Yale Professor Robert J. Shiller has a new piece examining the market up at The New York Times in which he notes that stocks are indeed expensive:

The United States stock market looks very expensive right now. The CAPE ratio, a stock-price measure I helped develop — is hovering at a worrisome level.

I wrote with some concern about the high ratio in this space a little over a year ago, when it stood at around 23, far above its 20th-century average of 15.21. (CAPE stands for cyclically adjusted price-earnings.) Now it is above 25, a level that has been surpassed since 1881 in only three previous periods: the years clustered around 1929, 1999 and 2007. Major market drops followed those peaks.

Unlike the standard way of valuing the market, based on trailing 12 month earnings, Shiller prefers to look at a smoothed out 10-year average of earnings to gain a long-term perspective, and to reduce the effect of the business cycle.

So while it's true that the market is very expensive right now, based on his measure, he notes that it's difficult to use this information to actually time the market. Just because it's expensive, doesn't mean it will go down. Furthermore, the market has been expensive based on his measure for the past 20 years (excluding the period of the recent crash), which raises the question of whether there's been some fundamental change to the economy or markets that would warrant higher valuations.

Shiller's piece examines some theories. One possibility is worker anxiety, and a higher inclination to put money into savings vehicles. He doesn't give this tons of credence. Another possibility is interest rates, which have been low and going lower.

Ultimately, he thinks it's simple:

...nothing I’ve come up with is a slam-dunk explanation for the continuing high level of valuations. I suspect that the real answers lie largely in the realm of sociology and social psychology — in phenomena like irrational exuberance, which, eventually, has always faded before. If the mood changes again, stock market investments may disappoint us.

And of course, the mood will at some point change.

Read the full piece here >

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We've all been guilty of re-using a single password for multiple websites. The idea is tempting. Who has time to remember a new password for every social networking site or service you sign up for?

Although it's known to be a risky tactic, plenty of people still do it. But according to LastPass CEO Joe Siegrist, it's not just risky — it's one of the most dangerous things you can do on the web. 

"Reusing a password is like reusing the same key for every lock and having that key be something that you give out to everyone you meet," Siegrist said to Business Insider. "And it can also be instantly copied and used remotely."

If a hacker obtains your password, the first thing he or she does is check whether or not that password works for other websites, Siegrist said. That's why it's important to use different and unique passwords for all of your online accounts.

There are a few ways to do this. If you're not using a password manager app like LastPass or 1Password, you could come up with a phrase you'll remember. Yuriy Guts, a software engineer and researcher at Eleks Labs, came up with a clever way to generate memorable passwords. Think of a movie, song, or pop culture reference you associate with that website, he writes on Eleks Labs' blog. 

Then, add a few transformations that make the phrase unique, such as replacing some letters with numbers or adding underscores. This also results in a password that is probably longer than one you would have thought of randomly, which also makes it more difficult to guess. 

"People don't grasp the risk they're actually taking when they reuse the same passwords," Siegrist said. "They think there's nothing really out there."

It's becoming more important than ever to protect your passwords. Within the past several months, there have been numerous breaches and Internet vulnerabilities that could make it very easy for hackers to obtain your data.

The Heartbleed bug that was discovered in April, for example, was considered to be one of the biggest vulnerabilities the Internet had seen in years. Just last week, The New York Times reported that a cyber crime ring in Russia had amassed a giant library of more than one billion passwords.

Creating unique passwords and changing them occasionally is important, but enabling two-factor authentication is just as crucial. With two-factor authentication, you'll need to enter a code sent to your smartphone before you can log in with your password. Some services allow you to enable your computer to remember this password for 30 days, and only prompt you to enter a code when you log on to a new device.

The problem, however, is that there are still a ton of websites and services that don't support two-factor authentication. Most email services and social networks do, but Instagram, Citi Bank, Capital One, and cloud storage platform SugarSync are among the websites that don't, according to TwoFactorAuth.org, a site that tracks whether or not websites support two-factor authentication.

"[There are] all of these places where you're putting your information out there," Siegrist said. "It's just a treasure trove, and people can do all kinds of things to you." 

SEE ALSO: Passwords Are A Horrible Way To Keep Us Safe — Here Are The Potential Alternatives

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Want to catch up fast on the US economy?

This simple summary from Nomura is quick and fast.

And now you're caught up.

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Texas Governor and likely 2016 Presidential hopeful Rick Perry was indicted on Friday for abuse of power.

The basic gist is that he threatened to eliminate the funding of a state investigatory body unless its head — who had been arrested on a DWI — resigned. She refused to resign. He followed through and killed its funding. This is what he's being indicted for — supposedly abusing his power in an attempt to oust a political foe.

As we noted yesterday, even liberals think the indictment looks very weak. Basically, the view is that he's being indicated for just doing the functions of the governor, even if there was some political hardball involved.

The most brutal takedown comes from liberal New York Magazine pundit Jonathan Chait who writes:

The theory behind the indictment is flexible enough that almost any kind of political conflict could be defined as a “misuse” of power or “coercion” of one’s opponents. To describe the indictment as “frivolous” gives it far more credence than it deserves. Perry may not be much smarter than a ham sandwich, but he is exactly as guilty as one.

You never know how things will turn out, but so far, very few people are impressed.

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Bill Gates had the best ice bucket challenge we've seen yet, by far. 

The ice bucket challenge has been going viral across Facebook and Twitter. It's being used to raise money for ALS. A person dumps ice water on their head and then challenges three other people to do the same within 24-hours.

Gates starts out by watching Mark Zuckerberg challenge him:

Then he pretends to sketch up an elaborate contraption to dump water on his head.  

A model of the contraption:

He pretends to actually build it:

And finally, it's dumping time:

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Arsh Shah Dilbagi, a 16-year-old from India, won a spot as one of Google's 15 Global Science Fair finalists for his project about helping people with developmental disabilities like locked-in syndrome, Parkinson's, or ALS communicate using only their breath. 

About 1.4% of the world's population suffers from some disorder that renders them almost completely paralyzed, forcing them to use an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device to communicate.

Many AAC devices use eye tracking to help people communicate, but Dilbagi says that most of them are expensive and bulky, so he set out to make a faster and more affordable alternative. And so "Talk" was born.

Dilbagi's Talk costs less than $100 and lets people communicate simply by varying their breathing. The Talk uses a micro-electrical-mechanical system (MEMS) microphone to interpret different breaths as either dashes or dots. The different breaths are interpreted as Morse Code, and then converted to words and sentences. Another microprocessor will then synthesize and "speak" those words and sentences out loud.

Watch Dilbagi explain and use the device:

"In nutshell, Talk has the potential to change the world by enabling people with disorders like LIS, ALS etc., speech impairments like Dysarthria and even Mutes to communicate and interact with the world like never before," Dilbagi writes. "It's my turn to change the world."

Dilbagi is one of 18 incredibly intelligent teenagers who made it to this year's Google Science Fair finals. Google will announce the top project in September, and the winner gets a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands, a visit to the Virgin Galactic Spaceport, and $50,000 in scholarship funding.

SEE ALSO: 11 Crazy-Interesting Facts About Google

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Bill Gates has the best ice bucket challenge we've seen yet. But, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a close second.

Bezos is normally a reserved, all-business kind of guy when he speaks publicly. It's rare that he ever talks to the media unless it's with a specific purpose of promoting a new Amazon product. 

So, it's fun to watch his ice bucket challenge which doubles as a comedy routine. Watch the video if you don't want us to step on his punchlines. 

If you don't care about the comedic effect... 

He starts out saying this is a great thing. Whoever came up with the ice bucket challenge which has led to millions in money to ALS research is a genius.

He then starts trying to figure out who he should challenge. At first he says, Edward Snowden. But he dismisses that idea. Too hard to reach, and besides, "the bucket would leak."

Then he thinks bigger. He says he should challenge the Pope and the Queen. But that doesn't work because "they wear hats."

He tries another idea... Kim Jong Un. But, he's not big on Twitter or Facebook so he'd never get the message.

Finally, he settles for his heroes from Star Trek. 

And then he dumps the water on his head:

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It's no secret that people love lists. They're organized, require minimal effort to read, and can make complicated information easy to digest. 

Lists appeal to our innate tendency to categorize information, as well as help us feel less stressed, according to The New Yorker. Seeing information as a list makes you feel less overwhelmed by a task so it's easier to complete, which in turn makes you happier, Maria Konnikova writes.

Here are 22 list ideas to get you started: 

1. Recipes you want to try: Pull this out the next time you're stuck on what to make for dinner for instant inspiration.

2. Movies you want to see: You'll never have to sit through the "I don't care, what to do you want to watch?" scenario again.

3. Books you want to read: Next time you're reaching for another predictable beach read, look up that acclaimed novel-of-the-year, Oprah-recommended one instead. 

4. TV shows you want to watch: You'll be prepared for when you binge-watch your way through the newest season of "Scandal" and need a new addiction now. 

5. Restaurants you want to try: Keep a running list of all the places you want to try and you'll never be left without a suggestion when deciding where to eat tonight. Bonus points if you organize it by type of cuisine. 

6. Places to see: Maybe you've always wanted to visit the Great Wall of China, or even just the Statue of Liberty. Once you have a list, you'll be motivated to plan a trip.

7. Cities and countries you want to visit: Perhaps there's not a specific landmark you're dying to see, but you've always wanted to eat pasta in Italy or drink wine in France. Your list will remind of which trips you really need to take. 

8. Places to visit in your hometown: It's not as exciting as jet-setting across the globe, but you'll have plenty of things to do instead of vegging out on your couch next Saturday.

9. Passwords: Never forget if your Amazon password is SoccerStar12 or Socc3rStar again. 

10. Daily to-do list: Keep track of everything that's on your plate for the day. Plus, nothing feels better than crossing something off. 

11. Done list: Looking back at your daily accomplishments will help you learn how to be more productive — and provides an automatic ego boost. 

12. Bucket list: Everything you want to do before you die, from big things such as getting married or climbing Mt. Everest, down to small things such as baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie. 

13. Short-term goals: What do you want to accomplish this month?

14. Long-term goals: What do you hope to accomplish in the next five to 10 years?

15. DIY projects: Pinterest might be a great aspirational site, but this will help you keep track of the projects you actually want to complete, like organizing your old photos or painting the furniture in the guest room. 

16. Home improvement projects: Writing down everything that needs to be done will allow you to prioritize what you should tackle first. 

17. Grocery list: Knowing exactly what you need to buy — and sticking to it — will not only save you money, it will help you resist that box of cookies you know you don't need.

18. Important dates: Everyone loves when you remember their birthday or anniversary, so keep a list of your loved ones' significant dates and you'll never miss a chance to make their day.

19. Due dates: If you're even the slightest bit forgetful, writing down when you need to return that shirt by or when those frozen chicken breasts expire can save you stress in the long run.

20. Favorite quotes: You'll feel inspired all over again every time you read through your list. If you're still looking for a favorite, here are a few great quotes from Albert Einstein and Richard Branson to get you started. 

21. Things you're thankful for: Revisit this on your toughest days to remind yourself how great your life is. 

22. Things that make you happy: Whenever you're sad, you'll automatically give yourself several reasons to smile. 

Are there any other lists we're forgetting? Let us know in the comments. 

NOW WATCH: This Billionaire's Definition Of Success Will Surprise You

SEE ALSO: 5 Morning Rituals To Keep You Productive All Day

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Bertolt Meyer was born without a lower left arm.

He started wearing his first prosthesis, or artificial arm, when he was 3 months old. Now at age 37, Meyer wears the futuristic i-limb — a high-tech bionic arm that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Aesthetics aside, the i-limb is highly functional. It's a myoelectric prosthesis, which uses electrical signals from the muscles inside the residual limb to control the prosthesis. 

Two electrodes lay on the bare skin of the residual limb of his lower left arm. "If you flex muscles in your arm, that will change the electrical pattern on the surface of the arm and these patterns are picked up by the electrodes that lie in the prosthesis," Meyer told Business Insider.

A microcontroller then amplifies the signal and the i-limb responds. If he flexes his upper arm muscles one way, the i-limb opens; another way, it closes.

In his professional life, Meyer is a professor of psychology at the Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany, where his research focuses on diversity.

In 2013, he was featured in the Smithsonian Channel documentary "The Incredible Bionic Man," which brought together leading researchers and roboticists to create the first "Bionic Man," assembled from the latest technology in prosthetics and artificial organs. Meyer's face was even used as the model for the man.

Meyer spoke with Business Insider about how his personal experience has motivated his research, how technology is changing perceptions of disability and the ethical questions surrounding the future of prosthetics.

The below interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Business Insider: What motivated you to study social psychology?

Bertolt Meyer: Well, I guess research is also always a little bit of "me" search. So I'd say one of the factors that influenced me is the experience of being different.

If you are born with a very visible physical disability, you learn very quickly what it's like to be treated differently and how it is to have people stare at you — children can be very cruel sometimes. I wondered where these things come from and how they affected us. 

BI:Was there a moment in your childhood when you understood that you were "different"?

BM: One early moment I can remember was in primary school, probably in second or third grade.

I was in a discussion with a classmate of mine and he asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" 

I said, "I want to become a firefighter."

He said, "You can't do that, you only have one arm."

And I had never thought about that. I was devastated at that moment and that was something that really stuck.

BI: In 2009 you started wearing the i-limb. Can you speak from your own experience how technology like the i-limb can change perceptions of disability?

BM: From personal experience, when you only have one arm, people usually meet you with a sense of pity. And people also kind of give you the feeling that they don't want to talk about it and they avoid gazing at you and so forth. It's uncomfortable at best — it's like an elephant in the room.

Now with the i-limb, that has completely changed. People have started to treat me in a different way.

It has changed to "oh wow, what a cool hand, can I have a look?" Especially kids, they're like "Wow a robot hand. Do you have super powers?"

Aside from the functional improvement that you get with such a prosthesis, what I also got was a psychological benefit. It drastically increased my self-esteem.

BI: And what about from an academic perspective?

BM: I think these devices have the potential to change commonly held stereotypes towards people with a disability. One important dimension of stereotypes is how we associate people from stereotyped groups with competence.

For example, when we talk about disabled people, we usually see disabled people as incompetent people —meaning that these people are unable to act out their intentions. Whereas people who we perceive to be "like us" or people who we perceive as idols, we usually see as very, very competent. 

Technology — high-tech and bionics — inherently evokes a feeling of competence. And what you get when you blend a person with a piece of high-tech is something that stereotypically is very competent. 

To illustrate, I would like to use the example of Oscar Pistorius — before he shot his girlfriend.

When Pistorius tried to compete in the able-bodied Olympics, some people were wondering whether he had an unfair advantage. And some journalists talked about "techno-doping."

I can't judge whether he had an unfair advantage or not. But it was interesting because the one thing that all the talk about him did not convey was stereotypes of incompetence. It was is he "too competent"— is he almost a threat to the able-bodied athletes. And that is a drastic shift. Seeing someone with a disability as a threat, because a disability suddenly gives a person a potential: an interface to a piece of superior technology.  

BI: Do you find that you use your right hand and the i-limb interchangeably?

BM: No. For that the i-limb isn't good enough.

The problem with the i-limb, and any other fully dexterous prosthesis, is not the way it's engineered. We now have hands where at least theoretically every joint could move and could do so independently of every other joint in the hand.

The biggest challenge that we face today with the hand prosthesis is the interface between the prosthesis and the body. If you have dozens of little motors in an artificial hand that can mimic any movement that your natural hand can do, where should the delicate control signals for all of these motors come from? How do you connect that to the nerve system? And that is a problem that is still not solved.

So, no, I can't play the piano with my left hand. But one thing I can tell you is before I got the i-limb, I almost exclusively relied on my right sound hand for doing almost everything. This caused my right shoulder to really start to hurt because I overstrained my right arm and shoulder. Since I started wearing the i-limb, that issue is completely gone. 

BI: In the past, you've discussed how the i-limb has a Bluetooth, meaning there's a wireless connection to your iPhone. Have you been worried about someone being able to hack into your i-limb?

BM: The very first version of the app that connects the iPhone to the i-limb didn't have a passcode, so anyone could establish the connection. Now they've changed that. In order to pair the app with the hand you need a passcode and you need to type in the serial number of the hand (which is printed on the hand) in order to establish the connection.

I haven't really personally worried about someone hacking into my i-limb. Also there is a hardware off switch on the side of my socket. Even if something would go weird, I could switch it off. 

It's more a conceptual worry that I have. That is if we continue to upgrade human bodies with technology and this technology is connected to the internet that does give the word hacking a new meaning. There are more stark examples than the potential of making another person's hand move.

The most extreme example I've come across was mentioned by an acquaintance of mine, Marc Goodman, who does cyber security strategy. [Some diabetics use electronic insulin pumps to manage their blood glucose levels.] And these pumps are continuously connected to the patients bloodstream and give off insulin at certain doses and in certain intervals. Now these things also have Bluetooth built in. And somebody has actually built a device that sends out a Bluetooth signal that causes these insulin pumps to give off lethal doses of insulin. So suddenly with a hack you can kill someone. 

So don't just think of prosthesis, think of these insulin pumps, pacemakers, artificial organs that we might see in the future. Things like that we need to start worrying about security. Because again in a connected world these developments really give the word hacking a new meaning. 

BI: One of the issues raised with the Bionic Man documentary was this idea of how much of a human could be replaced and still be considered human. Did your thoughts change after making the documentary?

BM: The question of whether someone or something is human or not does not depend on how many parts of the body we replace. In the end, it comes down to whether someone has a self-aware conscious.

The one thing that I'm really less worried about is the artificial intelligence. I do remember in the early '90s there were people who predicted that we'll have natural language interaction with computers by the year 2000. I learned from the Bionic Man project that we're still very far away from that. So actually my fears that some kind of machines will take over the world have lessened.

What I started to really think about is a question of enhancement. If you lose a limb, an artificial limb will not restore your functionality back to 100 percent. But I really wonder what will happen if — and it's a big if, it's not a given — we managed to invent an artificial limb or organ that's actually better than the natural counterpart. 

At the moment, an artificial hand like the i-limb, doesn't cater to people with two hands because it can't offer them anything they can't do. It only caters to a very small niche market — the very few thousand people who lost a hand.

But if you had an artificial limb that would be better than a healthy limb, then you'd suddenly have a product that emerges form a niche market to a mass market because suddenly it appeals to everyone. 

I'm not going to say that everyone is going to chop off their hands, but already we see body modification people who experiment with implanting little magnets into their hands to give them a sixth sense for magnetic fields. So if we already have extreme people willing to do that today, I'm pretty sure we'll have people who are willing to replace healthy limbs with artificial ones if these offer more functionality. 

Think of plastic surgery. In certain parts of society, it's already accepted to alter a healthy body in order to increase its aesthetic appearance, why not the same concept for functionality?

It will make products more appealing to a larger market. There's a lot of money to be made. And I'm just a little worried that with such projects some corporations might leave the ethical issues to the side. 

GAME CHANGERS:  Read more in the series

SEE ALSO: Humans Are Headed Down A Path That Will Allow Us To Supercharge The Brain

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The government has clamped down on Wall Street banks, but that doesn't mean money goes to sleep.

In a shift decades in the making, the hedge fund world has exploded in size, filling the void banks have left open to take finance's biggest risks and reap its greatest rewards.

Sebastian Mallaby's book 'More Money Than God,'documents the rise of hedge funds, from the very first venture in 1949 to the giants that they are now. It also provides insight into how many of today's star hedge fund managers go their starts.

We've gone through Mallaby's book for you, and highlighted the most important people that made hedge funds into the powerful, driving market force it is today.

Alfred Winslow Jones started then first hedge fund when he discovered the benefits of "hedging"— short selling some stocks to offset risks of buying others.

Fund: A.W. Jones & Co. (1947 – Present)

Background: Alfred Winslow Jones was a man in his 40s with almost no experience in finance. He had dabbled in public service, Marxist rebellion, and journalism. But by 1949, Jones had a family and two kids, and needed to make money. Jones raised $60,000 from his friends and threw in $40,000 of his own money.

Strategy: Jones created the hedging strategy, which used short selling to mitigate or "hedge" the risks from buying long. He financially incentivized brokers to provide him with their best stock picks to fill his portfolio. Jones also began the standard of charging a 20% performance fee on top of the flat management fee.

Major wins/losses: In 20 years running, Jones saw a return of almost 5,000%. But leading up to the market crash of 1969, Jones' segment managers started taking too many leveraged risks, and Jones lost 35% of his investors' money.

How they changed the game: Jones' "hedged fund" led to a flood of imitators and the start of a new financial movement. By 1968 there were 40 more hedge funds, and by 1969 there were anywhere between 200 and 500. 

Legendary trader Michael Steinhardt then used the same model, but to bet against conventional wisdom.

Fund:Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Company / Steinhardt Partners (1967 – 1994)

Background: Steinhardt graduated from University of Pennsylvania at age 19, and by 25 had already made a name for himself on Wall Street. Steinhardt known for his temper and contrarian attitude.

Strategy: Steinhardt developed an invaluable relationship with block traders. As investors began to pour money en masse into Wall Street, block traders stepped up to facilitate large trades and provide liquidity. Traders would come to Steinhardt because he controlled big decisions and big trades.

This allowed Steinhardt to take advantage of inefficient prices in the short-term, buying low and selling high. Steinhardt's firm was also the first to utilize monetary analysis and predict interest rates.

Major wins/losses: Steinhardt's firm was the only profitable hedge fund in 1971 because of its massive short positions during the 1969 market crash, with a total return of 361% since it started in 1967.

However, in 1994, Steinhardt lost a fortune in a huge European bond dump. His hedge fund wasn't able to recover, and he left the market shortly afterwards.

How they changed the game: Steinhardt's firm turned hedge funds from a method of controlling market exposure into a method of betting against conventional wisdom. The success of Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Company showed the hedge funds' capacity for contrarianism.

F. Helmut Weymar led one of the first 'quant' hedge funds that used mathematical models to trade commodities.

Fund: Commodities Corporation (1969 – 1997)

Background: Weymar wrote his PhD dissertation on predicting the price of cocoa by using historical data. As a graduate student, he built a mathematical model to evaluate prices of frozen orange juice, which ended up turning him a profit. He cofounded Commodities Corporation with friends, after a stint trading at Nabisco with his cocoa price model.

Strategy: Commodities Corporation focused on econometrics, building models, and forecasting market conditions. The firm built a computer trading system that found price trends in data and traded based on these patterns, which was one of the first automated trading systems used by hedge funds.

Major wins/losses: After a corn catastrophe, Commodities Corporation's capital was decimated from $2.5 million to $900,000 in less than a week. Weymar then turned around the fund with a new approach to risk taking. By the end of the 1970s, Commodities Corporation had risen to $30 million in capital.

How they changed the game: Commodities Corporation was one of the first "quant" hedge funds, using data to guide trades. However, its failure in 1971 also warned against placing too much confidence in mathematical models.

Nassim Taleb, the noted author who has written best-selling titles including "The Black Swan" and "Antifragile,"just tweeted a photo of an index card outlining his "sins to remember."

The card, which appears to be a quote from Taleb himself, reads:

"Muscles without strength, friendship without trust, opinion without risk, change without aesthetics, age without values, food without nourishment, power without fairness, facts without rigor, degrees without erudition, militarism without fortitude, progress without civilization, complication without depth, fluency without content; these are the sins to remember."

Taleb is big on short, aphoristic statements.

He even published a whole book of aphorisms, "The Bed of Procrustes."

Here's another one to file away. 

SEE ALSO: The Analyst Who Nailed The Housing Crash Is Quietly Revealing The Next Big Thing

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Edward Snowden's in-depth interview with James Bamford of Wired offers details about his last job as a contractor for the NSA in Honolulu, which raise disconcerting questions about the motives of the former systems administrator.

While working at two consecutive jobs in Hawaii from March 2012 to May 2013, the 31-year-old allegedly stole about 200,000 "tier 1 and 2" documents, which mostly detailed the NSA's global surveillance apparatus and were given to American journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in June 2013. The government believes Snowden also took up to 1.5 million "tier 3" documents potentially detailing U.S. capabilities and NSA offensive cyber operations, the whereabouts of which are unknown.

We now know more about the larger and more sensitive cache of classified documents. Furthermore, a close reading of relevant reporting and of statements made by Snowden suggests that much of what the rogue NSA employee intentionally took involved operational information unrelated to civil liberties.

While the tier 3 material appears to have not been shared with American journalists, some of it was shown to a Chinese newspaper. And 14 months later, given the uncertain fate of the documents, it is not unreasonable to ask whether they could have fallen into the hands of an adversarial foreign intelligence service.

That kind of hacking — employing the most sensitive of clandestine NSA cyber spying techniques — is carried out by the NSA's Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO). Current and former intelligence officialstold investigative reporter Matthew Aid that "TAO has been enormously successful over the past 12 years in covertly inserting highly sophisticated spyware into the hard drives of over 80,000 computer systems around the world, although this number could be much higher."

Snowden's new position gave him deep access into the NSA's emerging cyberespionage capabilities.

"Infrastructure analysts like Mr. Snowden, in other words, are not just looking for electronic back doors into Chinese computers or Iranian mobile networks to steal secrets," Scott Shane and David Sanger of The New York Times reported in June 2013. "They have a new double purpose: building a target list in case American leaders in a future conflict want to wipe out the computers’ hard drives or shut down the phone system."

Basically, Snowden gained the opportunity he sought.

"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he told the South China Morning Post (SCMP)on June 12, 2013. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."

For example, Snowden told NYT in October he had “access to every target, every active operation” mounted by the NSA against the Chinese.“Full lists of them."

Tier 1 and 2 vs. Tier 3

"He is a whistleblower in the case of some documents, and not a whistleblower in the case of other documents,"Epstein of WSJ said in a recent interview with Scott Johnson of Powerline.

Epstein reported that Snowden's job with Dell in Hawaii"gave him access to the NSA Net, from which he pilfered most of the documents he later gave to journalists, including the ones about NSA domestic operations that have preoccupied the world's media."

These documents, which comprise tier 1 and tier 2 of the intelligence community's damage assessment,"can be called whistleblowing, whistleblowing [documents] that say he's a man of conscience and he revealed what he thought ... the public should know," Epstein explained to Powerline. "But these constituted only a small portion because then he transferred to Booz Allen on March 15, 2013."

Epstein wrote that Snowden went to Booz Allen to "get access to the crown jewels, the lists of computers in four adversary nations — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — that the agency had penetrated."

These proverbialkeys to the kingdom are considered the most sensitive of the potentially massive cache of tier 3 documents that Snowden may have obtained but did not give to American journalists.

Epstein also reported that some documents "were taken from at least 24 supersecret compartments that stored them on computers, each of which required a password that a perpetrator had to steal or borrow, or forge an encryption key to bypass."

Snowden denies scamming passwords, but former colleagues have admitted to inadvertently providing Snowden a password to access information he was not authorized to see.

Epstein told Powerline that the theft at Booz was "basically a work of espionage: Taking documents that reveal sources and methods. He's never given these documents, with one exception, to any journalist, and no one knows where these documents are.

"So in the case of his work [for Booz Allen] at the National Threat Operations Center, he is not in my book under any theory a whistleblower,"Epstein concluded."At Dell, he could be a whistleblower. These are two different jobs and two different phases."

What Happened To The Tier 3 Documents?

Though based in the "special administrative region" of Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post operates under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, particularly when it comes to matters of national security.

Dr. Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, one of the coauthors of NATO's Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, told Business Insider in June 2013 that the NSA cyberspying Snowden reportedly divulged to SCMP detailed "either espionage or some other interference with the cyber infrastructure in another state.

"Let's be quite clear,"Dr. von Heinegg added. "Intruding into another state's systems in order to figure out what's in there — that's simply espionage, everybody's doing it."

Consequently, Snowden's decision to steal and share such details of the NSA's snooping on a foreign government is not a simple matter of exposing illegality or relative wrongdoing, but suggests something far more serious.

NSA whistleblower William Binney — a hero of Snowden's — told USA Today that the SCMP leaks marked his "[transition] from whistleblower to a traitor."

And it's unclear how much of the tier 3 material, if any, may have been shown to anyone else.

In October James Risen of the Times reported that the former CIA technician said "he gave all of the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong." (ACLU lawyer and Snowden legal advisor Ben Wizner subsequently told Business Insider that the report was inaccurate.)

In May 2014, Snowden thentold NBC's Brain Williams in Moscow that he "destroyed" all documents in his possession while in Hong Kong.

So, as Epstein noted, no one knows what happened to the tier 3 information that Snowden, "a genius among geniuses," managed to steal while immersed in NSA offensive cyber operations at Booz Allen.

Interestingly, in the German newspaper Der Spiegel, Poitras and "American WikiLeaks Hacker" Jacob Appelbaum reported detailed information about the NSA's elite TAO hackers and published a catalog of tools, created by TAO's technical expert division (known as ANT), used to hack into computers.

But the reports do not specify where the classified NSA documents came from.

Appelbaum, a close friend of Poitras, whom she brought in to vet Snowden, also presented the ANT catalog in December 2013 at a computer conference in Germany.

Stuck In Moscow

After outing himself on June 9, Snowden reached out to WikiLeaks for help finding asylum. On June 15, the U.S. asked Hong Kong to provisionally arrest Snowden for the purposes of extradition and subsequently revoked his passport on June 22.

On June 23, Beijing allowedSnowden to board a flight to Moscow using a "refugee document of passage"obtained by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian consul in London. But the document wasn't even signed— meaning that Snowden had no valid travel documents when he landed on Russian soil.

The fact that Snowden ended up in Moscow was "no accident from the Russian point of view," Epstein told Powerline, noting that Putin offered to consider Snowden's asylum request on June 11. For Russia, an American systems administrator with granular knowledge of offensive U.S. cyber operations would be an extraordinary prize.

For his part, Assange has stated multiple timesthat he advised Snowden to stay in Russia, as opposed to attempting to obtain asylum in Venezuela and Ecuador.

"In Russia, he's safe, he's well-regarded, and that is not likely to change," the Australian publisher told Janet Reitman of Rolling Stone. "That was my advice to Snowden, that he would be physically safest in Russia."

Epstein, citing a U.S. official he spoke with in Hong Kong, reported that "Snowden had been observed on CCTV cameras entering the skyscraper that housed the Russian consulate on three occasions" in June.

It is not known when in June Snowden visited the Russian officials in Hong Kong, but the circumstances may inform the fate of the tier 3 documents.

On June 12, Snowden told SCMP that he wanted to make more documents available to journalists if he had "time to go through this information."If Snowden had access to the tier 3 cache when he first met with the Russians in Hong Kong, it would explain their willingness to give him a safe refuge and protect him.

A Whistleblower — And a Spy

While Snowden can legitimately claim to be a whistleblower based on the tier 1 and 2 material he gave to Poitras, Greenwald, and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, the larger cache of information about America's cyberintelligence capabilities and activities around the world is another story.

Snowden's audacious theft of tier 3 documents, which included acquiring colleagues' passwords that gave him access to secret files, could potentially put him in another category altogether. Taking that information would in theory make him a renegade spy— and possessing it would make him especially welcome guest of the Kremlin.

"These secrets he took from [from Booz Allen] are of value to no one but Russia, China, and maybe North Korea, because these secrets are basically the lists of computers in Russia, China, and North Korea which [the U.S.] managed to compromise and tap into,"Epstein asserted to Powerline. "And not only that, ... it would take a very sophisticated counterintelligence service to reverse engineer and to figure out where all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

"So the strange thing about what he did at the National Threat [Operations] Center is what he took is ... only of use to two countries. Have they made use of them? I don't know. But they are of no use to journalists. If he supplied these to journalists, they would have nothing to publish [besides lists of compromised computers]."

Fifteen months after his epic heist, we still don't know if Snowden was telling the truth when he said he destroyed the tier 3 documents between June 12 (the SCMP leak) and June 23 (the flight to Moscow).

"The only thing that Russia and China certainly have in common is that they both want to deny American primacy," Epstein noted to Powerline. "Certainly if you can find a list of everything in your country that has been tapped, whoever you are, even if you were the Mafia, that list would be valuable to you."

As important as Snowden's exposure of illegal domestic spying undoubtedly has been, questions about the tier 3 documents — why he sought them; whom he shared them with; and where they are now — casts a dark shadow on his prominence as a hero.

SEE ALSO: There's An 11-Day Hole In Snowden's Story About Hong Kong

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Higher driving costs and falling pay have created a truck-driver shortage that's likely to worsen in the coming years.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) estimates the U.S. is short 30,000 truck drivers — a number expected to surge to 239,000 by 2022.

In July 2013 new federal hours-of-service rules went into effect. 

The key provision was a limit to the use of a 34-hour "restart." Drivers have a 70-hour-a-week cap on how much time they can be on the road. Previously, they'd been able to artificially reset that cap to zero if they took 34 consecutive hours off. Now many are unable to do so.

As a result, according to a survey from the American Transportation Research Institute, more than 80% of motor carriers have experienced a productivity loss, with nearly half saying they require more drivers to haul the same amount of freight.

"Smaller 'owner/operator' firms are increasingly dropping by the wayside as the cost of operations and maintenance are simply becoming too expensive to stay in business," Paul Pittman, a logistics planner at North Carolina-based logistics company, told Business Insider by email. 

So drivers are suddenly faced with the choice of leaving the profession entirely or moving to a larger company where wages are likely to be lower. 

"As controls continue to tighten, many of the existing drivers currently employed are turning to other areas of employment simply to get off the road and escape some of the regulations implemented to govern their operations," Pittman said.

To hang on, small operators are forced to cut corners. For Jeff, a driver who asked to be identified by only his first name, the pay isn't the biggest issue — it's the compromises some firms are making on driver compliance.

"With how my lifestyle is [the pay is] pretty decent. I don’t go out and blow money on speed boats, or the best electronics, or hookers and blow," Jeff said. "I’m married and I have four children. We prioritize our finances. Two years ago we finally bought an HDTV. My main issue is the safety aspect."

Violating Rules

His primary issue with trucking companies is the pressure they put on drivers to violate federal rules. Jeff worked for a small outfit in the Midwest. The owner of that company, he says, wanted him to take a dry van load from Hubbard, Ohio, to Syracuse, New York, which is about 327 miles.

Jeff explained that this trip takes longer for trucks than it does for cars, because trucks carry heavier loads, and it takes longer for them to speed up and slow down. It would take a truck about 5 hours and 15 minutes from Hubbard to Syracuse. 

The owner, whom Jeff didn't want named, asked him to drive back to Hubbard empty, do a drop-and-hook (drop one trailer, hook another) and take another trailer up to Binghamton, New York, the same day. And the trip from Hubbard to Binghamton is about five and half hours, meaning a round trip would only leave him about 30 minutes of driving for the day and legally Jeff couldn't.

"When you're non-compliant as a driver you run the risk of fatigue and the risk of hurting other people," he said. "And as a driver it's my license on the line." Jeff said he was asked by multiple trucking companies to falsify his logs, but he refused to.

"I consider myself a safety-oriented driver, and I have found that is a bad thing," Jeff said. "Because since I got my CDL [commercial driver's license] in 2008, I have worked for about 10 different trucking companies. That doesn't look good because it looks like it is job hopping ... I'm sticking to my guns."

Time Away From Home

Another problem is lack of time spent at home. Feucht says drivers can expect to spend as little as 52 days at home a year. Feucht, who hauls oversize loads, averages about three to five weeks. Last year he was home 54 days, including his vacation days. "Back in the day you were treated like a knight, but now you're treated like a peon," Feucht says.

All of this helps explain why the turnover rate at large truckload carriers was 92% annualized in Q1, according to the ATA. Turnover refers to the rate at which drivers leave the industry and are replaced.

"One-hundred percent turnover doesn’t mean that every driver left," ATA chief economist Bob Costello says. "If you keep a driver for 90 days, the rate generally drops in half. However, there are a group of drivers that churn, and they generally stay at a carrier for a short length of time (just weeks or a couple of months). Many drivers stay with a carrier for years."

Getting Squeezed

Meanwhile, drivers with less experience or bargaining power get squeezed. Todd Feucht of Wisconsin has been driving trucks for 20 years and thinks trucking companies need to be more honest when recruiting.

The new drivers are "greener than grass," he said. Those who attempt to lease trucks quickly discover the significant cost of maintenance and overhead. Young drivers who go this route end up having very little to show for it. 

"I meet these guys at truck-stops and they can barely afford to eat ramen during the week," Feucht told Business Insider. "They're dropping $850 on a truck a week."

Truck drivers typically get paid hourly or by the mile. Some get a percentage of the load. If you're getting less than 33 cents a mile "you're getting ripped off," Jeff, a 36-year old truck driver from Ohio, told Business Insider.

The truck drivers suggest if these companies want to see this turnover decrease they need to focus on improving pay, improving training for new entrants, and they need to not push them to violate federal regulations.

There may finally be some movement on this front. Last month, Swift, one of the largest haulers in the U.S., announced it would refocus expenditures on better labor conditions for employees, including higher wages.

"After assessing the current and expected environment, we believe the best investment we can make at this time, for all of our stakeholders, is in our drivers,"the firm said in its earnings release. "Our goal is to clear the path for our drivers by helping them overcome challenges, eliminate wait times and take home more money."

SEE ALSO: There's A Huge Shortage Of Truck Drivers In America — Here's Why The Problem Is Only Getting Worse

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Juggling a career and a family isn't easy. Yet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a majority of parents in the U.S. today are attempting to do it.

Approximately 88% of U.S. families with children have one parent in the workforce, and 58% have two working parents.

Knowing that, Business Insider partnered up with personal finance site NerdWallet to find the best cities for those with two jobs: employee and parent.

Our analysis focuses on affordability (median income and housing costs), childcare costs, school quality, and the community (percentage of households with children) in the 100 largest U.S. cities.

Gilbert, Arizona, ranks No. 1 with an overall score of 72.5.

NerdWallet analyst Divya Raghavan says the Phoenix suburb has transformed itself from the "Hay Shipping Capital of the World" to a diverse suburban center in recent years. "With moderate costs and a high median household income, Gilbert offers affordability and also high-quality schools," she says. Almost 77% of households in Gilbert include children.

Following close behind in the No. 2 spot is Plano, Texas, with a score of 67.4.

Located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Plano is home to the corporate headquarters of Dell Services, Toyota Motors, J.C. Penney, and Siemens PLM Software. NerdWallet found that Plano has a high median income, average childcare costs, and high quality public schools.

Rounding out the top three is Chandler, Arizona — another Phoenix suburb.

"Chandler's strong economy is partly due to the presence of Intel, which is the city's largest employer," says Raghavan. "Chandler has a low cost of living, which makes life easier for working parents. Incomes are high in the city as well."

The Southwest snagged a total of eight of the top 10 spots on our list largely because of the relatively low cost of living.

"Working parents want to live in a city where their children are set up for success and where their hard-earned dollar stretches far," Raghavan says. "As parents are planning for their children's education and their own retirement, they have to make decisions now that will affect the rest of their lives."

SEE ALSO: The 20 Best Jobs For Work-Life Balance

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Motorola is expected to reveal more information about its Moto 360 smartwatch next month, but it looks like Best Buy has already beat them to it.

The electronics retailer posted a product page for Motorola's new smartwatch, revealing that it will cost $249.99.

At that price, the Moto 360 will cost a little more than Samsung's Gear Live smartwatch ($199) and the Pebble Steel ($229), but slightly less than the Samsung Gear 2 ($299).

The Moto 360's product page on Best Buy has since been taken down and was first spotted by Droid-Life on Sunday.

The  page also listed some of the Moto 360's features and specifications, which include a circular 320 x 920 Gorilla Glass display, a built-in heart rate monitor, and a pedometer. There's no word on when it will be available for purchase, however. 

The price doesn't come as too much of a surprise considering Motorola accidentally revealed how much the Moto 360 would cost back in May. The company held a design contest inviting developers to create watch faces for the Moto 360, with the main prize being a free watch. Motorola noted in the fine print that the watch was valued at $250.

Motorola is holding an event on Sept. 4, where it will presumably unveil more details about when the Moto 360 will officially launch and some new smartphones. 

Here's a screenshot of the Best Buy page that Droid-Life saved before it was taken down:

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley Never Talks About The Real Reason You Don't Own A Smartwatch Or Wearable Tech

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) isn't slowing down his campaigning, even after he was indicted on felony charges last Friday.

Perry's aides told The Associated Press that Perry still plans a slate of appearances in the key primary state of New Hampshire next weekend amid a potential second campaign for president, including "events in Portsmouth, Manchester and Nashua on Friday, followed by a rally Saturday in Stratham, and Republican gatherings in Rochester and Chichester."

Perry is also set to give a speech on Thursday before the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.

In the coming weeks, Perry has still more events scheduled. According to the AP, Perry plans to spend two days in another key primary state, South Carolina, at the end of August, and is expected to appear with other presidential candidates at an Americans for Prosperity event in Texas. At the start of September, Perry further plans to return to Iowa, the state that kicks off the presidential primary.

This aggressive travel schedule is all despite the criminal allegations accusing him of abusing his office and coercing a public official when he carried out a threat to veto a state-level prosecutor's funding. Perry has defended the move, pointing to the prosecutor's drunken driving arrest.

"I exercised this authority to veto funding for an office whose leadership had lost the public's confidence by acting inappropriately and unethically," he said at a press conference on Saturday. "I wholeheartedly and unequivocally stand behind my veto and I'll continue to defend this lawful action of my execution authority as governor."

The special prosecutor who is bringing the case against Perry has said he will meet Perry's lawyer on Monday to discuss the case. 

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The recent conflict in Gaza has left $6 billion worth of damage in its wake, and rebuilding will be a daunting task.

One photo from AFP really illustrates the extent of the destruction:

Israel launched an offensive on July 8 after a surge in Hamas rocket fire across the border. The U.N. said 425,000 people in the Gaza Strip have been displaced, while thousands of buildings have been leveled by Israeli airstrikes.

As many as 400,000 people have lost their homes in the war, and officials estimate that 100,000 housing units will need to be rebuilt. The Palestinian Health Ministry said 2,016 Gazans had died, while 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel were killed.

Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times reports that more than 235,000 people were still crammed into 81 of the United Nations’ 156 schools as of Sunday, and classes were supposed to start in a week.

“The chances of that are zero,” Scott Anderson, deputy director of the agency that runs the U.N. schools, told The Times. 

There is so far no long-term deal in sight for the war as a five-day cease-fire ends on Monday evening amid faltering truce talks.

h/t Jon Williams of ABC

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For years, analysts have said we would soon be ditching our plastic credit and debit cards and start paying with our mobile phones. Our smartphones would use a radio frequency called near field communication (NFC), to send payments data to compatible store registers. But NFC-based apps like Google Wallet failed to gain popularity, and NFC fell out of the mobile payments conversation.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we take a look at why NFC is back. Apple may include it in the iPhone 6. Recent developments on the consumer, merchant, and developer side are reinvigorating NFC and making it a strong contender to become a leading technology for in-store mobile payments.

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Here are some of the key takeaways:

• We think there is a strong chance Apple's iPhone 6 will include NFC-compatibility. If, so it will be a game changer. Apple is the only smartphone manufacturer that has enough influence over its customers to change payment behavior en masse.
• Globally, shipments of NFC-enabled phones grew to nearly 300 million in 2013. That means that there is already a large installed base of phones that can make NFC mobile payments.
• The EMV security standard, which calls for credit cards with embedded computer chips, is driving retailers in the U.S. to upgrade their payment terminals and many of these new terminals are also NFC-compatible. That means that consumers will have plenty of options for where they can use NFC-based mobile wallets, which will catalyze adoption. 
• Contactless cards will act as a bridge for getting consumers to pay with their phones. Contactless cards, which interact with readers that are also NFC compatible, are already gaining popularity in Europe for low-value transactions. Consumers would easily transition from contactless card payments to NFC phone payments.
  
• Public transport systems will spur large-scale contactless card and NFC-based mobile payments adoption. Once people get used to tapping a card or phone to pay at the subway in big cities like London and New York, it will seem more natural to do so in other retail environments.
• Though consumers have concerns about the security of mobile payments, these can be alleviated with education. NFC-based mobile wallets already have a host of security features that make them as secure, or more secure, than credit and debit cards.

In full, the report:

• Provides 5-year forecasts of mobile payments volume, shipments of NFC-compatible terminals, and phones and the installed base of HCE-enabled Android phones from 2013-2018.
• Explains that even though NFC mobile payments aren't much better than paying with cards from the consumer's perspective, there are a handful of reasons why it doesn't matter.
• Explores why the EMV security standard, host card emulation (HCE) and public transport could push NFC to become the leading payments technology. 
• Analyzes Apple's unique position with consumers could bolster NFC adoption should they add capability to the new iPhone, as we expect they will. 

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The iPhone 6 is likely to come with a battery that is slightly larger than the one inside Apple's iPhone 5s, if a new leaked photo turns out to be legitimate.

French blog Nowhereelse.fr, which has a strong track record when it comes to leaking unreleased Apple products, has posted new photos that it says shows the battery for Apple's iPhone 6.

The photos (via MacRumors) show a battery with a 1,810 mAh capacity, which is a bit bigger than the iPhone 5s' 1,560 mAh battery.

This isn't too surprising considering that the iPhone 6 is expected to feature a larger display with a higher resolution than that of the iPhone 5s. It will need that extra capacity to power its larger display without decreasing the iPhone's battery life.

Apple is expected to release two new iPhones this year — one with a 4.7-inch display and another with an even larger 5.5-inch screen.

This smaller model is believed to be called the iPhone 6, while a recent rumor suggests that the bigger model could be named the iPhone 6L. This phablet-sized iPhone is expected to come with an even bigger 2,915 mAh battery, but we won't know for sure until Apple officially takes the wraps off its new phones.

Here's what the leaked iPhone 6 battery looks like alongside that of the iPhone 5s (via iFixit's in-depth iPhone 5s teardown). There isn't much of a change in physical size, but we've highlighted the difference in capacity. 

If this photo truly shows the iPhone 6's battery, this means it may be a bit small compared with other phones around the same size. The new HTC One, for example, also has a 4.7-inch screen but comes with a bigger 2,600 mAh battery. The Nexus 5, which comes with a slightly larger 4.95-inch display, comes packed with a 2,300 mAh battery.

That doesn't necessarily mean the iPhone 6's battery life will be lower than that of these phones. Other than sheer battery capacity, a phone's software and the type of processor it uses also affect how long it lasts on a single charge. Apple's coming A8 chip is rumored to focus on power consumption, which could mean improved battery life is in store.

Apple is expected to unveil its new iPhone(s) on Sept. 9, and other than a larger battery the iPhone 6 is rumored to come with a thinner design that is similar to that of the iPad Air and some camera enhancements.

SEE ALSO: Here's Everything We Know About The iPhone 6

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