that involve extremely large projects and require vast amounts of data to be kept in active memory. It is perfect for those working on high-resolution visual effects in cinema, simulation-based software, or advanced scientific computations, providing robust multitasking and peak performance across demanding tasks.


• 192GB: Enterprise-level users, researchers, and industry professionals dealing with mission-critical, memory-intensive applications should opt for 192GB. This option is suitable for large-scale data processing, machine learning, or AI development, ensuring maximum efficiency and reducing the need for data swapping between RAM and storage. It is also ideal for developers working on complex server-side projects requiring powerful single-machine testing.

A SpaceX Dragon capsule docked at the International Space Station at 9:52 AM EST on November 5th carrying over 6,000 lbs of cargo along with one small, unique prototype. On Tuesday, the company’s 31st resupply mission for NASA delivered the world’s first satellite built using wooden parts. More specifically, LignoSat is made with honoki, a magnolia tree native to Japan whose wood was historically used to craft samurai sword sheaths.

The origins of LignoSat (named after the Latin word for wood, “lignum”) date back to 2017, and come from former NASA astronaut and engineer, Takao Doi. At the time, Doi wondered if future human explorers on the moon and Mars could one day turn to materials other than steel and concrete to construct safe, resilient buildings. Speaking to The New York Times on Tuesday, Doi’s collaborator explained how history’s earliest, wooden airplanes soon served as jumping off point.

“…[W]hy not make a satellite with wood, too?” asked Koji Murata, a Kyoto University professor of forest and biomaterials science.

After partnering with one of Japan’s oldest timber companies, Sumitomo Forestry, Doi and Murata’s team arranged to send three wood samples to the ISS in 2022. Blocks of magnolia, cherry, and birch were then subjected to the extreme solar radiation, cosmic rays, and the harsh temperatures of outer space for nearly eight months. Even after the barrage of stress tests, the wood samples displayed no major signs of damage or deterioration. According to a Kyoto University rundown earlier this year, the honoki magnolia ultimately won out in the end due to its comparative light weight and crack resistance.

With the exact wood selected, engineers asked a team of artisans trained in “sashimono” for help. The traditional Japanese woodworking process dates back centuries, and relies on precise joint designs instead of nails, glue, screws, or welding to build structures and furniture. In this case, however, sashimono experts utilized their methods to construct large portions of LignoSat’s outer casing.

[Related: NASA warns SpaceX over safety issues after astronaut hospitalization.]

Now aboard the ISS, NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plan to deploy the LignoSat in December for a six month orbital trial. As it circles Earth, engineers will monitor factors like wood deformation, as well as assess how the material does or does not affect onboard sensors monitoring the geomagnetic field. As CNN notes, LignoSat will be put through the wringer during that time, withstanding temperature fluctuations ranging between -100 and 100 degrees Celsius (-148-212 degrees Fahrenheit) roughly every 45 minutes as it orbits the planet. Once its mission is complete, LignoSat will safely burn up upon reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.

Although this is just the first step towards incorporating natural wood into space exploration, LignoSat’s potential success could also preview a future that includes far more sustainable materials in satellites. The NY Times explains that since current orbital equipment is built with metal, their fiery de-orbits frequently release harmful, ozone-damaging emissions like aluminum oxide into the atmosphere. Replacing many of those components with wood such as honoki could greatly reduce their environmental impact—an increasing concern as the skies continue to fill with satellites.

The post World’s first wooden satellite shares material with samurai sword sheaths appeared first on Popular Science.

Chicago will update its 2014 green stormwater infrastructure plan in response to a new state permit program that requires cities to make improvements to combined sewer and stormwater systems that allow sewage to enter local waterways during flood events, a type of system common in hundreds of cities around the country.

As Ysabelle Kempe explains in Smart Cities Dive, the city is issuing a request for proposals for building more sustainable water infrastructure and collecting stormwater where it falls before letting it flow to rivers and lakes. “Chicago is looking for a consultant to map the city’s progress on GSI since 2014, conduct a cost-benefit analysis of existing GSI, examine other cities’ strategies, determine implementation challenges and identify potential policy changes that could promote more equitable GSI investments.”

The Illinois National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit requires an expansion of the GSI strategy as well as a focus on environmental justice communities and improved monitoring, reporting, and public engagement on stormwater and sewer issues.

• Chicago
• Stormwater
• Combined Sewer Systems
• Sewer Systems
• Flooding
• Stormwater Management

• 9th Gen iPad (64GB Wi-Fi) for $199.99 ($129 off)


• 10th Gen iPad (64GB Wi-Fi) for $296.00 ($53 off)


• Magic Keyboard for 11-inch iPad Pro for $249.99 ($49 off)


• Apple Pencil Pro for $91.99 ($37 off)

• The Best Early Black Friday Apple Deals


• The Best Early Black Friday AirPods Deals

• Apple Pencil (USB-C) - $69.00 ($10 off)


• Apple Pencil Pro - $91.99 ($37 off)


• Magic Keyboard for 11-inch iPad Pro - $249.99 ($49 off)


• Magic Keyboard for 13-inch iPad Pro - $273.99 ($75 off)

Earth’s surface is about 70 percent water. Our blue planet is more ocean than anything else. And here’s another fact: About 80 percent of consumer goods–nearly all the stuff we buy in stores and online–are transported by ship. Combined, that means lots of junk ends up overboard during long voyages between landmasses. “We are all connected to the ocean, even if you’re just going to the store and buying some clothes,” says Andrew DeVogelaere, a research ecologist with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. 

It’s difficult to know exactly how much stuff ends up in the vast blue, says Jessica Conway, a response specialist for NOAA’s Marine Debris Program. However, she points to one 2020 study that estimated about 23 million metric tons of plastic waste reached waterways in 2016. There are many sources of marine debris, she notes. Regular run-off carries trash from streets and landfills alike out to sea. Major storms and floods push big influxes of human-made stuff off-shore. Fishing, drilling, and other marine industries leave trash in their wake like lines, nets, and other equipment. And then, of course, shipping containers fall off of cargo ships, triggering spills. 

Varying fates befall every lost bit of artificial detritus at sea. Some things entangle wildlife. Others get inadvertently eaten, and end up lodged in the digestive tracts of aquatic animals or circulating in the food web as microplastics. Some bulkier items like appliances and empty vessels block channels, causing navigational difficulties and economic disruption, says Conway. Lots of plastics end up floating near the surface in gyres like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And some stuff gets beached. Here are some of the oddest things to ever wash up on sandy shores. 

In 1992, some 28,000 rubber duckies, turtles, beavers, and frogs fell from a cargo ship during a storm in the North Pacific. The bath toys breached containment and ended up free-floating in the biggest bathtub of all, circulating around the world’s oceans. They made their way to coastlines as distant as Australia, Indonesia, Chile, Hawaii, and Alaska. Some even passed through the Bering Strait, traversed the Arctic Sea, and landed on the shores of the UK. 

Oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham tracked their journeys, made predictions, and used the minor environmental catastrophe as a way to study Earth’s ocean currents. Other marine debris have also provided valuable information, including a 1990 cargo ship incident that sent more than 60,000 Nike shoes into the sea and disposable lighters washed up in East Asia. 

Five million Legos were lost when a cargo ship nearly capsized off the southwest coast of England in 1997, in an event known as the Great Lego Spill. They’ve been washing ashore British and European beaches since.

In a terribly ironic twist, many of the millions of plastic block bits were molded to resemble sea creatures or otherwise nautically themed. There are flippers, scuba tanks, lifeboats, seaweed, octopuses, and more. Among the cargo was also more than 50,000 plastic sharks, but unlike some of the lighter play pieces, the sharks don’t seem to float. Only one has been recovered so far, according to the Lego Lost At Sea, a social media group that tracks the pieces, and it was dredged up from the depths by a fisherman. 

Beginning in 2007, there’ve been several instances of a giant Lego-esque figurine appearing in the tide or on the beach in various countries (The Netherlands, the U.S., Japan, and the UK–to name a few). Though initially mysterious, all of the incidents are believed to be the work of an anonymous artist dubbed “Ego Leonard” who plants his figurative sculptures at public seasides (or releases them directly into the ocean) in an act of performance art. 

Other instances of purposefully planted, attention-grabbing beach wash-up include a fake dragon skull installed on a UK beach known for fossil finds in 2013. It was a viral marketing tactic for Game of Thrones season 3. 

For 35 years, hauntingly broken novelty landline phones shaped like beloved comic cat Garfield, kept washing ashore in Brittany, France. The source of the niche devices was a mystery for decades, until a local man remembered a shipping container lodged in a nearly inaccessible sea cave. Finally, the French were able to track down the source of all those garish Garfields. Unfortunately, as of 2019, they still haven’t been able to clean up the cave.  

The stray cigarette butt polluting the sand on a summer getaway isn’t so out of place. But when thousands of packs and complete cartons come ashore, that’s a different story. In 2014, a Danish cargo ship dumped 500 shipping containers into French waters. Inside at least one of them were cartons and cartons of Marlboro cigarettes. UK authorities reported removing 11 million cigarettes from one single beach during a cleanup effort in southwestern England. And just two years later, the same thing seems to have happened again. The cigarettes were no longer fit to smoke, but the UK customs agency reportedly incinerated them to generate electricity. 

Heaps of medical waste, including needles, syringes, and pill bottles washed up on Mid-Atlantic beaches in September of this year–temporarily shutting down popular swimming beaches in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. Weeks on from the incident, investigatory authorities have yet to publicly identify the source of the hazardous debris. 

Yet it’s not the first time that medical waste has polluted beaches. In 2019, a similar wash-up occurred in Pakistan. And in 2008, a dentist was charged for illegally dumping trash bags full of needles and other waste into an inlet on the Jersey Shore. 

In the most recent case, though the responsible party has yet to be found, Conway says it’s not hard to imagine how something like this could happen. “There is a lot of mismanagement in how we handle waste, and there’s a lot of opportunity for waste to be released into the environment just in transit,” she explains. It’s possible that the medical waste was aboard a cargo ship or trash barge for transportation elsewhere, as many places, like islands low on land space, ship their trash on the ocean. 

Beach wash-ups can be local environmental fiascos, and it takes lots of effort to clean up tons of hazardous medical waste from nature’s sandbox. In a way though, it’s the best-case scenario for marine debris, says DeVogelaere. “If something comes to shore, it can be removed,” he explains. In contrast, the stuff that sinks is stuck there. DeVogelaere has spent about two decades monitoring one of 15 shipping containers lost in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Initially, the container fell into the deep sea and crushed everything beneath it. Over the years, it’s attracted an idiosyncratic animal community, different from everything around it. 

20 years on, and there’s almost no degradation happening to the container itself, while it alters its surroundings. Looking at it, “you’d think, ‘oh, this could have fallen in here last year’,” he says. Aside from the hyper-local impacts, DeVogelaere’s concern is that containers lost along consistent shipping routes year after year could be creating “stepping stones” for invasive species in the deep sea–allowing creatures to leapfrog from one spot to the next. The deep sea is poorly studied, he notes. “We don’t even know the names of a lot of these things… we’re impacting a whole ecosystem that we don’t even understand.”

The post 6 of the weirdest things to ever wash up on the beach appeared first on Popular Science.

Many of New York City’s outdoor dining structures are being removed to make way for (mostly free) parking after restaurants and bars failed to make them compliant with the city’s new requirements. 

According to a report by Kevin Duggan in Streetsblog NYC, businesses with non-compliant designs had to take down their setups by November 1, while compliant businesses must remove them by November 29, since the outdoor dining program doesn’t apply in winter months. The new rules, which call for a public hearing for new outdoor dining applications, require that structures be easily removable and lightweight, banning fully enclosed hard structures.

Restaurant owners say the seasonal program makes operating an outdoor dining area more expensive since they must pay for removal and storage during the off-season, and many say they will stop offering outdoor dining altogether. “The numbers of sheds dropped significantly after the new regime first kicked in over the summer, with around 3,000 applications for roadway and sidewalk cafés as of late September, according to the Department of Transportation. Transportation officials estimate that the program peaked at 6,000 to 8,000 participants, including some 5,000 setups as of this summer.”

• New York City
• Outdoor Dining
• Al Fresco Dining
• Parklets
• curb parking
• Curb Management
• Parking

If the language of love is universal, then why not learn them all? With the Babbel Language Learning lifetime subscription for $149.97 through Nov. 10, you can brush up on romance-ready phrases in French, practice poetic Spanish, or dive into instruction for all 14 languages that’ll keep you feeling suave and sophisticated on any date.

Babbel’s courses are designed by actual linguists and offer interactive lessons that go beyond simple translations, letting you practice real-life conversation skills.

Whether it’s a flirty hello in Portuguese or a heartfelt compliment in Polish, Babbel makes it easy to learn each language at your own pace, with practical exercises for everyday chats and cultural insights that help you sound like a local, not a tourist. And you’re covered for a lifetime, so there’s zero pressure to cram or rush through the lessons. Just set aside a few minutes a day, and watch your language skills grow with every session.

Babbel also includes speech-recognition technology, so you can perfect that accent without the embarrassing “Did I say that right?” moments. Plus, with 10- to 15-minute lessons that you can tackle anytime, anywhere, you’ll be able to squeeze in practice whenever you’re ready for a break from swiping right.

With access to all 14 languages for a one-time fee, this subscription pays for itself in no time—and lets you impress in any language you choose.

Go on, broaden your romantic horizons (and conversation starters) with a lifetime subscription to Babbel Language Learning, discounted to $149.97 (reg. $599) until Nov. 10 at 11:59 p.m.

Babbel Language Learning: Lifetime Subscription (All Languages) – $179.97

See Deal

StackSocial prices subject to change.

The post Learn to flirt in every language with help from Babbel on sale appeared first on Popular Science.

Planetek Italia sarà presente a Ecomondo dal 5 all’8 Novembre 2024 a Rimini.

tvOS 18.2 Developer Beta 1 introduces the ability for Apple TV to automatically detect the best aspect ratio for your television or projector.

If you have an anamorphic lens or your television's aspect ratio is not detected, users will have the ability to manually choose from… pic.twitter.com/QjAFvKME7d