I was curious about that too, having a few friends with one non-Latino parent. Assuming the U.S. Census Bureau hasn't changed their methodology since 2010, Hispanic/Latino origin seems to be based on self-identification in their census questionnaires, so people with some Latino heritage and who feel like they have some sort of connection to Latino culture (I'd assume).

It's also noteworthy that the group that they outnumber, "Non-Hispanic White alone persons", is defined as people who don't identify as Latino/Hispanic and who specified White as their only race in the questionnaire, so I'm not really surprised that it's a group that's barely growing.

I had no idea the U.S. was considered the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world though. That's pretty cool!

That sounds about right. I was under the impression that military hardware was given to non-SWAT units as well, but I seem to have been mistaken.

NY Times wrote an article on it last year. Basically it seems as if police departments can ask the military for surplus hardware which will be destroyed if it goes unclaimed, so there's really no reason to say no to (essentially) free, cool, military gear.

Some restrictions seem to have been introduced in May though (Reuters), so hopefully things might start changing for the better.

I've gotten used to most of 8's kinks by now, but I absolutely agree. Navigating the OS just feels so disjointed because of metro/charms. There are a few keyboard shortcuts which are pretty useful in Windows 8 to make life a little bit easier though (in case someone hasn't heard of these):

Win+Q: brings up the quick search panel without dragging you out of desktop mode (it's equivalent to pressing the windows key and typing, but you get to avoid most of the metro interface)

Win+I: brings up the settings panel within the charms bar for quick access to the shutdown/reboot menu

Win+C: brings up the charms bar

Win+X: displays a context menu for easy access to the Control Panel as well as a few useful system features