The Year in Housing: The Middle Class Can’t Afford to Live in Cities Anymore In the center of Boston rises the small neighborhood of Fort Hill, on top of which sits Highland Park, designed in the 1700s by Frederick Olmsted. Patriots stored gunpowder here during the Revolutionary War, and a tower fit for Repunzel commemorates their efforts. The abolitionist writer William Lloyd Garrison fought against slavery from a house on this hill. And now the battle for urban housing affordability rages on these streets. It’s a microcosm of the battle playing out on a neighborhood level in every growing city in America: a battle between those who want to keep property values high, and those who want the chance to live in the cities that have the best economic prospects. If cities want to retain a middle class, experts say, they will have to make it happen on their own. […]

Gangster’s girlfriend is forced to have her head shaved as grim punishment for ‘cheating’ on him The poor girl is forced to squat while a man takes a set of barber’s clippers to her long hair – then they mockingly place clumps of hair on head like a wig A young woman is forced to have her head shaved as a bizarre punishment after she was accused of cheating in her gangster boyfriend. The girl, dressed in shorts and a black top, is forced to squat and hold her head down while a man takes a set of barber’s clippers to her long hair. The video, which is supposed to act as a warning to other women, was posted online by the Brazilian drug dealing gang. It shows a chilling insight into their dark world of the drug cartel. People shaving the woman’s head (Photo: CEN) The shocking footage shows […]

Meet Olli, America’s first driverless public shuttle bus The shuttle, which can fit 12 passengers, will be piloted in several cities at the end of this year. What do you get when you cross self-driving artificial intelligence, 3-D printing, and public transportation? Olli, an autonomous, electric shuttle with room for 12 passengers. Local Motors, a manufacturer known for its focus on open-source vehicle designs, unveiled Olli on Thursday at its new facility in National Harbor, Md., a development just outside Washington D.C. To test Olli, Local Motors plans to offer free rides to the public around the development in what is believed to be the first public trial of a completely self-driving vehicle in the United States, reported The Washington Post. In February, the Netherlands launched a fleet of WEpod driverless buses, which can carry six passengers, on the campus of Wageningen University in a central Dutch agricultural town. Recommended: How much […]

Amazon’s Real Future Isn’t Drones. It’s Self-Driving Trucks Here in the US, trucks carry 10 billion tons of freight each year. That’s 70 percent of all goods shipped across the country, according to the American Trucking Association. The trouble is: we don’t have enough drivers, and their numbers are dwindling. The American Trucking Association says the driver deficit currently stands at 48,000, and if trends continue, that could reach 175,000 by the year 2024. The average age for an American truck driver is 63, and that’s only going up. “Where is the next generation of truckers going to come from?” says Ryan Petersen, the CEO of Flexport, a company that helps businesses organize their shipping efforts through trucks as well as ships and trains. Related Stories The US Doesn’t Want Drone Deliveries—So Amazon Took Them to England Sorry, Donald Trump: Amazon Dominates, But It’s No Monopoly Only Amazon Could Make […]

ET deals roundup: Save big on laptops, TVs, and more Still need to get your holiday shopping done? Worry not, there’s tons of great sales going on for December. From Dell laptops to VR headsets to big-screen 4K televisions, you can save a ton online, and get everything shipped to your door. • Lowest price! New Dell XPS 13 Intel Core i5-7200u dual-core Kaby Lake 13.3-inch laptop with 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, 1080p Infinity Edge display for $849.99 (Coupon code: WQ12RNCZ?NP$QH — List price: $1049.99) • Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Intel Celeron N3050 dual-core 11.6-inch laptop with Windows 10 for $129.99 (Coupon code: 684PT369XQXTXG — List price: $199.99) • PCMag editors’ choice: Dell Latitude 14 7000 Intel Core i5 dual-core 14-inch business Windows 7 Pro laptop with 1080p Gorilla Glass touchscreen, 256GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, and a three-year warranty (Only 3.5 pounds, MILSPEC rated) for $729 (Coupon code: […]

The New Adidas Are Made From Lab-Grown Spider Silk The future of footwear isn’t just about self-tying shoes—it’s also about mimicking nature to make stronger, higher-performance, more sustainable materials. Earlier this month at the synthetic biology and design conference Biofabricate in New York City, Adidas unveiled the Futurecraft Biofabric. The company says this will be the world’s first athletic shoe that’s 100 percent biodegradable. How is this possible? Adidas worked with another German company called AMSilk, incorporating its Biosteel fabric, a new type of fiber “grown” by bacteria and designed to mimic the properties of natural spider silk—namely, strength and lightness. At the same time, the shoes can also be quickly broken down and safely returned to the environment, using a specific enzyme (so you don’t have to worry about them turning to mush while you’re out for a run in the rain). Watch our exclusive interview with Jame Carnes […]

 Dark patterns and the dark web: FBI joins Rule 41 in setting troubling precedent. Somebody’s poisoned the water hole. — Woody the Cowboy, Disney’s Toy Story The news broke in January that federal agents had taken down Playpen, a notorious child porn site on the deep web, and run a huge 13-day sting on its users as part of the international Operation Pacifier. Newly uncovered court documents now reveal that the Playpen takedown extends far beyond its alleged operators. It was the largest law enforcement hacking campaign ever. The FBI seized the physical server hardware under a previous warrant, but that wasn’t enough to get the people involved. So they seized administrative control over the site under the auspices of a warrant issued by Federal Magistrate Judge Theresa C. Buchanan. (The exact details of the warrant are still secret.) They couldn’t see the IPs of visitors, because most visitors were […]

All Aboard Volvo’s Very, Very Long Bus. Like, All of You Volvo Group Any half-hearted bus observer knows about articulated buses—those double-trouble mutants with an accordion-like joint. But get a load of the Gran Artic 300, introduced last week in Rio de Janeiro and billed as the world’s longest bus (though a few others are competitive). Articulated, shmarticulated. This baby is biarticulated, with two joints, the kind of bus already on the road in a few European and Latin American cities. What makes this one different is it’s 98 feet long. Ninety-eight feet long! That’s nearly one-third of a football field, or 1.5 bowling lanes, or 8 feet longer than the distance between home and first base. Volvo Buses says this extra-long beast can carry an amazing 300 people. (That’s assuming eight folks pack into each square meter—a very squashed ride.) The typical New York subway car packs about 255 passengers. Your standard city bus fits about […]