If you are a fan of crocheted pot holders or hand-crafted, fair trade jewelry, you probably enjoy the online retailer Etsy. But now retail giant Amazon wants crafters to know that they can sell their wares on a bigger stage.

“Handmade” is Amazon’s new platform for sales of artisan goods, according to Newsweek. The site was launched this week, in what many see as a direct attack on Etsy, which went public earlier this year.

Since its stock launch, Etsy’s shares have plummeted, and an additional eight percent drop followed the Amazon announcement. By contrast, Amazon’s share price is up a whopping sixty-five percent over the past year.

The new Amazon site debuted with an impressive catalog already. More than 80,000 products are on offer, from more than 5,000 crafters from over 60 countries. More than 800 items are eligible for the Amazon Prime swift delivery service, and thirty percent of the items are customizable, according to an Amazon spokesman.

While artisan production is generally more time consuming, the retailers expects more Prime-eligible offerings soon, especially during the holiday shopping season. Also, as Etsy has moved to offer more manufactured goods, Amazon established Handmade to offer only certified handcrafted products.

Amazon is also competing with Etsy for artisans with no listing fee and a twelve percent selling fee, countering the twenty cents per item listing fee that Etsy charges on top of its 3.5 percent selling fee.

A design team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, working with the private design firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have created the first concept home that pairs the energy production and demand of the house with a car.

Their aim was to demonstrate that during peak power use, a car’s stored energy could be used to power a home, according to Fast Company. The system is more energy efficient because it avoids the loss of electricity inherent in pulling power long distances over the current energy grid.

Solar energy from panels on the home’s rooftop can be used to charge the car’s batteries through a wireless charging pad when supply outpaces demand. When the home needs power, it can then draw it from the hybrid natural gas-electric car.

The small home also makes use of energy efficient lighting and high-efficiency insulation. Its micro-kitchen was built by GE with efficiency as a priority.

The home is made with 3D-printed walls, also cutting down on energy costs and building materials. Using 3D technology also helped the designers modify the structure as needed during construction, with engineers printing new panels on demand.

The building materials can be ground up and re-printed as needed, eliminating waste if the building needs to be replaced.

You may have heard about complaints from drivers who work for new online on-demand car service providers. Several lawsuits have been filed to win worker’s fair compensation and other benefits.

Now the car sharing service Lyft wants you to know that they are putting their driver’s happiness first. The company has made recent deals with Hertz, Shell Oil and others to provide benefits for their force of 100,000 drivers, according to Forbes.

Under the terms of the deal with Hertz, Lyft drivers can receive discounted car rentals, if they use the car for Lyft business or personal use, and if they are driving for the company for at least two hours a day and are accepting at least 90 percent of rides requested.

Other deals include an arrangement with Shell for discounted fill-ups, and partnerships that will allow drivers to receive instant cash for their daily earnings, instead of having to wait for weekly paychecks.

Lyft is especially counting on the car rental deals to bring in new drivers. The company says that twenty percent of driver applicants do not have a car that can meet its qualifications. Some drivers may also choose to rent larger vehicles that can earn them higher fares.

Since Lyft and other car sharing services hire drivers as independent contractors, they cannot legally forbid them from working for competing firms. But Lyft is hoping that the new benefits will build loyalty and encourage their drivers to spend more time working for Lyft, and less elsewhere.

If you’re a Nook reader, you may have noticed a recent change in the Barnes & Nobel hardware. The company appears to be ending its own Nook production, in favor of partnerships with other tech companies.

The Galaxy Tab E Nook is the third collaboration between the book seller and Samsung, according to CNET. The device comes with Microsoft office pre-installed and allows split screen use of two apps at the same time.

The slim reader is just 0.33 inches thick and weighs just over a pound, and allows reading books, magazines, and newspapers in portrait and landscape layout. Buyers receive the first three Nook e-books and three Nook magazines free.

Samsung has two previous Nooks on the market. The latest device comes in at $249, between the lower-priced Galaxy Tab S2 Nook and the premium priced Galaxy Tab 4 Nook.

Samsung’s tablet sales have fallen, as the category overall is declining, with even Apple’s iPad sales dropping. With competition from larger smart phones, analysts expect tablet sales to fall eight percent overall this year.

It’s increasingly common to see unmanned drones flying overhead. But this week federal regulators sent a chill through the drone industry with what would be a record-setting fine for violations of air space rules.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed a $1.9 million fine against the drone company SkyPan, for the company’s flights in high-use airspace in New York and Chicago, according to the Washington Post. SkyPan cameras record the landscape primarily for developers who want an aerial view in planning construction projects.

The FAA says that at least 65 SkyPan flights over the two cities between March 2012 and December 2014 violated federal rules, including flying without air traffic control approval, failing to have required radio and other equipment, and failing to have required registrations and other paperwork.

The company’s flights, the agency charged, were careless and “endanger(ed) lives or property.” Drone sightings are increasingly common: in 2014, just 288 drones were reported, mostly by pilots. This year there have already been more than 900 such sightings.

The FAA’s most serious concern, especially with flights in crowded air space in major cities, is that drones will disrupt commercial airliners. A U.S. House subcommittee on aviation heard testimony from the FAA and others at a hearing this week on the safety of drone flights.

If you consider gaming an important part of your streaming entertainment choices, you may not have much in common with the chief executive of the streaming platform Roku.

In advance of the roll-out of the company’s Roku 4 earlier this week, company CEO Anthony Wood discounted the value of gaming in the streaming video market, suggesting that not only his company but others would not make gains by marketing to gamers. Instead, he described gaming as a feature that would be available on the company’s products, but would not be a strategic marketing opportunity, according to Bloomberg.

Currently console like the Xbox and Playstation have captured the bulk of the gaming market, with mobile gaming also taking a chunk of the sector. With those two platforms well entrenched, Wood believes that streaming services should focus on other entertainment options.

Other companies have tried to market streaming alternatives to more pricey consoles, like the Nvidia Shield or Playstation TV, but none of these devices have paid off.

Still, Apple and Amazon, with relationships that make for potentially more fruitful opportunities, are pursuing gamers for their streaming platforms. Apple is banking on its connections to mobile gamers, while Amazon has been building a network of studios to develop games for its devices.

If you have never experienced it, you have probably heard about it: your computer gets infected by hackers, who surreptitiously insert software that locks all of your files. The next thing you know, you’re receiving payment instructions that say for $200 to $300 or more, you can have control of your computer back.

Such attacks by one malware tool called the Angler Exploit kit nets hackers more than $30 million annually, according to a BBC story. But this week, the tech firm Cisco announced it has uncovered how the hack works and will issue a patch that many users can install to protect their machines.

Still, the company warns that some users may remain vulnerable, and notes that hackers will eventually adapt to the fix. Estimates suggest that Angler Exploit hackers currently target as many as 90,000 people a day, with nearly half of the attacks occurring on servers connected to U.S. based web hosting providers.

Angler works by breaching vulnerabilities in Flash, Java, and other plug-ins, and is feared as one of the most advanced tools used by hackers. The fix to Angler involves disrupting its ability to communicate through the internet, rendering it ineffective.

Still, Cisco believes that attacks by hackers using Angler will continue and could eventually generate double the revenue that hackers are currently taking in.

For decades, the down time of solar and wind energy projects have kept renewable energy from gaining a larger share of the overall energy market. But now the growing adoption of renewable technologies is making for less downtime, giving investors a hint of the technologies’ potential to disrupt power production markets.

Renewable energy sources have suffered from their low “capacity factor,” based on the amount of power they produce over time, according to Bloomberg. The nighttime downtime for solar energy, for example, means that solar plants that can produce 100 megawatts of power during peak daylight may produce on average just 20 percent of that, making the plant’s capacity factor 20 percent.

But now solar and wind are competing with natural gas or coal plants, even though the latter have much higher capacity factors. That’s because once renewable plants are built, they have none of the input costs that come with fossil fuels that need to be constantly replenished.

Wind and solar energy plants are now outcompeting gas and coal plants, leading more power companies to cut back on their fossil fuel plants and build more renewable operations.

Wind and solar energy have remained at about 5 percent of all U.S. energy output for many years, but an analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that the recent growth trends in renewables is having a greater impact on power companies’ decisions about when to keep their fossil fuel plants running.

As power operators look to renewable sources and use their fossil fuel plants less, the formerly advantageous capacity factors of fossil fuels decline, making renewables more attractive. The trend creates a self-reinforcing cycle that favors a transition to renewable energy. Coupled with new efficient batteries, renewable energy becomes even more competitive.

Last year, for the first time wind power became the cheapest electricity in the U.S., factoring in government subsidies.

A decade ago you may have paid cash for a cup of coffee or a pack of gum. Today more and more people are using their debit cards even for small transactions.

The trend is resulting in increasing ATM fees, according to a USA Today report. Since banks must continue to maintain the less and less used money machines, they’re charging more and more for each withdrawal.

Of all debit card transactions today, 54 percent are for less than $20, according to a spokesman for PULSE, one of the country’s largest ATM and debit networks. The survey of 70 financial institutions on their ATM policies was conducted for pulse by Bankrate.com.

The survey found that the national average fee for an out-of-network ATM withdrawal was $4.52, but some cities’ fees were in a significantly higher range. Atlanta topped the nation with a typical fee of $5.15, while Milwaukee, Miami, Phoenix and New York all came in with fees above $4.75.

San Francisco was among the lowest for ATM fees, with a typical out-of-network withdrawal fee of $3.85.

With fewer users, ATM fees have increased by 21 percent in the past five years. The ease of “cash back” from transactions with many retailers is an additional factor in the decline of ATMs. In another survey, nearly 25 percent of respondents said they even look for opportunities to make small purchases and receive cash back in order to avoid using an ATM.

Many countries’ anti-trust standards forbid “bundling,” the practice of packaging offerings together to pre-empt consumers from using competing products or services.

In Russia, the country’s anti-monopoly agency FAS gave Google until November 18 to answer charges that the company’s Android operating system for mobile devices includes pre-installed apps intended to bypass local competitors, according to Reuters.

The complaint against Google was filed by the Russian company Yandex, which has led Google in the country but is seeing its market share slip as more Russians are purchasing Android-based smart phones that come loaded with competing Google apps.

The European Commission is already investigating complaints that Google unduly influences internet search results to favor its offerings. Other countries will be watching the Russian situation and possibly evaluating their options against the company.

In the U.S., several competitors have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate certain Google Android deals. An FTC investigation of anti-trust issues involving Google’s search engine ended in 2013 with the company making some adjustments to its practices.

In Russia, Google stands to lose as much as 15 percent of its 2014 mobile app revenue if it fails to adequately address the Yandex complaint. A company spokesman said that Google was still studying the FAS report.