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 housing at the beginning of spring, concrete alternatives, the upcoming need for new housing, fire alarm wallpaper, and online video advancements. Dig in!

Generally

That’s New
Young adults usually start looking to buy homes because of big life events, such as marriage or children, but now it might just be because of expensive rent prices. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are confident they can do it however, as homebuyer confidence is the lowest it’s been in the past two years.

You Don’t Say
A survey by Realtor.com showed that 23% of buyers between 18-34 years old said rising rent was what triggered their desire to buy a home. This survey also found that buyers over the age of 55% were most concerned about privacy in their new home. For those that are looking to buy now 68% said now is a good time to buy. That’s down from 72% last quarter, but it’s even worse if you are a renter. 55% of renters say this is a good time to buy a home, down from 60%.

Solid Examples

Concrete Reasons To Be Excited
Elon Musk, think Tesla and SpaceX, announced that he is taking the tunneling rocks from The Boring Company projects, currently digging under LA, and will turn them into “Lifesize LEGO-like interlocking bricks.” The bricks will apparently be rated for California seismic loads and will be bored in the middle so they won’t be as heavy. Researchers from another company, called Finite, are working on binding sand and composite materials to make a green alternative to concrete.

Take Notes

800 Million
That’s the number of new homes we will need in the next 80 years if we want to keep up with demand and population growth. People per household around the world are decreasing year over year and life expectancy is going up so we are going to need more and more houses each year. Luckily this is the number of homes needed globally, but this is the moderate guess, so we could end up needing even more.

Not So Up In Flames
A new type of wallpaper is hoping to make wallpaper not as dangerous and flammable. A new graphene based wallpaper would be fire resistant and is also being tested as one big fire alarm. The paper could be connected to alarms and even could turn on lights. It is still being tested, but this could help keep houses and buildings with wallpaper much safer.

Stream Me Up Scotty
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Cisco, and Netflix have all worked together to finish a technology called AV1. This is the latest in video compression technology and use 30-40% less network capability. This would mean you wouldn’t have to wait as long to download or watch videos online. This will start rolling out to major web browsers at the end of this year and next year.

Totally Unrelated

Jokes On You
April Fools has come and gone and people went all out this year. Check out the full list of brand pranks and jokes that went on this year here.