The Borowitz Report is, or at least used to be, satire -- kind of like the Onion.

Ironically, income for most Americans has not increased since Reagan became President.

It is surprising that cutting taxes and reducing regulations for corporations and the wealthy, while undermining unions and cutting government services to everyone else, results in the wealthy getting wealthier and the rest standing still. Who could have imagined such an outcome?

When will the " trickle down" that Reagan promised start happening? I feel like it could be any day now.

Aren't there plenty of other, and Free, ways to publish? It's not the end of the world but when someone like Linus Torvalds does it I think it sends a message that undermines the value placed on FOSS systems. If end-user control isn't important for Torvalds' personal communication, when is it?

And yes, I'm aware I'm publishing this on Slashdot, but they say "Comments owned by the poster" and in this case, there's not a functional alternative for participating on this discussion.

People like to argue that these kinds of surveillance and control are legitimate and nobody cares about them; if so, then why are they done in secret?

No, we should follow the same rules as any drug tests. Whether people are law-abiding or not has no bearing on whether we can do experiments on them.

I thought testing drugs on humans -- without their informed consent and successful prior testing -- was banned long ago.

It doesn't matter that the person is a prisoner; in fact the standards are higher for them, because they are much less able to refuse consent. It also doesn't matter that they will die soon; terminally ill patients also must give informed consent.

What kind of sick society experiments on helpless prisoners?

The government invested and invests very heavily in the technology, including R&D, both through the military and NASA (and maybe via other agencies I'm not thinking of). For example, here is NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

Boeing is a leading beneficiary of these funds. Also, have Boeing and their competitors received tax breaks and other aid?

How does a successful test of a prototype tell you anything about the demand for it? Silicon Valley landfills are filled with successful prototypes of products you've never heard of.

They need someplace to go and something to do up there. Until consumers can spend a weekend in orbit doing entertaining activities, it's hard to imagine many people willing spend six figures (?) on the trip.

(I'm all for commercial space flight, by the way, I just don't see much consumer demand for it.)

That's a very big change. 'Our security is so perfect that any fraud must be perpetrated by the user''?

Thanks, that makes sense.

Hmmm ... given the amount of money involved, doesn't it seem likely that methods for breaking the security are already known?

Could someone explain how EMV chips work, especially,

1) If every consumer and retailer in the world will be able to utilize them to process purchases, how can we stop people from using the same devices fraudulently? If the answer is that they use a PIN, then why not use the old mag-stripes with a PIN?

2) Is anything stored on them besides payment data, such as other personal data? In addition to a payment mechanism, is it also yet another way to track and collect information about people? Could other data potentially be stored on them?

3) Is wireless necessary or even a good idea? Why not require contact with the credit card machine?