Sun

A deal between California utility Pacific Gas & Electric and solar company SunRun will eliminate the upfront cost of installing rooftop solar panels for 3,500 homes.

PG&E subsidiary Pacific Energy Capital has created a $100 million tax equity fund that will be used by SunRun to offer homeowners financing for solar electric panels.

SunRun offers a power purchase agreement through which consumers pay a small upfront fee and then a monthly payment for the solar panels, rather than purchase them outright. The financing, regularly used with business customers, allows homeowners to lower their monthly electricity bills with … Read more

Pornography, like beauty, is very much in the eye of the beholder.

For some, pornography is any woman in an advanced state of nakedness and any man without shorts. (Unless they're at, say, a hot springs in Calistoga, Calif.) For others, porn is the amount of food some Americans like to put on their plates.

So perhaps one should vigorously exercise subjectivity on hearing that Apple is reportedly to allow the Sun newspaper to enjoy a magical iPad app.

Some might be surprised at this decision as, in 2009, Apple prevented an app called Newspaper(s) from appearing on the iPhone specifically because this app offered all the finest aspects of the Sun newspaper.

By "finest," I am naturally implying that the app contained shots of girls next door who happened to have omitted their shirts. These are lovingly known in the U.K. as the "Page 3 girls."

This time around the situation is, allegedly, different. PaidContent reported that the Sun's iPad app has been approved because all who download it (for almost $8) have to declare that they have more than 300 growing in their armpits and 12 on their chins. Yes, you must state that you are 17.

Your first reaction might be that if all an app needs to do to gain approval is to ask every downloader whether he or she is of an age to cope with such material, then perhaps there might be a flood of application applications with a hard core of content.… Read more

Solar project developer SunEdison has secured a financing package projected to reach as high as $1.5 billion to install solar power at businesses and utilities, the company said Tuesday.

SunEdison and First Reserve, a private equity firm that invests in energy, announced a joint venture to finance, build, and operate solar photovoltaic projects.

The initial investment in the joint venture is $167 million, and First Reserve may later raise another $150 million in equity. To finance large-scale solar projects, the joint venture will borrow money. The combined project financing debt and equity could result in $1.5 billion worth … Read more

SunPower, a Silicon Valley manufacturer of high-efficiency solar cells, panels, and systems, announced Monday the debut of its its new SunPower E19 Series solar panels, a product lineup that offers an efficiency of 19 percent or greater.

The efficiency figure measures how great a percentage of the sunlight that hits a solar panel is actually converted into usable electricity. The higher the efficiency, the cheaper the cost of using solar energy.

Some companies have reached up to 42 percent efficiency in testing their products. Others have claimed even higher percentages in the lab. But most commercial silicon solar cells average … Read more

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is betting on a mobile, cloud-based future and is winning.

Former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz bet big on that same future...with dramatically different results.

It's easy to suggest that the answer must be because Google employees are simply smarter than their counterparts at Sun, or that Schmidt is a rock-star CEO while Schwartz was not. But history belies such facile reasoning.

For one thing, there's no shortage of Sun employees at Google, including, most recently and notably, Tim Bray, who … Read more

Java co-creator James Gosling is saying good-bye to Oracle just a few months after the company acquired his longtime employer, Sun Microsystems.

Gosling made the announcement on his blog, saying he resigned from the company on April 2.

Gosling didn't give any reason for his departure. Instead, he wrote, "Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good." As for what he'll do next, Gosling said he doesn't know--just that he'll take some time off before starting his job search.

Gosling helped create the Java … Read more

A vulnerability in Java technology could be exploited by attackers and used to compromise computers running Windows if they visit a Web page hosting malicious code, two researchers warned on Friday.

Google engineer Tavis Ormandy released details on the Full Disclosure e-mail list and Ruben Santamarta, an engineer for Wintercore, wrote about it on his company's blog site.

The problem is with the Java Web Start framework, which allows developers an easy way to create Java applications. Disabling the Java plug-in will not protect against an attack, according to Ormandy.

"The toolkit provides only minimal validation of the … Read more

Many people who invest a significant amount of money in solar panels find themselves groping in the dark when it comes to knowing how well a system performs.

A new company, SunReports, has developed a device and Web software application that keeps tabs on how well both solar electric and solar hot water systems are performing. The San Francisco-based company on Tuesday said it expects to begin manufacturing its solar monitoring devices with a goal of making hundreds of thousands of units this year, according to CEO Thomas Dinkel.

The SunReports Apollo1 is a small box with ports to connect … Read more

You know the story from Greek mythology about Icarus, and how his father Daedalus told him not to fly too close to the sun with the wings he made for him out of feathers and wax. Icarus didn't listen and fell into the sea.

Well, according to several reports, Daedalus might want to warn iPad owners not to play too close to the sun with their beloved new devices because they too may crash.

While Apple has historically had a good track record when it comes to the reliability of its high-profile products, there have been a few glitches … Read more