"Individual" in this case does NOT mean "person".

If you download the spreadsheet you can see that they classify total spending as either "direct" or "grants", of which the vast bulk is "direct". Everything that is not a grant must be being paid to an entity of some kind, whether an actual person, a company, a non-profit or something. You can verify this is the total Federal spending using the Monthly Treasury Statements at https://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/... - I recommend the PDF versions.

As for the percentage going to veterans, I expect the number of veterans isn't growing very much, whereas the Federal budget is. So a constant amount in a larger total is going to be a smaller fraction.

Bottom line, this article is FUD and should not be taken serious by anyone.

This is awful! I'm shocked! SHOCKED, I tell you! I'm going to write to my congressman and tell him... Tell him... Um...

Wait, what exactly am I supposed to be outraged about here?

tl'dr? Anyone who'll sell you homeopathic crap is a liar and should be treated as such.

You are aware that most regular grocery stores and pharmacies regularly stock homeopathic remedies, right? Boiron USA, maker of many homeopathic products, proudly advertises that their retailers include groceries Publix, Albertson's, and Safeway in addition to Whole Foods; also pharmacies CVS, Rite-Aid, and Walgreens.

Your own grocery and pharmacy probably carry homeopathic products as well. Look especially at the "natural" cold and flu remedies, children's medicines, anti-itch and poison ivy relief, that sort of thing. They'll either say "homeopathic" on the label or have ingredients with suspicious-sounding Latin names followed by a number and letter -- "Spongia tosta 3C", "Aesculus hippocastanum 1X", etc. Here's your handy guide to the dilution scale. It's worth keeping in mind how homeopathic ingredients are labelled since not every product actually says "homeopathic". At least not in print large enough to read without a magnifying glass.

tl;dr? Yes, homeopathy is bullshit, but if you shun all stores that sell it you're going to have a rough time doing your weekly shopping.

But yeah...try their steak sometime. WOW, is it good :)

But... Is it gluten-free?

An IDE doesn't make one a bad programmer. However, it does provide enough of a crutch to fool bad programmers into thinking they're good programmers.

Talk about a content-free article. The TSA wants industry to produce a scanner that can detect explosives unobtrusively without slowing down traffic. Well, duh. Of course they want that. And if anyone knew how to make one they would have already. The headline may as well read, "Gold Coin Giveaways May Be Coming To An Airport Near Your" based on the TSA asking for a leprechaun to produce his pot-o-gold. It's about as realistic.

Like my cat, I just pee on everything that's mine. Or that I want to be mine. Works like a charm.

Thanks for mentioning that. I'd heard of that vulnerability before. I actually have a Python implementation of the algorithm which I normally use from the command line rather than in the browser. That pretty effectively nullifies spying on the DOM. :-)

This much is true. That's why I normally use a locally-stored script, either Javascript in the form of a bookmarklet or a Python implementation of the algorithm.

For the most part I don't save or memorize passwords. I regenerate them as needed with SuperGenPass. SuperGenPass algorithmically generates passwords by hashing the site's domain name together with a single memorized password. This always generates the same password for any given site. So, I don't have to remember them or store them anywhere, I just need to know how they're generated.

But what if I'm at someone else's computer without SGP installed? The SGP website has a "mobile" version, which is just javascript that runs entirely within the browser. Go there, type in the domain and password, and generate it. (Yes, I've checked the javascript. It's not sending your password out to the mothership or saving anything locally.)

I do keep a notebook in a plaintext file with all the sites I use. This contains the domain name that the site had when I first signed up. Domain names sometimes change, or are ambiguous (ie., the same site is available via both foobar.org and foobar.com). The text file lets me keep track of what I need in order to regenerate the password.

What about sites that require periodic password changes? I use the domain and just suffix my memorized password with a sequence number. And I write the sequence number in my notebook.

What's that? Security questions? I generate the answer by hashing the question itself rather than the domain with my memorized password. And of course, I copy the question verbatim into my text file so I can regenerate the answer when I need to.

The only failing is when I hit a site that doesn't allow certain punctuation, or has length limits, or something of that nature. Then I modify the parameters that I give to SGP and write down the specific parameters that I used.

The notebook is stored on my home fileserver in an svn repository which gets backed up every night. I'm completely screwed if I ever forget my one secret, but it's one I've been using for literally decades now. It's going to be one of the last things to go when my brain develops bit rot.

Actually some of the BASIC ones have waypoint control

The way you capitalize that makes me think the drones are programmed like...

10 REM WAYPOINTS IN LAT/LONG ORDER
20 DATA 43.36,39.43
30 DATA 43.37,37.44
40 DATA 43.40,37.39
50 RESTORE
60 READ LA,LO
70 GOSUB 200
80 READ LA,LO
90 GOSUB 200
100 READ LA,LO
110 GOSUB 200
120 GOTO 50
200 REM FLY TO LAT/LONG
...

I've been saying for a decade now that the very fact that there hasn't been a bombing of a security checkpoint line demonstrates that there certainly isn't a legion of crazed bombers trying to take down the country. Hit one security line and you'll bring American passenger travel to a screaming halt for a few days. Hit two lines and you'll shut it down for weeks. We'll piss ourselves trying to figure out how to check people for bombs before getting to the checkpoint. Don't just hit big, juicy targets like LAX and JFK -- hit a few random podunk airports too, places that no one would bother to bomb. Do that enough times so that the TSA can't effectively concentrate their defenses around the next likely target. The goal of terrorism isn't bodies, it's terror. A lower body count can be more effective if you're showing people that they can't expect to be safe anywhere.

And until this starts happening, let's just admit that the TSA is a bunch of hokum and get back to some semblance of sanity.

For me, the killer app would be if it would identify the face of who I'm talking to and overlay the name. I'm horrible at remembering names and would gladly pay $1500 for an unobtrusive real-time lookup. Even if it was limited to names already in my address book, even if it could only identify people I'd personally photographed, it would be worth it to me.

tracking a person's car without a warrant is illegal, per the SCOTUS

That SCOTUS decision says nothing of the sort. It says the police are not allowed to secretly plant a tracking device without a warrant. It says nothing at all about the legality of tracking via something on the car which is publicly visible, whether it's the license plate or just keeping track of the make, model, and specific pattern of dents your car has.

I think tracking like this is going to become de rigueur within a very few years. I don't know that I like it, but I don't see any way of stopping it. I mean, you can see the bloody plate right there in front of you. It's not like anyone could argue that they didn't know. The only way to stop this sort of tracking would be to outlaw traffic cameras, and that horse left the barn ages ago.

And how would "computer-illiterate little brother" be any less sexist? To be non-sexist you'd have to say "computer-illiterate younger sibling". Then you're merely being ageist, not sexist. To fix that you need to say "computer-illiterate twin sibling". Of course that plays into the whole "evil twin" stereotype. In fact, when you come right down to it calling any class of person "computer-illiterate" is denigrating them. Better just say "your computer-illiterate pet hamster".

Except that saying that Metro is made for an offspring-eating rodent that fouls its home with its own excrement is demeaning to the hamster.