Nest might soon launch a cheaper thermostat and new security system

Nest practically disappeared after it became an Alphabet company, but a new report has suggested it’s coming back in full force.

A report from Bloomberg claimed Apple is working on new connected products, including a home security system, a smart doorbell, a refreshed version of the indoor Nest Cam, and a cheaper version of its popular Nest smart thermostat. That’s a whole lot of goods coming from a company that’s stayed relatively low key ever since Google bought it for $3.2 billion in 2014.

However, Nest has actually been rumored to be working on a home security system since last May. Bloomberg said it might feature a central keypad hub, alarm sensors for doors and windows, and a key fob that you’d use to activate and deactivate the alarm. You’d also be able to control the entire security system through a connected phone app, similar to other Nest products.

• Nest 3.0 review: The smartest thermostat just got smarter
• Nest Cam Outdoor review: Secure enough as a security camera?
• Nest Cam review: The next level in home security?

Bloomberg also detailed the cheaper thermostat and smart doorbell, the latter of which could feature a camera so you can talk with visitors through a connected app. The thermostat should cost under $200, a $49 price difference from the current Nest. The company is also working on new sensors to pair with the thermostat, allowing you to finely control temperatures in each room.

Nest is supposedly readying the smart doorbell for sometime in 2018, while the security system should release this year. Keep in mind Nest hasn’t released a completely new product since the Nest Protect smoke detector in 2013, though it did rework a Dropcam product in 2015, with the release of Nest Cam. It also launched a waterproof version of the camera, the Nest Cam Outdoor.

We’ll know more in the coming months. Meanwhile, we’ve contacted Nest for a comment and will update if we hear back.

A renewable planet is almost inevitable

When the leader of the free world denies climate change and fills his cabinet with like-minded individuals, it’s hard not to panic. The world is, after all, hurtling toward an irrevocable ecological catastrophe that threatens all of our lives. There may be a reason to be slightly less pessimistic, however, thanks to the mechanics of the energy business. Shortly before leaving the White House, Barack Obama said that clean power had an “irreversible momentum,” and it looks as if there might be evidence to justify his optimism.

There are generally two kinds of arguments against renewable energy: the cost and the lack of consistency. After all, solar panels can’t work in the dark and wind turbines don’t turn on still days, but we still need to charge our smartphones 24/7. The solution here is to build large-scale energy storage (read: really big batteries), but they’re not economically viable.

Except that isn’t true — not anymore, anyway. Bloomberg recently reported that the price of batteries has fallen 40 percent since 2014. These plunging prices have been so pronounced that big financial institutions are now throwing their weight behind the energy-storage market. Bloomberg also reports that institutions like Investec and Prudential have piles of cash earmarked to put behind industrial battery projects. Indeed, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) believes that we’re on track to be able to store 250 gigawatts of electricity by 2030.

And as costs fall for big business, they begin to slide for the rest of us, with James Forrest at business consultancy Capgemini claiming that the current “adoption of renewable energy” is “driving down the price for everyday people.” There’s more good news, since Bloomberg believes that deals for battery projects will hit $2.5 billion in 2017, and that figure doesn’t even take into account what Elon Musk is up to. During Tesla’s most recent earnings call, Musk claimed that he would build up to five Gigafactories to mass-produce batteries for the Model 3 and Powerwall 2.

If Tesla is successful, it will create a seismic change in the way that we store and use energy in the home. You will not only be encouraged to buy a (cheap) battery to connect to your solar roof but also have a car that can power your home in an emergency. Not to mention, the running costs for an electric vehicle are continuing to fall, providing further incentives for buyers to make a switch.

It’s not only batteries that are helping to effect massive change either but also the increasing efficiency of solar panels in general. Damien Ryan, acting CEO of environmental nonprofit the Climate Group, says the world is “producing more megawatts of green energy for the same amount of money.” He adds that the resulting price drop is a “powerful driver for change.”

And such change is coming, because the economic argument for investing in carbon-intensive energy gets less credible by the day. Saudi Arabia — home to the world’s second-largest oil reserve — has outlined its plan to build a huge 300MW solar plant. Electrek believes that the facility’s eventual energy cost will be a staggering 1.99 cents per kWh. For comparison, the average price of electricity in the US at the end of 2016 was 12.75 cents per kWh — and no coal-fired power station is likely to compete.

Speaking of which, the Navajo Generating Station is the largest coal-fired power station in the western US. It was originally going to be mothballed in 2044, but it’s now expected to close in 2019, several decades ahead of schedule. As Fast Company explains, it’s the seventh-largest individual source of pollution in the US, pumping 14 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year. The cause of the plant’s closure is the advent of natural gas stations and renewable energy, which is cutting deep into profit margins to the point where operations are no longer sustainable.

The falling cost of both panels and storage is a boon for the developing world, where 1.2 billion people live without energy each day. The head of the IREA believes that the cost of large solar installations will fall by more than half in the next two decades. That, combined with cheap batteries, will help poor communities get power and escape extreme poverty.

Of course, many will scoff and say that the renewable energy industry has so far survived on government subsidies. When those subsidies are withdrawn, the industry’s unprofitability will be exposed once and for all, right? Not so, says Dr. Chris Case of the solar panel company Oxford PV. He is optimistic, saying that we’re now on the cusp of living in a solar world. The use of photovoltaic panels “has doubled seven times since the year 2000,” he said, “and only needs to double six times more by 2030 to generate 100 percent of our global power needs.” He later added, citing the Saudi Arabia project, that it offers “the cheapest form of electricity anywhere in the world and has been achieved without subsidy.”

He also said that while even a few years ago solar power would have needed help, the business is now strong enough to stand on its own. “Solar has the lowest cost of generation in many places,” he said, “and when that statement can be made without the caveat of ‘in many places,’ then it’ll be unstoppable.” Case believes too that this force is enough to overcome even the most crafty of governments with a mission to rig the game in oil’s favor. “There’s no political or social force that can resist [lowering prices]” he said. “Not even the president of the United States can fight it.”

But while the global market for renewables might be getting stronger, the US itself stands at a crossroads as to its future policy on climate change. Rachel Bronson of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, told the AV Club that any climate backsliding could be catastrophic. “It’s not that far away where our children will be dealing with more difficult outcomes than if we got serious now,” she said.

Bronson describes the hope that the success of President Trump, Rex Tillerson and Scott Pruitt represents the “last gasp” of climate denial because the evidence is overwhelming. But Bronson knows that “when carbon gets into the atmosphere, it can stay there for 10,000 years.” She added, “Given the amount that we’re pumping into the atmosphere, the changes have to happen now.” As optimistic as we could be, unfortunately it’s still going to take a lot of effort before we can say that our planet’s future is safe.

Image credits: Roberto Baldwin/Engadget (Gigafactory); Isaac Kasamani/AFP via Getty (Ugandan solar power)

NASA highlights women in STEM with a virtual field trip

NASA and Google Expeditions are celebrating International Women’s Day with a series of virtual field trips highlighting the careers of seven women and their contributions to America’s space program. The tours are part of the Modern Figures program, which continues the conversation started by the film Hidden Figures, and allow viewers to step into a 100,000 square-foot aircraft hangar, a simulated Martian landscape, a space flight operations facility and other locations where NASA’s women engineers, scientists and directors work towards the next milestone in space exploration.

The commemorative partnership also marks the first time Google Expeditions has visited the space agency for a VR-based career day. Because the expeditions are designed for classrooms, users will need the Google Expeditions app loaded on their iOS or Android device and a Google Cardboard kit (or compatible viewer) to follow along. (You can also explore on your own in “Lead” mode.) In addition to the Women’s Day field trips, NASA also contributed three other Google Expeditions: a 3D tour of the International Space Station, a ride-along on the Juno mission to Jupiter and views from the surface of Mars.

Source: NASA

‘No Man’s Sky’ update adds more than just ground vehicles

When Hello Games teased big things coming with No Man’s Sky’s Path Finder update, it wasn’t joking around. The studio has taken the wraps off the upgrade, and there’s a lot more than what was hinted at. For one thing, there are multiple ground vehicles (exocraft in NMS lingo) — you can travel across vast landscapes in a speedy hovercraft, the previously leaked buggy or a “lumbering” but capacious cargo hauler. You can even participate in custom-built races when you’re done exploring.

This is also a major improvement if you have high-end gaming hardware. PS4 Pro owners will get 4K rendering and subtler graphics improvements (such as delta color compression and automatic depth buffer decompression). Hello is also promising gamers higher-resolution textures, an HDR mode and more accurate lighting effects. And if you have to show off this visual refresh, there’s a dedicated photo mode that lets you change the time of day, cloud cover and filters to achieve the effect you’re looking for.

Most of the other additions are nuts-and-bolts improvements. You can now own multiple spaceships and store them in a freighter. There are ships with specializations, too, in case you want a fighter to deal with pirates or a hauler to carry resources. A Permadeath mode, as the name suggests, ends your game if you meet an untimely fate. Also, you can share your bases with others — you no longer have to take screenshots or capture video to show your sweet setup. This is crucial to racing (you can try to beat others’ split times if they have circuits), and adds a much-needed social element to a game whose early multiplayer plans never really panned out.

As with the Foundation Update, Path Finder isn’t likely to have you racing to buy a copy of No Man’s Sky if you weren’t already sold on the concept. However, it’s clearly a far meatier game than it was on launch. This could keep you playing if you’re an avid fan, or give you a reason to come back if your copy of the game has been gathering dust.

Source: No Man’s Sky, PlayStation Blog

Snapchat ‘celebrates’ women with more insensitive filters

Snapchat has a really hard time celebrating without coming off as offensive. Last 4/20, the app introduced a Bob Marley filter that prompted accusations of racial insensitivity. A few months later, it rolled out an anime-inspired filter that sure looked a lot like yellowface. Now, it’s National Women’s Day, and the company has messed up yet again.

Snapchat users can celebrate with new filters based on three historic women: painter Frida Kahlo, civil rights activist Rosa Parks and scientist Marie Curie. While the Curie filter features beakers and a ribbon identifying the female luminary, users are wondering why it also adds digital eye shadow and smooths out their skin. While it seems Snapchat had good intentions, it’s not clear why it thought a face-enhancing filter was an appropriate way to celebrate the scientific achievements of a legendary woman.

I appreciate the effort @Snapchat but why add the makeup to the Marie Curie filter? #InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/CQ1MZ9S3ZJ

— Eileen Dawson (@MarrowNator) March 8, 2017

The Parks filter doesn’t reach full Marley blackface levels of embarrassment, instead using her signature hat, hair and glasses — but still turning a person of color’s likeness into a costume. Similarly, the Frida Kahlo filter adds her historically accurate hairstyle and thick eyebrows, but reducing her to a few facial characteristics comes off as pretty clueless and insensitive. As of this writing, all three International Women’s Day filters still available to use.

As The Verge points out, the company only has one woman on its board of directors, so perhaps there was a lack of female insight here. Then again, it shouldn’t take a woman to realize that honoring the first woman Nobel Prize winner with cosmetics isn’t a great idea. Considering its past filter-related controversies, it’s surprising that Snapchat isn’t much more careful about this sort of thing.

Via: The Verge

Switch owners will wait longer (and pay more) for ‘Rime’

If The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has piqued your interest in whimsical open-world adventure games featuring young men solving puzzles, Rime has you covered. It’s coming out on May 26th for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, developer Tequila Words announced in a tweet. But Nintendo Switch owners are going to have to wait — and pay $10 more.

Rime was supposed to be a PS4 exclusive when it debuted in 2013. But, after buying full rights to the game back from Sony, Tequila Works decided to bring it to other platforms, most notably the Switch. It’s one of more than 60 indie games supposedly coming to Nintendo’s new console this year. In today’s tweet, however, the studio said a release date for the Switch version “will be announced soon.”

Rime will be available both digitally and at retail for $29.99 on the PS4, Xbox One and PC, but it will cost $39.99 when it comes to the Switch. We’ve reached out to Nintendo and Tequila Works to ask about the price difference, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.

Via: IGN

Source: Tequila Works (via Twitter)

Pinterest acquires Jelly, the startup from Twitter’s Biz Stone

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s startup Jelly has seen plenty of twists and turns since its 2013 introduction: it launched as a crowdsourced question-and-answer service, pivoted, and then pivoted back to its original concept in 2016. Now, however, it’s poised for its biggest change yet: Pinterest has acquired Jelly. The terms of the deal aren’t available, let alone the ultimate intentions, so it’s unclear just what will happen. Will Jelly be independent, or melt into its new owner? Stone sees the deal as important to the “future of human powered search and discovery,” though, so you know what his focus will be.

As our TechCrunch colleagues point out, this isn’t coming out of the blue. Stone is an angel investor in Pinterest, so he has an incentive to sell to them. And while Jelly’s financials aren’t public, it’s safe to say it hasn’t enjoyed nearly as much (relative) success as Twitter. This could be as much about ensuring that the technology and team survive as it is giving them a chance to grow as part of a larger company.

Source: Jelly (Medium)

Tesla’s new solar energy station will power Hawaii at night

Renewable energy supplies are great because they produce power without filling the air with pollution. Yet, once the sun goes down solar panels become pretty useless. But Tesla and Hawaii have a solution that’ll use the sun’s rays both day and night using Powerpacks built at the Gigafactory.

The Kapaia project is a combination 13MW SolarCity solar farm and 53MWh Tesla Powerpack station on the island of Kauai. In partnership with the KIUC (Kauai Island Utility Cooperative) the project will store the sun’s energy during the day and release it at night. The station (along with Kauai’s other renewable resource solutions including wind and biomass) won’t completely keep the island from using fossil fuels but it will temper the need.

In addition to using Tesla’s station to battle the island’s incredibly high electric bills, it’s also part of a long-term Hawaii-state plan to be completely powered by renewable energy sources by 2045. Kauai has its own goal of using 70 percent renewable energy by 2030. With this project the island is getting closer to that goal and can now produce 100 percent of the energy it needs during high usage mid days and low loads via renewables during a brief period of time.

“This is the first time that solar energy can be delivered very reliably into the night. That’s the key to scaling renewable energies up,” said Tesla CTO, JB Straubel.

The island state doesn’t have the benefit of a massive grid like the mainland to pull electricity from sources hundreds of miles away. Instead each island has to take care of its own energy solutions.

According to Tesla and the KIUC, the 45 acre Kapaia project will reduce the use of fossil fuels by 1.6 million gallons a year.

This is the first big project from Tesla and SolarCity since the acquisition. Both companies believe this station is the biggest combination solar panel and storage facility in the world. With approximately 55,000 solar cells spread over about 45 acres, it’ll be tough to find anything larger.

Final ‘Destiny’ add-on revives old raids on March 28th

At the end of this month, Bungie will release the last extra content for its shooter MMO Destiny before it moves on to the game’s sequel. In a livestream today, the studio’s developers and community manager Deej outlined what’s coming for players in Age of Triumph: A return to old raids that have been boosted to the current max Light level. Guardians, get ready. Your free “victory lap” re-experiencing legacy content from the first three years of Destiny launches Tuesday, March 28th.

Watch live video from Bungie on http://www.twitch.tv

Classic raids from vanilla Destiny and the expansions The Dark Below, The Taken King and Rise of Iron will all be revamped and have a 390 Light Level requirement for entry, so get ready to plumb the depths of Vault of Glass one last time. Finishing these earns players recognition in a brand-new Record Book tracking achievements from across Destiny’s history (including one for you braggarts who boast about playing since day one). For completing all of them folks will get permission to buy an Age Of Triumph-themed T-shirt from Bungie’s online store so they can flaunt their in-game prowess in meatspace.

Bungie deigned not to satisfy fan cravings to raise the Light Level above 400, noting that it would exclude players who haven’t even made it to the current cap. Sure, it’s less work for the studio than re-balancing the existing meta while they’re working on the game’s sequel, which was originally slated to launch later this year. But Age of Triumph is a free event, so thank your Guardian-lords that the studio isn’t just hyping the sequel and leaving the community out to dry, especially given their assurance in this livestream that they’d be keeping the original game live for some time.

The studio will reveal more about the game’s last content block in another livestream (two of which will be released in the weeks leading up to Age of Triumph’s launch). Just keep in mind that the Record Book achievements will likely be the only things from AoT that you’ll be able to carry over into the sequel, as Bungie announced all items and power won’t transfer with your character to Destiny 2.

Source: Bungie (Twitch)

Experiment suggests potatoes really will grow on Mars

It looks like Mark Watney, the fictional, stranded astronaut in The Martian, was right about one thing. Potatoes can grow on Mars. The International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima placed a special potato inside a sealed container that simulates Mars temperature, air pressure, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. The results so far are positive; cameras inside the canister show sprouts.

The current potato experiment is inside a CubeSat, a small, modular satellite that can be sealed against the hazards of space. It allows the experimenters to create a Mars-like environment without going to the red planet itself.

“Growing crops under Mars-like conditions is an important phase of this experiment,” research associate Julio Valdivia-Silva told Phys.org. “If the crops can tolerate the extreme conditions that we are exposing them to in our CubeSat, they have a good chance to grow on Mars. We will do several rounds of experiments to find out which potato varieties do best.”

But didn’t Mark Watney grow potatoes on Mars already?

“Well, they’ve known for a while that crops can grow in Martian soil,” science nerd and author of The Martian Andy Weir told Engadget. “It’s just a matter of cleaning the perchlorates out of the soil, and providing an Earth-like environment (air, water, temperature, etc.).” This current experiment takes things even further by simulating more of the Martian environment.

The potato already has a great genetic capacity for adapting to extreme environments, according to CIP breeder Walter Amoros. An earlier phase of the project used soil from a desert in Southern Peru to prove that the tubers could grow in salty, dry conditions.

Potatoes are important for another reason, as well. Weir’s famous astronaut ate potatoes because they have the highest calorie yield per land area of all crops. Getting more calories with less farming space is important.

This is the second phase of the Potatoes on Mars project, which aims to figure out which extreme conditions the hardy tuber can thrive in. If they can grow on Mars, surely they can survive in areas here on Earth that have been devastated by climate change.

Source: Phys.org