The Goodyear blimp hovers over the 1955 Rose Parade, the first nationally broadcast live aerial shot.
The Federal Aviation Administration is still wringing its hands about the commercial use of unmanned aerial vehicles, but manned blimps have had the FAA’s blessing for over half a century.
Goodyear is celebrating its 60th year of aerial coverage of the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena tomorrow.
Continue reading “Goodyear celebrates 60 years of aerial coverage” »
After more than a decade working for some of the largest toy companies in the world, toy designer Brandon Giraldez left his steady 9-to-5 to start Beeline Creative, a boutique toy company he runs out of his home in Marina del Rey.
Continue reading “How A Toy Gets Made: the Anchorman action figure” »
Los Angeles is Uber’s largest market. It’s also the testing ground for the taxi app’s latest offering: rides in ultra-luxurious cars like Teslas, Mercedes Benz S-Class and BMW 7-Series.
Continue reading “Uber launches luxury car service UberLUX in LA” »
The Sony hack has shown the world how vulnerable large corporations are to cyber attacks. But big-wig film execs aren’t the only ones that should be worried about their online privacy.
Continue reading “Top-level domains raise Internet security concerns” »
SpaceX has 16,000 solar panels installed on the roof of its Hawthorne factory. Photo: SolarCity
Like an eco-friendly Bat Sign, the solar panel installation on top of SpaceX rocket factory is a nod to CEO Elon Musk‘s terrestrial efforts to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
Continue reading “SpaceX factory has X-shaped solar panels” »
SolarCity is the largest solar panel installation and finance company in the U.S.
The company has 168,000 customers in 15 states.
SolarCity has a new home in the South Bay.
The solar panel installation giant has moved from a 10,000 sq. ft. facility in Westchester to a warehouse in Hawthorne, where 12 installation crews will eventually be working seven days a week to keep up with demand.
Continue reading “SolarCity triples warehouse footprint in the South Bay” »
Computer scientists flew a human-size robot developed at USC to a research lab in Germany. Booking a seat was cheaper than sending it as freight.
The robots are coming… and they’re flying economy class.
Researchers from the University of Southern California checked a human-size robot onto an LAX flight Monday to save money on shipping costs.
Mickey Avalon performs at the Standing Room in Redondo Beach on Dec. 11. The show was booked with the new mobile app FanFlex
The Internet has destroyed a lot of music industry wealth, but mobile app FanFlex promises to help bands earn some of that money back.
Continue reading “FanFlex app connects musicians with fans” »
Mira Costa High School freshman Ryan Ulrich applied for the Manhattan Beach program because he’s interested in starting a surf clothing line.
With median home prices in the $1 million range, Manhattan Beach is no place for beach bums.
Maybe that’s why the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce is creating a business incubator — so that kids will one day be able to buy a home in the place they grew up.
Continue reading “Business incubator for teens planned in Manhattan Beach” »
NASA’s Orion spacecraft is offloaded from the well deck of the USS Anchorage at a navy base in San Diego.
NASA finally got to test out the Orion spaceship last Friday, but Orion is still a long way from being able to take astronauts to Mars.
Continue reading “Orion reveals why NASA is no longer sexy” »
The last C-17 cargo plane making its way through the Boeing factory in Long Beach, which will close next year.
Boeing plans to layoff 360 employees at three of its Southern California locations between Dec. 12 and New Year’s Day, bringing total job losses for 2014 to more than 1,600.
Continue reading “Boeing to layoff another 360 workers in Southern California” »
The cult of Waze looms large in Los Angeles, where even veteran side-street-savvy motorists are turning to the now-Google-owned app to beat traffic as they traverse Southern Calfornia’s increasingly crowded highways and byways.
Continue reading “Where there’s a will, is there a way to thwart Waze?” »
This morning I got to snoop around the storage room at LAX where TSA agents dump all the weapons they confiscate at security gates.
The number of knives, swords, wooden bludgeons, toy guns and cork screws is STAGGERING.
Continue reading “TSA screeners at LAX have their hands full — of knives and machetes” »
After months of speculation, Google has purchased 12-acres of office space in Playa Vista that could accommodate as many as 6,000 engineers.
The $120 million lots run along the north side of the Hughes “Spruce Goose” hangar, which is across the street from the Google-owned YouTube Space LA, a film and production studio for YouTube content creators.
The Google buy “really makes and brands Playa Vista as the tech and innovation capital of Los Angeles,” Playa Vista’s city councilman Mike Bonin told the LA Times.
Bonin was “stoked” to hold his swearing-in ceremony last year at Google’s Venice offices, a binoculars-shaped building designed by Frank Gehry.
Brookfield Residential, which is developing high-end housing in Playa Vista, is also likely stoked by the prospect of thousands of high-salaried professionals moving into the area.
The rising rents in Silicon Beach are sure to follow.
Elon Musk at the SpaceX rocket testing site in McGregor, Texas
Elon Musk has a flare for stirring up interest in pretty much everything he does. Even the prospect of hiring a farmer is national news, given Musk’s dream to colonize Mars.
So when SpaceX announced it was hiring a farmer… well, it’s easy to jump to conclusions.
Of the 600+ acres that SpaceX leases from the city of McGregor and Texas A&M University, only about 127 are dedicated to rocket testing, according to the McLennan County Appraisal District, which oversees the area that includes SpaceX test site. The rest of the land is farmland that acts as a buffer for potential rocket explosions.
None of the land at the SpaceX test site is zoned for agricultural use, even though “farmers have been on that land for a number of years,” says McLennan agricultural appraiser Matt Davis.
SpaceX., which has not responded to questions about its farming program, may just want to have greater control over the farmland buffer around its test site.
From the job post:
This position will be required to work around test schedules as necessary to ensure the successful crop production does not interfere with testing progress.
According to Mike Farah, a real estate lawyer specialized in farm and ranch law, “it could be as simple as they have a lot of land and they are looking for someone to manage it.”
There is a loophole in the Texas tax code that allows ranch owners to pay taxes on agricultural production instead of on the value of the land.
That is, if your $20 million ranch only yielded $20,000 in alfalfa last year, you’re only paying taxes on that $20,000, rather than Texas’ higher-than-average property taxes on the full value of the land.
“You’re talking about a major, major economic boost,” Farah said.
Farah, who manages several high net-worth clients, said it is common practice to maintain some farm activities in order to avoid property taxes.
“It’s a very safe place to place many millions of dollars, have that property grow in value and not pay very high taxes to keep it,” Farah said. “There’s nothing shady about it.”