THE BYTE

Welcome to the BYTE, where we serve up the latest home and tech news from the last week for you to sink your teeth into.

This week we’re taking a BYTE out of land value, the people’s AI, smart homes, light-ning fast internet, and sharing services. Dig in!

Generally

Land is Expensive
FastCompany took a look at the cost difference between homes and the land they’re built on and unfortunately in places like San Fran the land can be worth 5x as much as the home on it.

Well That Is A Lot
The high land to home cost ratio isn’t primarily caused by the fact that a lot of people want to live there, it has more to do with the codes of the city. For example, San Francisco hasn’t allowed developers to build vertically as much as other cities. This makes it so the city isn’t as dense and makes land prices shoot up instead. Other places with expensive land are San Jose and Washington D.C. On the flip side, Houston is a city that has managed sprawling growth and density well with the land to home ratio only being 1.54 on average.

The People Know What They Want

But Will They Get It?
Ikea’s external future-living lab, SPACE10, asked 12,000 people what they wanted in AI. 139 countries were included with people from all ages and backgrounds. 73% want AI to be human-like. 85% want it to be able to react and understand emotions. 44% want their AI to be gender neutral. With more AI being made every day, this study may help those creating AI get a better sense of what is actually wanted for the AIs of the future.

Take Notes

Waiting To Boom?
The Internet of Things and smart homes get a lot of press, but a new report gives us a look at exactly how many people actually have a smart home. 16.3% of Americans are projected to have smart homes by the end of 2017, meaning they will have more than one internet connected smart device in their home. So far, security systems, lights, and speakers are leading the charge for what people already have. For what smart things people want, mattresses are leading that charge with 76% wanting one to track their sleep, followed closely by 64% of people wanting smart toothbrushes.

Light The Way
pureLiFi, a company leading the charge in creating light based wireless connections, has released their latest product, the LiFi-XC. The new product is a USB type device you plug into your laptop to get connected using the light around you. LiFi is seen as the next step after WIFI. It uses light as its form of connection and could potentially turn every light bulb into an upgraded version of a WIFI hotspot. Imagine only needing to flip your lights on and off if your internet goes out.

Not Always Open To Sharing
Sharing companies such as Lyft or Airbnb have opened up new markets around the world, but not everyone is happy about it. A new survey shows that 33% of cities have a “Very Poor” relationship with sharing companies. Other findings show that only 16% of cities have partnered with such companies, but of the 84% that said no 79% are open to the idea of a partnership. Also 22% of local governments do not support the overall sharing economy.

Totally Unrelated

Not For Me
Sharks are amazing and really beautiful to watch from afar, but I wouldn’t want to be the videographers in a submarine being attacked by a group of sharks…