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Comment I hope they don't require mowing or blowing (Score 1) 347

I own an empty residential lot in San Jose (south bay instead of east bay). The county of Santa Clara requires that all land always be mowed and never have grass taller than 6 inches. Their excuse is fire danger. Even if the grass is green. Even if it is the rainy season and the grass will grow back in a week. Even in a residential area.

I would like to use an electric string trimmer, but the city won't let me get electricity service without a building permit. Building permits cost 10% of construction costs, so realistically $100k. I hear other local governments in the bay area are even worse.

The lot is big enough that it would cost me around $1000 for enough batteries to mow the entire lot. I can do it with less than $1 worth of gas with my $400 4-stroke gas string trimmer. On top of that, lithium batteries only last a couple of years before they need to be replaced.

A policy like this would increase the cost of staying in compliance with the other rules by an order of magnitude.

That said, I hate gas law equipment as much as the next person. Ideally I would like to see all laws and codes requiring the use of lawn equipment dropped along with a ban as implemented in Oakland. I just know from experience that local governments aren't capable of considering the interactions between their various laws and codes.
Businesses

More Tech, STEM Workers Voluntarily Quitting Their Jobs (dice.com) 167

Posted by timothy from the spend-time-with-family dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: New data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggests that more tech professionals are voluntarily quitting their jobs. In August, some 507,000 people in Professional and Business Services (which encompasses tech and STEM positions) quit their positions, up from 493,000 in July. It's also a significant increase over August 2014, when 456,000 professionals quit. Voluntary quits could be taken as a sign of a good economy (Dice link), hinting that people feel confident enough about the market to jump to a new position (likely with better pay and benefits), if not strike out on their own as an independent. For tech pros, things are particularly rosy at the moment; according to the BLS, the national unemployment rate among tech pros has hovered at under 3 percent for the past year, although not all segments have equally benefitted from that trend: Programmers, for example, saw their unemployment rate dip precipitously between the first and second quarters of this year, even as joblessness among Web developers, computer support specialists, and network and systems engineers ticked upwards during the same period. If there's one tech segment that hasn't enjoyed economic buoyancy, it's manufacturing, which has suffered from layoffs and steady declines in open positions over the past several quarters.

Comment Google is keeping "don't be evil" (Score 5, Informative) 247

by loosescrews (#50652883) Attached to: Google As Alphabet Subsidiary Drops "Don't Be Evil"
From TFA:

Even though Google is underneath Alphabet, its own, more specific code of conduct remains largely the same, and it retains the "don't be evil" motto. And since most of Alphabet's employees work at Google, that means "don't be evil" is still very much alive and well in Mountain View.

It is just Alphabet that is dropping it.

Submission + - Microsoft Tries Another Icon Theme For Windows 10

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Back in February, users decried the new icon look in Windows 10. To respond to the feedback, Microsoft has implemented a new icon pack in a leaked build 10125, which is soon expected to arrive at the Technical Preview testers as well. Screenshots allow us already to see what the final version of the OS could look like when it goes live this summer. The new icons go all-in on a flat approach, so they follow the same design cues as the rest of the operating system, but the "pixel art" style has been abandoned. Once again, Softpedia asked for user experiences, and this time the comments have been mostly positive.
Shark

Laser Takes Out Truck Engine From a Mile Away 274

Posted by Soulskill from the all-it-needs-is-an-orbital-targeting-platform-and-we-can-make-popcorn dept.
MutualFun (1730480) writes Aerospace company Lockheed Martin has used a laser to obliterate the engine of a small truck from more than a mile away. (Finally, Star Wars is making a comeback!) The company says, "The demonstration marked the first field testing of an integrated 30-kilowatt, single-mode fiber laser weapon system prototype. Through a technique called spectral beam combining, multiple fiber laser modules form a single, powerful, high-quality beam that provides greater efficiency and lethality than multiple individual 10-kilowatt lasers used in other systems."

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