Erosion victim warns'trauma tourists' to stay away A woman who lost her home at the start of the year due to coastal erosion has warned visitors to stay away and don't gloat. Shelley Cowlin, whose home of 48 years in Thorpeness, Suffolk, was demolished in January, said tourists turning up to witness other people's suffering and even steal items from their gardens were sick. Now living in a holiday let, which she said did not feel like home, the 89-year-old called on so-called trauma tourists to leave villagers in peace. We don't want people relishing in glee at the tragedy of other people, she said. Following the demolition, Cowlin said there had been incidents of people claiming they were her gardener, or even her grandchildren, and pinching things.

'It Was Nuts': The Extreme Tests that Show Why Hail Is a Multibillion-Dollar Problem The costs of a hail damage have ballooned over the past two decades, prompting researchers to resort to extreme measures to understand how these storms destroy buildings. The scars left on houses look like shotgun blasts, sometimes. In the aftermath of major storms, Andrew Shick, owner and chief executive of Illinois-based firm Roofing USA, has driven through suburbs blasted by hail and been left stunned by the damage. Earlier this year, he visited a farm complex in western Illinois where roofs, even sturdy metal ones, were left pockmarked and perforated after 3-inch balls of ice fell from the sky. "It was nuts," he recalls.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. A view of cleared lots and sparse construction after the Palisades fire in the Sunset Mesa neighborhood of eastern Malibu on Oct. 21. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . Fire survivors can now access a portal with vetted residential templates designed to speed rebuilding and reduce costs, with homes potentially ready by 2026.

Scientists have identified more than fifty ways that houses can ignite. It's possible to defend against all of them--but it's arduous, and homeowners can't do it alone. In June, 2012, hundreds of homes in Mountain Shadows, Colorado, a subdivision in the foothills of the Rockies, were reduced to ash during the wind-whipped Waldo Canyon Fire. On a cul-de-sac called Hot Springs Court, however, four dwellings somehow remained standing. The mystery of their survival nagged at Alex Maranghides, a fire-protection engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (), who worked with several colleagues on a meticulous reconstruction of the fire. How did the homes make it through? Was there something special about them--a fireproof roof, say, or a fancy sprinkler system? The team collected weather reports, topographic data, G.P.S. records from fire engines, photos, videos, and property-damage reports.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Chris Heinrich will never forget the winter day he and his family evacuated their home in Altadena, California, as a vertical wall of flame was slowly bearing down on their neighborhood from the mountains. "It was dark," he told Slate. "There was no internet, my daughter was crying, the wind was blowing." Even as the fires approached, he said, he didn't really believe that their house would burn.

A new bill moving through the Florida Senate would give homeowners the right to use "reasonable force" to take down drones infringing on their right to privacy, directly conflicting with federal airspace regulations while raising new legal questions regarding how far a person can go to defend their home from surveillance. The bill primarily focuses on further regulating the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) while broadening the scope of locations that are protected from drone flights within the state, such as airports and correctional facilities. Notably, the bill would permit homeowners to use "reasonable force" to stop a drone from infringing on their expectation of privacy. A bill proposed in the Florida Senate would allow homeowners to use "reasonable force" to take down drones infringing on their right to privacy. "No one wants to have a drone sitting over their property, filming what they do for any number of reasons," Florida-based attorney Raul Gastesi told Fox News Digital.

Legal reform can be challenging in light of the volume, complexity, and interdependence of laws, codes, and records. One salient example of this challenge is the effort to restrict and remove racially restrictive covenants, clauses in property deeds that historically barred individuals of specific races from purchasing homes. Despite the Supreme Court holding such racial covenants unenforceable in 1948, they persist in property records across the United States. Many jurisdictions have moved to identify and strike these provisions, including California, which mandated in 2021 that all counties implement such a process. Yet the scale can be overwhelming, with Santa Clara County (SCC) alone having over 24 million property deed documents, making purely manual review infeasible. We present a novel approach to addressing this pressing issue, developed through a partnership with the SCC Clerk-Recorder's Office. First, we leverage an open large language model, finetuned to detect racial covenants with high precision and recall. We estimate that this system reduces manual efforts by 86,500 person hours and costs less than 2% of the cost for a comparable off-the-shelf closed model. Second, we illustrate the County's integration of this model into responsible operational practice, including legal review and the creation of a historical registry, and release our model to assist the hundreds of jurisdictions engaged in similar efforts. Finally, our results reveal distinct periods of utilization of racial covenants, sharp geographic clustering, and the disproportionate role of a small number of developers in maintaining housing discrimination. We estimate that by 1950, one in four properties across the County were subject to racial covenants.

As the spring planting season arrives in College Station, Texas, certified master gardener Mark Smith is thrilled that peace is in the air. This time last year, a loud buzzing noise began disrupting Smith's morning routine of checking on the peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and shrubs growing in his backyard. Several times an hour, an Amazon Prime Air delivery drone would noisily emerge about 800 feet away, just past a line of trees behind Smith's home. His neighbors began calling the fleet flying chainsaws. Smith, a retired civil engineer, preferred a different comparison: "It was like your neighbor runs their leaf blower all day long," he says.

Reolink has unveiled the Altas Wireless Security System, a battery-powered camera setup capable of delivering 24/7 recording in 2K resolution. Designed with flexibility and ease of use in mind, the system targets homeowners who want reliable surveillance without technical headaches. Unveiled this week at CES in Las Vegas, the Altas Wireless Security System includes two 2K bullet-style Altas cameras, two 6-watt solar panels, and a Home Hub for centralized management. Each camera features a 20,000mAh battery, providing up to seven days of continuous recording. With just two hours of sunlight daily, the solar panels keep the cameras running around the clock, reducing reliance on motion detection.

AOSU has announced the HomeCortex, a new smart home security hub set to debut at CES 2025. The system promises to simplify home security with centralized management, using advanced AI to coordinate devices and analyze events. It also breaks from the subscription-based model by providing up to 16TB of local storage, making it a compelling choice for homeowners looking for robust, long-term security without the extra costs. The HomeCortex addresses the growing demand for unified smart home security solutions, where a single system can manage multiple cameras and related devices. As more households adopt connected technology, centralized control has become essential, streamlining what can often be a fragmented setup.