HAWTHORNE, Calif.—In the sleek warehouse of Tesla’s Design Studio, CEO and co-founder Elon Musk announced the company’s latest products—a line of stationary batteries for households and utilities meant to store energy so that it can be used when energy is scarce and/or expensive. The home stationary battery will be called the Powerwall and it will cost $3,500 for a 10kWh unit. That unit is optimized to deal with serving a house if the traditional power grid goes down. A cheaper, $3,000 version will have a 7kWh capacity, and it will be able to help a house with solar panels deal with the fluctuations in energy supply. The prices don’t include installation, and Tesla said it would be working with certified installers including SolarCity and others. In a Q&A before the event, Musk said that the batteries will have thermal management systems to allow them to power houses in hot and cold climates too—the batteries have an operating temperature range of -20C (-4F) to 43C (110F). Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Tesla’s new “Powerwall” home battery will cost $3,500 for 10kWh units [Updated]
An anonymous reader writes: Modern game consoles have a “standby” mode, which you can use if you want the console to instantly turn on while not drawing full power the whole time it’s idle. But manufacturers are vague about how much power it takes to keep the consoles in this standby state. After a recent press release claiming $250 million worth of electricity was used to power Xbox Ones in standby mode in the past year, Ars Technica decided to run some tests to figure out exactly how much power is being drawn. Their conclusions: the PS4 draws about 10 Watts, $10-11 in extra electricity charges annually. The Xbox One draws 12.9W, costing users $13-$14 in extra electricity charges annually. The Wii U draws 13.3W, costing users $14-$15 in extra electricity charges annually. These aren’t trivial amounts, but they’re a lot less than simply leaving the console running and shutting off the TV when you aren’t using it: “Leaving your PS4 sitting on the menu like this all year would waste over $142 in electricity costs.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes Researchers at Trend Micro have uncovered a gas pump in the United States whose ID has been changed from ‘DIESEL’ to ‘WE_ARE_LEGION’ — the call-sign of the Anonymous hacking group. Following up recent revelations regarding the vulnerability of gas pump systems to online attackers, the researchers found 1, 515 completely unprotected gas pump monitoring devices via the Shodan device-based search engine. The report notes that the exposed devices are capable of being protected via six-digit pins, but this security measure is not being used. The report concludes: “Our investigation shows that the tampering of an Internet-facing device resulted in a name change. But sooner or later, real world implications will occur, causing possible outages or even worse.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The Microsoft cloud storage platform formerly known as SkyDrive now reaches across desktops, laptops and mobile devices, and will become even more important when Windows 10 arrives later this year. We’ve gathered together 10 helpful tips to make sure you’re getting the most from your OneDrive account and to demonstrate some of its capabilities. Read more… 
MarkWhittington writes The Washington Post reported that the NASA portion of the president’s 2016 budget proposal is basically status quo though it does provide further funding for a mission to Europa. A Europa probe is near and dear to the new chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA, Rep. John Culberson. However, the $18.5 billion budget proposal also funds the asteroid redirect mission, which has come under increasing fire from both Congress and the scientific community. The Houston Chronicle suggested that the final spending bill will be considerably different once congressional Republicans get through with it. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Piper is many things in a tiny package. The pint-sized home security device—it’s literally the size of a pint glass—watches over your house, automates your connected devices, and helps you keep in touch with friends. And now, with night vision too. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes “Amazon has announced that it will begin to produce and acquire original movies for theatrical release and early window distribution on Amazon Prime Instant Video. From the article: “This is a big move from Amazon, as it seeks to narrow the theatrical release window to between four and eight weeks. It can often take up to a year for films to land on subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video, however they do typically land on DVD/Blu-ray within around four months. Production for the aptly titled ‘Amazon Original Movies’ program will kick off in 2015, and plans are afoot to create around a dozen original titles for release in cinemas each year.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.