Roughly the size of a soda can, sitting on a bookshelf, a relatively harmless device(设备) may be turning friends away from your home. The elephant in your living room is your Internet-connected camera, a device people are increasingly using for peace of mind in their homes. But few stop to think about the effect these devices may have on house guests. Should you tell your friends, for instance, that they’re being recorded while you all watch the big game together?

"It’s certainly new territory, especially as home security cameras become easier to fix," says Lizzie Post, president of the Emily Post Institute, America’s distinguished manners advisors. " I think it will be very interesting to see what manners appear in terms of whether you tell people you have a camera or not, and whether guests have a right to ask that it be turned off, if it’s not a security issue. "Post wants to make clear that she’s not talking about legal rights, but rather personal preference.

When it comes to security cameras, Post says it’s a host’s responsibility to make sure guests feel comfortable within their home. If the host casually acknowledges that there is a camera in the room by telling a story about it, that may be enough to provide an opening for a guest to say if they are uncomfortable.

However, if a contractor(合约工)is working in your home, you don’t need to tell them that there are cameras watching. Then again, the camera can also work in contractors’ favor. "If anything does go wrong while they’re in the house, they don’t want to be blamed for it," she says. "In fact, the camera could be the thing that proves that they didn’t steal the $20, or knock the vase off the table.

Young adults in Singapore can often live with their parents into their 30s. They are encouraged by the government, which is fond of praising family values. Housing policy makes it difficult for young people to live independently. Almost 80% of Singaporeans live in subsidized (补助的) public housing. They cannot have a flat of their own until they marry or turn 35.

Yet a small but growing number of Singaporeans are resisting the nanny state (保姆式国家): Between 1990 and 2020, the number of those under 35 who lived alone or with non-family members grew from 33,400 to 51,300. Since they do not qualify for public housing, they must rent in the private sector. One factor is that Singaporeans are getting married later. In 1980, the average ages at which men and women married were 27 and 24; today, they are 30 and 29. A growing number choose not to marry at all. For others, it was COVID-19 that pushed them out of the nest. Serene Chee, a 25-year-old lawyer, did not greatly mind living with her parents until travel restrictions and work-from-home policies kept her stuck at home all the time. In June, Ms Chee and a friend moved into an apartment together.

Living on your own is not easy. First, you must inform your parents. It took Lydia Yang, an illustrator who was then 28, three months to gather the courage Then you must learn to pay bills and do basic chores. When Lenne Chai, a photographer, moved out seven years ago at the age of 23y she did not know how to cook.

Life on your own can be lonely. Ms Yang found it “a bit depressing”, particularly during the lockdown. But living apart may improve relationships. Both Ms Yang and Ms Chai said that they got on better with their parents after moving out. When living together, they paid each other little attention. Now their weekly visits are “quality time”, said Ms Chai. When Ms Chee’s parents came to her flat for dinner recently, they were impressed by how tidy it was.

Some houses are designed to be smart. Others have smart designs. An example of the second type of house won an Award of Excellence from the American Institute of Architects.

Located on the shore of Sullivan’s Island off the coast of South Carolina, the award-winning cube shaped beach house was built to replace one smashed to pieces by Hurricane Hugo 10 years ago. In September 1989, Hugo struck South Carolina, killing 18 people and damaging or destroying 36,000 homes in the state.

Before Hugo, many new houses built along South Carolina’s shoreline were poorly constructed, and enforcement of building codes wasn’t strict, according to architect Ray Huff, who created the cleverly-designed beach house. In Hugo’s wake, all new shoreline houses are required to meet stricter, better-enforced code. The new beach house on Sullivan’s Island should be able to withstand a Categ hurricane with peak winds of 179 to 209 kilometers per hour.

At first sight, the house on Sullivan’s Island looks anything but hurricane-proof. Its redwood shell makes it resemble “a large party lantern” at night, according to one observer. But looks can be deceiving. The house’s wooden frame is reinforced with long steel rods to give it extra strength.

To further protect the house from hurricane damage, Huff raised it 2.7 meters off the ground on timber pilings—long, slender columns of wood anchored deep in the sand. Pilings might appear insecure, but they are strong enough to support the weight of the house. They also elevate the house above storm surges. The pilings allow the surges to run under the house instead of running into it. “These swells of water come ashore at tremendous speeds’ and cause most of the damage done to beach-front buildings,” said Huff.

Huff designed the timber pilings to be partially concealed by the house’s ground-to-roof shell. “The shell masks the pilings so that the house doesn’t look like it’s standing with its pant legs pulled up,” said Huff. In the event of a storm surge, the shell should break apart and let the waves rush under the house, the architect explained.